FROM HONG KONG, CHINA

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Hong Kong: A Private Tour

HONG KONG, Dec 20, 2007 - Since this was my first visit to Hong Kong as a tourist, I did what I usually do on such occasions in a "new" city: I hired a private guide and the hotel car to take me around town.

The guide's name was Bruce; the driver's Steven (left).  They were both great.  What makes a good guide in my experience is the flexibility of mind and the ability to listen to what the client wants.  Which in this case was no organized tours; no preset plans.  I told them in general terms what kinds of things interest me.  We then set out on an improvised half-day tour that was as enjoyable as it was spontaneous. 

The first thing Bruce suggested we do is go to Victoria Peak, from where one can enjoy wonderful views of the city.  Alas, Thursday Dec 20 was another cloudy and foggy day around here.  So took a photo of a poster showing the night view from that very spot, just in case we were not able to see anything (left middle).  Well, it wasn't exactly nothing, but not far from it, as you can see in the right two pictures (Bruce is again in one of them).  When Bruce took a picture of me at the same spot, it turned out that my blonde hair blended so well with the cloudy background that I can now claim to have "cloudy hair," at least in Hong Kong.  :-)

Right at the top of the mountain, we came across an artist who was selling his paintings - the Parisian-style - by hanging them on the wall.  As I started chatting with him (left two photos), and perusing his work, Bruce kept clicking with the camera.  In the end, I ended up buying two oil paintings (unframed canvasses), one each for Ida and myself.

We took a couple of more cloudy views of the city (left) before descending from Victoria Peak back into the city.  Along the way, Bruce was telling me about the high price of real estate in Hong Kong.  Which is not surprising, considering that seven million people live in such a small area, and that most of the land is unusable, because of the steep hills.  That's why housing is the single biggest expense for Hong Kong residents, Bruce said.  An average small apartment (1,000 sq ft) costs about $3,000,000 in U.S. dollars. Now that's pricey!

Once we got down to the Aberdeen area of the city, Bruce showed me some government-subsidized housing honeycombs (right) in which families of four live in apartments of 350 sq ft.  That means there is no room for four beds in such tiny apartments.  So often times mother and daughter, and father and son, sleep together.

Chinese children stay close to their parents even beyond these early years.  Bruce, for example, who is 38, still lives with his parents.  Meanwhile, he has a girlfriend of about the same age whom he would like to marry but can not.  Why not?  Because the reason he is staying with his parents is that they are very elderly and cannot look after themselves.  His girlfriend is doing the same for her parents.  So as long as both sets of elderly parents are alive and indigent, the young couple cannot afford to get married.

"That's the Chinese way," Bruce explained. By contrast, back home in the U.S., where selfishness reigns supreme, we tend to throw our parents overboard when they become a burden, as Ida noted.  Those os us who can afford it usually send the aged parents to some home for the elderly.  For those who can't, well.. I'd rather not think about it.

The next thing Bruce suggested we see was the Aberdeen fishing village.  The boardwalk was lined with trees bearing beautiful purple flowers (left).  I thought they were orchids.  But Bruce corrected me.  He said they were "bomias" [sic], a flower unique to Hong Kong.  As for the fishing village, "that's some village," I said, "with all those highrises in the background."  Bruce laughed and said that most fishermen actually live on their boats year-round.

When I told Bruce that I was looking to buy some special jade jewelry for Ida, he offered to take me to a jewelry factory, where they not only do custom designs, but can actually make custom pieced based on a customer design (like the one you can see in middle right sketch).  I was met by several staff who spoke perfect English.  They gave me a private tour of the factory, and later of the showroom, too.  It was fascinating to see the craftsmen work on the jewelry pieces.  Everything is still done 100% manually, as it was thousands of years ago.  About the only thing different is that now they work under electrical light.  Making jade jewelry is an art, not a production process (at least it is at this company). And so one can well appreciate now why the finished jade products are as expensive as they are.  But they are worth it.  No wonder the Asians ascribe all sorts of powers to jade, including some healing ones.  Anyway, in the end, I got what I wanted - an education about a craft unique to Asia, and some beautiful pieces of jewelry that are truly unique in every way.

