Laura in Hong Kong

ciao

2006-08-18T04:53:00.000+08:00

Most of you know that I'm back in the US by now, as of more than a week ago. The last of the HK pictures are at Flickr now. Thanks for reading.

yacht people

2006-07-24T16:12:00.000+08:00

Vietnam had the boat people in the 1960s and 70s. “If worse comes to worse,” went the crass joke in 1997, when thousands of rich Hongkongers were obtaining foreign passports before the handover to China, “we’ll become the yacht people.” Our fancy boat moored off the coast, near Repulse Bay and its giant Miami-looking condos. The sun was shining so brightly that we could see the islands of China out in the distance. Alongside us were two fishing trawlers. My host explained that we are in the midst of a government-mandated break in the fishing season, so that the fish can replenish themselves. Instead of equipment, these fishermen had loaded their boats with family—dozens of little children in lifejackets climbing down the rusty green ladders to the water and paddling around happily as their mothers and fathers watch from the deck. I did some paddling of my own just off the boat, unable to shake the feeling that the warm, bright water I was swimming in was of questionable cleanliness. Luckily, there was a little shower to rinse off as you reboarded. I sat for a while on top of the boat, in the sun, looking out again to China. Hong Kong's stratospheric buildings were behind me, and the quiet rocking of the water, the impossibly bright sun, the rocky islands and green cliffs combined to clear my brain of crowds, filling it instead with the incredible natural beauty of this city’s setting. Unfortunately, I must have looked a bit pale after rocking for two hours in the hot sun, for one of the women we were with offered me a little brown dried up thing. “Chinese sour plum,” she explained. “Helps with sea sickness.” I sucked on it gratefully, tongue tingling, feeling the breeze finally blow again as we turned back towards Aberdeen Marina and the Hong Kong of public transportation, people, and activity.

ritual

2006-07-21T00:29:00.000+08:00

Sophia looked back at me periodically to make sure I wasn’t lost, gesturing in the proper direction, as we wove through people and people’s umbrellas in the rainy afternoon. We were in Yuen Long, way out in the western New Territories, and out of our home zones. The KCR light rail—an electric tram—swooshed by, surprising me. The restaurant was up some stairs, unobtrusive home of the “very delicious food” that is Sophia’s favorite in all of Hong Kong. We were led to a table with three typical place settings: small plate, small bowl, chopsticks, teacup and saucer. (Napkins are an anomaly—most Hongkongers carry small packs of tissues for use at meals and Chinese-style public toilets, as well as for dabbing foreheads and necks in this hot weather.) The waitress brought a white teapot of dark, red tea and a big, green ceramic bowl. My hostess took my chopsticks, bundled them with hers in one fist, and carefully poured the dark tea over the bottom tips, letting the liquid and stray tea leaves fall into the green bowl. I watched her wash in this way my bowl and cup, swirling the water inside each one so that all of the surfaces for eating and drinking were touched by tea. When all of our tableware was cleansed, the waitress came and took away the green bowl, ignoring the dark splashes that the process had wrought on our white tablecloth. Sophia promptly filled my cup with the same, red tea. “Drinking tea is very healthy,” she observed, while her friend implied that drinking tea with a meal helped one to not gain as much weight. For certain, it complemented our delicious meal: chicken, shrimp, bitter melon with soybeans, lotus-root soup, rice, and dumplings with egg custard.

frilly

2006-07-20T00:36:00.000+08:00

These days, the girls on the MTR are my primary fashion inspiration. They wear delicate, feminine skirts, or longish, ballooning, multi-pocketed shorts. They wear either strappy heels (but low ones), or a very specific type of Birkenstock. They carry big leather satchels. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine myself pulling off the outfits I think are way cool on these local girls. But the frilly shirt is an exception. Worn with skirts and jeans alike, these shirts are structural, usually cotton, and often open in the front in button-down shirt style. They are absolutely covered in frills: lace, pearly buttons, bows, collars, layers. The effect is usually beautifully feminine, and occasionally, over the top. Soon after my arrival in Hong Kong, I entered a tiny store in Tsim Sha Tsui called “In Fashion” to buy myself a frilly shirt. Racks of them before my eyes, in a very specific spectrum: white to pink. The salesgirls ignored me as I circled the store to make my decision. There was neither brand label nor size; only a hand-written price tag. I found a white model that ties in the front, with lace bottom and collar. There was no fitting room, and, besides, you can’t try on tops at most local stores here. I brought it over to the salesgirl. “Do you think this will fit me?” I asked, holding it up to my torso and gesturing. She took it from me, nodding, and stretched the waist tie (which is slightly elastic) out in front of me a few times. The lack of size labels and the meaning of her gesture hit me: I realized she was telling me this shirt, this store, and the Chinese girls I see on the MTR, were one-size-fits-all. I bought the shirt for $60 HK ($8 U.S.) and wear it proudly.

