Hong Kong, 1999 (updated)

HONG KONG, October, 1999

Oct. 10: Well, another United Red Carpet room, this one in Narita Airport, Tokyo.

It is very unsettling here, the way everything happens in the same space and the way incredible crowds build up in no time. You’re all alone, and then suddenly you’re surrounded by a fast-moving crowd in Brownian motion. I nearly fell down getting off the plane, because the stairs were so narrow and steep.

 

I’m becoming an international expert on Red Carpet Rooms. This one has an admirable window treatment—cloth window shades and high-intensity lighting strung up on guy wires. It looks very festive and at the same time stylish. I wonder what the people who work here think of the way Red Carpet customers are often the grubbiest and most dressed-down of travelers.

 

Well, now it’s Tuesday, the 12th, I believe. Hong Kong has taken us in with a warm and sticky embrace.  This is a city like Venice, on the water, and that seems to give a touch of festivity to even the everyday here. The tall buildings and the green hills, the yachts and the sampans, rich and poor mingle everywhere. I feel very much at home here.

 

Hearing the tones of Cantonese brings me back to San Francisco and Grant Avenue, the noise, the enigmatic foods, the urban squalor that people put up with with no complaint. Then there are  the shopping malls, such as Pacific Place, which has a huge open atrium and is full of office girls, totally flat chested size two and four, dressed in black from head to toe. At the dim sum restaurants, they nibble cautiously, their hair falling in their faces. All the businesses, restaurants, stores “front” these young girls, who will of course try to get married before they become old hags of 30 and have to be dismissed. I don’t like to see them wasting their time, because trends indicate that they will have to support themselves in the future. I swear, these girls are really very underfed looking.  They probably won’t get fat later or have any weight problems, but the older women I have been seeing around, (most of them scrubbing floors, by the way),  all have rickets and arthritis in their hips and that would be due to malnutrition. Surprising, isn’t it, that girls will consent to starvation this way, when there is adequate food these days for them.

 

Oct 17—I take that back. Food costs about 3X as much here as in the states, at least in the central city area, even staples like noodles. If you’re an office girl, you’re expected to look a certain way, and that’s expensive. Furthermore, if eating is expensive and makes you put on weight, it’s perfectly logical to spend money on clothes and not food.  

 

We had a shopping adventure. I love the malls here, not the above-mentioned shopping center, but the ones that have labyrinths of shops. I really haven’t found much to buy, but these are window-shopping and people watching paradises.  One jeweler came out of his shop and took me in to look at his earrings. He had a pair of earrings I liked that he wanted way too much for, and ended up practically begging me to name my price, and it took a lot of will power to walk away.

 

My husband and I fell for the charms of a Hong Kong tailor, and he bought a suit, two shirts, and a sports jacket. I practically fell over, because I had been after him for years about the advantages of a sports jacket, and it took this man five minutes to convince him to get one! What a salesman.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Aberdeen! This was the place that reminded me so strongly of SF Chinatown. Poor and crowded in the way I remember, with the same sights, sounds, and smells. Hemmed in on all sides by richer areas. And yet well located. The market there was the limit in poverty gracefully endured, except for the beggar sprawled at the front entrance, a wooden leg prominently displayed, and just as prominently, two sound legs (???)  It is surprising, given how very poor this area is, that there were not more beggars. Well, I guess you can’t make much money begging from the poor and I’m sure the police chase beggars away from the other places.

 

 

 

These eggs in the Aberdeen Market look at least 1000 years old.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Aberdeen sits on the waterfront and is the embarkation point for the sampans. As we approached the dock, a distinguished looking older woman came up and talked us into her relative’s boat. I learned from my guidebook that many of these sampans are run by women of a “rather looked down upon” minority, who are descendants of the original Hong Kong inhabitants.  She took us around for ½ hour, past the garish floating restaurants and, most interesting, into the area where the permanently moored boats are, boats, not houseboats, but with people living on

them.

 

 

 

I felt  mighty sorry for their dogs and cats, which live their lives out tethered on short lines that choke them if they even try to stand up. None of them were fat, so I guess they don’t get fed much either.  We did see a dog carcass floating in this area.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Star ferryboats are cheap and frequent. Sporty, too. You have to step lively on and off the gangplank. The Bay is choppy from boat traffic, and every once in a while a swell will lift the gangplank way up, and I suppose people get thrown off them from time to time. They have lots of people keeping an eye on passengers. Amusingly, they dress in blue sailor outfits, sans hat .[ I couldn't get a picture of one of them, so I stole this photo from the Internet.] 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We ate at the New World Renaissance Hotel Restaurant, The Panorama. It was very nouvelle cuisine—lots of exquisite little artistically prepared dishes, a small but perfect filet, etc. Our hosts proved to be very entertaining people, British ex-pats of three years’ standing (That’s a long time, apparently, because people burn out fast here), who have rented a house in the New Territories. This once rural area on the Mainland is now under development. This is different from the way it used to be. A friend of mine who resided here in the 70’s lived on Hong Kong Island in a tiny apartment, sharing it with the nursemaid and the housekeeper, two kids, and a husband who dropped by now and then.  So from that standpoint it’s better, but it gets ever more hectic here—more people, more traffic, faster and faster pace of life. Our host works very hard, and he’s not getting any younger. He’s one of those rare people in high-tech who knows how to get a manufacturing process set up, running, and profitable in a short period of time, but he would really like to get off the treadmill soon. They certainly enjoy an opulent way of life here, but they have held on to their home in a nice area of rural Southern England, where they hope to retire.

