Location(s)

September 3, 2007

It’s 4:24 a.m. Chicago time (5:24 p.m. HK time), and we are a little more than an hour from Hong Kong, 411 miles away. It has been a rather long, slow flight. I haven’t slept much, but only because it’s difficult to sleep on an airplane. I’ve done my research, said the Rosary, watched a couple Chinese TV shows, and now I’m listening to what I think is Chinese classical music. Or maybe it’s just Western classical. No matter, I have almost arrived.

Several minutes ago I peeked out the window (the shades have been drawn for much of the trip). Below me is the bright blue Pacific with thick, wispy clouds above. I think it’s going to be a good visit. Here I am traveling nearly 8,000 miles from home and investing quite a lot to undergo what my friend Alicia calls a “reconnaissance mission” for my career. I like the thought of it. It’s quite a risk, but it is exciting nonetheless. Most of these people (at least the Western business people) already have jobs. The young Californians in the row ahead of me are working for clothing design companies and television. Me? I’m just checking out the place.

* * * * *

It’s just before midnight, and I am worn out. The flight was uneventful and early, and I was impressed with the transport system – very efficient, clean and quick.

As I emerged from the terminal, I walked to the Airport Express stand to buy a ticket. I stood behind the line tat states: “Stand here” and waited. Just then an old Asian dude – probably Chinese – walked right around me, dragging his roller suitcase behind him. He barely missed me, ut the bag didn’t; it rna right over my right foot. Welcome to Hong Kong. So I bought the ticket and asked the agent if there was an ATM nearby. “Sev-own elev-own,” he said, motioning around the corner. “OK. What about calling cards?” “Sev-own elev-own.” Sure enough, as I emerged into the concession hall, the first thing I saw was Burger King, followed by Seven Eleven.

The train into the city was a 25-minute and sped through at about 100 MPH. Nice and efficient, though. Checked in to the South Pacific Hotel Wanchai in Causeway Bay and headed up to the 24th floor to a room overlooking the Happy Valley racecourse.

The city is amazing. It’s a Monday night, and with the teeming crowds it feels like Friday. And it is massive. Miles of imposing docks in Kowloon and a tightly compact Central District on Hong Kong Island, which feels like Times Square and Trafalgar Square on steroids: Everything neon. Buildings towering to the sky. Shops and restaurants occupying the ground floor with apartment after apartment in the gray concrete slabs above.

The people are buzzing everywhere. They walk in no particular order, bumping and cutting off on the way to spend more money. It’s a compact, lively city – though with very few foreigners – or at least Western foreigners. Nearly all Asian, and many of them tourists from Mainland China. The expat community all but packed up and left after the handover 10 years ago. Those who stayed eventually left for Dubai to make their fortune there. Now Hong Kong – still the region’s financial capital – is a largely Chinese city, the cosmopolitan aspect left to the advertisements for foreign brands.

I met with Alicia shortly before 9 p.m., and she (a former Hong Konger and expat herself) helped maneuver us through the human maze to a Thai food place for excellent pai tai with prawns, spring rolls, garlic asparagus and pork. I spotted a ******roach as big as my nose near our table. Alicia told the busboy, who couldn’t catch it. She saw it scramble under our table and toward the next table – a dozen Hong Kongers were celebrating a birthday; I know this because they actually sang “Happy Birthday” in English to the girl of honor. Alicia motioned to the busboy to catch the roach, and he gave her a look as if to say: “It’s under a table of a dozen happy diners. I can’t catch it now! What’s the big deal?” Another guy grabbed it with a napkin and carried it off.

* * * * *

Hong Kong
September 5, 2007

So this is the new Red China. My first full day in Hong Kong, and although I saw fewer symbols of British colonialism than I had expected, the Special Administrative Region, or SAR, as it is officially known, felt very little like I expected a modern Chinese city to feel like – even in advanced Hong Kong.

