In 2001 I was invited to the Baptist University of Hong Kong as part of a Commission convened to advise on a new master's degree. I set off from Hartford, Connecticut, changed planes in San Francisco and eventually arrived at Chek Lap Kok airport after 17 hours of flying. Here are some of my impressions of that short visit to the territory.
Asian 747s lumber into the sky laden so heavily that it seems like a miracle that they will ever get off the ground. The flight lasted 14 hours and there were five in-flight movies. United Airlines is world famous for the poor quality of its catering and its instant noodles really hit the nadir: lukewarm water poured into a waxed paper cup to produce a gluey mass that could only be swallowed by making contortions reminiscent of the tortured postures of a Gaudia-Brezhka statue.
I arrived on a wet Sunday evening. My instructions were clearly laid out on a sheet of paper. I got off the metro at Prince of Wales Square and confidently walked out of the station into the tepid drizzle of a spring evening in Kowloon Tong. The instructions said "walk down the road with the bridge above it to Renfrew Avenue": and what a comforting British name, betokening order, propriety and well-swept middle-class suburbia. Well, to begin with there were three roads, and each one of them had a bridge above it. I turned back to the station. All metro stations have maps of the local area in them, and of course this one did too. Where was Renfrew Avenue? Unfortunately, all the street names were printed in Putong Hua. Eventually, by waving some more instructions printed in Chinese at a taxi driver, I found the Baptist University hostel and my room for the night.
Next morning, I drew back the curtains and there, from the ninth floor, was a splendid panoramic view of the Waterloo Barracks. The British forces had, of course, gone, but there was a detachment of the Chinese Red Army, resplendent in their olive-green uniforms, with their hands clad in white cotton gloves that swung rhythmically from side to side as they marched. The first day was spent at the University in briefing meetings and tours of the Biology Department. This had its greenhouse on the top of the nine-storey science building. The structure was heavily reinforced against typhoons and had the sort of glass that looked as if it could resist a bazooka attack. The greenhouse was used for growing seedlings, which looked curiously weedy and pathetic in this translucent strongroom. Likewise, when we received a guided tour of the University's bonsai collection it felt as if we were venturing into a Liliputian forest.
The other foreigner on the Commission was an ecology professor from John Moores University in Liverpool, England. He was the perfect Scouser (which is what people from Liverpool are called): gregarious, down-to-earth, humorous and a good companion. When the day was over our host, Professor Ming Wong, took us to the local pub, which was a bold oriental attempt to imitate the traditional English hostelry, all black beams and white lath-and-plaster. It bore the unlikely name of "The Billy Boozer". A Chinese waiter brought us glasses of Tsing Tao beer, brewed on the mainland, and my Scouse companion looked intently at him and asked "United or City?" The waiter looked back impassively and quietly replied "United". How the Liverpool lad knew that our waiter was a fan of Manchester football will forever remain a mystery to me.
The Special Economic Territory, or former colony, of Hong Kong is a marvel of vertical building. But it is also remarkable for its transportation. The buses, for example, have 161 seats in them. Some are open-topped vehicles and one can sit on the upper deck and gaze up at the forest of skyscrapers in an aerial panorama that changes its perspective like a kaleidoscope every time the bus rounds a corner. Below ground, the metro runs with extraordinary efficiency and stops in the stations with millimetric precision. Perhaps it is the height of the buildings and the efficiency of the transportation that makes Hong Kong seem much less cluttered than one would expect given the density of population.
We took the ferry across the bustling, steamy stretch of water between Kowloon Tong and Hong Kong Island, and then the Swiss-built funicular railway to the top of Lion Peak. The walk around the park situated on this lowly mountain affords some spectacular views of the collection of skyscrapers, with the steep tropical slopes that seem to plunge into their bases. In fact, such is the wetness of the climate, steepness of the slopes and fragility of the natural environment that the Hong Kong Government has gone to enormous lengths to protect slopes. The Geotechnical Engineering Department remains one of the most powerful agencies in the territory and everywhere there are signs of slope stabilisation work. On the most humble level it seems that every patch of undergrowth is home to a person in a large, conical hat who stumps around making sure there are no signs of instability.
