A few days in
I moved to Mong Kok. I'm not sure why. I was here once and I remember it being local and interesting. It is also utter chaos. Hong Kong is supposed to have this incredibly high population density, one of the highest in the world, and I don't have much trouble believing that, but in most parts of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon in which I have spent time, I never felt it to be substantially more crowded than New York or any other place I've been. Tonight, which happens to be Friday which may or may not provide an extra kick to the size of the crowds, I really felt on the verge of being overwhelmed. It's the kind of crowd where when you get to a big intersection, there's the crowd on your side and the crowd on the other side, getting bigger and bigger as you all wait for the light to turn, which in Hong Kong involves a series of beeps not unlike a patient on a hospital show going into cardiac arrest, and then these two enormous swimming pools filled with people just sort of charge each other like a battle with cellphones and shopping bags instead of broadswords, though I would have found use for the latter.
The crowds are not only enormous here creating a steady stream of traffic on the sidewalk into one must merge swiftly and decisively, but people pay zero attention to what's going on around them. I was thinking about this as I saw people stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk to pursue their cellphone conversation more intently, or turn around backwards to stop and talk to their friend behind them, or any number of comparable behaviors. People don't become aware of it either unless verbally notified. They seem genuinely oblivious. People are also constantly moving in and out of streams of people, pushing, jostling, getting directly in front of you if you're on line. I think this must have to do with growing up in a place with this many people and just getting used to having no personal space ever. On the New York subway once a while during rush hour you are shoved a little too closet to someone for comfort, but even if the train is relatively empty in Hong Kong, people will just stand what I find to be uncomfortably close, though I think I realized over the course of the last few days that it is ridiculous to get upset when somebody is freelancing the sidewalk in front of me, zigzagging in any direction for no particularly apparent reason, preventing me from moving forward. If I got upset every time somebody did something that shows they are completely unaware of me or my desire to share the sidewalk with them, I'd probably get to see the inside of a Hong Kong psyche ward, which would make for a good blog entry I bet.
We in the US of course have a massive consumerist culture, but here, it just feels more. More of everything. I saw a woman today wearing a shirt that said "Get Rich and Spend Money" in huge letters on the front. She was maybe 40ish. It didn't seem to be an ironic statement, but who knows. I passed a store called "Trendy Bear." On my way to vegetarian shenanigans this evening, I walked through a shopping district that reminded me of the feeding frenzy described by Robert Shaw in Jaws. I guess we have all of this too, but here it feels like there is an intensity to the spending and desire to acquire that we either don't have in the US or I don't notice as I do here. I also walked down a street similar to 5th Ave filled with fancy brand names likes Gucci and Prada and they actually have lines to wait and get into department stores. Long lines in which people stand and wait. I saw a Lamborghini on that street too.
So all of this said, there are some crazy things they pull off here which I have no idea how we could ever accomplish. The subway stations here as I said years ago, are immaculate. Not only are they incredibly clean and well-designed, including labeled exits telling you what significant streets and landmarks a given exit will dump you at, but also tons of shops and things to buy down in the elaborate subway stations. Of course you have your 7-11 or what-have-you, but today I passed this shop which really summed it up, which was a really nice bakery with fancy desserts. It's all clean and bright and crisp, the polar opposite of the NY subways which although I love for running 24 hours, look like the world has gone up and the only thing left are rats and garbage. Alright, I give a few stations credit for making effort with sculptures (like the cool little men at the 8th Ave L train) or the tiled murals you see around, but still, can you imagine there being a confectionary or a shop selling electronics in a New York subway station? It's not like there are even many cops around in the stations. Also, they have tons of staff down there including people cleaning on a regularly basis. Also, yesterday I saw a freakin' ipad, sort of embedded in this wall unit, along with several other terminals which have free internet. Nobody had cracked the screen or written obscenities on it. So although there is this constant, unending explosion of people, somehow they all have some large degree of respect for the city and for the laws. Either that or they know if you try to steal the iPad you spend the rest of your life in Mongolia mining raw materials for the new high-speed rail between Beijing and Shanghai.
Anyway, beyond social observations, I went to the park in Kowloon again at 5am to do taiji with the senior citizens. It's pretty atmospheric. I did a bunch of work in the morning hours, eventually went out in the afternoon for a while with my friend Mafa who is originally from Beijing and doesn't speak much English, so I had a chance to speak Chinese which in Hong Kong is somewhat uncommon. I later moved to this hostel only to find out that they actually pay attention to the arrival time you specify without thinking on the online reservation from and that if you do not arrive within two hours of it, they will in fact give away your room to the next person to wander in off the street. So I showed up and they had no room. They were pretty nice about it, and ultimately decided they'd give me a 4-bed room for the price of my original room, which was thoughtful of them, and as it turns out the room is actually quite nice and clean. I would actually stay at this hostel again despite the difficulty with the reservation. They did in fact say that in their emails, I just didn't look carefully because I'd never encountered a policy like that. Apparently they have a lot of no-shows which is why they do it. So after moving, I was tempted to fall asleep but I fought it and went out to some Japanese vegetarian place that's new in the hurricane of commerce that is this neighborhood. Now I am back and it's 10:30pm and I'm proud of myself for making it this far without napping today. I plan to sleep well tonight and hopefully later than 5am so I can be on my way past the jetlag.
