Photos from Hong Kong
I've got all of my photos from China online now, but there's like three hundred of them, and that's a lot, and cris's recent posts have reminded me that it's worth breaking the trip down a little bit, remembering each day, or at least each city, on its own.
So, photos from Hong Kong at the beginning and end of the trip. For a combination of factors this was my first and last destination in China, and it ended up functioning as something of a liminal space between Home and Not Home. Familiar things mixed with the unfamiliar in a comfortable balance. Disruptive enough to be exciting but not so much to be off-putting. The decision to make this trip, and to do it with Cris was a pretty hasty one, made before I could stop to consider whether I was too set in my solo travel idiosyncrasy to be a good companion, and once I did start to wonder along those lines it was inevitable that I'd consider the downsides without much thought to possible upsides. Here is an upside: Cris is better than I am at navigating, and took point with maps and subway system diagrams. Here is another: Cris is great company, both in "HEY, WE ARE IN CHINA, THIS IS KIND OF AWESOME" chatter and let's-wait-out-this-three-hours-between-trains-by-journaling silence. It was great fun to share the experience, and just as much fun to see the experience reflected back in post-trip entries. I also like that Me as captured in Cris's recollections of conversation never swears and speaks largely in complete sentences.
After Cris went home and I returned to Hong Kong on my own, I spent most of the day wandering on foot, crossing the path of Three Weeks Ago at the Mid-Levels Escalators and the second class deck of the Star Ferry. I dropped into art galleries on Hollywood Road and, stirred by the large format city photography in one, stared hard at apartment towers for the rest of the day, appreciating the repetition of tiny balconies and air conditioner units at every floor. I tagged along to a group birthday dinner with a high school classmate and a bunch of his expat peers and spent the last of my cash on postcards of neon collages and clusters of skyscrapers. I had $1.30 Hong Kong dollars left when I boarded my flight to Chicago, worth about 20 US cents.