Oct 19-24, 2009
Objective: Ascertain viability of long term living in HK
Risks: Pollution, poverty, Trish killing me
The best way to see HK is either after or in between China. Having done this now twice, I (Wayne, here) am deluded with romantic notions of it. I crossed into it after the Tiananmen Sq massacre, and now after a month of second hand smoking, spitting and language challenges.
I also remember HK the way it was, before the Brits left. Temple St inspired my first published story. And even Temple St is now a disappointment, a gross tourist trap not worthy of the seedy aura it once held for locals and foreigners, I still love it all and hope to convince Trish to move here for a year or so. Why?
I love how Louis Vitton, and Dior snuggle up beside greasy chopstick diners, dried seafood stalls and knock off vendors.
I love how 5 star hotels look out into 20 story crumbling apartments and their laundry. Imagine Four Seasons-like hotels back home surrounded by Jane/Finch corridor or Caldwell like tenements (which would be mighty fine here) and you get a picture.
I love how beyond the columns of fantastical modern and decrepit skyscapes, are hundreds of island getaways, subtropical jungles and hills, and the most gentile villages, without the mass tour groups.
I love the irony, the contrast, the juxtaposition of east and west, rich and poor, indifference and conscience, and of past and future.
And I love how after a month in China, we haven’t had to breath hardly any second hand smoke, dodge sharp spitting locals; and because of widespread English and my faiing Cantonese, have not had to think.
We hook up with Anne and Max. She’s an Aussie we met along with her two wonderful mates in Turkey years back. They’re doing the expat scene, living on the Island, killer hours, primo expensive digs. They’re younger and more portable and I’m jealous. They’re also wonderful hosts. They did offer to take us to the China Club where her company has a membership, a vestige of the colonial era. It was created because the Chinese were not allowed into the English Club. The irony is, now only white folk go to the China Club. I was kinda hoping to go, pick up a tray and some drink orders, do the odd bow— for the hell of it, but they were packed. Anyway, even Anne and Max can’t help me accomplish my mission.
Regrettably, Trish loves Edinburgh more. So for me to drag her to such heat, which in the summer feels like a heating vent for Hades, I’d need a serious paying job so she could be a kept women gingerly taking up caligraphy and sipping iced teas.
Mission status: abort
