Hong Kong – May 2006

Hong Kong:

After passing several lakes and playing cat-and-mouse between several stormfronts, we arrived in Kunming, the “City of Eternal Spring,” where it was anything but that for us. Cold rain and damp weather encouraged us to once again bring out our winter jackets and gloves – in May! We had hoped to receive a one-month visa extension in the city in order to have enough time to complete our trip to Lhasa, but that proved impossible, so we had no other choice but to go to Hong Kong for that purpose (the one place where you can receive a prolonged Chinese visa). We despaired when we saw the transportation prices and number of days required to take a train or bus to the city, but then we got lucky by hearing that a 1 1/2-hour flight to Shenzhen – just across the border and only a 45-min. metro ride from Hong Kong – was about the same price as a bus ticket to Hong Kong! We jumped at the chance, and were soon on our way.

Although Hong Kong is technically a part of China, it has a special history and a special status. Everyone speaks English – it was, after all, a British colony until 1997! It has a very definite international feel – very different from mainland China. It proved to be a veritable fusion between the West and the East. Entering the Hong Kong customs house was like entering another country. The three remarkable differences were that there was no smoking, no spitting, and a large proportion of non-Chinese foreigners. On the Chinese side, a sign directed us: “To Leave the Country, Please take Lift,” and so we took the lift, and passed through long corridors and a health station where women took the temperature of those passing through. Then we reached the Hong Kong side, where hard-to-miss signs warned: “Stay Away from Red Fire Ants,” “Help Prevent Avian Flu,” and “No Spitting and Littering,” the offense of which for the latter one was a “Fixed $1500 Fine.”

We took a 45-min. train ride from the customs house to Tsimshatsui, a neighborhood on the tip of Kowloon, on Victoria Bay. On the way, we passed mountains and a beautiful bay with a lot of modern high-rises on the beach. Our first stop was at the Shoestring Travel Agency, where we filled out our forms for a three-month Chinese visa, to be picked up in two days for a cost of 26 USD each. Next was our search for a hotel, which we found across the street at the dirty and cramped Chungking Mansions. Neighbors weren’t exactly friendly here. They yelled in each other’s faces, Chinese and Indian men all insulting each other and each one trying desperately to pull us in different directions. While one was in mid-sentence, another ran up between us and shoved a discount or VIP card in our faces – they were often angry, but at least there was competition to drive the prices down for us!

We found a shoebox of a room in the Mansions, a labyrinth of a building that is divided into at least six different blocks. Cramped walkways led into the heart of the Mansion, where Muslim Indians in their flowing white robes and turbans conversed with tall Africans, who in turn conversed with old Chinese men. Large African mamas in their bold, bright designs and headscarves sat on stools with their small babies. Men sold fake watches, copies of brand-name handbags and other cheap goods, and Indian snacks and sweets. The building’s windows looked onto the opposite side of the same building and black-encrusted air-conditioners and bamboo scaffolding that reached to the top of the 15th floor. The stairwell invariably let us out into a back alleyway filled with garbage cans and ugly odors. Really, the crowded passageways that led into the heart of the building and its dark and dirty corners, along with its cockroaches and smells, provided a striking contrast to the rest of the city’s antiseptic, sparkling, and glittery air-conditioned malls.

Chungking Mansions was a sort of mini-India – the heart of Hong Kong’s Indian community. The smell of incense and curry, the bearded, robed men, the women in saris and red dots on their foreheads, the touts selling hashish and opium, and even the cockroaches in the dirty stairwells and running across our restaurant table all served to make us feel like we were back on the subcontinent. All the good and bad things came back in a rush, and I missed India. We were very happy to once again find Indian food.

The neighborhood of Kowloon, where we stayed, was the tourist center, where a lot of hotels, travel agencies, restaurants, and shops were located. A part of the neighborhood was called the “Golden Mile” because of its commercial potential, and was home to such upscale shops as Gucci, Burberry, and Dior. There were endless shopping arcades, mostly fancy, and all busy. Hong Kong is a definite shopping town. It is very commercial, very built-up, and very crowded. The skyscrapers seemed unending. Indeed, our neighborhood of Tsimshatsui has one of the highest population densities on the planet!

Tsimshatsui was on Victoria Bay and commanded a superb view of Hong Kong Island. By daylight, the China Sea is an emerald green, and commercial, industrial, and private boats ride its waterways. Passenger ferries come and go from and to Macau and Shenzhen. By nighttime, the skyline lights up, the billboards and company names on the tops of buildings light up in blue, green, red, or yellow. Some snazzy ones change color or flash. At 8 PM every evening, a lightshow called the “Symphony of Lights” dazzles a crowd of onlookers. Lights from Kowloon shine over the Bay and the buildings on Hong Kong Island blink in time to the music. The skyline over Victoria Bay must surely be one of the most impressive skylines in the world. A promenade follows the curve of the bay from near the Cultural Center and the clock tower to the Avenue of the Stars, whose sidewalk features lit stars and a path of glowing, multi-colored lights.

As luck would have it, a typhoon hit the China Sea on the day that we arrived in Hong Kong. It wasn’t too bad – but it sure was a downer after the heavy rain in Kunming.