Harbor
ha ha ha ha
random temple somewhere in Hong Kong. December 2008
Back to Hong Kong
When I lived in Japan and traveled regionally, I always booked my flights via Hong Kong. My Asian Life Coach, Bill Purver, a Canadian colleague in Japan, suggested that I keep an open return ticket to Hong Kong, so that I could fly there and buy a cheap plane ticket elsewhere. Air tickets in Japan in those days were unbelievably expensive considering how much the Japanese traveled internationally. Those were the days of extremely cheap travel from British Hong Kong - all booked via very dodgy travel agents. It worked, too. Most of my holidays involved a day in Hong Kong to purchase a ticket onward AND make sure I had an open ticket back for the next holiday. Hong Kong also happened to be the ONLY easy portal for journeys to the Mainland. How travel has changed since those days.
Twenty years later, I was in Hong Kong with Brian. It was now part of China. In those intervening years that "special administrative region" continued to develop and had improved, actually. Places we were familiar with in Kowloon (the tip of Hong Kong's mainland peninsula, the heart of the city) were all gone. The place to stay in 2008 was Hollywood Road - that was the new artsy and trendy area over on the Island side (we never would have considered staying on Hong Kong Island before). Hong Kong was cleaner. Hong Kong was BETTER.
Although we enjoyed a few good meals, the consensus that Singapore was superior for dining really appeared true. Hong Kong was very Chinese (it was China after all) and without cultural and linguistic knowledge, eating local food there would always be a challenge. We went out to a couple of trendy clubs near the hotel and agreed Hong Kong was nothing like in the days when we both lived in Japan. Hong Kong was better, but we missed the edgy and chaotic feel from the past. I liked British Hong Kong for all the wrong reasons, I guess. It was not about the rule of law - it was about all the things that existed "at the limit". Hong Kong still clung to the edge of China in an insane existence, and it felt like it - although that specialness was rapidly fading.
I was awed by the new airport and the big bridge that connected its newly created island to the mainland. The airport train was sleek and efficient. Who would possibly choose to go into downtown Hong Kong via taxi when the comfortable train whisked passengers there in minutes? Hong Kong had more skyscrapers. The famous Star Ferry between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon still plied its route, but with fewer passengers - it was likely maintained out of a sense of nostalgia. The Peak Tram climbed its steep rails to Victoria Peak, but the pollution was so bad, the lovely night view of the city from the top of the territory was dulled and blurry. The famous Haw Par Gardens had gone bankrupt. Hong Kong was just not how I remembered.
One cannot recapture the past, and I am grateful I experienced Hong Kong of the mid-1980s. My last visit to territory reminded me of both how much the city and I had changed.
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