Saturday June 5, 2010

Hong Kong, a once prominent gem in the English Empire now a fraternal twin of the Chinese government. I can think of no city that better deserves the title of “The Urban Jungle”. In the warm humid setting of the Hong Kong peninsula- concrete, glass, and steel shoot out of the heavy hilly rainforest surroundings like a jungle unto they’re own. Where there are not the sounds of thousands of little insects outside my bedroom window buzzing chirping and hissing, there are millions of people living their lives.

Apartment buildings everywhere; Twenty, thirty, forty + stories tall! Hundreds of them Everywhere! I have been in the country for less than 48 hours and have spent more than half my time wandering through the New Territories just north of the Island of Hong Kong. Sha Tin, Mong Kok, and the Sha Tin Buddhist temple are the destinations of today. I have already had the privilege to try abalone, gluttonous rice balls, and some of the best dim sum the world can offer. The malls here are a main hub of transit, social life, eating and shopping. They are also something alien to me. The exteriors lack that aesthetic appearance we are used to and remind me of something from the soviet block. Bland grey concrete outsides hide the metropolis of shopping and eating inside. 7 stories tall, the mall at Sha Tin was visited several times. Some for necessity, others for sociological immersion, and most important…Food! Maybe coming 7000 miles for Thai food may seem like a xenophobic choice to food, but when 5 students with no knowledge of the widely spoken Cantonese venture out into the cities on their own…give us a break. Oh and also, it was DELICIOUS! The mall also provided us with a commodity more important than internet, phone signal, and maybe even clean drinking water…TOILET PAPER. In mainland China it is not uncommon for a toilet to be no more than a hole in the ground with no TP to be found. The phrase “Be a man, use your hand” was to be found somewhere in our conversations about this. However, we are ever so fortunate to be in Hong Kong where a large portion of public restrooms are identical to the US… and while our dorm may supply no direct toilet paper in the bathrooms we managed to acquire some for about 2 US Dollars, 14 Hong Kong Dollars.

The food here on day one was Fantastic. Even going into a bakery with only pictures to guide our choice of food was great. Quickly recognizing my personal favorite BBQ pork buns, bao, I selected that, another random item and a drink that I did not recognize (for adventures sake). My goal, when hungry or thirsty, drink and eat thinks I don’t know and cannot read. So far this has yielded a sort of cheese danish type bun, Chinese sport drunk, various dumplings and meats, and Gluttonous Rice Balls. I am almost sure that a botched translation from Cantonese to English has lead to the titular word “gluttonous” used for tiny little rice ball dumplings that have been sweetened. But I kid you not, these little guys thrown in mango pudding with a mango sorbet, and – you guessed it - MORE FRESH MANGO… It was one of the best desserts I ever had.

While my attention deficit type of writing may digress here and there, I will end with what our first day started with. The night we arrived was the anniversary of Tiananmen Square. A statue that was modeled after the statue of liberty, but only about 3 or 4 meters high, was created in honor of this event and was moved to Hong Kong. At midnight this statue was placed at our University and a crowd of thousands showed up. The news clip the next day of these people working together to lift this statue upright was amazing. The last time I saw a news clip of a statue… was the tearing down of Saddam Hussein’s in Baghdad, but here people were lifting up what was essential a statement of the Chinese saying “give me liberty or give me death”. The lady was holding a torch and tome with the words “Liberty, Democracy, Justice, Human Rights” on it. It will never cease to amaze me how Hong Kong manages to express feelings and ideals that would get a man killed in mainland China, but here it is encouraged by professors and students. Education is and always will be the most important element of society. There is no freedom without it.