Early Saturday April 28th I left Lanshan for Hong Kong. It was the start of the May holidays and although I was not due to meet my sisters for another three days, I was so desperate for some big city life that I just had to go at the very earliest opportunity. I was probably a little too early as in the midst of my preparations I heard that I theoretically had some displaced classes to teach over the weekend. I chose to ignore these rumours and as no-one actually came up and told me I did have classes, I left as planned. 14 hours later I pulled up outside Chungking Mansions, an immense dilapidated block of guesthouses, shops, cheap eateries and rentable space where I was to stay for the next few nights. I was exhausted and must have looked an extremely soft target as I exited my taxi for within seconds I had been pounced upon by some guy offering a room, taken up some back stairs from a side alley through a maze of corridors and shown to a room.When I say room I mean cupboard.
The 'room' was a little over a metre wide and maybe two metres long, with a thin plastic mattress leant up against one wall. At the end was the bathroom. This was an amazing space, simply for the lack of it. In an area of perhaps 1 metre square max was fitted a shower, toilet and sink. Admittedly you had to sit on the toilet sideways, which was where you'd also sit to shower, and reach behind it to access the world's tiniest sink, snugly fitted into the windowsill space, and that was only if you were able to get in and turn around in the first place, what with the boiler taking up a fair portion of the headspace...
This guy knew what he was doing.
"Closethedoorbehindyoutolaythebedonthefloor.Sheetsareintheplasticbagbehindthedoorok?greatseeyoubye"
And with that he walked out, closing the door behind him, and was gone. Gobsmacked is a state that I had always thought existed only in crappy literature. Until that moment. I stood still for a minute, mouth open, trying to work out if I was dreaming or actually had just been charged 150 Hong Kong dollars for a night in a broom cupboard on a wipe-clean mattress.
It took a while for a word to form in my head. First an 'n', then, finally, an 'o'. No. Sorry. Hey! No! I opened the door and ran down the corridor after the guy. Like hell I was going to stay some place like that. I may be on a budget, but there are limits. I had stupidly given him my deposit already and of course he refused to give it back. I had no alternative but to follow him to another room on another floor in another guesthouse, which was at least decent, if a complete rip-off. At that point though I didn't care. One night and I'd move. I just needed to sleep.
Welcome to Hong Kong...
So of course, next morning I checked out and found another place, still within the same complex, but this time in a friendly place, in a small but comfortable room, and for only 120 HK dollars a night. Much better. So, with that little obstacle overcome I set out to explore Hong Kong.What I saw at first almost shocked me. I saw normality. It was just like being at home. I didn't know what to do with myself. And there were so many foreigners! I haven't seen as many white faces in one place since I left the UK. I honestly thought in my head 'wow, look at all the laowai'. I stood and considered them from the same perspective as the Chinese in Lanshan consider me and my presence in their small town. I temporarily felt myself to be on the other side of the fence. That was weird.
For eight months though I have lived in a small rural town where the opening of a supermarket stocking 30 different kinds of toothpaste (but still no deodorant) is an event celebrated with song and dance, water buffalo walk down the main street and farmers sell their wares sat by the side of the road. Suddenly I was in a skyscraping metropolis where pinstriped businessmen carrying coffees and women in designer shades strode past doormen maintaining orderly queues outside Louis Vuitton. Crowds of trendy young folk waited obediently for the traffic lights to stop the constant stream of traffic and let them cross the roads lined with stand-alone stores representing every single exclusive designer and luxury brand label I had ever heard of while working for Harvey Nichols. Fendi, Missoni, Roberto Cavalli, Zegna, Chloe, Paul Smith...it was like walking through a catalogue. It was overwhelming. I had reverse culture shock and began to feel slightly homesick for simple little Lanshan.
