Hong Kongisms

Three full days in Hong Kong came and went before we knew it. As I write this we are currently half way through our four-hour flight to Beijing (North Eastern China), where we will be participating in a tour organized by the study abroad program we will be with for the next three-some months.

I am extremely glad we had the chance to experience Hong Kong before heading to the mainland. Perhaps this is because everything is still fresh in my mind, but it’s possible that my previous favorite city, Sydney, Australia, has been dethroned; the upbeat feel and dynamic beauty of this harbor city was simply a pleasure to experience. While I would hardly say that Hong Kong qualifies as being a different culture, there were a few unique aspects of the city that I found interesting:

The natives do indeed love hearing foreigners speak a bit of broken Chinese. Even though we could only speak a little Mandarin and no Cantonese (native tongue of Hong Kong, much different) many if not most of the residents have learned Mandarin as a foreign language. One of our servers in particular was fascinated that we Americans could speak a little Zhongwen (Chinese), and consequently lingered at our table throughout the lunch, and even accepted our invitation to sit down with us once his shift ended. He had lived in Hong Kong since he was four, so it was very cool hearing what he had to say about the city.

I’m having a hard time deciding whether the city is more or less pedestrian-friendly than the norm, but I’m leaning towards more. While we were walking around the area by our hotel as well as in Central Hong Kong, we actually spent most of our time a story above traffic; there’s an extensive network of bridges that snake throughout the city. For example, it was about a ten-minute walk from our hotel to the subway, and we would leave straight from the second-floor lobby into a walkway that went over traffic and through buildings until we arrived at an escalator taking us underground. Most of this time this is very convenient, but it’s a bit annoying if you are at ground level and you want to cross the street, as you usually have to climb a flight of stairs to do so.

The dumplings are sooo so good! I ordered a couple different kinds while there, and they knock the socks off of any pot stickers I’ve had back home.

The subway is incredibly clean, and very efficient. I don’t think we ever spent much more than 60 seconds waiting for a train.

We took the 15-minute ferry ride a few times across the harbor—as were walking to the station the first time we anticipated paying at least five bucks for the trip, seeing as it must be a popular tourist attraction; turns out, it cost us about thirty cents a ride. Crazy.

The McDonalds tastes exactly identical to the one in Roseville, California, as does the Starbucks.

When I ordered a coffee from a Chinese bakery, the girl at the counter handed the filled cup to me in a plastic bag, which seemed a bit superfluous. See I always thought that it was the purpose behind the cup to safely contain the liquid, but I guess they felt this inadequate (turns out it was, the cup was scalding hot).

The water in the bay was pretty shockingly disgusting; it actually looks more like oil with water in it than the other way around. Well that may be a slight exaggeration, but either way it would be an exceptionally brave man that ventured in for a swim.

All in all, it was a fantastic experience, and I am very much hoping I’ll be able to come up with an excuse to return there at some point.