I awoke to an overcast, rainy day. My room overlooks the south side of Hong Kong Island, so I have a view of The Peak. Low-lying clouds hovered over the top of Victoria Peak, identifiable by the unmistakable half-circle observatory and shopping all a short walk from the tram. Despite the drizzling, I was excited to begin my first full day in Hong Kong. For breakfast Alicia and I found a local place down from the hotel on the second floor. It was packed with locals, and obviously, I caught a few stares form the “Hong Kong grannies,” as Alicia calls them.

There was little character to the room, but the food – my first dim sum experience outside the U.S. – was excellent and exotic. Accompanying the jasmine tea, we shared chicken feet with black bean sauce, barbecue pork bun (my favorite, a sweet and savory dish), premium siu mei, steamed squid with garlic and spring rolls stuffed with shredded taro. It was a relxing way to spend a gray morning.

Afterward we rode the trolley – the narrow, double-decker signature of Hong Kong transport, a throwback to the 1920s when most of them were built. Luckily, I caught a seat at the back against an open-window, a great way to see Hong Kong for the first time in daylight.

It was a Tuesday morning, at the beginning of rush hour, and hundreds of trolleys, double-decker buses and red taxis zigzagged along the winding, curving streets of Central, Admiralty and Western districts. I saw very few Western faces, which was my first indication that things really have changed since Hong Kong was transferred back to the Chinese in 1997.

Alicia would later lament the loss of so many symbols of Britain’s once-top jewel in the crown of its faraway colonies as we walked past – of all things – the city’s last remaining kilt maker. Look around, she said: No more British crowns on the mailboxes, some of the street names have changed, the “Victoria” has been dropped from the names of both The Peak and The Harbour. Still, the permanent result of those times – something that will never change – is the city’s official English language (which it shares with Chinese).

… “The world is won by refraining. / How do I know this is so? / By this: / As taboos increase, people grow poorer; / When weapons abound, the state grows chaotic; / Where skills multiply, novelties flourish; / As statues increase, more criminals start. / So the Wise Man will say: / As I refrain, the people will refrain; / Since I like quiet, they will keep order; / When I forebear, the people will prosper; / When I want nothing, they will be honest.” – Poem 57, the Tao Te Ching …

The world will be won by leaving it alone. So says Lao Tzu. The more a government actrs, the more it has to continue to act, so leave the people alone to do what they will. Only then – he argues – will they return to the honesty and simplicity of earlier times. The ideal of capitalism, perhaps?

Well, although the change has been great, both the British in their day and the Communist Party today have at least realized one thing: that it likely is better to let the people do what they will. So for the “one country, two systems” formula – in which China’s socialist economic system is not to be imposed on Hong Kong and that Hong Kong will enjoy a high degree of autonomy except in foreign and defense affairs for the next 50 years – seems to have worked.

The SAR is buzzing with life, and the people seem to be thriving. The tourists keep coming, too. We took the Peak Tram (again, window seat) to the top. Pulled by steel cables, it climbs aout 1,200 feet and is so steep that buildings appear to be standing at 45 degrees. Development has been carved into the mountain all the way up, and not just with squat, low-slung buildings but towering, slender apartment blocks, largely in the Mid-Levels, a middle-class residential neighborhood halfway up the Peak. Everything in Hong Kong – from the mountains to Hong Kong Island to the skyscrapers to the people – are tall and slender and compact. After all, the population of seven million occupies an area of just 424 square miles (fortunately much of that land remains undeveloped once you leave the area around the Harbour).

… “The Master said, So long as the ruler loves ritual, the people will be easy to handle.” – The Analects of Confucius, Book XIV, no. 44 …

Keep them shopping, keep them happy. A simple goal, but somehow it works in Hong Kong. More than half of Hong Kong women say they shop just for the fun of it – and they’re consumers of luxury goods. Now, there wasn’t much luxury at The Peak, but I’ve already had a taste of it wandering through the variety of malls in the Causeway Bay area.

