There are lots of differences between Hong Kong and the United States (or England, although there are a few more similarities with the ex-colonial power). This unsurprising thought came to me this evening as I was cooking dinner and tipped a collection of cut up chicken pieces, bought wrapped in plastic at our local supermarket, into the pan. The expected wing and breast and leg were there, but then so was a chicken foot. And a "parson's nose", which is essentially the chicken butt. I cooked it all up happily, although Jacob commented that the actual meat was rather sparse. But then he was a little prejudiced because (another difference) he had just spent 2 hours unsuccessfully searching for tortillas. He had a hankering for tacos, which was destined to remain unfulfilled.
You can get excellent food in malls in Hong Kong. I had sort of been aware that good restaurants could be located in malls. Ground floor shop front space is in short supply, so restaurants often set themselves up elsewhere. But last Saturday, we went to see Precious and decided to go look for dessert as part of our attempt to process what we had seen. The theater was about a 10-minute walk from a big ritzy mall so that was where we headed. The mall, Langham Place, is architecturally very interesting. It is spread over 12 floors and has some wonderful open areas that allow you to look down through most of those indoors. I don't think it can be very "green" - it must take a lot of energy to cool that volume of air. It also has some very long escalators, which means that you can get up 12 floors in 3 flights. Anyway, to get back to the food, we toured the mall in search of dessert, but also noticed the crowds of people, at 10.30 PM, sitting and eating dinner. There were lots of different kinds of food and all of it looked good. Actually, I am sure there must have been a McDonalds there also, so perhaps that was an overstatement. We ended up at a Japanese/Western fusion restaurant on the 11th floor and enjoyed delicious and unusual desserts. The mall did start to close around 11 PM, much later, of course, than those in most US cities.
A snowstorm would feel pretty good right now. For the past week or so, the temperatures have been in the mid to high 70's and the air has been as wet as it can get. Warm fog is a new phenomenon for me, but visibility quite often has been down to about 50 yards. The great view that we have out across Victoria Harbour has been reduced to gray, and boat foghorns have been added to the background noises. We had been washing our clothes in our machine and then hanging them to dry, because we don't have a drier. That doesn't work any more because they just don't dry. So now we have to take them to the laundry. Elizabeth and I realized that the dirty smudges on the wallpaper in our bedroom were actually healthy (or rather unhealthy) growths of mould. Fortunately, the wallpaper was washable, so that was what we did. Also fortunately, it was warm enough to turn on the air conditioner and use it to dry out the room.
I had been thinking that Hong Kongers were lousy pedestrians, because I keep having to adjust my direction to avoid them as I move at my faster than average pace. In fact, I think they are just average pedestrians, although they do walk a lot more than the average Western city dweller. My collision avoidance tactics are required simply because the density of people is so high that there is very little space between us. It’s a bit like driving a car in London, where you have to get used to negotiating narrow spaces with very little clearance.
Here is my final difference for today. This afternoon I met with the director of Hong Kong Community College, which is affiliated with PolyU. Hong Kong has community colleges, just like the US, to give opportunity to those who cannot attend a university. However, here it costs more to attend community college than one of the state-sponsored universities. I think about 16% of high school leavers can find a place at one of the 8 government funded universities. For those that cannot get in and don't have the resources to go abroad, there are local private full degree colleges and there are these 2 year institutions. Community college students here are mostly school leavers, attend full time, and evening and weekend classes are not offered. And at least for HKCC graduates, they transfer into full degree institutions at a very high rate.