back from guangzhou

2006-07-17T12:48:00.000+08:00

(Click here for photos.)

industry/empty

2006-07-11T16:22:00.000+08:00

On Sunday, having boarded a bus the stops of which I vaguely recognized, I perched at the front of the air conditioned top level and watched the Hong Kong landscape unfold. From Diamond Hill in Kowloon, over to the eastern end of Hong Kong island and through Causeway Bay on to Aberdeen tunnel and finally, out the bridge to Ap Lei Chau. Here, my guidebook proclaimed, was a fascinating shipyard with all sorts of traditional crafts to observe. My bus went through various twists and turns, passing housing complexes and shopping centers before finally reaching the southern end of the island. Spread below me, no shipyard but a wide industrial street lined with warehouses, which oversaw the rocky coast and the green island of Lamma with its two infamous smoke stacks. The bus stopped, we were at the end of the line, and I stepped down to the empty sidewalk. The bus driver came over and with studied precision asked if he could help me. I had six minutes, said he, until the bus left again. The open street, lit with subtle sunlight, invited me to investigate, and I walked to the left, a concrete wall, graffiti scrawled; standing on my tip toes, I could just see over to the blue, blue water and dramatic coastline, quietly watching over the slow container ships as they traveled the channel. Beside me, an old woman sat in her lawn chair in front of the sea water-treatment building. I motioned to the building’s side, and she nodded, smiling. When I walked past her, to the water, I found a drop-off of concrete, with no railing, just steps leading down into the water and a complex maze of chain-link fences sheltering the mysterious treatment facilities. The bus had stopped at the end of the line, the end of the island, and I felt a little at the end of the world. When my six minutes were up, mysteriously, several people had appeared at the bus stop and got on board wordlessly with me, heading back towards the activity and the crowds. The woman remained in her lawn chair, watching us go.

mall

2006-07-10T16:19:00.000+08:00

One of the first things I noticed about Hong Kong, on my first day riding the MTR and getting acquainted with the city, was the way every stop opened up into a mall. Example: at Kowloon Tong, where I usually switch between the KCR and the MTR, there is a celebrated center called Festival Walk. Its logo is an enormous red ribbon, twined around its name, a gift to all suburban Hongkongers. Up a short escalator from the trains, and in fact between the KCR and MTR stations, are no less than seven stories of stores, natural light glittering on no less than five (and maybe more) different sets of silver escalators carrying people up and down. Welcoming all MTR passengers as they first enter is a grocery store called TASTE, whose produce aisle is (unlike the more urban foodstores here) respectably sized and whose dairy aisle sports six types of tofu. Bypass Taste (although I do my grocery shopping there); do not be intimidated by Anna Sui, Vuitton, and Prada on the lower levels; simply begin your ascent to the top. Pass the shoe level, keep up. Pass the make-up level, keep up. Pass the full size skating rink, full to the brim with children in winter coats, and the Kentucky Fried Chicken tables that overlook it. The food court, called “Food Fest,” offers Thai, Japanese, Cantonese food. At all hours it is lively, and open til 11. On Sunday I got a high-quality haircut at Festival Walk; ate sushi off a conveyor belt at Hollywood Plaza and took the bus from its bottom level; recharged my SIM card at Citylink; had a bubble tea in Windsor House. Though it may seem to some of you that I make it a pastime to defend ugly horrible soulless suburban things, there has always been little love lost between me and Mall as a theoretical object. Yet all over the city, I lived my Sunday in malls—and, after four weeks, barely noticed until I sat to tally for this entry.

