Hong Kong, Day 1
Alas for you all, the hotel has free wireless, which means I continue to babble. Double alas, Tiny Laptop seems to be very intractable about uploading pictures to LJ, so picture spam of Hong Kong scenery and food will have to come after I get back to Taiwan.
My last trip to Hong Kong was six years ago, and though I fell in love with the city, I also had two of the worst months of my life here. I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back.
I still love the city, even though the urban glitz may turn some people off. I love the winding one-way streets and the red taxis and the British signs to look left or right for incoming traffic. I love the leafy green jungly mountains and how high rises jut out of them like cyborg titanium spikes; I love the combination of overgrown tropical nature and metal human geometry. I love looking into a street and finding it completely covered by small street stores selling cloth and fake brand name bags and dried fish snacks, so crowded that you can touch both sides with your arms, and emerging on the other side to find all of Central and Hong Kong's financial district laid out before you, neat and formal and co-existing with the mess just two feet away.
I'm better with the heat and humidity here. It's been six years, and I still associate the aggressive air conditioning with miserable, 17-hour workdays. The wall of humidity that hits when you step outside a building means freedom and time to gather myself in.
I love this city.
*
I always think food in Taiwan is good, and then I come here. There were things on the menu at dinner tonight that I've never seen, from three pages of medicinal soups to pig's pancreas soup with Chinese prayer beads, crocodile soup with dahurian angelina root and wolfberry root bark, and deep-fried crocodile belly.
My mom refused to order the crocodile belly, even though I wanted to try and my uncle said it was good.
*
I haven't been here a full day yet, and I've already found an English bookstore. It's one I used to make trips to on the weekends, only not. Same mall, more stores, one additional giant glass building, and it's not at all like wandering there by myself, lost and in search of the familiar.
The books are mostly boring, with a scattering of favorites that made me smile. No imported Lindholm, no Risen Empire, but yes to international magazines and books translated from Chinese.
I think I'll go back tomorrow and buy four or five of them; they're available on Amazon, but cheaper here.
*
It's a foreign country here, but not; it's part of China, but not; it's a former British colony, but not.
I can't understand what people are saying because they start out in Cantonese, but I can read everything-signs are in Mandarin/Canto and English. Sometimes I'm confused because the phrasing is Cantonese. I'm sad and happy that there is so much English: more bookstores and books for me, and yet, a visible imprint of colonization.
Speaking, though, Mandarin or English can be iffy at best. The further you get from Central, the more Cantonese it is, I assume, since Central is the financial district. I can't tell if Mandarin is gaining speakers while English is losing them; I would guess so given the state of government, but I also suspect English will be the default in the financial district for some time.
*
Kowloon and Hong Kong are the same and yet different, and both of them are one of my favorite cities in the world.
My last trip to Hong Kong was six years ago, and though I fell in love with the city, I also had two of the worst months of my life here. I wasn't sure how I'd feel coming back.
I still love the city, even though the urban glitz may turn some people off. I love the winding one-way streets and the red taxis and the British signs to look left or right for incoming traffic. I love the leafy green jungly mountains and how high rises jut out of them like cyborg titanium spikes; I love the combination of overgrown tropical nature and metal human geometry. I love looking into a street and finding it completely covered by small street stores selling cloth and fake brand name bags and dried fish snacks, so crowded that you can touch both sides with your arms, and emerging on the other side to find all of Central and Hong Kong's financial district laid out before you, neat and formal and co-existing with the mess just two feet away.
I'm better with the heat and humidity here. It's been six years, and I still associate the aggressive air conditioning with miserable, 17-hour workdays. The wall of humidity that hits when you step outside a building means freedom and time to gather myself in.
I love this city.
*
I always think food in Taiwan is good, and then I come here. There were things on the menu at dinner tonight that I've never seen, from three pages of medicinal soups to pig's pancreas soup with Chinese prayer beads, crocodile soup with dahurian angelina root and wolfberry root bark, and deep-fried crocodile belly.
My mom refused to order the crocodile belly, even though I wanted to try and my uncle said it was good.
*
I haven't been here a full day yet, and I've already found an English bookstore. It's one I used to make trips to on the weekends, only not. Same mall, more stores, one additional giant glass building, and it's not at all like wandering there by myself, lost and in search of the familiar.
The books are mostly boring, with a scattering of favorites that made me smile. No imported Lindholm, no Risen Empire, but yes to international magazines and books translated from Chinese.
I think I'll go back tomorrow and buy four or five of them; they're available on Amazon, but cheaper here.
*
It's a foreign country here, but not; it's part of China, but not; it's a former British colony, but not.
I can't understand what people are saying because they start out in Cantonese, but I can read everything-signs are in Mandarin/Canto and English. Sometimes I'm confused because the phrasing is Cantonese. I'm sad and happy that there is so much English: more bookstores and books for me, and yet, a visible imprint of colonization.
Speaking, though, Mandarin or English can be iffy at best. The further you get from Central, the more Cantonese it is, I assume, since Central is the financial district. I can't tell if Mandarin is gaining speakers while English is losing them; I would guess so given the state of government, but I also suspect English will be the default in the financial district for some time.
*
Kowloon and Hong Kong are the same and yet different, and both of them are one of my favorite cities in the world.