We took the “suicidal bus” down from The Peak – an interesting ride characterized by sharp turns and speeding drivers who, according to Alicia, used to race each other down the hill. We had lunch at a Japanese restaurant at the IFC Centre (sashimi with fatty tuna) – excellent. Actually, all I’ve had so far has been pan-Asian food. And it’s all been good. No wonder.

I spent the afternoon walking Hollywood Road, crammed with antique shops selling everything from Ming dynasty furniture to lotus lamps to Mao pocket watches and ancient snuff bottles. More than a century ago, Hollywood Road was the place where foreign merchants and sailors would sell the antiques and artifacts they collected from China on their way back to Europe.

I had my eye on a little Mao pocket watch – his hand waved in a sort of Communist benediction as it kept the time – but it was too much: $45HK ($6US). Most of the antique shops offer true antiques, but since there’s no way to ship anything back to the U.S. cost-effectively, I went for the smaller stuff. Spent quite a bit of tie in True Arts and Curios, a cramped, stinky place run by a friendly husband and wife who wouldn’t let me bargain too much, but I ended up with a beaded jade bracelet for $28US and a coin from the T’Ang dynasty of 618-906 AD ($7US). I killed some time before meeting Alicia and the publisher of a Hong Kong-based trade magazine, so I checked out the Man Mo Temple.

A tribute to the gods of literature (Man) and war (Mo), it is one of the oldest and most famous in Hong Kong. Not much to look at outside (bamboo scaffolding obscured the façade), so I concentrated on the interior, where the air was thick, shrouded in incense. It was hot and humid and, with more scaffolding inside for what appeared to be a major renovation, I didn’t care much for it.

Dozens of incense coils were suspended from the ceiling just above my head, and several guests were lighting incense sticks, bowing to the deities and stuffing the sticks into crammed jars fronting the effigies. It overpowered the senses: thick incense, a hidden tape recorder looping faint chants throughout, sweat pouring down my brow and candles mingling with Christmas lights stuffed and crammed around the likenesses of the deities. Kwon Yu, another god of war, a Han-dynasty soldier born in the 2nd century A.D., is also the patron saint of restaurants, pawn shops, the police and secret societies such as the Hong Kong Triads. Interesting.

… “If those who are excellent find no preferment, / The people will cease to contend for promotion. / If goods that are hard to obtain are not favored, / The people will cease to turn robbers or bandits. / If things much desired are kept under cover, / Disturbance will cease in the minds of the people. / The Wise Man’s policy, accordingly, / Will be to empty people’s hearts and minds, / To fill their bellies, weaken their ambition, / Give them sturdy frames and always so, / To keep them uninformed, without desire, / And knowing ones not venturing to act. / Be still while you work / And keep full control / Over all.” – Poem 3, Tao Te Ching …

If Lao Tzu’s intention was to get people to abandon the vices of civilization, modern Hong Kongers are not listening. They eat like mad, they shop zealously and they party – a lot. We had dinner at Spring Deer restaurant (classic Beijing cuisine), and the favorite haunt of a friend of a friend. Tasty Peking duck, which is carved right at the table, where diners drizzle plum sauce on a Chinese pancake, add a slice of onion, drop in a piece of duck and eat it like a little burrito. Excellent. Spring Deer has a classic Hong Kong feel: a bustling atmosphere, no-nonsense suited waiters and plenty of tourists. Now, the remainder of the dishes (all Beijing regional) were bland. I kept eating the jellyfish just because it was jellyfish. I didn’t actually like it much.

… “The Master said, Govern the people by regulations, keep order among them by chastisements, and they will flee from you, and lost all self-respect. Govern them by moral force, keep order among them by ritual and they will keeo their self-respect and come to you of their own accords.” – The Analects of Confucius, Book II, no. 3 …

The MTR (public transport system) is the cleanest, most efficient system I may have even been on. It mirrors the inner workings of the city itself, a place easy to navigate despite the swirling streets and jam-packed roads and manhandling crowds.

On Wednesday I stopped by Alicia’s old office, a crowded room of small cubicles and happy employees. The main reason for my week-long jaunt to Hong Kong was job hunting, and my first unofficial “interview” was with the managers of a custom publishing house. We chatted over pasta in baby octopus sauce about the job market.