fishman

2006-07-03T15:56:00.000+08:00

At the Sai Kung public pier, small fishing dinghies line up daily, packed with plastic bins full of fish that flap their fins futilely as they lie in their water in the hot sun, waiting to be sold. Small guppies, big black fish, flat flounders, mussels, nondescript sea creatures, and long, sleek leopard-print eels mingle by type and size in the bins. I stood on the pier on Sunday, when the dinghies arrived around noon from their morning’s catch. Several people watched from ten feet above the boats; tourists and interested buyers alike stood captivated by the process and the sights. A woman, between tasks of splashing fresh water into her squirming bins, saw me staring down at her octopus, which was packaged neatly in a white net and unceremoniously floating in its bound condition. She called to me loudly in Cantonese. I shook my head and moved on. A man at the end of the pier was garnering business from an older woman. His skin was dark brown from the sun, though he wore a traditional straw hat, and he scampered barefoot among his wares. The customer spoke authoritatively down to him, choosing with points and nods a group of three small black fish. One by one he dumped them on his round board, squatting easily, and whacked their heads with a wooden stick until their flapping ceased, or had at least slowed. With practiced hands he held their faces tightly, and scraped their scales off with a large cleaver before slicing their necks and bellies and forcing the bones out onto the board. The bloody discards were thrown towards a floating trash box by the side of the boat. Some water from the irrigated bins to rinse his board and the fish, and they were ready to be set in a clear plastic bag, tied off tightly. His long-handled net went up to the customer, laden with fish, and came back with some bills inside. Another purchase complete, he gazed up at us with what looked to me like desperately sad eyes, gesturing questioningly. I realized at last that he was mute, or couldn’t speak Cantonese. He tossed a flawless, two-metres-long eel into the water in the bow of the boat, as if its impossibly graceful slithering (despite its tragic condition) would command us to buy.

(See pictures here.)

teahouse

2006-07-01T15:09:00.000+08:00

Life in Hong Kong is not all roses; it is often said that the city is stressed, crowded, and fast paced beyond other Asian cities. I have in vain tried to find a quiet place to sit and people-watch near my office. All but the most expensive Chinese restaurants are crowded, loud, and somewhat uncomfortable, with stools or plastic chairs and—typically—flourescent lighting. Eating, or drinking, is not a leisurely experience; it is considered odd to linger over the menu, or to sit alone pondering the complexities of life while observing urban life outside. Since such a pastime is my favorite way to spend an afternoon, I miss it tangibly. (I sometimes give in and visit Starbucks, or its Hong Kong equivalent, Pacific Coffee Company, although I hate to do it.) As we walked out of work on Friday, I asked my friend Darren, who is from here, if such a peaceful place existed, and if we could go there. He thought a while as we walked west, for a long while. Finally he had an inspiration. The place was in Shueng Wan, next to the water. Darren explained that it was one of just a few remaining tea houses from the 1940s-50s; most are still owned by the original family, and just holding on until the now-elderly owners pass away. The place was very quiet inside, with no overhead lights but just the sun coming in through the beads of condensing water on the refrigerated glass cases that made up the front wall. Inside one case were cans of Coke, Sprite, and tea, with a frosty coil running along the side. The other held egg custard tarts and other common pastries. The white tile floor was worn down to red in parts, and there was an altar on one wall, above the register. We sat in a small booth for a while, attended by the wizened and patient owner. Darren said that often you can see long-time patrons, who have become wealthy or prominent since the war, come to these humble old places for lunch and leave hundred dollar bills as generous, grateful payment. A group of laborers paid for their meal and left; I finished my red bean ice with delicious unhurriedness before walking out again to the busy street.

tai o

2006-06-26T11:26:00.000+08:00

In Tai O, a fishing village on the southern end of Lantau Island, the streets are narrow. They wind along the general side of the water, and divide in places to curve back out to the more developed public housing towers just beyond the older streets. The walls are relatively high for such a village, often two stories tall, and the sense is of being inside a secret complicated urban web where cars and busses never enter. Aside from the piles of dried fish, octopus, squid, mussels, shark fins, etc. that sit in the hot shade of the markets, there are open-front shops and food stalls with small round stools for seating. Bicycles and children mingle in the open areas, groups of people play mah-jongg. But it’s not just the shops that open invitingly onto the streets, but people’s homes, interspersed erratically and without ceremony into the mess of small industry. They have no door, just an accordion-shaped metal divider, adorned with floral cut-outs, that closes for privacy or sleep. Though outside is dirt and the smell of drying fish, hot sun, the view inside these homes gives one an immediate sense of cool peace. The floors are all tiled, the walls mostly bare, the wicker and plastic furniture pushed neatly against the walls, a white ceiling fan at rest. In some cases, a small television sits in the corner, and another room (kitchen? bedroom?) lies darker in the back. In some cases, stairs lead up to a second floor. In other cases, the clean tiled floor of this room is all that’s there, ending with a dusty step into the street. Louis Kahn’s words rang in my head: “The street is a room by agreement…. Its ceiling is the sky.”

