Hong Kong snapshots
I might have spoken too soon: the temperature has climbed up a few degrees since I celebrated the chilly wave sweeping Delhi. But it’s still not as insane as it can get. I’m eyeing the Cascade Fixation I brought with me… stay tuned.
It’s easy to get overwhelmed by the high-rise density of Hong Kong; you keep looking up at the buildings rising majestically in front of you, and your neck hurts after a while. The hills rising from the sea along with the buildings sharpens the sense of sudden height and you can’t help but draw in your breath. I have little technical knowledge of architecture or architectural history, but I love photographing buildings when I’m travelling. Hong Kong is a wonderful place to indulge this interest, but also frustrating, as the structures very easily resist capture in a small Canon camera. Here’s one of the iconic buildings of the Hong Kong skyline, the Bank of China building in Central, by day and night:
It rained incredibly heavily for a couple of days when I was there - glorious, sheet-like warm tropical rain. It left everything looking green and almost sounding squeaky clean, even as the mist lingered around the buildings and softened their sharp edges.
This second picture (a 19th century colonial building in Central with the more recent landmark, the IFC II building disappearing into the mist at the back) is a perfect snapshot of the Hong Kong of my imagination before I left. Old and new, side by side. This was created mainly through Modern China and British Empire histories as a classic crossroads site where peoples, languages and goods met in a remarkable marketplace, and and imperial ambitions clashed violently, but also through the films of Wong Kar-wai, whose Chunking Express and In the Mood for Love I absolutely adore. I had heard the saying that the skyline changed if you looked away for a while; the old was swept away for the newer and shinier whathaveyou rather more quickly in Hong Kong than in many other places. And yet I wondered how pervasive that was. In wondering what traces still existed of the worlds of the East India Company or of the romantic and lyrical ’60s inhabited by Maggie Cheung and Tony Leung in In the Mood for Love, I was fully aware of being a rather predictable and tiresome Orientalist, all the more ironic for the number of times I have ranted about clueless tourists who come to India seeking some imagined and ahistorical, essential civilizational traces.
After a lazy moment of trying to turn this ironic realization into a clever, generalized theory about the poverty of all touristic urges, I settled on the hope of finding none of what I had imagined, wishing for it all to make no sense to me, a sense of history and preservation that evaded all my efforts to temporalize, categorize and parcel it. I continued to try and map the old and the new as I saw them, but with some comfort that my efforts would yield little by way of explanation or representation:
That’s me with my godson, the young intellectual Samar (who was a trooper for spending the whole day walking around town with four adults without complaining), with a friend who not only showed us around but helped me get some great bargains in Stanley. It is also thanks to her suggestions that I had some excellent food in Hong Kong.
But lest you think I threw up my hands in postmodern defeat, I did to go to the Chungking Mansions where Chunking Express was filmed, and smelt the paneer butter masala from all the illegal desi corridor restaurants that fold up midway through your second naan when the inspectors suddenly turn up.
The sense of Happy Bewilderment as foil for the Angst of Representation, I must confess however, was cold comfort in Macau, where beyond the regulation Portuguese announcements and touristy restaurants, there was scant everyday sense of the long colonial history of this place, now a gambling and construction paradise. I wasn’t complaining for the most part, but I was a little disappointed that I got lost and was unable to find the Quartel dos Mouros, (Moorish Quarters), military barracks in the main hill-fort with Mughal architectural influences that I had read about. In the 19th century, this apparently housed Indian policemen from Goa working for the Portuguese. I wanted to get a picture especially for Sepoy, but alas, this serene image of the Four Wise Men of Macau will have to do instead:
They sat on the ledge of the fort quietly, gazing at the South China sea as a breeze blew gently across to them. When I walked past them a couple of hours later on my way back, there they were still, not saying a word, reminding me of the three old men in Asterix in Corsica.
Of all the Hong Kong districts, I think I liked the area around Kowloon’s Golden Mile the best. A lot of time was spent walking up and down and around Nathan Road, checking out various markets and small eateries. Once, however, we took a cab because we were late for something, and the map wasn’t very clear about how to walk there (aside: avoid the Fodor’s guide at all costs.) As it turned out, the cabbie wasn’t so sure either, and it was a hilarious moment when my husband tried to reach over and show him the location on the map. In the middle of speeding traffic (we were still moving fast as I clicked this), you can see the attention he paid to the map with both hands while still driving down the busy Nathan Road:
But I will be eternally grateful to this man. My camera slipped out from my pocket as we hurriedly got off at a crossing, and he was gone before I could slap the pocket and realise the camera was gone. But even as I wrung my hands in despair, he was back with it, actually finding me in the chaotic traffic. Little did he know the importance of the digital camera for the knitblogger!
Another thing that overwhelmed me is the sheer range and extent of the public transport available. Ferries, buses, trams, cable cars, the wonderful MTR trains; nothing like rushing in and out of these to give you a heady sense of being part of a bustling urban space. I like how the card you use to pay for transport everywhere is called the Octopus. Very apt image! This is my friend, her son and I in the subway, looking quite beat at the end of a loooong day (we were happier than we look!):
Finally, food. I could spend a month detailing the dim sum I had, which was, seriously, a.w.e.s.o.m.e! Way way better than any I have had even in San Francisco, and it is a serious incentive to return. But instead of showing you pictures of dumpling after dumpling, let me leave you with two pictures of rather unusual desserts that I had. One is a kind of jelly with flowers in it, which was very tasty, and crumbed most delightfully in the mouth. The other is durian and sweet glutinous rice globs in vanilla sauce. I was very curious about the durian, having heard that it stinks to the high heavens. Let me just say that I now know why Singapore bans the consumption of this fruit on the trains! It was tasty, but boy, oh boy.
