Hong Kong is part of China since 1997, but has special status under the Chinese 'one country, two systems policy'. In terms of being one of the major global commercial hubs, nothing much seems to have changed due to reunification, except for continued spectacular growth.
Our sail in - around 6 am - felt like sailing down watery mainstreet of a giant metropolis among a forest of soaring glass skyscrapers of the most daring designs, sweeping roofs of huge museums, conference centres, shopping malls, and long stretches of modern concrete highways, suspended over the harbour waters, the barren stretch of now abandoned Kai Tak airport awaiting development as a space age cruise terminal. Not a sampan or junk in sight, but the old Star Ferries, some still painted the old white and green, and some in psychedelic paint still ply the harbour waters. A few tourists boats hovered around, some breakwater enclosed marinas with either fishing boats or sleek modern yachts. Further into the harbour, cranes, freighters, rows and stacks of thousands of containers. 85000 containers are moved every day, ships turn around within 3-4 hours, unload and load. (No wonder Hong Kong serves as a teaching model for Logistics)
Beyond all that, the lush green and still mist shrouded hills of Hong Kong Island in the background.
A very crowded city, where landfills encroaching into the harbour are normal and frequent, and as soon as they have 'settled', another complex of housing, manufacturing, office buildings are constructed in record time. Popilation grows at break neck speed, much of it from immigrants from China.
Hong Kong actually consists of Hong Kong Island proper, with Victoria Peak rising above it, Kowloon across the harbour on the mainland, and the New Territories, which used to be a backwater rural area, sharing the northern border with China.
Commuting is efficient. Although car and bus traffic clog the roads, pedestrian traffic flows thickly and safely through all green/all red intersections or crosses noisy streets via underpasses. Moving walkways, several miles long, connect entire city blocks, their direction alternating between a.m. and p.m. to accommodate rush hour traffic. There is an extensive modern Metro (which transports 2.4 million commuters daily), several trains, buses, thousands of taxis, tunnels under the harbour, some trams and the ever present ferries crossing to the many smaller islands belonging to Hong Kong, or visiting Macau, the old Portuguese strongholdnow a Chinese city and modern gambling heaven.
I threw myself into the throng, walked down Salisbury Road, where my old stomping ground, the Ambassador Hotel, used to be next door to the allegedly 'best' hotel in the World, the venerable Peninsular. Well, the Peninsular is still there, genteel British Afternoon Tea as well, except it has been extended heavenward with a couple of hotel towers each about 50 stories high. No trace of the old Ambassador, in it's place stands another double towered Sheraton Hotel.
Nathan Road, shopping street and a long series of 1950's uglies in years past, is still shoppers paradise, but many of the uglies have given way to ultra modern malls and shopping centres, offering again every international fashion brand. Judging by the prevalence of up-end exclusive stores, where even kid's clothing is couture from Dior and Yves St. Laurent at outrageous prices, many of Hong Kong citizens must enjoy wages and salaries, of which the rest of us can only dream. The car traffic apart from taxis and trucks, seems to consist of Mercedeses and BMW's, with a few Maseratis and Ferraris mixed in between.
Lee Ka Shing, the 11th richest man in the world, not only lives here, but 30 % of Hong Kong works for him. The middleclass employs 300,000 Philipino women as nannies, the lower middle class employs as many Indonesions - difference being capability or lack thereof in the English language.
Some of the old Kowloon is still evident, pre-sixties buildings with dilapidated facades, each window graced with an old fashioned airconditioning unit. The walls are covered with placards, store signs, restaurant advertisements, tailor signst, foot massage, acupuncture, cheap travel, Chinese Viasa outlets, money exchange, souvenirs....a bewildering jungle, in which narrow side alleys lead into the odorous, dank underbelly of the glitzy city.
Later, I took one of the Star Ferries to Hong Kong Island, and alit at the old Central Pier. Ferries are free for people over 65 years, which I learned too late. But, at 75 cents one way fare, that was not a costly error. I took first a bus and then a funicular to 'The Peak' (at reduced senior rates), one quick way to grasp the immensity of the City from the lofty heights of Victoria Peak. Up there, development had morphed the old peak station into another convoluted shopping centre, a multi storied viewing tower replete with dozens of restaurants and shops, with some super exclusive private villas built along the ridge of the Peak. Propably some of the most expensive bits of real estate on the entire globe.
But, from here the size and height of the hundreds of sky scrapers sank in, a view akin to one of a monstruous science fiction porcupine, where each spine would be a few dozen stories high and packed as tight as the network of roads and streets would allow, and then some - as some were bridged together above the streets.
Next I revisited what used to be quaint fishing villages, with floating restaurants, heavy sampan traffic in the bays, and deserted beaches. Now, Repulse Bay looks like Miami built on a hill (the beach is still purre white sand), Aberdeen has a huge JUMBO floating restaurant with Conference facilities and free shuttle 'sampan' look alikes, and Stanley has evolved into a thriving tourist market place with restaurants 'a-la-French-Riviera' along the esplanade.
Every living language can be heard inthe markets, and in the streets.
But an old temple graces the end of the beach front, with aromatic incense floating from its many joss sticks, and an air of peace and quiet inside. Albeit, the interior is vibrant with colour, where red seems to overwhelm everything else.
Hong Kong at night is a feast for the eyes, with colourful neon lit streets and alleys, some of which turn into night markets and social hangouts - too many in too many areas to count. Topping it all a laser show lights up the sky over Hong Kong/Kowloon skyline every night, music and all, and for 30 minutes every skyscraper flashes, turns colour, lights up in different designs to the rythm of public music, and multi coloured lasers pierce into the clouds above. Amsterdam had the prime spot, right beside the central clocktower in Kowloon, where thousand of people gather every night to watch the spectacle.