Hong Kong Chinese tend to bear adopted British names, which are decades, if not centuries behind the fashions in Britain. For the women these are Milly, Prudence, Priscilla, Maude and so on, giving impressions of ladies with coiled hair and 1940s dresses. Our host was Mrs Pauline Ma, a severe matron with a job in university quality assurance. A rather more affable person was the Rector, who took us to lunch in an up-market restaurant where the revolving table served us pieces of a roast piglet that had been glazed and carefully cut into cubes so that it resembled a porcine mosaic.
The search for the exotic led us to the six-storey shopping centre in Kowloon Tong, but it contained the same drably uniform chain stores as one can find anywhere else in the world. Marks & Spencer differed from Paris or London only by having the prices of the same goods in Hong Kong dollars, not euros or pounds. Even the obligatory Italian restaurant differed only in the inability of whoever wrote the menu to spell 'tagliatelle'. So we retreated to a proper Chinese restaurant and had watery soup with fibrous pieces of shark's fin floating in it. At our next meal, in a Japanese restaurant, I photographed the page of the menu that offered "Japanese flied beancrud with melted cheese". The transmogrification of the edible bean-curd to the disgusting beancrud, appropriately flied in a pan, certainly gave a new aspect to an old dish.
Clearly, for commerce it was necessary to find a few locales less influenced by the crushing hand of international standardisation, so we headed for the Chinese quarter. And there the shops were small and picturesque, full of silks and carvings, half-made suits and hand-crafted shoes. Yet at the entrance to the quarter there was an Irish pub in which one could buy a tee-shirt with 'Guinness' written on it in Putong Hua, as well as a glass of the Irish 'Liffey-water' that tasted just as it would in Europe.
I found the Hong Kong Chinese to be formal, hospitable and industrious. The only thing they seemed to lack was a sense of relativity and irony, both very necessary when dealing with the contrasts of the modern world.
Asian 747s lumber into the sky laden so heavily that it seems like a miracle that they will ever get off the ground. The flight lasted 14 hours and there were five in-flight movies. United Airlines is world famous for the poor quality of its catering and its instant noodles really hit the nadir: lukewarm water poured into a waxed paper cup to produce a gluey mass that could only be swallowed by making contortions reminiscent of the tortured postures of a Gaudia-Brezhka statue.
I arrived on a wet Sunday evening. My instructions were clearly laid out on a sheet of paper. I got off the metro at Prince of Wales Square and confidently walked out of the station into the tepid drizzle of a spring evening in Kowloon Tong. The instructions said "walk down the road with the bridge above it to Renfrew Avenue": and what a comforting British name, betokening order, propriety and well-swept middle-class suburbia. Well, to begin with there were three roads, and each one of them had a bridge above it. I turned back to the station. All metro stations have maps of the local area in them, and of course this one did too. Where was Renfrew Avenue? Unfortunately, all the street names were printed in Putong Hua. Eventually, by waving some more instructions printed in Chinese at a taxi driver, I found the Baptist University hostel and my room for the night.
Next morning, I drew back the curtains and there, from the ninth floor, was a splendid panoramic view of the Waterloo Barracks. The British forces had, of course, gone, but there was a detachment of the Chinese Red Army, resplendent in their olive-green uniforms, with their hands clad in white cotton gloves that swung rhythmically from side to side as they marched. The first day was spent at the University in briefing meetings and tours of the Biology Department. This had its greenhouse on the top of the nine-storey science building. The structure was heavily reinforced against typhoons and had the sort of glass that looked as if it could resist a bazooka attack. The greenhouse was used for growing seedlings, which looked curiously weedy and pathetic in this translucent strongroom. Likewise, when we received a guided tour of the University's bonsai collection it felt as if we were venturing into a Liliputian forest.