More to come. Probably a lot more.
The crowds are not only enormous here creating a steady stream of traffic on the sidewalk into one must merge swiftly and decisively, but people pay zero attention to what's going on around them. I was thinking about this as I saw people stop walking in the middle of the sidewalk to pursue their cellphone conversation more intently, or turn around backwards to stop and talk to their friend behind them, or any number of comparable behaviors. People don't become aware of it either unless verbally notified. They seem genuinely oblivious. People are also constantly moving in and out of streams of people, pushing, jostling, getting directly in front of you if you're on line. I think this must have to do with growing up in a place with this many people and just getting used to having no personal space ever. On the New York subway once a while during rush hour you are shoved a little too closet to someone for comfort, but even if the train is relatively empty in Hong Kong, people will just stand what I find to be uncomfortably close, though I think I realized over the course of the last few days that it is ridiculous to get upset when somebody is freelancing the sidewalk in front of me, zigzagging in any direction for no particularly apparent reason, preventing me from moving forward. If I got upset every time somebody did something that shows they are completely unaware of me or my desire to share the sidewalk with them, I'd probably get to see the inside of a Hong Kong psyche ward, which would make for a good blog entry I bet.
We in the US of course have a massive consumerist culture, but here, it just feels more. More of everything. I saw a woman today wearing a shirt that said "Get Rich and Spend Money" in huge letters on the front. She was maybe 40ish. It didn't seem to be an ironic statement, but who knows. I passed a store called "Trendy Bear." On my way to vegetarian shenanigans this evening, I walked through a shopping district that reminded me of the feeding frenzy described by Robert Shaw in Jaws. I guess we have all of this too, but here it feels like there is an intensity to the spending and desire to acquire that we either don't have in the US or I don't notice as I do here. I also walked down a street similar to 5th Ave filled with fancy brand names likes Gucci and Prada and they actually have lines to wait and get into department stores. Long lines in which people stand and wait. I saw a Lamborghini on that street too.
So all of this said, there are some crazy things they pull off here which I have no idea how we could ever accomplish. The subway stations here as I said years ago, are immaculate. Not only are they incredibly clean and well-designed, including labeled exits telling you what significant streets and landmarks a given exit will dump you at, but also tons of shops and things to buy down in the elaborate subway stations. Of course you have your 7-11 or what-have-you, but today I passed this shop which really summed it up, which was a really nice bakery with fancy desserts. It's all clean and bright and crisp, the polar opposite of the NY subways which although I love for running 24 hours, look like the world has gone up and the only thing left are rats and garbage. Alright, I give a few stations credit for making effort with sculptures (like the cool little men at the 8th Ave L train) or the tiled murals you see around, but still, can you imagine there being a confectionary or a shop selling electronics in a New York subway station? It's not like there are even many cops around in the stations. Also, they have tons of staff down there including people cleaning on a regularly basis. Also, yesterday I saw a freakin' ipad, sort of embedded in this wall unit, along with several other terminals which have free internet. Nobody had cracked the screen or written obscenities on it. So although there is this constant, unending explosion of people, somehow they all have some large degree of respect for the city and for the laws. Either that or they know if you try to steal the iPad you spend the rest of your life in Mongolia mining raw materials for the new high-speed rail between Beijing and Shanghai.
Anyway, beyond social observations, I went to the park in Kowloon again at 5am to do taiji with the senior citizens. It's pretty atmospheric. I did a bunch of work in the morning hours, eventually went out in the afternoon for a while with my friend Mafa who is originally from Beijing and doesn't speak much English, so I had a chance to speak Chinese which in Hong Kong is somewhat uncommon. I later moved to this hostel only to find out that they actually pay attention to the arrival time you specify without thinking on the online reservation from and that if you do not arrive within two hours of it, they will in fact give away your room to the next person to wander in off the street. So I showed up and they had no room. They were pretty nice about it, and ultimately decided they'd give me a 4-bed room for the price of my original room, which was thoughtful of them, and as it turns out the room is actually quite nice and clean. I would actually stay at this hostel again despite the difficulty with the reservation. They did in fact say that in their emails, I just didn't look carefully because I'd never encountered a policy like that. Apparently they have a lot of no-shows which is why they do it. So after moving, I was tempted to fall asleep but I fought it and went out to some Japanese vegetarian place that's new in the hurricane of commerce that is this neighborhood. Now I am back and it's 10:30pm and I'm proud of myself for making it this far without napping today. I plan to sleep well tonight and hopefully later than 5am so I can be on my way past the jetlag.
More to come. Probably a lot more.
posted by Dan at 7:05 AM
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