CUL: Back to the Mother Island

After Lijiang and Shangri-La, my family vacation took me to a 36 hour sojourn to Hong Kon, a pitstop before I leave for Beijing tomorrow morning. A few quick notes on Shangri-La which is likely a familiar name. The earthly paradise from James Hilton's Lost Horizon (which you can read about here) no one actually knows the true location of the Shangri-La that inspired James Hilton (although wikipedia never says if Hilton even went to China so I doubt such a place exists). My dad told me that recently, the Chinese government sponsored a Singaporean research group to discover the true Shangri-La. These academics poured through the book while chartering through the Himalayas in search of clues, which raised the question my brother posed: what sort of qualifications did this group have? Was it a motley crew of English majors, geologists, Chinese historians and mountain climbers? I would have liked to have been on that mission. Anyways, that group picked a place on the border of Tibet and the rest of China, a curiously political pick. Somehow a completely unrelated city named Zhongdian, to the southeast, decided to rename itself Shangri-La, or Xianggelila, to become a tourist attraction. And that's where we went, although I'm still not sure why.

Xianggelila was certainly interesting and very culturally Tibetan. Many signs were bilingual in Tibetan (which looks a lot like Sanskrit) and Chinese, and a few were trilingual with English. The city is small and peaceful and we ate skewered yak and I bought two ceremonial Tibetan knives that nearly got confiscated at the airport. One interesting aspect of Western China were the effects of China's "One time zone" policy. If you aren't aware, the entire country runs on Beijing time even though the country is 4 zones wide. It was curious to see a bright sun at 8:00 in the evening this far south. There were certainly other interesting parts of the town but I won't be covering it in this blog. Email me if you'd like to know. The trip grew monotonous after I visited my 1000th Chinese shop and I could not wait to go back to Hong Kong and Beijing.

Arriving in Hong Kong from Western China transforms me from being linguistically infantile to a master of dialect. Obviously my English goes a long way here. According to Wikipedia, 95% of Hong Kong is Chinese (and nearly all speak Cantonese natively), and only 38% speak English. That figure seems too low (could Wikipedia be wrong??) as nearly everyone speaks English, albeit typically with discomfort and a thick accent. I don't have a real idea but I'd guess that of the native Cantonese about my age, less than 20% speak English without a strong Chinese accent. So my accent is useful here. My Cantonese is also native and while not fluent and devoid of slang, I more than get by here. Thirdly, my Mandarin is actually better than the average HKer, although not for my age group, which for the most part studied Chinese in school. I heard an airport attendant dealing with a Mandarin speaker say 20 as er sup, instead of er shi (sup is Cantonese for 10, shi Mandarin) which cracked me up. While I'm here though I often pretend to speak only English, because that gives me the ability to surprise someone when I do break into Cantonese. Instead of going in with my American-accented Cantonese and sounding like a fool, I speak confidently in English and then understand people when they gossip about this American in Cantonese.

After a serious typhoon in June, a week of constantly looming rainclouds has surprisingly left this city very pleasant. Ever-present drizzling isn't usually ideal but the overbearing heat and humidity has been replaced by very agreeable 70 degree weather. I think I've mentioned in this blog how I don't think I could ever live in Asia, even Hong Kong, because I'm too American. Well I think I'm changing my opinion there. As my brother is looking into working in Shanghai or Tokyo, I'm more and more becoming intrigued by Hong Kong. I mean I've always loved it, ever since I spent a month here in '98. Its bustling, alive, convenient and a truly special city. It'd be a big lifestyle change coming here, basically sacrificing American sports and suburban comfort, in addition to dealing with the normal humidity. But my goodness there's a lot to like about this city, and I think that if any American wants to have fun in Asia, they have to stop in Hong Kong.

Which brings me to another point - is Hong Kong part of China? I've always gotten offended when people called Hong Kong "China" especially before July 1997 when it legitimately was not China. Now technically it is politically a part of China, but if you look at the Special Administration Region policy that governs the relationship between the two places, you may wonder the extent of this connection. Hong Kong has its own laws, its own currency, its own Olympic team - basically the only way you'll see China involved in Hong Kong is if you decide to invade the island, in which case you'll soon find yourself facing a giant red army. By the way, Hong Kong has the unique fortune to have been militarily defended by first the British Empire and now the Chinese government. It has been able to concentrate on its own economy and not worry about self-defense. Also, Hong Kong is culturally, linguistically, economically, politically, ideologically and even racially very different from China, and you can probably add another 3 "allys" to that list. This leads me to a CNN article I read today by David Challenger: article. In it, Challenger says

it soon struck me that I was in the "real" China, as opposed to expatriate-weary Hong Kong. A double-take here, an odd smile and nod there, confirmed that the slickness of Causeway Bay and the uppity pretensions of Lan Kwai Fong were now far behind.

