And so my visit to Hong Kong (the main purpose of this whole trip I suppose) ends without much panache. Travel days are usually unexciting at first - they start out with the one day I am able (or allow myself) to sleep in, then go look for breakfast somewhere in the vicinity of the hotel. This is usually followed by checking out of the hotel and dealing with some airport I usually don't have much inclination to deal with. They end with the tiredness that comes with travel but also the excitement of being somewhere else, and somewhere new.
Today is not much different to tell you the truth. I woke up at 8:00 am, watched Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel (China LOVES the Discovery Channel - they must agree with my parents on it being wholesome and informative or something) and then I got dressed and went in search of breakfast food. I settled on a small Dim Sum restaurant a block away from the hotel (yes, Dim Sum as brunch silly westerners - and yes, I didn't know this either until I came to Hong Kong and got a few weird looks when I asked where I could find some quality Dim Sum at 8:00 pm). I had a really delicious breakfast of steamed veggie dumplings, shrimp rolls (steamed), and a pot of Pu'Er tea (my favorite Chinese tea). All of this for 33 HKD (or $3.85). Really good deal if you ask me!
The restaurant people were really nice too! When I came in and sat down, the lady warned me that this was a Chinese restaurant that didn't serve western food. I told her that I knew that - that I had come for Chinese food and that I spoke Mandarin Chinese (普通话 - Pǔtōnghuà). She was quite delighted about this and proceeded to take my order in Chinese. When she cleared my plates, she said it had been wonderful to meet a westerner who spoke Pǔtōnghuà and who spoke it as clearly and nicely as I did. High praise!!! I usually think that I butcher my Chinese when I speak it, so to have someone say that I spoke beautifully really made my day.
To be honest, I've missed speaking Pǔtōnghuà here in Hong Kong. I mean, a lot of the conferences at Filmart were dictated in Chinese (and I understood a great deal of them to my surprise) but nobody really speaks Pǔtōnghuà to you here if they can avoid it. Although the guy who came to fix my internet last night spoke Mandarin with someone on the phone. Again, I understood most of the conversation (except for words like "IP Address", but come on, I barely remember how to say toilet in Chinese sometimes, do you really expect me to know "IP address"?). The point is, part of me is really happy about going back to China where I can speak the language and read the signs on the streets.
Hong Kong has been quite an experience though. Perhaps not my favorite place I've been to soo far on this trip (Beijing takes that honor so far - but I have a feeling Xi'An might de-throne it) but an interesting experience nonetheless. I mean, I came to Hong Kong to do what everyone in Hong Kong comes here to do - work. Hong Kong is a business city. You can just see that through and through that's what it is. I mean, one of the nice things, however, is the the absence of real opulence like you'll see in Los Angeles, New York, or even Shanghai and Beijing. Especially in Los Angeles. I swear I saw as many Chanel boutiques in Hong Kong as Old Navy stores in an average American city. And the thing is: PEOPLE BUY STUFF there, they don't just like window shop. The thing is, I think they seem to like owning one nice thing. Like, they'll own a Chanel purse, but just the one and won't really buy a new one each season. Also, you won't really see any Maseratis running around town (who owns a car in Hong Kong with that unbelievably smooth, efficient, and cheap subway system anyways?) so I guess they just don't spend money on that. I like that absence of opulence though. The problem is that because Hong Kong seems to be so strictly about business I think that given my personality and my history, living in a city like that would cause me to overwork myself or become a workaholic which I don't really think that I'd like. That being said, Hong Kong is one of those few cities which I feel like I could live in for a while if I had to (unlike, say, Shanghai, Chicago, or Miami). It is because of all of this that I think that if the world ever needed a capital, I think Hong Kong would be the ideal city (and not New York...I know, SHOCKER, right?). It is just such a teeming metropolis of Pan-Asian culture --- it really is unique that way, it just absorbs different culture into its own in an effort to define itself - Chinese (southern chinese), India, Malaysian, Thai, Australian, UK, Philippines, Korean...I swear, all you need to do is throw in a few thousand latinos to Latin-Americanize the place and we're golden. I think seeing Hong Kong has helped me understand and contextualize the theme of an identity-confused city in Wong Kar-Wai's films. Hong Kong is exactly that - it doesn't quite know what it is and suffers because of it, but only makes passive efforts to remedy the situation. It is, in that respect, also the perfect symbol of modernity - growing, absorbing, but still unable to tell us who we are or what it is.
My next destination approaches.
I see the much more modestly tall skyline from the airplane window bathed in the rays of the sunset. ON towards my next adventure - to the city of the terracotta warriors.
Some pix of Hong Kong:
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