(More pictures of the Lantau day trip on Flickr.)

commute

2006-06-22T09:58:00.000+08:00

A pictorial demonstration of my commute, which takes me about an hour. 1) The Chinese University bus from the top of the hill to the 2) University KCR station to 3) Tsim Sha Tsui East along the water to 4,5) the ferry from TST to 6,7) elevated walkways in Central, through extravagant malls, whose draw is their air-conditioning. I exit 8) at Louis Vuitton and walk the rest of the way in the heat.

red bean love

2006-06-21T14:37:00.000+08:00

I have a recent infatuation with red beans, sweet, kidney-looking beans that are used in Chinese desserts. I’ve eaten them all over the city, in many different permutations of style and presentation, although they always deliver their sweet, mealy satisfaction. It began with my ordering a “red bean love” smoothie at a Sichuan restaurant in Kennedy Town, which turned out to be a partially-chunky milkshake consumed with a large straw. Next, I had red beans and steamed milk in Yau Ma Tei. The steamed milk tasted like cold custard, with the same familiar consistency, and the red beans lay liquidly on its white top, warm. Days later, I ate so-called red bean and coconut pudding in Tsim Sha Tsui, which came as a three layer cake of gelatin. The top layer was clear, with little yellow lemony flowers inside, while the middle was red beans packed tightly together, and the bottom was coconut flavored. In Central, at a dedicated dessert place, I ordered the hot red bean soup, which may have had chunks of rice in it and came with ice cream dumplings in a small side dish. The dumplings had a doughy exterior and came in 3 flavors: taro, sesame, and vanilla. I think the sesame, which was colored green, was my favorite. Finally, last night, I ate in a mall food court in Admiralty. I ordered soft-serve green tea ice cream atop cold red bean mixture, with “dumplings,” which were fairly tasteless chewy, smooth rice balls. So delicious, and so Hong Kong.

p.s.a

2006-06-21T10:03:00.000+08:00

There are now tons of photos on my Flickr of Hong Kong. Click on the link on the right sidebar! And if you have any requests for photos, leave a comment.

the song

2006-06-19T10:17:00.000+08:00

In my daily commute, I rarely have the breathing space or inclination to pull a book from my bag, so my mind has nothing to contemplate but its own workings and the activities around me. Though many of the people around me have headphones on, my only soundtrack is the sounds of the KCR and MTR. I hear the digital music of my Octopus (a card for frequent public transit riders) as it beeps into the KCR and out of it again, chimes into the MTR and out of it again. I hear the quiet footsteps of thousands of my companions going up and down the stairs. I hear the Cantonese, Mandarin, and English announcements of the station stops, the door-closings, the mind-the-gaps. (I always think the woman who speaks Mandarin has a funny baby voice, although the intonations of the language probably don't help her cause.) But my favorite commuting noise is a song that they play in the MTR between announcements. I assume it’s piped through some official channel, although it’s far from the soothing classical music that one would expect them to choose for a commute in one of Asia’s most stressed-out cities. No, this tune is a happy, bopping melody that could easily be the background music for a television shot of little kids dancing energetically with their new puppy in a grassy field, or a group of friends whooshing down a water slide with huge smiles. When I hear it, the cameras turn on me and I become a sitcom star: the happy Hong Kong intern, walking happily and confidently towards a day full of adventure in the city above.