I decided to visit the New Territories on the second day. Walked to the Holiday Inn, and booked a local tour at 'Senior Citizen' Price, which came to 30 dollars...
The guide for the dozen or so people participating greeted us 'On behalf of the Government' - a recognition of the Benevelont Rule emanating from China is suppose.
Again what used to be extensive farmlland, producing vegetables for Hong Kong, has turned into an almost never ending Mississauge - reasonably prosperous, growing and singularily ugly. Just outside Kowloon is a new manufacturing district on reclained land, where factories are 30 story high rises with a small footprint, and beside are housing developments for the labour force, which only has to cross the street to go to work. There are schools, hospitals, and sportsgrounds etc. Housing developments grant one room with one window to a family, housing 60% of Hong Kong's population, who partitions the room into segments for male and female family members. All that luxury costs $200US per month, still a fortune for most of the manual labour.
Hong Hong does not enforce a 'One Child per family' policy, however as raising a child and paying for a reasonably good education costs about 450,000, not too many people take advantage of that freedom. One hour for a tutored English lesson costs $ 400 Hong Kong - about $60 US. Newly weds opt for a dog instead - cheaper. But, the dog of course has to be a purebred, and I saw lots of purebreds, and not a single mutt.
Nestled among these suburban highrise sprawl was the Yuen Yuen Institute, a temple/monastry devoted to three religions: Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism. All seem to coexist in peace. Some of the religious rules are easy: no killing, no alcohol, no sex, no stealing, no cursing....if one breaks the rules, one descends into one of the 18 levels of hell. The lowest level involves almost eternal punishment by being deep fried in bliling oil. That would clean up the language...as the ascend from those hellish level is truly a tortuous one.
From the main temple I could hear monotonous drumming with a quick regular beat. Monks or Priests gathered amongst the offering of fruit and the hundreds of incense sticks, and started to chant. An Oasis of devout worship and reflection amongst the populous city outside. One remains respectfully just outside the temple door, not to disturb the worshippers. Above the doors hang conical coils of incense, apparently burning forever.
Further north towards the Chinese border, some farms remained, but soon they gave way to mountain ranges covered with lush rainforest - no wonder Hong Kong had 9 feet of rainfall last year, enough to water a few mountain ranges. Beautiful natural parks and reserves are veined with walking trails, hundreds of kilometers of them, great for hiking and picnicking. Many areas are groomed with hundreds of picnic tables and bar-be-que pits, where city folk crowd in during weekends to relish a small slice of nature.
The village of Fanling, almost at the border, still has remnants of it's ancient city walls, which protected the town from invaders and bandits. But the surrounds are also changed from rice paddies to parking lots and housing. Inside the walls housed are crowded so close together, that hardly any light penetrates to alley level. Doors are all decorated at either side with red banners for luck, but under one's feet, drain pipes drain anything from rain to waste into the ancient sewage system. A throng of people was working in the constricted spaces exchanging pipes and connecting whatever....to narrow to make out what they were doing. The whole inner wall area harboured a faint smell of cloaca.
Out to nature again, past a huge wetland area, where cranes and ibis abound, and China laid across the water, looking exactly the same as the rest of the country.
Near the East Coast of the New Territories fish farming is still done in the ancient fashion. Nets are strung between boats, which are almost like a permanent floating village, and seafood is harvested mostly for local consumption. The most famous delicacy seems to be 'cream crab', of which only a few are permitted to be caught each year, hence outrageous prices for a specimen a couple of ounces in weight in any upscale restaurant. Anyway, snake can be on the menu as well, said to be as tasty as chicken.
A curious thing about Chinese language: Hong Kong speaks Cantonese (apart from mandatory English) and Mainland China speaks Mandarin, one cannot understand the other. However, their writing, representing concepts not a combination of letters forming a word, are read equally well by both Countries, as it is exactly the same.
English is considered extremely difficult to learn. Chinese is 'musical' as the same word sounds aquire different meanings depending on their intonation on the musical scale. I.e. the same words, sung differently, could mean "I am hungry' or 'I have diarrhea' - potentially embarrassing for a Westener. Imagine how a Chinese pupil feels, with an ethnic difficulty to pronounce an 'L' and say 'R' instead, when confronted with a word like 'fog', which sounds to him exactly like 'frog' (he would then propnounce 'flog') and fu...k. Embarrassing for sure!
Apart from enjoying an almost 'private' ride on this little tour, we were only about 12 guests, we were treated to some interesting trivia of Chinese traditional medicine. The guide's relative is a 'bone-setter'...anyway, milk is bad for you, tea is good, red meat is bad for you, tofu is good, snake elixir is best against arthritis when it comes from a really poisonous snake...Just like mother told you and Happy hunting.
A Chinese theatre group came aboard in the evening and treated us to a magical dragon dance, perfomed in the dark, only the undulating dragon chasing a ball is visible, and the dancers melt into the overall darkness. A masked dancer performed an incredibly dexterous dance of changing masks. With quick turn of the head or swipe of a fan, the mask would change without any discernible action - instantly. Colourful and truly a 'different face' of Hong Kong.
Being the Year of the Tiger, the show would have been lacking but for a dance of giant tiger (two men under a tiger costume moving and pouncing cat like) who drank from a magic flask and then spit out mini tigers into the audience. Well, as a 'Dragon' I missed out on the tiger rain.
My apologies, that all my photos sit 'apart' from the text, instead of being inserted at the appropriate spots to illustrate the writing. But, publishing this blog via limited e-mail capabilities and not on-line, creates a few problems for style and lay-out.
Off to Shangai and the Shanghai River tomorrow - I hope. So far it is so foggy out at sea, and the ships horn blasts regularly every 60 seconds, that piloting up the Shang Hai River may be suspended. May the fog disapear!!!
