Hong Kong!

I’m writing this entry way later than I should have. I know that. For some reason I just don’t like writing on Microsoft Word. I guess Word just reminds me so much of writing horrible papers for school, so I never really think that doing anything on it would be fun. In my defense, the earthquake in Taiwan totally messed up the internet for all of mainland China by disrupting a lot of cables that run under the ocean, so I’ve hardly been able to check my email since Christmas, let alone access the blogger website.

Anyway. Christmas and New Year’s have come and gone. I’m sort of in awe.

First, Christmas. Shannon, Kerry, Hayley, and I took the trip to Hong Kong that I hadn’t been excited about at all. My excitement was further lessened when I realized we were going to have to leave campus at like 5:30 in the morning to get to the airport with enough time. We got to the airport bright and early. Good thing, because our flight was delayed 3 hours. It was so delayed that once we were on the plane, we waited another hour on the runway and they fed us a meal to keep us quiet.

Because of our early start and the immense amount of waiting, by the time we got to Hong Kong we were exhausted. However, we noticed the huge difference between Shanghai and Hong Kong right away—the airport was clean! It smelled like good food instead of stale air! We got on the airport express train to take it to Hong Kong Island (where our hotel was), and that was clean too! People were polite! Everything was in English. There were hills and mountains! We were all sort of taken aback. That first night we just went out for some sushi at a Japanese restaurant on Lan Kuai Fang (I don’t know Cantonese, I probably spelled that wrong), which is this awesome area of restaurants and bars, most of which have open air seating and where the whole area becomes a pedestrian area (no cars) after 7:00pm (I think).

The next day (Christmas eve), we took the sky rail (a suspended cable car) on Lantau Island up to the top of this big mountain to see the “largest bronze seated outdoor Buddha in the world.” Apparently the largest bronze standing-up outdoor Buddha is somewhere else. The experience was pretty cool, but I read that the Buddha was finished in 1993, so as Kerry so eloquently put it, it was like seeing a “McBuddha.” Everything was so new. It was pretty, yes, and interesting, sort of, but so touristy. Is there anything in China that is actually old? Because I’ve been here for almost 5 months and everything I’ve seen is “old.”

After seeing the mcbuddha, we went to an outlet mall for a while (I bought a skirt) and then went to the movies to see Casino Royale. Tickets weren’t that expensive, I think it was around $9 US, and since Hong Kong is way more expensive than Shanghai, I was surprised that movie tickets weren’t outrageous. At the movie theatre, I urged Shannon to use the handicapped bathroom, and when I used it after her, I was shocked to find that there was actually a handicapped person waiting for me to get out of the bathroom. I felt so guilty. I’m just so used to mainland China, where all the handicapped people are begging on the street. Just kidding. Kind of.

For dinner, we went to a Panera-type place a few doors down from the hotel, and I had a delicious tomato and mozzarella salad. It was pretty much the best thing I ate in Hong Kong. Oh, and there are 7-11s everywhere in Hong Kong. It was awesome. Shannon was feeling sort of sick that night so we went to 7-11 to get some snacks, and when we were leaving, a choir and band were singing/playing Christmas carols outside the church across the street. It was a nice Christmasy moment, since we didn’t really do anything else special for Christmas eve.

Christmas day, we took the Star Ferry across the bay to Kowloon Island. We pretty much just walked along the bay for a good chunk of the day, admiring the view of Hong Kong and did a little cosmetics shopping, since cosmetics are less expensive in Hong Kong than in Shanghai due to the huge taxes they have to pay on the mainland. We went to dinner at an irish pub (no joke) and I had a reuben sandwich for Christmas dinner. It was no beef Wellington, let me tell you. I was really missing the stuffed salmon and pierogi and latkes and cabbage and pear flan those couple of days. After dinner we went to try to see the light show and fireworks, but as I expected we were moving too slowly at dinner and missed it by like 2 minutes. I was so pissed. But the view of Hong Kong at night is really, really beautiful. After admiring the view for a while, we took the MTR (the mass transit railway, aka the subway) back to Hong Kong island and went back to Lan Kuai Fang to go to some bars. Suffice it to say that we took about a billion pictures and had a really, really fun time. It was way different from how I usually spend Christmas, but it was definitely a nice change of pace. It sort of didn’t feel like Christmas, which in a way is a good or bad thing.

We didn’t have much time on the 26 to do anything super special, so we just went to a random dim sum place near the hotel for lunch. I was satisfied, since that was the one thing I really wanted to do in Hong Kong. The food was good, but not spectacular. Maybe I’m just getting used to it, or maybe you just get what you pay for…but either way, Chinese food hasn’t really been impressing me much lately.

Coming back to Shanghai was such a let-down. The weather in Hong Kong had been 75 and sunny. On Christmas, we were sweating. We were walking around without jackets, surrounded by friendly people who spoke to us in English. At the dim sum restaurant, another patron came up to our table to help us order. She was so nice! All of our cab drivers spoke English, and one of them was joining us in lightheartedly making fun of Shanghai and the way the people there speak Mandarin. So when we arrived at the desolate, dirty, dated, depressing Shanghai Pudong airport, we were clearly unhappy. It’s always nice to come home to your own place and your own bed, but this time, there was a little less excitement. I guess I could say that part of my love for Hong Kong was due to the fact that I had such low expectations, but I don’t think that’s it. It really is an incredible city. For me, it’s the perfect blend of East and West, but then I wonder if that makes me a bad person for wanting Shanghai to be that westernized too. Or, not a bad person, but intolerant of Chinese culture. And Shanghai is definitely more westernized than most cities in China. It’s hard enough dealing with the differences here sometimes, so I can’t really imagine living somewhere more remote.

To anyone planning on visiting China: Hong Kong is a must. You could probably convince me to go with you! More about new year's, etc, later.