We haven’t been here long, but there’s already a few interesting things that are, well, interesting. Consider for the moment the fact that we’ve been running through three very different countries from what we expect to see at home: Russia, Mongolia, and China. For many of us, China will at least seem familiar, only from possibly walking through our respective Chinatowns or our favourite Chinese restaurant. Be rest assured, your favourite Chinese restaurant probably has little to do (or in common) with some of the places we’ve been…
It’s also fair to say that the Russian places are totally different. Mongolia, don’t even get me started.
But Hong Kong is a strange parallel of familiarity and complete opposite. It’s a Chinese province, for all intents and purposes. But it’s also London, sufficiently removed and deposited halfway around the world. That doesn’t make a heap of sense in some cases, as I haven’t really been to British colonies before. But in a way it also makes sense. The British, during their colonial days, were very keen on overlaying their system on top of others’. And with Hong Kong, they quite literally had free reign (and a clean slate) to do so. Today, Hong Kong is a wide diversity of Chinese and English that seem to thrive together in some strange sort of tango.
Many of the roads bear names such as “Chater”, “Queens St.”, and other Anglicized names. It’s odd. But go far enough, and you’ll find the Chinese names. Certainly, this applies on Hong Hong Island, which is more English than Chinese. Skip across to Kowloon (which we really haven’t seen yet), and it’s more Chinese than English. It’ll be interesting to see how that changes in the times to come.
A few things that haven’t changed include driving on the left side of the road, and using the imperial measurement system instead of Metric.
And things here are expensive. I’ve just succumbed to the sticker shock, and Amy might soon find me really annoying because of a desire to avoid racking up huge bills here. I have bills at home to pay…
Anyway, getting kicked off this computer, so no more for now…