… “The highest goodness, water-like, / Does good to everything and goes / Unmurmuring to places men despite; / But so, is close in nature to the Way. / If the good of the house is from land, / Or the good of the mind is its depth, / Or love is the virtue of friendship, / Or honesty blesses one’s talk, / Or in government, goodness is order, / Or in business, skill is admired, / Or the worth of an act lies in timing, / Then peace is the good of the Way / By which no one ever goes astray.” – Poem 8, the Tao Te Ching …

A king’s object is peace with families secure on their land and orderly government. Sounds like Hong Kong as a colony (let’s forget that the Brits put this ideology aside when hammering the Chinese in 1839 to exact reprisals for the emperor’s crackdown on the illegal British practice of smuggling opium to China; the British eventually pressured the Chinese into ceding Hong Kong Island to them in perpetuity).

A more serene, civilized landmark of British colonialism – the Peninsula Hotel – was where I spent a relaxing late afternoon. The classical grandeur of the lobby is the setting of the long-standing afternoon tea. Beautiful setting: grand, gilded, columned lobby. I spent more than an hour munching on tea cakes, cucumber sandwiches, custard and scones and drinking the Peninsula Afternoon Blend. The lobby jazz band softly played modern music. It was crowded but subdued from my seat at the window overlooking the entrance, the mountains in the distance and the ugly dome of the Hong Kong Space Museum across the street. The cream-colored walls and columns rise two storeys above the lobby to a gilded ceiling. At the base of each column is a large pot stuffed with palm fronds. Tranquil.

I finished the evening wandering the Temple Street Night Market and being kicked out of a “karaoke” club. Walking through Kowloon, I spotted a mass of neon signs on a nondescript building, one of which read: “Golden Lady Karaoke Night Club.” Sweet. I stepped into a cramped elevator and joined an aged hunchbacked operator and a coupe other Chinese.

At my floor I was greeted by a grinning grandmotherly hostess who spoke not a word of English. It was dark, and I couldn’t see around the corner into the club. I asked if I would need a reservation. “No English,” she replied. “Can I get in?” She motioned for me to wait. Just then a young punk, orange hair and all, popped out from around the corner and asked if he could help me. “Yes, I’d like to go in,” I said, innocently. “Sorry, members only. Maybe next time,” he said with a smirk before turning around and leaving. Members only? What, was this? I’m just a regular white guy who wants to sing some Bobby Darin, that’s all. What harm could I do?

The night market was cramped, but I worked on my bargaining skills and spend $25 for an oil painting, karaoke CD, classical Chinese CD and a four-piece set of wooden placemats, chop stick holders and cups. Not bad. I tried to talk one guy down to $30HK for a “silk” Chinese baby outfit, but all he kept saying was, “No bargain. Fixed price. Fixed price.” Still, I tried. “Thirty-five?” “No! Fixed price!” “Why?” “This silk!” “No it’s not,” I said. I knew it wasn’t. He couldn’t fool me. “How about thirty-five?” “No.” He stepped out of the tent and didn’t return. Still, it was an amazing sight: rows of brightly lit stalls hawking a motley variety of everything. I saw no fortune tellers or Chinese opera enthusiasts (as I had read about), but it was a unique flea market nonetheless.

* * * * *

Hong Kong
September 7, 2007

Jet lag finally hit me yesterday afternoon – and it wasn’t aided by the fact that I had just completed all my interviews (one full-time job offer), further adding to the pressure and subsequent relief of completing the meetings and finally being able to relax.

I spent the morning relaxing in the hotel room after waking up at 4 a.m. and unsuccessfully returning to sleep. So I fiddled around, made tea, watched TV, cleaned up and finally, after wasting as much time as possible, opened the journal. I spent much of Thursday morning in my room, although I took a quick trip to Central (which I’ve visited so many times that I’m already tired of it) to check out the architecture.

