(no subject)
Why explore?
For me, the answer is simple: I'm a collector of surprises. I seek the unexpected and the magical, although I often feel that the two are the same. I'm happiest following the road just to see where it leads, simply for the thrill of discovery. The world is full of delightful secrets. There is pleasure in the familiar but also beauty in the unknown, beauty that will reveal itself to whoever dares to explore it. I dare.
Today's exploration began modestly enough. I went for a run in a local park that I hadn't visited before, but quickly tired of running loops around the perimeter and left in search of something more interesting. After only a few minutes' walk, I found it: a building called the Sai Ying Pun Community Center, which I had seen countless times from the window of the minibus, always with the same question: "I wonder what's inside...?"
Peering through a door, I saw an audience of several hundred people watching something onstage. At first I thought it was a church sermon, but when the "pastor" began to sing, I realized I had stumbled on my first surprise: it was actually a performance of traditional Cantonese music. Two middle-aged women in glittering pantsuits sang the vocals, accompanied by several orchestra members playing instruments like the gaohu (a two-string fiddle with a plaintive, droning sound) and the dizi (a resonant bamboo flute).
Judging from the waves of grey-haired heads nodding in time to the music, I was the only person under 50 in the room, and likewise the only one who didn't understand Cantonese. Still, it was a unique window into a part of the Hong Kong community I rarely get a chance to interact with. The older members of the audience had probably seen Hong Kong evolve from a barely inhabited port overshadowed by Shanghai in the 1930s to today's booming international megacity. When they weren't playing endless games of mah-jongg or cards, this was how they chose to spend their Sunday afternoons.
After listening to a few songs, I left in search of more surprises. At the intersection where I normally turn torwards home, I looked in the opposite direction and realized I had never gone up that particular street despite living next to it for almost a year. So I set out to answer another of my favorite questions for exploring: "I wonder where this goes...?"
My curiosity was richly rewarded. The road wound up, up, up into the mountain that is Hong Kong Island. The farther up I went, the more expensive the houses looked and the denser the trees got. When the road dead-ended I was left alone, listening to drops of water fall between the lush leaves overhead. This would have been surprise enough in itself: standing in what felt like a rainforest, not 20 minutes away from the most densely populated square kilometer on the planet.
But just when I was preparing to leave, I saw my final prize: a tiny paved path leading into the very middle of the rainforest. This is exactly the sort of thing I hope to find when I go exploring: an intriguing piece of the landscape, unlisted in any guidebook, perhaps not even known to most people who live there--and all mine to discover. I stepped over the threshold.
At first the path was well-kept, with impressive views of the harbor glimpsed through the trees. But soon I started having to push through more and more overgrown branches and follow increasingly crumbling stairs set into the steep mountainside. I ducked under huge steel beams that seemed to be part of a landslide prevention system, involving a series of fences kept under tension by the beams. I guessed that the path had originally been a maintenance trail for workers to repair the fences, but for some reason had been abandoned. By the end, I was bushwacking through the forest in earnest. I finished by clambering down a water spillway back to civilization below.
By the time I made it back home, I was wet, muddy, and sported several mosquito bites. Pleasant afternoon stroll? Hardly. This was far better: I had opened myself up to the universe, and the universe had once again amazed me with its beauty. The world is full of tiny treasures, and I'd found three of them today in the space of just two hours. I was exhilarated.
To explore is to be in love with the world.
For me, the answer is simple: I'm a collector of surprises. I seek the unexpected and the magical, although I often feel that the two are the same. I'm happiest following the road just to see where it leads, simply for the thrill of discovery. The world is full of delightful secrets. There is pleasure in the familiar but also beauty in the unknown, beauty that will reveal itself to whoever dares to explore it. I dare.
Today's exploration began modestly enough. I went for a run in a local park that I hadn't visited before, but quickly tired of running loops around the perimeter and left in search of something more interesting. After only a few minutes' walk, I found it: a building called the Sai Ying Pun Community Center, which I had seen countless times from the window of the minibus, always with the same question: "I wonder what's inside...?"
Peering through a door, I saw an audience of several hundred people watching something onstage. At first I thought it was a church sermon, but when the "pastor" began to sing, I realized I had stumbled on my first surprise: it was actually a performance of traditional Cantonese music. Two middle-aged women in glittering pantsuits sang the vocals, accompanied by several orchestra members playing instruments like the gaohu (a two-string fiddle with a plaintive, droning sound) and the dizi (a resonant bamboo flute).
Judging from the waves of grey-haired heads nodding in time to the music, I was the only person under 50 in the room, and likewise the only one who didn't understand Cantonese. Still, it was a unique window into a part of the Hong Kong community I rarely get a chance to interact with. The older members of the audience had probably seen Hong Kong evolve from a barely inhabited port overshadowed by Shanghai in the 1930s to today's booming international megacity. When they weren't playing endless games of mah-jongg or cards, this was how they chose to spend their Sunday afternoons.
After listening to a few songs, I left in search of more surprises. At the intersection where I normally turn torwards home, I looked in the opposite direction and realized I had never gone up that particular street despite living next to it for almost a year. So I set out to answer another of my favorite questions for exploring: "I wonder where this goes...?"
My curiosity was richly rewarded. The road wound up, up, up into the mountain that is Hong Kong Island. The farther up I went, the more expensive the houses looked and the denser the trees got. When the road dead-ended I was left alone, listening to drops of water fall between the lush leaves overhead. This would have been surprise enough in itself: standing in what felt like a rainforest, not 20 minutes away from the most densely populated square kilometer on the planet.
But just when I was preparing to leave, I saw my final prize: a tiny paved path leading into the very middle of the rainforest. This is exactly the sort of thing I hope to find when I go exploring: an intriguing piece of the landscape, unlisted in any guidebook, perhaps not even known to most people who live there--and all mine to discover. I stepped over the threshold.
At first the path was well-kept, with impressive views of the harbor glimpsed through the trees. But soon I started having to push through more and more overgrown branches and follow increasingly crumbling stairs set into the steep mountainside. I ducked under huge steel beams that seemed to be part of a landslide prevention system, involving a series of fences kept under tension by the beams. I guessed that the path had originally been a maintenance trail for workers to repair the fences, but for some reason had been abandoned. By the end, I was bushwacking through the forest in earnest. I finished by clambering down a water spillway back to civilization below.
By the time I made it back home, I was wet, muddy, and sported several mosquito bites. Pleasant afternoon stroll? Hardly. This was far better: I had opened myself up to the universe, and the universe had once again amazed me with its beauty. The world is full of tiny treasures, and I'd found three of them today in the space of just two hours. I was exhilarated.
To explore is to be in love with the world.