Crazy Hong Kong

(HelloKitty and the Olympic Games...what could be a better joint venture? The craziness of China's biggest ever event is spreading. So if you don't see a problem in spending a mere 2000€ on the golden kitty above that heralds the Olympic fire in nice fashion..)

ASIA'S WORLD CITY

HongKong branded itself as 'Asia's World City'...designated to strengthen the already good name it has grown into a very powerful financial hub in Asia and found its place in the big world out there. Using the bus to go into Kowloon (which is north of Hong Kong Island, but is itself integral part of this so-called special administrative region in China) I was astonished by the never-ending, quite run-down skyscrapers that were placed into the rugged landscape of Hong Kong merely to house all the people. The better part of Hong Kong's surface is hard to cultivate as it represents hilly and rugged landscape, so one can see big houses all along the way into the city, apparently built everywhere the land was flat enough to allow housing. This keeps me wondering where this enormous city plans to expand into. Also, a few years ago Hong Kong and Shanghai outstripped Singapore as the world's biggest ports, giving it even more clout than it already has. We spent a few days just stretching our legs in this city and in nearby Shenzhen...Let me lose a few words on some things that passed on the way.

(a normal day in busy Kowloon..this jungle of signs is very characteristic and gives Kowloon a very distinct, buzzing outlook. The north of Hong Kong Island in comparison is much more like glitzy Singapore, just with the added spice of being placed into a wonderful, hilly landscape in which you can climb up or even use the famous 'longest outdoor covered escalator in the world' to carry all those tourists up the hill; it is about 800m long with about 130m of vertical climb)

VIP PLEASE

After arrival in our hotel, we were upgraded right away to VIP class without even asking..giving ourselves the splendor of a much better room than in Singapore (who would have thought...supposedly, Hong Kong rooms are smaller most of the times than anything you would get in Singapore) and even wireless Internet (although nothing to use it with). Was this another instance of Ang Moh ('Red hair people' widely used Singaporean expression for caucasians) superiority that can be so often observed in Asia? I do not know, as I did not dare to confront anyone. A good contrast and good start indeed. Next important item on the list is of course the food, whereas Hong Kong has a cuisine that quite differs from what you would get in Singapore. Some things appear outright wrong to me in the first place...such as mixing coffee and tee together with lemon into one drink, or boiling coke with ginger. There are however numerous desserts everywhere in town that have to be tried, as well as such wonderful things as 'hairy crab' (not this time) or a kind of humongous prawns that take some mastery to open and cannot be found in Singapore in most places. My favorite dish became a simple fish soup whereas the noodles where made of fish themselves...therefore the easy name of the dish..'noodles made of fish' :-)

(very important details on the public train...please don't accidentally lose saliva, especially not in a noisy fashion. Also, previously famous things such as Ghetto blasters have also been replaced by phones that are frequently used by very young people to let everyone on the train participate in their music adventures. Of course, everybody MUST like your music and the people who play it loudly always seem to be under the immense illusion that they are the only one's who are listening to it...according to their glassy looks. I am sure this is just a new expression of altruism that I am too stupid to get..)

EXPENSIVE OR CHEAP?

I tried to buy a gadget ...a hand phone that is sold widely in the world, brand SonyEricsson. Not wanting to endeavor in something like a Chinese 'Sang Ericsson' (no joke), I wanted to have something I can even use back in Germany. Hong Kong's prices are competitive, but why oh why does their warranty only apply locally to HongKong and China through their only distributor of choice? This smacks very bitterly and strangely..and gives me reason enough to mention an article that I have read on German news a while ago. Feelings aside, China is very well-versed at copying things and not caring much about copyright infringements. Cases documented earlier that whole factories have been copied by Chinese which produced for example Canon cameras at the same quality as the originals, but were not supported by the original vendor's warranty as they were never licensed to be produced. I don't want to say here right away that most of the products in Hong Kong are counterfeit. Maybe there is even a law that the local dealers have to follow, so not to harm more expensive markets around. Will try to search further..

(here Western and Eastern cultures collide a bit...at least for me. The more China you go, the more the people seem to love food that is as fatty as possible. Ordering some pork stew will give you 3/4 of deep fried fat with some meat as bonus)

WINTER, I ADORE YOU

One very noticeable thing about Hong Kong people: Fashion and outlook. Especially the fancy female population craves to be individualistic, which shows itself in daring hairstyle and actually incompatible clothing combinations (miniskirts, winter coat and flipflops worn on the same person). Summers tend to be very hot and winters only mild. Still, one can perfectly distinguish locals from tourists as the tourists will go around in December wearing t-shirts and shorts, while the locals must feel determined to show off their fancy winter clothes...coats, nice cardigans to snuggle into, branded jackets and so on. This is quite funny to see as there really seem to be two worlds existing side by side and one can easily see people in shortest summer look (dressed according to weather) standing besides arctic-dressed and bundled up people (dressed according to calender) waiting on one traffic light to be shooed over. This is apparently perfectly fine and expected behavior..also in Singapore I see that sometimes young people pack out their cardigans as soon as the temperature drops noticeably below 30 degrees to fight any possibly upcoming goosebumps.

(When we were there, Hong Kong experienced quite a high pollution index of way above 100 , which is already going into the hazardous range. The city was under a thick haze comparable to what Singapore experienced end of 2006 after rain forest burns in Sumatra. Many locals ran around wearing mouth protections and the general taste was not nice...but after taking a ride with a tuktuk through the streets of Bangkok one can take ANY kind pollution!)