The International Finance Centre was the first stop. Rising 1,378 feet into the rooftop of Hong Kong, the imposing Two IFC (like the World Trade Center, it’s home to two towers) is a recent addition, opened in 2003. It’s one of the tallest skyscrapers in the world. I took a ride up to the Hong Kong Monetary Authority on the 55th floor, where an observation deck overlooks Hong Kong Island and the Harbour. It’s difficult to grasp how tall The Peak is, since it’s omnipresent no matter where you are in this city: If you’re on the Island, there it is, peeking between the skyscrapers or, more often, the rooftops of apartment blocks.

At 1,800 feet, both The Peak and the accompanying ridge that extends west to east down the middle of the Island are the dominant symbols of Hong Kong, whose urban heart is squeezed between the mountains and the Harbour. In fact, from my hotel it’s probably just a mile to the base of the mountains. The buildings are unique, amazingly slender and tall, like dominos placed carefully on top of each other.

Around the corner is a view of the Harbour, a view through the morning haze of one of the busiest ports in the world. Freighters plied the waters in what seemed to be a generally quiet morning. I barely made out the silhouette of the mountains on the Kowloon side, but the Harour looked nice anyway. An equal amount of buildings, albeit shorter, populate Kowloon, and just beyond is the South China Sea, where I made out a few islands through the haze. I was hoping to continue the tour by checking out some of the colonial sites (the former Central Magistracy, Victoria Prison, the Cathedral of the Immaculate Conception and the Government House) as well as some of the skyscrapers (HSBC Main Building, Bank of China Tower and the Cheung Kong Center).

But the time and the heat slowed me down. So I wandered through a few markets and made my way back to Wan Chai, where I was to meet another job prospect at Water Margin, a Beijing regional-style restaurant at Times Square. Decorated in dark wood and stone, it is festooned wuth red lanterns and finely carved rosewood.

…“The Master said, (the good man) does not grieve that other people do not recognize his merits. His only anxiety is lest he should fail to recognize theirs.” – The Analects of Confucius, Book I, no. 16…

Great lunch at Water Margin: dim sum with squid in garlic, more jellyfish, noodles and spicy beef all washed down with Tsingtao beer in little cups. “You can’t have Chinese food without a beer,” my contact (an East Coast native) told me, admitting that she has little knowledge of the U.S. because she has spent the last decade in China and before that was in Europe for half a dozen years. Privileged East Coast? Probably, but someone’s got to be privileged, right?

… “The Master said, Those whose measures are dictated by mere expediency will arouse continual discontent.” – The Analects of Confucius, Book IV, no. 12 …

That’s the pace of modern China, which my contact was quick to point out: There’s no slowing down, even if the GDP has dropped to 9%. That’s what her American editors (those foreign devils) keep stressing: Slow growth means bad news for China! No, 9% is huge, considering the enormity of the population. She steered my editorial instincts in the direction of Macao and its prospects, which are good, as well as India, which is being unfairly sidetracked by the media and foreign governments.

In the end, though, Americans don’t care about China, or Asia for that matter, and it will likely remain that way – even after the Olympics and all the petty stories fed to us in between competitions. Still, it’s the economies of Asia that will be affecting us years into the future – beginning now.

…“The Master said, A young man’s duty is to behave well to his parents at home and to his elders abroad, to be cautious in giving promises and punctual in keeping them, to have kindly feelings toward everyone, but seek the intimacy of the God. If, when all that is done, he has any energy to spare, then let him study the polite arts.” – The Analects of Confucius, Book I, no. 6…

I returned to the hotel, exhausted, and I lay down on the bed shortly before 5:15 p.m. I ended up sleeping for 13 hours.

