Hong Kong: Asia's World City

 Hong Kong: Asia's World City

While the trip officially began in Beijing, a couple of us (myself, Taylor, and Drew) decided before the trip that it would be worth our while to include a few days in Hong Kong prior to our arrival in the capital. Since we didn't have lectures or Chinese students with us to engage in intellectual debates, I'll leave my impressions on the class- and IR-related topics for future posts. This one is reserved for our HK adventure.

A city rich with history and culture, Hong Kong literally means "Fragrant Harbor," and has throughout its history has been a British colony, occupied by Japan, and (currently) a "Special Administrative Region" of the PRC. A quick wiki search will net you plenty of information about HK, but we chose the scenic route. According to the internets, HK is one of the most densely populated and tallest cities in the world, with high per capita income, HDI, and life expectancy, as well as (supposedly) great quality of life. More on all of this later!

We spent most of our time in HK exploring, largely at random. Without any willingness or ability to consult a map set expectations, we were able to focus on the experience rather than fitting in a particular set of sights to a tight agenda. As the pictures below show, we spent some time on the harbor, which was the cheapest way to go from Central HK to the Kowloon Peninsula. Since our hotel was on the opposite side of HK island from downtown (and our free hotel shuttle only took us about half of the distance there), we chose instead the Peninsula as our main attraction in the trip's early stages.

We didn't see the top of this building until our last day in HK

View of the Central district of HK from about halfway out in the harbor

Kowloon was a short ferry ride across the harbor (for $2 HK, or about a $.25 US), and, if you peered through the fog, pretty enjoyable. It was here that we indulged our inner nerds and toured the HK Museum of History, where we learned all about the city and region from prehistoric times to the present (well, up to 1997, after which point there was little said).

"Stop Useless Resistance"

Posters from the War

My favorite was the WWII section, covering the Battle of Hong Kong, Japanese occupation, the subsequent famine and forced repatriation to the mainland of many citizens, the guerrilla tactics used against Japanese by HK, and the eventual return of the colony to (once) Great Britain. At this point, HK was largely decimated. In 1984, the British and Chinese agreed on a joint declaration to transfer HK's sovereignty over to the PRC in 1997.

the celebration of the transfer in 1997

As a semi-autonomous region of the PRC, HK ostensibly has control over its own, well, everything. It's allowed an autonomous judiciary, constitutional documents, economic functioning, etc - anything you could want, with the exception of official diplomatic relations or military defense. Sounds legit, except one of the rules of the Basic Law requires that the legislature be largely in the hands of the Electorate Committee, a small group of 400-1200 members (most of whom have strong ties to the mainland), rather than the general population. The system has been heavily criticized by pro-democracy dissidents and Westerners as over-representing the groups close to Beijing and under-representing those deemed "hostile"...

lest we forget who really runs things...

All that aside, HK is pretty great. Most of the people we met in the mainland seemed to view HK as a wonderful haven for intellectual and political freedom. It was certainly a cultural hub. We made our way to a little eatery and had some spicy dim sum before catching the ferry back.

At this point, we were itching to see some history. So we made the trek to the Golden Bauhinia Square outside the Convention Center, where the statue commemorating the transfer of sovereignty stands. At this point, I feel I should comment briefly on how we got around: this city can be navigated almost entirely in English. Just about anywhere you look, you can find an expat, especially in the parts of town where you would find yourself as a typical tourist. Even the little restaurants tucked away in alleys have English menus!

In any case, after that, we felt like we were largely able to navigate the city and spent the rest of the trip seeing specific places of interest. There was the University of Hong Kong...

 ...The marketplace in Kowloon Central...

...And the "Ladies Market," which had just as many items available for men shoppers as women, thank you very much. This was a multiple block-long series of tents full of totally legit products knock-offs for discount purchase (with a little bit of bargaining).

We finished the trip with an excursion up into the Soho region to walk around, ride on the longest outdoor escalator in the world, and explore a little bit more of the "East meets West" that makes Hong Kong such a famous tourist location. We also had fish and chips!

livin' la vida expat

After avoiding the pull of our new friends - a British schoolteacher, an Australian personal trainer, and a Filipino bartender - who wanted to take us to Wan Chai, the home of HK's "famous" red light district on our last night in HK, we settled in and prepared for our flight to Beijing the next morning.

Overall, the experience in HK was great. Most beneficial, I think, was the fact that it gave us a point of comparison immediately upon arrival in Beijing. More on that in another post, though. What stuck out to me was how packed together everything was. The reports of its population density and overall city height are absolutely true. Everything is jammed together with not an inch to spare. Despite the seeming lack of an air pollution problem (when not rainy, the sky was a pretty light blue), the city streets were dirty and there was trash everywhere. Many of the skyscrapers in the poorer areas looked likely to collapse any minute and the bamboo construction sites seemed thrown together overnight. On every day except Sunday, children in school uniforms could be seen darting into and out of schools, tutoring studios, and music lessons from morning until around 6 or 7pm. It's evident that the city has a culture prioritizing upward mobility through sheer force of intellectual effort.

The parents invest heavily in their children, which should come as no surprise given the fact that HK is an expensive city and the children are expected to take care of their parents as early as possible. What I found most interesting is the distinction of people who will and won't talk to foreigners in English: since it is taught from primary school onward (just as in the rest of industrialized China), it's easy to tell who isn't educated based on their ability and willingness to converse in English. When you attempt to engage someone in English, they are either happy to do so (and usually quite good), or will avert their eyes and make every attempt to get you to leave them alone. They usually won't even point at a map or converse in (butchered) Chinese. Note: I don't offer this as a blanket generalization, merely as an observation and a potential explanation. If there's a better one, please correct me. I never intend to insult.

So that's our short trip to HK. I'm sure Drew and Taylor will have more to say on this little adventure in their posts. For the sake of brevity, I'll end here and cover Beijing/Shanghai, as well as my overall views on the China study abroad trip and my impressions of mainland China, in subsequent posts. Later!

-Jack Huguley