People

There are a lot of people in Hong Kong. They are not quiet people either and so Hong Kong is also a noisy place. Both aspects are in stark contrast to our usual life in rural Connecticut. Both are in many ways refreshing but I can imagine there will come a time when I crave for peace and quiet.

I walk to work everyday and vary my routes for interest and to discover as much as possible in the side streets of our neighborhood. Street life is so complex that there are often new things to be seen, even on streets that I have walked on many times before. The other day I was with Jacob and he noticed a movie theater that I had never seen before. (I have been talking with a colleague in the General Education Centre who is a film critic and he has promised to get me into Hong Kong Movies beyond Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan.) But the last half of my walk to work is along a walkway. It is about 20 feet wide, sometimes elevated above the roads and sometimes a tunnel, going under/over who knows what. It always appears to be crowded with people, going in both directions. Some of them are students/staff going to/from PolyU, but that probably represents a minority. The numbers are swelled by the fact that the walkway also connects to stops for buses that go through the tunnel to Hong Kong Island. But for the most part the destinations and purposes of all these people is unknown to me. But I have ample opportunities to observe.

There is a wide variety of ages. I actually see more elderly people in the streets closer to our apartment building. Sometimes they are by themselves, shuffling along or sitting on one of the benches, watching the world go by. Sometimes they are with a younger person who is playing the role of support or guide. Normally they are female, either a daughter or granddaughter or a paid helper, usually Filipino. I am told that older people do well here (I think Hong Kong has the second longest life expectancy in the world), as long as they have family. The other interesting category of people I see before I get to the walkways is children being escorted to school. They are wearing their neat school uniforms and walking hand-in-hand with an adult. It could be father or mother or, again, a Filipino helper. It has the look of a relaxed stroll, rather than the rush that you might expect in the United States. The pace of walking or the more relaxed life in general seems to allow interactions between the two of them, conversation, jokes, physical affection.

A variety of paces can be found in the walkways. Some people are ambling along, whereas others are moving much more quickly, intent on getting somewhere. Needless to say, I am in the latter category. Surprising to me, given the variations in speed and the fact that there appear to be no rules like pass on the left, there are no collisions and almost no physical contact. People have the skills to get extremely close to each other without actually touching. There is not much space to go around in Hong Kong and so people have learned to be comfortable with small amounts of personal space. Sometimes this is manifest in interesting ways. For example, I can be in the supermarket, perhaps 2 feet from the shelves, inspecting the merchandize. Local people will think nothing of occupying the space between me and the shelves, apparently oblivious to my presence. It would be thought of as extremely rude in the United States, but here the understanding of personal space is so small that clearly there was plenty of room. This understanding allows the migration of lots of people through the walkways with efficiency and lack of trauma.

Another aspect of the people that interests me is their dress. This is a big city and so dress is important. Elizabeth notices fashion much more than I do so you should go to her poisedforlife blog for more complete descriptions. I find myself noticing clothing quite often because it seems interesting. I am not just talking about short skirts on the younger women, although that is quite evident and it is almost always the women that are interesting. It might be the tops, with either cut or color or some combination of the two being striking. Or it might be the words written on the t-shirts, making statements that are not quite right, grammatically speaking. None of the phrases have stuck in my memory, but Hong Kong is famous for these t-shirts.

Our first typhoon

This week saw our first typhoon. Typhoon is Pacific lingo for hurricane. Like most things in Hong Kong, their approach is very organized. You know something is up when the typhoon signal is hoisted. The language must date from the time when it truly was a flag being hoisted, but now, of course, it is publicized by TV, internet, radio, etc., but also lots of signs strategically placed, for example in the shopping malls and the foyer to our building. Signals 1 is just an alert, and then it goes to 3 when the winds become substantial. The next signal after 3 is 8, peculiarly (they used to use the intermediate numbers to signify direction). But 8 means everything stops, schools and businesses close and everybody goes home. From 8 it can go up to 9 or 10.

We got our first 8 on Monday, around 4.30 PM. But it was very civilized because they announced that the number 8 signal was to be hoisted then a couple of hours earlier, to give people, especially those living on the outlying islands, the chance to get home. Our flat is well positioned to view a typhoon, as it faces east/north/east. But of course, we did not want to experience it from the confines of our apartment. So we waited for a break in the rain and then went down to the waterfront. The tall buildings interact with the wind and so in some places we would wonder what all the fuss was about, whereas in others, we would be struggling to keep our footing and avoid being blown off our feet. Duncan figured out that that pleasurable sensation could be enhanced if he held his jacket out with his arms to create sails. Given that the walkway was made of bricks that became slippery when wet, he invented a new sport of typhoon windsailing. Elizabeth and I restricted ourselves to just seeing how far it was possible to lean into the wind without falling over - quite far.

That was the fun part of the typhoon. The less fun part was that the wind quite effectively forced water around the seals of the windows in our flat. We had towels placed along all the windows, but in the living room that was not enough, because the towels were soaked in 5 minutes. Jacob worked out an effective wicking system so that the water would flow through the towel and into a bucket. Then the latches on 2 of our leeward windows (one of them nicely positioned right above the head of our bed) broke. I managed to fix it closed with a metal coat hanger, so that we could get to sleep.