* * * * *

Hong Kong
September 9, 2007

With the arrival of Friday morning came the best 24 hours I’ve had in a long time. Alicia had invited me to the office to talk shop with her colleagues. As soon as that was complete, though, I was free for the rest of my stay, so I decided to take a trip to Aberdeen on the south side of Hong Kong Island to see what the fishing industry is like. The ride there on a public bus through the mountains was quick, and the landscape was a dramatic scene. The mountains fill the island, rising sharply from the coastline to soaring, narrow ridges mirroring the skyscrapers and 30- and 40-storey apartment blocks carved into their sides. The bus (a British holdover in its double-decker design) made it the fifth type of public transport I had taken in just three days – shuttle, MTR, trolley, tram and bus.

Aberdeen itself is home to brightly decorated trawlers, which double as floating homes for the local fishermen. The sheltered harbor’s hillsides are decked wiyh woodland and residential towers. That is one thing that I was surprised to hear: About 70% of Hong Kong is woodland, due to the government’s prudence (as well as the inability to build much on steep hillsides).

Once a pirate refuge, Aberdeen can be home to 3,000 junks and sampans in the harbor, which is still interspersed with the town’s famous floating restaurants. I walked along the harborfront and learned about the history of the town and its evolution from a fishing village to tourist center. Actually, the village originally was called Hong Kong, ut when sailors and explorers began visitng the island, they began to refer to the whole island as Hong Kong.

The British later renamed the port after an English lord. A diminutive sun-drenched woman croaked, “Sampan? Sampan?” at me, but I declined, happy to find a licensed operator closer to Aberdeen Center. No luck, so I took a ride out to Jumbo Kingdom Floating Restaurant, open since 1976 and designed to look like a classic Chinese palace.

After lunch I returned to Central to meet the rest of the group for dinner at a funky, modern Vietnamese restaurant where we shared all kinds of food I’ve never heard of, couldn’t pronounce and can’t remember tasting like anything I’d had before.

It was just the beginning. We decided to go bar-hopping in Lan Kwai Fong, the trendy neighborhood where hundreds of bars – Irish, sports, karaoke, dive – line the hilly one-way streets that are packed curb to curb with Hong Kong’s headstrong partygoers until early morning. Music (anything with a beat), blared out of one club to the next, fitting the legendary party corridors with a happy cacophony that reminded me a little of Sixth Street in Austin, Texas, except in place of live bands there were deejays, and instead of boots there were stilettos. Amazing, even for a guy who never got much into the club scene.

But then it really picked up when Alicia’s boss – the company's CEO – arrived with a friend, his attractive Chinese assistant and her girlfriend. The guy is wild: In his mid-50s, he’s loud, ostentatious and a spendthrift drinker (he must’ve bought me half a dozen gin & tonics in just a couple hours). We rambled from one bar to the next, including a reggae place. Reggae. In Hong Kong. One of a kind, I thought, until I asked the band to play some Jimmy Cliff. “Who?” the singer asked. Well then...

The night ended at 3 a.m. without my requisite trip to a karaoke bar (an essential stop whenever I travel).

* * * * *

Hong Kong
September 10, 2007

My final day in Hong Kong was one of the best. Alicia rented a junk, and we toured the Harbour, dirty, packed with all sorts of boats criss-crossing throughout, before heading southwest around the main island to Lamma Island, widely regarded as a hippy outpost. But nevermind that; it’s a gorgeous, quiet, bucolic retreat from the smog-filled city. No cars are allowed on Lamma, where two of the island’s main fishing villages cater to both locals and the masses of tourists who stream in every weekend.

It’s small: We crossed the island on its narrow walking paths in half an hour, ending at a tree-lined beach with banana trees and the hills framing the backdrop and the omnipresent triple smokestacks of the island’s power plant in the foreground, just beyond nearby hills.

The smattering of houses nearby had no obvious development pattern, and dogs ran wild through the streets. I bought tea at an upscale teahouse, and we ate lunch at a seaside place where we picked our fish fresh from the tank. A hearty, fresh meal before returning and stopping briefly at Lantau Island, where expat high rises line the shoreline as well as the interior of the island. It’s highly Westernized, offering little surprise and lots of Brits and Americans and Australians and Germans. And tennis courts.

Anyway, that was about it for the trip, which was one of the best decisions I've ever made ... no matter what comes of it.