chopsticks

2006-06-15T17:53:00.000+08:00

The other day I stopped on Queen Victoria Street (which, like most roads in the area south of Central, is a steep cobblestone hill) to eat lunch. There were people waiting on the sidewalk to get in, although the place, typically of Hong Kong restaurants, has no door but is entirely open on the street side. I waited for a while, enduring being cut in line by several people who were more accustomed to the system and who knew how to yell to the one waiter in Cantonese. He finally motioned me to a table in the corner, with three other women eating alone at a small round table. All around us, people were talking, and I could see through the crowd a small window to the kitchen, where three or so men were cooking. I pointed to the characters above my selection on the menu: “stir noodle with vegetable.” They came with the green stalks of “vegetable,” a brown ladling of sauce on top and a bowl of broth. I took two black plastic chopsticks from the jar on the table, and started my attempt at eating. My chopstick abilities are acceptable, but don’t feel nearly so when exercised on a huge plate of noodles in front of three local women. I avoided looking at my seatmates for several minutes, embarrassed, sure that they were scornful of my foreignness and disgusted by the sight of noodles constantly falling out of my mouth as I ate. Finally I mustered my courage to look around the table, and my eyes settled on the woman across from me, who had ordered the same dish, only with little shrimp dumplings on the side. I watched her for a while, hiding a smile of relief: it was exhilaratingly comforting to see the long strands dangling from her mouth, just as mine had.

sky-line

2006-06-13T22:44:00.000+08:00

Tonight I decided to commute all the way home above ground—probably unusual in downtown Hong Kong, where the MTR (metro) is clean, close, and comes frighteningly often through Central station filled to the absolute brim with people. It was a beautiful evening as I set off down Queen’s Road towards the water; having rained intermittently all day and the day before, the streets were damp but the air was clean, and felt familiarly hot even in the dark. I had my map book in hand, my finger firmly stuck into the correct page. (Near catastrophe had stricken moments earlier when I almost forgot it at the 7-11 counter having set it down to pay for my Magnum ice cream bar.) My directions consisted of a small note at the edge of the page that said “Ferry to East Tsim Sha Tsui,” which is the final stop of the KCR railway into the suburbs, where I live. As I walked past the Star Ferry pier, finally reaching ground I hadn’t trodden before, and finally getting beyond the elevated walkways that clutter Central three dimensionally, I was greeted quite suddenly by the sight of the Hong Kong skyline at night. I was so close, and just a small thing on the ground; the colors and bright magnitude were so stunning that I was left literally with my mouth open, standing on the sidewalk. My love for viewing night skylines is well-known among you, and maybe trite, and this particular one I have seen before in pictures and recently during the day many times. But the lights stayed with me as I walked alone towards the ferry I’d never been to before, across the lurching black waters, and along the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade. I found the KCR with no problem, a bit inland, still glowing from the reflected light of "Asia's World City."

central

2006-06-11T10:23:00.000+08:00

Today I got off the MTR (metro) in Central, to see massive skyscrapers hold hands with rain clouds. On the surface, to a girl fresh off the plane from the mainland, that part of Hong Kong seemed not too different from New York; but then I noticed that everything and everyone in the mall I had exited into was Filipino. There were money wiring enterprises, hawkers with international calling cards, ethnic food. Had I stepped off into little Manila, or was I in the very center of a world city, surrounded by some of the most expensive real estate in the world? Out on the street, my bemusement grew. Armani, Gucci, Prada, and, plopped down on plastic blankets and makeshift lawn chairs, groups of Filipinos. Not only were they sitting on the ground (a no-no in China), but they were laughing, eating, selling, looking at vacation photographs (this is true) on the ground. The distinctive plastic woven totes of third world countries were everywhere, filled with clothing and fruit and belongings. My Western mind had nothing to reference but refugees, and the homeless. Yet there was something off about that assessment. Though it was raining, and they were confined to areas under walkways and shelter, and though sitting in such busy thoroughfares can’t be comfortable, the women and men I saw were plainly joyous. These underpasses held a sense of family. Later, in the air-conditioned fluorescent quiet of my dorm room in the New Territories, I read by coincidence in my guidebook: “This area is a major focus for dense crowds of the territory’s 200,000 Filipina amahs, or maids, who gather here on Sundays, their day off.” Would knowing that beforehand have made the sight less enchanting?

summer schedule

2006-05-25T04:08:00.000+08:00

This blog is not yet in operation. Stay tuned.
June 4th, I arrive in Chengdu, China.
June 10th, I arrive in Hong Kong.
June 12th, I begin work.
August 7th, I return to the United States.

(At left: the illustration from my Chinese tourist visa.)