hong kong - and china conclusion

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My days in China were coming towards their conclusion.  Hong headed back to his home in Chongqing and I spent a day in Guangzhou (fogbound again) but was coming down with a heavy cold,e so I just wanderd around along the river banks a little bit and through a couple of parks, and across the city’s iconic bridge.  Then next day I took the express bus to Hong Kong, through the endless mega-conurbation of the Pearl River Delta region.  Nearly 50 million people live here, and whizzing along through this vista of belching chimneys and factories, power stations and refineries, and pungent industrial smells, half hidden in the mists, I was reminded of my childhood driving along the East Lancs Road through what was then a Lowryesque landscape of mills and mines before the days of the smokeless zone.  But this is on a whole new scale – the new workshop of the world.

It was good to be back in HK, where I worked for most of 1998, and somehow it felt like returning to civilization.  At least, a different civilization, much more western influenced, with bars and restaurants; cars that stop at pedestrian crossings (and drive on the left!); an internet that works normally; all ring-fenced for now by the one nation-two systems policy.  I met up with Ken and Wallace, friends from 15 years ago, and reminisced about those post-handover days, and I walked and walked, through the areas I knew in those days.  Hong Kong Park, still an immaculate island amidst the soaring blocks of Central and Mid-Levels; across to Kowloonside on the Star Ferry; up on the old cable tram to the Peak; and I even visited Fairview Height, my old apartment block on Robinson Road, right by the Escalator.  All very nostalgic.  Hong Kong has sprouted lots of new towers – even whole new districts – but is still very familiar, and quite unique, with many of its old landmarks intact.  Very different from the huge new cities of China, where almost every scrap of the past has been swept away in the haste to modernize. 

So – conclusions about China?  This is where I make broad assumptions about a quarter of the world’s population based on a fortnight’s holiday! 

I felt there’s something rather mean spirited about life in China.  A few examples:

·       Many restaurants charged for the napkins – because if they just put them on the table they would all disappear.

·       A toddler was pushing a trolley right out into a busy road, having got away from his mother, who was running up and shouting from some distance away.  Everyone else seemed to be ignoring this.  I just put out my foot and stopped the trolley. 

·       The huge number of western websites that are verboten or subject to long delays or failures.  These include google, gmail, flickr, blogger and even wikipedia!

·       Appallingly selfish driving.  As bad as India but here the speeds are faster and the vehicles more high powered. Constant ‘get out of my way’ honking all day and night.

·       Waiters and receptionists are generally surly and haphazard – maybe because no-one tips.  But there were honourable exceptions to this.

On the other hand, I will remember the old people, having a lot of fun for free in many and various ways: dancing and singing in the streets, exercising and playing games in the parks, sipping tea all afternoon in the lakeside houses.  I will always remember the spectacular sights I have seen: the mountains of Guilin, the terracotta warriors, Du Fu’s garden and of course the pandas.  And above all, I will remember the alien culture.  Dynasties came and fell, but China reasserted itself time and again, a continuum of two thousand years of history, content in its own terms, self confident, assured.  Perhaps in a thousand years the Communist party will just be listed as another dynastic phase. 

China is not really ready yet for tourists, except in the most carefully managed way – bus tours with guides.  As an independent traveller without a knowledge of the language it would have been impossible without the help of Hong, who steered me through the maze.  All the hotels I stayed in seem to have a death wish as far as fire regs are concerned: fire doors propped open, piles of laundry stacked in the fire stairs...  Mention this to the staff (or other deficiencies) and all you get are blank stares.  Perhaps western chain hotels are better, but there’s a sense that these things don’t matter.

One interesting thing – and I think symbolic – is that in Chinese your address is backwards:  “China, Sichuan Province, Chengdu, Republic Street 127, Lucky Apartments no 316, Mr Mason Keith ”.  It’s as if you are just a cog in this huge machine that is China, whereas we start with the individuals and place them in their context. Even the name order puts the personal name subordinate to the family name. 

So my tour is at an end, and in Hong Kong the fogs finally lifted and bright, clear sunshine suffused the city as I looked out from the Peak right across to the mountains on the border with the People’s Republic.  There’s a metaphor in there somewhere.