The other foreigner on the Commission was an ecology professor from John Moores University in Liverpool, England. He was the perfect Scouser (which is what people from Liverpool are called): gregarious, down-to-earth, humorous and a good companion. When the day was over our host, Professor Ming Wong, took us to the local pub, which was a bold oriental attempt to imitate the traditional English hostelry, all black beams and white lath-and-plaster. It bore the unlikely name of "The Billy Boozer". A Chinese waiter brought us glasses of Tsing Tao beer, brewed on the mainland, and my Scouse companion looked intently at him and asked "United or City?" The waiter looked back impassively and quietly replied "United". How the Liverpool lad knew that our waiter was a fan of Manchester football will forever remain a mystery to me.
The Special Economic Territory, or former colony, of Hong Kong is a marvel of vertical building. But it is also remarkable for its transportation. The buses, for example, have 161 seats in them. Some are open-topped vehicles and one can sit on the upper deck and gaze up at the forest of skyscrapers in an aerial panorama that changes its perspective like a kaleidoscope every time the bus rounds a corner. Below ground, the metro runs with extraordinary efficiency and stops in the stations with millimetric precision. Perhaps it is the height of the buildings and the efficiency of the transportation that makes Hong Kong seem much less cluttered than one would expect given the density of population.
We took the ferry across the bustling, steamy stretch of water between Kowloon Tong and Hong Kong Island, and then the Swiss-built funicular railway to the top of Lion Peak. The walk around the park situated on this lowly mountain affords some spectacular views of the collection of skyscrapers, with the steep tropical slopes that seem to plunge into their bases. In fact, such is the wetness of the climate, steepness of the slopes and fragility of the natural environment that the Hong Kong Government has gone to enormous lengths to protect slopes. The Geotechnical Engineering Department remains one of the most powerful agencies in the territory and everywhere there are signs of slope stabilisation work. On the most humble level it seems that every patch of undergrowth is home to a person in a large, conical hat who stumps around making sure there are no signs of instability.
Hong Kong Chinese tend to bear adopted British names, which are decades, if not centuries behind the fashions in Britain. For the women these are Milly, Prudence, Priscilla, Maude and so on, giving impressions of ladies with coiled hair and 1940s dresses. Our host was Mrs Pauline Ma, a severe matron with a job in university quality assurance. A rather more affable person was the Rector, who took us to lunch in an up-market restaurant where the revolving table served us pieces of a roast piglet that had been glazed and carefully cut into cubes so that it resembled a porcine mosaic.
The search for the exotic led us to the six-storey shopping centre in Kowloon Tong, but it contained the same drably uniform chain stores as one can find anywhere else in the world. Marks & Spencer differed from Paris or London only by having the prices of the same goods in Hong Kong dollars, not euros or pounds. Even the obligatory Italian restaurant differed only in the inability of whoever wrote the menu to spell 'tagliatelle'. So we retreated to a proper Chinese restaurant and had watery soup with fibrous pieces of shark's fin floating in it. At our next meal, in a Japanese restaurant, I photographed the page of the menu that offered "Japanese flied beancrud with melted cheese". The transmogrification of the edible bean-curd to the disgusting beancrud, appropriately flied in a pan, certainly gave a new aspect to an old dish.
Clearly, for commerce it was necessary to find a few locales less influenced by the crushing hand of international standardisation, so we headed for the Chinese quarter. And there the shops were small and picturesque, full of silks and carvings, half-made suits and hand-crafted shoes. Yet at the entrance to the quarter there was an Irish pub in which one could buy a tee-shirt with 'Guinness' written on it in Putong Hua, as well as a glass of the Irish 'Liffey-water' that tasted just as it would in Europe.
I found the Hong Kong Chinese to be formal, hospitable and industrious. The only thing they seemed to lack was a sense of relativity and irony, both very necessary when dealing with the contrasts of the modern world.
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