THERE are just some nights that when you wake up, your skin is warm and the smell of a thousand dinners waft through a half-open window. Then, it is easier to pretend to be someone else, someone you can only recall with a drowsy eye.I am always this way in Hong Kong.For an instant I can be an innocent young girl, my sister sleeping, my father daydreaming his way through countless decisions, or my mother tending to her garden. Hong Kong allows me the luxury of that instance before pasting images and sounds together into a cosmopolitan hub.
All I know is this: Hong Kong first confuses, then comforts. The moment you are ushered out of the airplane, its “hugeness” assaults. You take a short “train” ride to immigration, wondering whether your luggage can catch up with the rush and hustle of electric tracks that hum past the window.
Then you sense the distance behind the courtesy of immigration personnel. Everything is efficient, tourism people mouth banalities (the weather, how long you’re staying), even trash bins are stringently labeled and sorted. You begin to buy into first world efficiency until you remember that many of your kith and kin are responsible for this without enjoying its benefits (a Cebuano taxi driver once revealed that Chek Lap Kok Airport was constructed by former Atlas workers).This confusion of feelings is temporary.
Out of the airport, your heart begins to race with envy at the pulse that drives this city. Familiarity in its strangeness Hong Kong is not a shopper's paradise--if you are a shopper hunting for bargains to rival Carbon's ukay-ukay finds. But if you are funky and value variety, Hong Kong is incomparable!
Walking around Park Lane (Hong Kong side), small shops compete with large Japanese chain stores for attention. Their only difference is that at the small shops you can attempt (and often successfully) to bring down the price to 1/4 of what it says in the tag. Here and there in the shopping districts (whether in Tsim Sha Tsui, Stanley Market or Mongkok) you hear snippets of Filipino, sometimes raised in anger over the antics of a pesky child.The streets are also full of anachronisms: Mobile wielding teens furiously texting in Putonghua, quail eggs in vats of boiling water (which we only see in dimsum baskets), fish balls sharing space with stinky beancurd, and a sign that says "Welcome To Tai O" (whatever that may mean).
Hong Kong’s rhythm allows residents to run while they’re eating.Still, it is these anachronisms that comfort. You are reminded that in Hong Kong, you can find characters to almost believe in.
In the end, the confusion encourages you to return. Hong Kong fascinates because it perplexes. The SARS episode only added to its mystique, because there lies its secret.Hong Kong makes us bloom, marking us and challenges what we believe is inviolable. There is never a simple plot in their lifestyle, no closure or unity that often arrives in another city's daily life. So, you return and do nothing except to record Hong Kong's stunning recklessness.
All I know is this: Hong Kong first confuses, then comforts. The moment you are ushered out of the airplane, its “hugeness” assaults. You take a short “train” ride to immigration, wondering whether your luggage can catch up with the rush and hustle of electric tracks that hum past the window.
Then you sense the distance behind the courtesy of immigration personnel. Everything is efficient, tourism people mouth banalities (the weather, how long you’re staying), even trash bins are stringently labeled and sorted. You begin to buy into first world efficiency until you remember that many of your kith and kin are responsible for this without enjoying its benefits (a Cebuano taxi driver once revealed that Chek Lap Kok Airport was constructed by former Atlas workers).This confusion of feelings is temporary.
Out of the airport, your heart begins to race with envy at the pulse that drives this city. Familiarity in its strangeness Hong Kong is not a shopper's paradise--if you are a shopper hunting for bargains to rival Carbon's ukay-ukay finds. But if you are funky and value variety, Hong Kong is incomparable!
Walking around Park Lane (Hong Kong side), small shops compete with large Japanese chain stores for attention. Their only difference is that at the small shops you can attempt (and often successfully) to bring down the price to 1/4 of what it says in the tag. Here and there in the shopping districts (whether in Tsim Sha Tsui, Stanley Market or Mongkok) you hear snippets of Filipino, sometimes raised in anger over the antics of a pesky child.The streets are also full of anachronisms: Mobile wielding teens furiously texting in Putonghua, quail eggs in vats of boiling water (which we only see in dimsum baskets), fish balls sharing space with stinky beancurd, and a sign that says "Welcome To Tai O" (whatever that may mean).
Hong Kong’s rhythm allows residents to run while they’re eating.Still, it is these anachronisms that comfort. You are reminded that in Hong Kong, you can find characters to almost believe in.
In the end, the confusion encourages you to return. Hong Kong fascinates because it perplexes. The SARS episode only added to its mystique, because there lies its secret.Hong Kong makes us bloom, marking us and challenges what we believe is inviolable. There is never a simple plot in their lifestyle, no closure or unity that often arrives in another city's daily life. So, you return and do nothing except to record Hong Kong's stunning recklessness.
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