Really? You just then realized that Hong Kong wasn't the "real" China? What tipped you off Challenger? Was it the cars driving on the right side of the road? Or did you notice that all your money now had a picture of Chairman Mao on it? Or was it the fact that when you went to use a public bathroom you couldn't find any toilet paper? (I haven't figured out exactly how Chinese people use the bathroom but let's just say I always carry a packet of tissues with me) But yeah, Hong Kong is very different from China which is why I still argue that Hong Kong is not part of China. I know that Miami and Iowa are very different places and both are in the US, but I think Hong Kong:China is more like Puerto Rico:USA, if you're a fan of the old SATs. Although I don't think the Hong Kong basketball team can beat the Chinese team quite yet, but I digress. So who is this David Challenger guy who didn't know this? How is he writing for CNN.com? Is it because he used "uppity pretensions" to describe LKF?

My blog is really about China and so based on my previous logic, I really should not be writing so much about Hong Kong. I'd just like to say a few things though on this city's behalf. Many people I've met in Beijing, Americans who are interested in China, find Hong Kong uninteresting and disingenuous. It's as if they think the city belongs in Europe, and if it wants to remain in Asia it should throw away its quality bathrooms and British-funded office buildings. They don't understand the uniqueness of Hong Kong and how the city is true to itself. The Western influences clearly stand out in any Google image search of the city, but once you step foot in the city, there is no doubt as to what continent you are on. I've already mentioned the 95% Chinese population and the side effects of that are 1) race is a large factor and 2) the other 5% have interesting stories. While much of that 5% are migrant workers from Southeast Asia, especially Filipinos, all the Westerners here are well-traveled and thoroughly appreciate this special city. They know how to order dim sum and use chopsticks, listen to Cantopop and shop like its their job. I think that most Westerners that live here are transplants and one who grows up and dies here is a rarity, but they all say they love Hong Kong. Most neighborhoods though, are entirely Chinese and often very poor, and you will see the same bargain markets and street vendors that you do in the rest of China. Unlike Beijing and New York though, the cab drivers here can speak English.

Furthermore, Cantonese is a very unique language. The 21st most spoken language in the world, Cantonese, with the possible exception of some Indian languages like Bengali or Hindi, is the most important language almost entirely spoken by one nationality. Before you question this claim, consider what languages are offered in college. Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Mandarin - a white American L2 speaker of these languages would be unlikely to shock you. Sure 99% of Russian speakers are Russian, but Westerners and even Chinese can and do learn Russian. On the other hand, a really unusual set of circumstances need to be present for a Caucasian to speak Cantonese. I've never seen it offered as a second language anywhere, except maybe for the Chinese school I used to go to. EDIT: DJ says it's offered at Harvard, if you take 2 years of Mandarin first. Ok... Combine this with the fact the language is brutally hard to learn - it has 9 tones as opposed to Mandarin's 4 and there are many words in which I can't find roman letters to imitate - and its basically a language that is spoken 100% by native speakers. It's surprising enough when a halfie speaks Cantonese, an absolute eye popper when a non-Chinese does. I have a few relatives who look very white and seeing them speak Cantonese was a formative life experience. In addition, I've heard that there is an Indian comedian here who does an act in fluent Cantonese that brings the house down. So note to all Western readers of this: learning a few Cantonese phrases, particularly pickup lines, will automatically make you tremendously popular here. Also, Hong Kong, Macau and India are the "only regions on the GDP per capita top 50 with a 50% stake in two very different language families."

But really, Hong Kong is everything China strives to be, with the added bonus that China actually produces goods instead of just offering financial services (like 90% of Hong Kong's economy). HK is efficient with one of the world's best subway systems and decent traffic, tourist-friendly while remaining culturally relevant, internationally esteemed and economically prosperous. Hong Kong is extremely dense, but unlike Beijing, it manages the overcrowding very well with lots of overhead walkways, taxi stands and better sidewalks. This may change as I go to Europe in the fall, but right now my favorite 3 cities in the world are Boston, New York and Hong Kong with Paris a distant 4th. I do wish I could go to Tokyo, Taipei, Seoul and Bangkok because I feel as if I still don't have a complete sense of Asia because I don't know those cities.

Well this was an unbelievably long post as I seem to have acquired Bill Simmons' inability to be concise but I hope some people at least read through this.