From precious to mundane... Bruce asked me next if I wanted to see a dried fish market.  Why not, I thought.  Wherever I go, I like to see the grime as well as the jewels.  And what a treat that was!  An entire district of Hong Kong consisting of nothing but hundreds of dried fish stores.  And not just dried fish... every kind of dried food conceivable. Most of the time I had no idea what I was looking at, even though Bruce did his best trying to explain things to me.  About the only thing I remembered is that in the  rightmost photo, the slugs in the left box were sea cucumbers.  They have to be cooked for a very long time (like two days?) before they soften enough.  They also expand about three-fold from the size you can see.  And the white sticks in the right basket and shark tailbones.

Most of these dried foods have some medicinal qualities, according to Bruce, whom you see pointing to some dried reptiles in the middle photos.  He should know.  He is studying medicine and practicing as a reflexologist.  Being a tour guide is a part time job for him. 

But the dried fish have another quality besides being medicinal.  "The people who like it think that it has a fragrance," Bruce explained. "Those who don't, say it stinks.  Either way, you always know if your neighbor is cooking it for dinner." :-)

Nor was everything exactly dry in Hong Kong's dried fish district.  I was interested to see, for example, a stand selling Chinese ham that looked just like the Italian prosciutto, or "shunka," the equivalent Serbian smoked ham (right photo).

During our drives through the city, Bruce pointed out several other Hong Kong curiosities.  The leftmost photo shows the world's longest escalator.  A number of people take it to go to work in the morning, when the direction is reversed (it descends from the hills into the city).  Can you imagine asking someone, "how do you commute to work?" and getting the answer, "well, I take an escalator."  :-)

The middle left photo shows the slope of one of another fairly steep street that reminded me of San Francisco.  As to the middle right photo, it shows a renovation in progress of an older building.  Bruce pointed out the reusable bamboo scaffolding, which he says is used everywhere around Hong Kong in construction.  Not far from there, I spotted a building that could use some bamboo scaffolding around it, and some developer's TLC as well as cash. :-)

"Would you like to see a temple?" Bruce inquired. 

"I thought you'd never ask," I replied.  "I love temples.  I was beginning to think that in all the modernity that comprises Hong Kong nothing was saved from the past."

And so, off we were to the Man Mo Temple, Hong Kong's oldest and best known.  The haze you're seeing inside the temple is a wonderful fragrance from the burning incense that comes from all those hundreds of coils that hang from the ceiling.

Those mean-looking characters in the right photo are the temple guards, so I thought I'd stand in front of them to try to soften the scene a bit.  Or accentuate their toughness... I'll leave it to you to judge.  :-)

The temple's name - Man Mo - consists of names of two gods.  Man is the God of literature and Mo the God of war.  I thought that was a peculiar combination.  But then coming from a culture that has invented the yin and the yang, it became perfectly logical upon reflection.

This is when Bruce told me about his uncle, a famous kung fu fighter in Hong Kong.  His uncle, a WW II veteran as a youngster, is 75 now.  And on his last birthday he had split a bamboo stick by squeezing it with his bare fingers.  Back in WW II, when attacked once by a Japanese soldier from behind, his vise-like grip ripped the attacker's arm right out of the elbow socket.  Now mostly a teacher of kung fu, Bruce's uncle instructs his nephew in the ancient Chinese martial art.  Bruce says he practices several times a week outdoors, in the soccer field near where he lives.  And he also practices meditation... for about two hours at a time.  He sees the purpose of meditation in stretching the internal organs.  So when he is done, he is covered in sweat. 

Can you imagine anyone in America spending two hours perfectly still, just meditating?  And then on top it, use the power of mind so that he produces physical changes in and benefits to his body?  I can't.

By this time, the sun had come out.  So I suggested we go back to Victoria Peak and try those elusive "view shots" again.

And voila! 

And that's all she wrote from my private tour of Hong Kong.

TO BE CONTINUED... in Hong Kong, Day 3.

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