HONG KONG (2)

I am now back in Denmark after 10 days with my wife spent visiting my son in Hong Kong. A great holiday; very interesting, very exciting, but also pretty tiring.

Where to start? Well, Hong Kong has a dramatic setting. Imagine Manhattan Island with a range of steep 300m high hills running through the middle of it, and you get an idea. The geography puts a premium on flat land, and forces builders upwards. 30-40 storey buildings, both offices and residential apartments, are everywhere, just like in New York. But they are also interspersed with a surprising amount of greenery, not least because 40% of the former colony is given over to national parks. When combined with the many small islands, you get fantastic views.

Since there are a lot of people, and not much room, living areas are small (a 50 sqm flat seems to be pretty standard) and expensive. So, not surprisingly, people appear to spend most of their leisure time on the street. Shops are everywhere and open all hours; so too are restaurants. Indeed, it's as if the two major preoccupations of the local Chinese are shopping and eating. We certainly did quite a lot of both.

The British were pretty snotty colonialists when they ran the place. But they also bequeathed to China a love of trade, the concept of a cooked breakfast, trams and double-decker buses, city parks, the common law, and school uniforms for girls (complete with knee-length socks), all of which flourish today. Plus a Victorian sense of public hygiene. Hong Kong has far and away the largest number of public lavatories in any city I have ever visited. Nearly all of which were spotlessly clean.

There were some surprises. First, there were fewer expats than I anticipated, and many Chinese spoke little or no English. It was cool and windy, rather than hot and humid (though, admittedly, it was winter). There was no graffitti and very little litter. The traffic was dense, but moved, certainly more quickly than in London. Chinese (or, at least, Cantonese) food is not at all spicy and doesn't include much rice. Shenzhen, the border town in China proper, is no poorer than its more famous neighbour. Chinese people are quite small; at 6 feet, I am only of average height in Western Europe, but I never saw anyone taller than me, and many of the older generation only came up to my ribcage. And some of the best tourist attractions were the cheapest; both the tram on Hong Kong Island and the ferry from Kowloon across to it cost only HK$2.30, roughly kr.2 or 20p.

Finally, four small things, that I really liked, all to do with service. A free shuttle bus from the hotel to the local metro station. A haircut which was half the price of a Danish one, but which included a free facial rub and (for the first time ever in my life) an extra rinse after the hair had been cut, meaning I didn't have to take a shower later in order to get rid of all those small cut hairs that get stuck under the collar. A forex bureau, which changed all of our remaining Chinese renminbi back into Hong Kong dollars, including the coins. And an Octopus card (see my son's blog post http://globe6joachim.blogspot.com/2012/01/octopus-cards.html), that goes negative, if you take a longer journey on the underground than your existing balance. At some point, you will want to use the card again, and when you top it up with your next HK$100, it will simply deduct the negative amount to give a net balance. A much better system than locking you inside the metro system until you find the missing HK$1.60 or whatever, and a refreshingly adult attitude.

More thoughts on Hong Kong in due course, but that's all for today.

Walter Blotscher