The wind had dropped some when we woke up but the number 8 signal was not relaxed back to a 3 until 10.30. When that happens, everybody has an hour to get to work. I saw a fair amount of tree damage, but overall the city came through very well. Any debris was cleared away remarkably quickly. There are 2 or 3 typhoons that come through every year and I realized that evacuations never seem to be a part of the plan. Everybody is expected to go home to ride out the storm. I suppose that the buildings are constructed to withstand anything that is likely to come. We could feel our 20 year old block swaying a little and the window frames were flexing back and forth. It would have been fun to be at the top of one of the really tall ones, to see how much they move.

I am absolutely in love with the Hong Kong public transport system. I had heard good things about it before we came and was really looking forward to living without a car. However, this has exceeded my wildest expectations. Hong Kong is famous for the Star Ferries. They ply back and forth between various points on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, also part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, but attached to the Chinese mainland. The fares vary a little bit, depending where you are going to/from, but they are all less than a dollar (US). There were riots a couple of decades back when the Star Ferry company increased the fares. It makes the Staten Island ferry seem expensive. They run like clockwork very frequently and they get people on and off them with enormous efficiency. Plus, it is very pleasant to ride them.

Then we have the MTR subway system. It is not enormous by NYC standards, but it is so much cleaner, quieter, cheaper and more pleasant, there is really no comparison. It is more like London's except enormously less expensive. Waiting for more than 5 minutes for a train seems unusual. And then they have interchange platforms, where two different lines come together, They have the timing down so well that they synchronize arrivals so that people can change from one train to the other without waiting. The exits are labeled, so that when people are giving you directions, they tell you which exit to use.

Taxis are also cheap and very plentiful, although my non-existent Cantonese means that it can sometimes be difficult to communicate the destination.

But my first love is the buses. There are literally hundreds of different routes. When I first came I asked for a bus route map, but there really isn't one - it would be too complex. So for a while, the buses were an impenetrable mystery. Then I discovered that my Hong Kong street atlas marks bus routes and since that discovery, I feel like I own the city. The double deckers are best, riding on the top deck, with so much to see. They are, of course, cheap and they go everywhere.

There are also trams, lots of them, but mostly restricted to a single line going east/west across the island. Also double deckers, but very narrow. Yesterday, we just got on them and rode from one end of the line to the other. They are very slow, but cheapest of all. It will set you back HK$2 - just over 25 cents US, to ride.

Having said all that, I walk to work every day.

September 6, 2009

Sunday evening and we have now been in our apartment (or in Hong Kong/British parlance, flat) for almost a week. Our move-in was delayed by the need to install new air conditioners. The PolyU people, who are the official renters of the flat, are very picky and went over it with a fine tooth comb to make sure everything worked. The landlord, CY Chim is a very good man and he seems to want everything to be good for us. On the day we moved in he came and took us on a tour of the neighbourhood. The waterfront, the municipal swimming pools and soccer field, the local park, the wet market, the dry market, the public library and then all the Wonderful Worlds of Whampoa (more of those later). It was enormously helpful and saved us several days of wandering around lost by ourselves.
The closet city to Hong Kong in the USA is probably New York. Rent and property prices may be similar. As a consequence, apartments are very small by US standards. I believe ours is 750 sq. ft. Jacob and Duncan each have their own bedroom but they are each only about 10 x 6. What it lacks in square footage, it makes up for in views. Our flat is on the 12th floor (our block is small by local standards) and we look out over the harbour, which is surrounded on most if not all sides by high rises of one kind or another. So as I look out now, I see the MegaBox, a big retail/entertainment complex. It has an elaborate and constantly changing display of lights on the outside. Between us and it, are two cruise liners that are anchored in the middle of the bay. They are also lit up like Christmas trees and getting ready for their nightly trip out into the ocean. Gambling is illegal in Hong Kong (surprisingly) and so the solution is floating casinos. They go out very late and then return around 9 the next morning. I think I will give that experience a pass.

August 22, 2009

So we have been in Hong Kong for 5 days now. What a place! We are staying in the Regal Kowloon Hotel. Kowloon is a part of Hong Kong that is on the mainland. It looks at Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbor, which has to be one of the most beautiful urban views in the world. They do architecture well here, so lots of elegant skyscrapers that are all lit up like Christmas trees at night. Kowloon is equally, if not more crowded than the island. A few less Westerners, so more Chinese. Our hotel is only 5 minutes walk from Hong Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU), where I will be working. Of course, I am not going to be living in the hotel for 10 months, so we have spent a lot of time looking for an apartment. Fortunately, people have helped us with this from PolyU, since the combination of jet lag, culture shock and complete lack of Chinese language skills would have made it impossible otherwise. But after 3 days of looking we were successful, and will move into our modest 12^th floor apartment later next week.

Hong Kong is very hot and humid, very crowded, very foreign and very familiar at the same time. Multinational corporations are all over the place. There are three Starbucks within two minutes of the hotel. I haven’t been in them yet, but they seem to have that Starbuck’s feel, though the menus are different. I’ll have to see what the coffee tastes like. Also lots of Seven Elevens. But they have whole cooked chickens and all sorts of other prepared foods for sale in them.