Welcome to Hongkong

 

The entry into Hongkong is spectacular, especially the aerial view…the islands divided into pockets of green and steel towers. It is breathtaking to see how much land has been developed and unlike other urban centers, the city is almost vertical. This is definitely the case in the urban centers of the island, where all the establishments are small, and restaurants are often in the 1st or 2nd floor. It definitely takes some getting used to, especially if one is searching for a particular restaurant…..in my case Gaylord, the first Indian restaurant in Honkong! (Stop your smirks right now!) The restaurant is in the 1st floor of a narrow shopping center. The elevator literally spits you out into the narrow lobby of the restaurant. Contrary to Indian restaurants elsewhere, this one is empty. Am I in the right place? Is this what happens to the first Indian restaurant in the Island? Gingerly I step in and I get a table and order the food: Seekh kebab, Achari Gobi, Roti, and Mango Lassi. As always, food could always be spicier! With the universal service charge of 10%, tipping is easy in Hongkong. This makes life easier….but then perhaps this also acts as a disincentive to ignore the customer’s pleas? Further experiments will only tell.

A quick stop in a convenience store also revealed an interesting obsession in Hongkong – Face WHITENING masks for men and women! It is interesting how all the leading brands of cosmetic companies are marketing products to whiten the skin…and beauty parlors openly advertise botox injections!! I guess the slogan is indeed universal – Fair and Lovely! It is a wonder how women manage to wear make-up in this city, given the high level of humidity. Chennai is a breeze in comparison.

Hongkong is truly a city of lights and electricity reigns supreme. With tall apartment buildings, each with an A/C unit, it is anyone’s guess how the city will survive, should it experience an electricity blackout!! Imagine climbing 64 flights of stairs….nice work out for the lazy folks. Despite its reputation for being a super-mall, the outskirts or the middle-class neighborhoods of Hongkong faintly remind one of the old parts of Mumbai with the 60s British style construction….and Mongkok definitely fits the bill. The neighborhood is home to the flower and bird market, the ladies and the men’s market…it appears as though each street has its own commercial pull, starting from cheap adapters to laptops to camera shops to pet stores to vets to shoe stores!!!

Upon my arrival in Hongkong, the tourism department directs me to brochures containing information on the Shopping festival! A walk in the downtown areas, and it is impossible to avoid the zillion malls, big and small, local and designer. In fact, the Gucci store seemed to have a huge queue at any time of the day. It reminded me of the long queues outside Guruvayoor Temple (a famous temple in Kerala) for a glimpse of the Lord. I guess a glimpse of the latest Gucci bag is almost a spiritual experience for the shopper…

In its 10th year anniversary of being an special administrative region of China, there are interesting debates in Hongkong and people have interesting ideas on Yamrica’s current export – Democracy (apart from guns, that is). On a tour, the guide said:

“Here, in Hongkong, we are all very lucky. The govt. takes care of us and we have a democracy”

Me thinking: Hmm…but you don’t elect the Legislative Council, do you? They are hand-picked, aren’t they? But then, in Hongkong, they do protest the lack of pig in the market for consumption, the issue of taxicab drivers, and there are discussions of the privatization of health care.

There is an interesting relationship between China and Hongkong. The guide said,

“We like to go to Mainland for rest and recreation. They have beautiful mountains. People from Mainland like to come here (for shopping) as we have everything. But we don’t want that, as Hongkong is a small island. When the Chinese come, we will definitely sink”…

and guffaws. Interestingly, while I got a visa for 14 days, a friend from China had 7 days permit to stay in the Island.

A face that is not revealed in many of the glossy flyers is that of the cost of urban development in Hongkong. A trip to a local NGO in WanChai revealed the ugly face of urban development, the slow process of ‘gentrification’ and the eviction of local markets to make way for more shopping malls and hotels! How many do they need? Interestingly, the same guide who was extolling the virtues of the condos built on reclaimed land lives far away from the city as these ‘beautiful buildings’ are unaffordable! As I walked the narrow lanes of the markets, I kept thinking of similar debates of gentrification in Brooklyn…to borrow Thomas Friedman’s line – The World definitely appears flat, at times!