It all started during my first trip to China. Our team had just left the slow-paced life of Liping (see the preceding six entries), and many of us were bound for Hong Kong. With our 30-day-double-entry visas set to expire, we needed to leave the country and re-enter to activate our second stay. [How it makes sense that leaving mainland China for Hong Kong, then returning to the mainland constitutes re-entry if they really are "one country, with two systems" is anyone's guess. But, of course, there are many things about Communism that defy the understanding of those of us born under the banner of the free market. I guess in this situation, this conundrum really is preferable to the added cost of flying to a more distant country and returning in order to use our second 30-day visa.]
So there we were, leaving the poorest province of China for what, if it were counted as an independent country, would be 8th richest nation based on per capita GDP, adjusted by purchasing power parity. [Wikipedia cites Hong Kong as the 11th largest trading entity, with the 13th largest banking center. It also has the most liberal economony in the world, and has a per capita GDP higher than those of the the United Kingdom, Germany, France, and Italy.] To adapt a line from Virginia Woolfe, naturally, all one's sympathies were on the side of Liping.
Against the backdrop of rural poverty and warm country hospitality, the lights and glitz of Hong Kong struck me as perversely shallow and, unlimately, nothing more than affectation. It did not help matters that in response to the question, "What is there to do in Hong Kong?" two answers—and only two answers—were proffered: "shop and eat." (Though the answers did not vary, the order in which they were listed changed depending on whom I asked.)
So here was a great city—really, a great city-state—extremely prosperous by any standard, yet without the appearance of anything I would associate with "culture." One can tolerate a great deal of materialism and superficiality, especially if he is from the greater Los Angeles metropolitan region, but at some point one needs balance, a feeling of culture and art. No one with whom I spoke mentioned nice parks or bibliophilistic libraries, so it seemed I could forget about museums, opera houses, art galleries, ballet companies, or the symphony. All the wealth amassed from being the "Pearl of the Orient" and the economic hub for southeast Asia seemed to have been diverted into restaurants and shopping malls, without any consideration for a decent theatre.
I think the straw that broke this camel's back was a description of the HK paradigm from a friend who had grown up there . "Women won't leave the house without dressing up and putting on their make—not even to go to the grocery store," I was told. "When Hong Kong people see a fat person walking down the street, they say to themselves, 'disgusting! That person shouldn't even leave their [sic] house. It's embarrassing to be seen on the street looking like that.'" Whether this characterization is accurate or not is debatable, but this was the information given me, and I saw little if anything that contradicted it.
After that, I vowed never to return to a place that made Los Angeles look like an 18th century Puritan settlement. One tasty, almost poetic, fact I gleaned from my first visit to Hong Kong was that due to limited availability of land, the city has expanded on "reclaimed" land, which is actually garbage that's been dumped into the ocean. I was really quite pleased at what an apt metaphor this seemed: a city, an entire way of life, built upon nothing more than trash.
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Yet, here I am, back in Hong Kong, this city of shopping and eating, eating and shopping. In a place renowned for its gustatory delights, I am eating crow.
Here's a photo from this trip (2006) of me, overlooking Victoria Peak (named for Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom):
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