"I compared Heung Shan with Hong Kong, and although they were only 50 miles apart, the difference impressed me so much that I began to wonder why it was that foreigners had done such marvellous things with this barren rock within 70 or 80 years while China with 4,000 years of civilisation had not even one place like Hong Kong…" -Sun Yatsen, the father of the Republic of China, AKA the China that could have been.
Writing to you from the air on a flight back to Shanghai after a wonderful 36 hours in Hong Kong. People love to judge and they tell me “36 hours is too short, why bother?” Well Mr. nosey cat, flip open the New York Times travel section and read the 36 hours in ________ story. Also I was actually there for 40 hours and 40 hours outside China is well worth any plane ticket.
My flight was delayed out of Shanghai and delayed in the air as we circled over Hong Kong for a while. When I finally touched down two hours behind schedule I was so relieved. Right off the gangway I had this feeling that I belonged there. That’s the same feeling I get after crossing a bridge or tunnel into New York City. Albany just feels like home- from the air it is gray and from the ground it is frozen and time as if no amount of time I spend away from there will change the grayness. On the other hand Miami is beautiful from the air but on the crowd it feels like I’m vacationing in Cuba. For a short time (four years)its amazing but I’m too restless to spend my whole life on the beach (although semiannual vacations are necessary).
I’ve always described Hong Kong as a perfect balance of New York, London, and China--- but only the good parts of China like its untapped potential. My travel companion Kirsti that it has a big of a Vegas Vegas feeling as well and I see that too. Something are over the top, such as the super nice hotels going for $700 a night for a basic room this weekend. HK is just a one hour ferry ride from Macao, home to the world’s largest casinos. Also, as my friend Mary’s well established mother told me, forget Paris or New York, Vegas has the best shopping. The expression for shopping in Chinese, mai dongxi, translates literally as “buy things”. Other expats joke that whenever you tell a mainlander you are traveling to Hong Kong they respond “you go Shanghai buy things?”. Needless to say, I did. I can’t help if everything I like is located on one easy to walk island (actually some of the best shops are on Kowloon so one island and some other property the British borrowed).
So what was mine and Kirsti’s purpose in Hong Kong? Shop, eat, and party.
All of our meals were planned beforehand. It’s quite amazing how much we could eat in 36 hours. When I finally got to the hotel near 2am we ran off to get Ebenezers, the best kabobs EVER. MMMMM. The next day I took Kirsti to Chungking Mansions, a single building which should be called Little India based on demographics. The building is VERY SKETCH. When I was studying abroad the boys would not let me go there without being accompanied by at least two of them. The first floor is all black market currency exchanges, Indian groceries, and men harassing you to buy a suit, dinner, or stay at one of the many hostels located within this slum. The hostels are by far the cheapest accomadations on this pricey island and would be hard to resist if you had no idea what a slum the building is. But its Hong Kong, the building can’t be entirely bad and it is worth the trip for the delicious Indian food.
---Break that thought. The flight attendants are giving us midflight instructions on how to stretch! They are counting and stretching and rubbing their temples for concentration.OH MY!--
The purpose of the trip was supposed to be to attend the Rugby Sevens, an annual tournament in HK which many of my study abroad friends dubbed the best weekend of their lives. Unfortunately, tickets sold out in
minutes and we being scalped for hundreds of dollars. So we decided to just party in the beer tents. But with 36 hours in the best city east of New York, we nixed that plan and said we'll see all the hunky men out in LKF that night. And we did as it was a sea of WHITE. There was English- loud, fluent English.
Another amazing fact about Hong Kong is that it is impossible to get a hangover there so I spent the next day exploring the city on foot. I shopped some more and revisited that Hong Kong Museum of History which has an exhibit celebrating the 100th anniversary of the Republic of China. The quote at the beginning of this post was from the exhibt. Needless to say, you will never see a display of this important piece of Chinese history on the mainland (crap land).
Now I am sad and depressed to go back to Shanghai. I decided to dedicate myself to a Hong Kong job search. The market is tough so if you or any of your friends have good guanxi pass it on!
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