However, this was precisely the reason why I'd come to Hong Kong in the first place, to experience these long-absent familiarities, so I pulled myself together and went for a walk. I took the Star Ferry across the harbour to Central Hong Kong, saw the skyscrapers tower above me and took a short ride on the world's longest escalator, climbing the steep hillside that rises almost immediately behind the waterfront. Pretty much the only flat parts of Hong Kong are reclaimed from the sea. I saw the trams and, bizarrely enough, hundreds of Filipino women lining every street and square, sat about doing nothing much in particular. I wondered if they might be demonstrating somehow, and seeing as a couple of women were promoting Christianity I thought it must be some kind of women-only worship thing going on. I later found out that this is a regular Sunday occurrence, and that they are mainly domestic workers gathering together on their one day off. Interesting. One other extremely interesting thing I noticed was the freedom of speech and expression that people enjoy here. At the ferry terminal was a protest to release imprisoned Falun Gong practitioners. There were the Filipino ladies recruiting for the church and most impressively, unrestricted internet access. I browsed the BBC News website and looked up information on Wikipedia. Bliss.
One further noticeable oddity was how subversively British everything still is. Besides the roads all having typically British names like Wyndham Street, small details like the designs of the traffic lights and street signs stood out to me in particular although it took a while before I realised everyone was driving on the left too. Night-time was another experience. The city exploded into a neon supernova advertising everything, and I mean everything.
Keeping in mind that my sisters would also want to see a lot of the attractions, I avoided all the major sights and concentrated on doing all those big city things that I have so missed in the last eight months or so.I went to good restaurants and ate varied food. Italian, American, vaguely German and an excellent lunchtime buffet at the fantastically named 'Gaylord' Indian restaurant. I did not touch Chinese food for an entire week.
I went swimming. And it felt like the best thing in the world. I used to train 3-4 times a week when I was younger and I have missed it so much. I swam for as long as I could and fully exhausted myself. Best feeling in the world.
I went to the cinema. I shouldn't have bothered. I was dying to see a film in a theatre but, Sod's Law, there was nothing decent showing at the time. I settled for 'Epic Movie', by the makers of 'Scary Movie' and realised I really hadn't missed that much.
I went to a bar. That was fun. There's a little street in Central Hong Kong called Lan Kwai Fong that's full of ex-pat bars. It was literally 'spot-the-Chinese' in this place. There was a great atmosphere. I soaked it up, drank a couple of German beers and chatted to a few people before getting a taxi back to Kowloon. This was where it got slightly disturbing. I always reached my guest house by a set of back stairs down a little alley of stalls selling magazines and sex aids where young men sat on the steps offering hash to anyone who passed. This time, as it was late when I got back, the stairs were locked shut. In my slightly tipsy state I didn't know what to do. I banged and banged on the door, hoping someone would come and open up but there was no answer. Not from inside anyway. As I was desperately thinking how I could avoid a night spent sleeping rough a heavily made-up head peeped itself round the corner and said in a very husky voice, "you wan' licky licky? 30 dollar". By now I could see that the head was attached to a set of fairly broad shoulders and none too slender arms. It was clear that this 'lady' had certain extras. I politely declined and as she/he tottered off down the alleyway in her/his high heels I remembered another entrance on a different street, was successful and soon safely in bed. I had never imagined that China would possess Lady-boys but this is Hong Kong, a different place indeed.I went to museums and galleries. These were great. I love museums, and my sisters don't, so I had my fill while I could. The Hong Kong Museum of Art was a very cool place. One exhibition I saw was 'Chinglish', celebrating the peculiar mixture of Chinese and English slang that many people, especially in Hong Kong, speak. It was ok, with the exception of one piece, by an artist called Tsang Kin-wah. I walked through a doorway into a room decorated floor to ceiling in a blue and white Victorian style floral print. It was only when I got closer to examine the pattern that I saw that each leaf and petal was formed of words. Bad words. Words like 'f**king b*stards', 'shut the f**k up', 'stupid f**king c**t' and 'pretentious little sh*ts'. It was amazing how a pattern so tame and inoffensive could be fundamentally composed of these streams of abuse. Pure genius. Everyone was walking round so seriously, appreciating how (and I quote) 'the huge discrepancy between visual associations generates huge conceptual displacements, leaving visitors uneasy...'. Personally I couldn't keep a straight face and just kept thinking how much my mom would have loved it. As I continued to read, my eyes fell on a tiny leaf twirling away from a larger stem that simply read 'boobs boobs'. I burst out laughing and had to leave the room.
Examples of similar works are here and here. Please, please, please have a look around his website. I have already vowed that when I'm all grown up my bathroom will be decorated in this style.
