Hong Kong, Hong Kong
It just came to my mind, that I can write Hong Kong, Hong Kong like New York, New York. But in New York, New York, the second New York is only a state, while the second Hong Kong in Hong, Kong Kong is referring to something that’s between a state and a country. Isn’t it amazing? That you can find your city under the country list? I’m not kidding. Try to create a fake fb account and put your country as Hong Kong. You’ll see. I can only think of two other cities that you could do this to: Singapore and Vatican City. There should be some more but if I don’t know them that means you don’t know them either. But they are actually countries, while Hong Kong is not, unless we want live monkeys pulled out of our asses by the Chinese gov. Cute.
Hong Kong is a pretty awesome place. We are a capitalist city where freedom of everything is celebrated. We embrace idiocy as much as we love democracy. We make great movies and we make a lot of crap movies too. We are proud to have stars that appears in big Hollywood movies conversing with Morgan Freeman in Batman and we are ashamed that he also shags like fifteen of our most loved female celebrities, taking nude photos of them and “accidentally” posted them on the internet. People think Hong Kong-eses are racists but no, we love foreigners, as long as you are not from the East, North and South. We think Hong Kong is gonna thrive, oh yes, it will, but our sons and daughters are going to school in the US and we are retiring to Canada. We love our own goods but we think that Japanese goods are better.
There are many names for the city: the Pearl of the East, the Food Paradise, the Shopping Paradise… Hong Kong IS a paradise for everything. You can get anything in Hong Kong — Disneyland, Hollywood Walk of Fame and even Fisherman Wharf — and you can get away with anything in Hong Kong. But everything comes with a price. The price is usually proportional to the size of your ego. And you can always find the right stuff to fuel it, and the people to fan it.
Do you know there are 408 persons per sq mile in New York, 9,920 persons per sq mile in Berlin, and 16,000 persons per sq mile in Hong Kong? There’s so little space available for people you cannot walk down the street without brushing against someone else’s shoulders, bumping into each other and taking in each other’s disgusting breaths. But with that little room, there is always still some more for bigotry.
Most Hong Kong-eses are multi-lingual. While many of us speak fluent English and good Japanese, vulgarity is our mother-tongue. Advice: Don’t ask any Hong Kong people to teach you Cantonese, or someone’s mom is gonna get brutally abused.
Hong Kong is a complicated place. It’s not for the tender heart. To survive out there, speed is essential. Agility is absolute. Remember, in the concrete jungle, if you are not the first, then you are the last. While good deals are everywhere in Hong Kong, bad deals are ubiquitous. If you can find something cheaper in one store than the other, I can guarantee you that you can find it even cheaper somewhere else.
And in a city as highly commercialized as it is, individuality is just another rendition of the sheep psychology — you think you’re the coolest dude getting an iPhone. There are another million of you out there who covet the iPhone. You think you’ll be the first one in Krispy Kream when it opens, there are about fifty thousand of you lining up for Krispy Kream while you are savoring that thought.
We live the lives of bees. Except we don’t work for the queen. We work for ourselves. We are the guards, the fighters, the drone all in one. Many work from dusk till dawn but many work like they are the same thing.
My co-workers asked me if Hong Kong is like Beijing. No, it’s nothing like it. Beijing has its charm. I’d love to go to Beijing one day. But Hong Kong is a completely different city/country/planet by itself. It’s very hard to describe it in words. You have to be in a crowded MTR train to understand it; You have to be standing on the intersection in front of Sogo in Causeway Bay to understand it…
We all love Hong Kong, for it sweeps us off our feet and takes our breath away every single time, regardless of where you are when the thought of it comes to mine.