 

The amount of activity at night is stunning. Everyone’s out on the streets. Busses loaded with passengers practically mow you down. It’s exciting in a kind of well not for me way, with lots and lots of bright lights. As we were walking back to the ferry boat from the restaurant, we saw a  Hong-Kong acquaintance with two German companions, one of whom we entertained briefly in Hilo who made so little impression on me that I can’t remember his name. Another Hong Kong acquaintance is taking us out on his yacht on Friday night. I’m rapidly approaching the point where I feel that I’ve had enough to eat.

 

I saw an elderly and unappealing looking man at breakfast this a.m. paying off his companion of the night, a very tall, busty blonde girl with no hips wearing a black low-cut short dress and tennis shoes. She went out down the street, book bag slung over her shoulder, so I guess she was a student making a little money on the side.

 

This is an expensive place to live. The vice is muted here and very expensive, too. My guidebook describes one of these high-tech whorehouses where teenage girls dressed in pink entertain the customers. It is said that the Japanese have separate areas just for them (??????) Just another example of the Japanese enigma—they know why they do things the way they do, and it probably is some very simple reason, but they like to make it all seem mysterious by not telling anyone.

 

My faves:

The Star Ferry Boats

The skyline, especially the color clock, the changing color building, the electric razor building that sends a blast of light straight up  [I never learned the real names of these buildings], the view of all this from the Hong Kong Hotel, the yacht trip to Lamma Island and an assortment of seafood in a brightly lit outdoor café on the water. Great red wine with that. Another banquet with another host, similar food. Great suckling pig skin. Groupa, a red fish. They parboil the fish, take the meat out, serve that individually and put the head and tail back together. It’s decorative (for Chinese) and brave souls will eat the cheeks and eyeballs, a rare treat. After that meal, we decided we had had enough Chinese food to eat. It happens when you see the fish staring at you and you stare back.

 

In that frame of mind, we attended the Oktoberfest at the Hong Kong Hotel and had a blast to the music of a very talented and funny oompa band from Munich. We ate totally authentic sausages and sauerkraut and drank Loewenbrau beer.  Those Chinese sure know how to party—they were up on the tables shouting and singing. I guess you would have to let off steam a lot in such a pressure cooker as Hong Kong.

 

My husband got our days screwed up, so we were at the airport at seven am yesterday and found we were 24 hours early!  Well, it was great to have an extra day.

 

We went to Macau, the most interesting if not exactly the most pleasurable outing we made.  It was squalid there in a way that Hong Kong isn’t, although Hong Kong’s more crowded. (Click for the full effect.)

[I wonder what it looks like today. Surely the Chinese have invested in this place since the takeover.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The pictures we took show an entirely Asian peoplescape with a church lacking everything but a façade, and a street leaving the plaza that is shaped like such streets in Europe but is overwhelmed by cheap tourist gimcrackerey.  Strangely, the schoolgirls wear what look like little Catholic uniforms. Are they Catholic? Are there still Catholic schools there? It all reverts to China in December 1999.  I wonder if the Chinese will ever decide to restore the architectural marvels that the Portuguese left behind. Would be a pity in a way, since they make such interesting and picturesque ruins.Having forgotten our guidebook, we were not able to find a Portuguese restaurant and instead ate rather well in a noodle shop that was memorable for an absolutely incredible noise level!!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Hong Kong Art Musuem in Kowloon was a marvel. I have seldom had such a pleasurable few hours, not because of the collection, necessarily, but because of the way it was presented, and especially the CD-ROM player that had excellent recorded commentary on many of the pieces. It was very cheap, too—only about three dollars for admission and the player. I really enjoyed looking at the brushwork scrolls and was surprised at the range of style. Also, although we think of these works as being flat and “representational,” I found them lively and full of motion and very impressionistic. They were drawn from life, pre-photography. They had some nice ceramics and porcelain. I imagine museums in Europe have better pieces, but this was so well curated, with a nice sense of history, a good selection of information, not overloaded.

 

Here is a flickr collection of the photos we took there. [Stop when it begins to look like Rome, unless you want to see pix of Rome, that is. I'm having problems with my flickr account, but this is OK for viewing for now.]

 

Marianna Scheffer, 2010