Ten days in China (or maybe not) — Letters from the Road

Why maybe not? Well, I visited Hong Kong and Macau. They are both special administrative regions (SAR) of the People's Republic of China, which means they are under the control of the Chinese government but at the same time have a very high degree of autonomy (they have their own currency, their own visa requirements, and even their own Olympic teams). Also, both Hong Kong and Macau have been distinct political entities for a long time and only joined China recently (1997 and 1999, respectively), so in my mind they are different countries.

Hong Kong

There are two official languages in Hong Kong: Chinese and English. But, to my surprise, nobody seemed to know English. It was actually easier to communicate in Japan than here in this former British colony. What they speak in Hong Kong is Cantonese (like Bruce Lee in Fist of Fury and Jackie Chan in Police Story, not like Chow Yun-fat and Michelle Yeoh in Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon).

Hong Kong has three parts: Hong Kong Island, the big island in the southern part, which people here just call Hong Kong; Kowloon, the south part of the peninsula north of Hong Kong Island and across Victoria Harbour; and the New Territories, a large area West, North, and East of Kowloon, plus about two hundred little islands.

I stayed in a hotel on Hong Kong Island, in an area known as North Point, in a 27th-floor room facing the Victoria Harbour. It's a tiny room, but at least I have a great view. And the greatest attraction in Hong Kong is actually the view of Victoria Harbour. I did quite a bit of walking on both sides. On the first day, I took the ferry boat right in front of the hotel and crossed from North Point Pier to Kowloon City Pier, then walked the promenades on the other side (Hoi Sham Promenade, Laguna Verde Promenade, Hung Hom Promenade, Tsim Sha Tsui Promenade, and the Avenue of the Stars, where you can find a statue of Bruce Lee), all the way to the Tsim Sha Tsui Ferry Pier, where I took another boat and crossed back to the Wan Chai Ferry Pier on the island to continue my walk and return to the hotel. That was a 10 km stroll.

I also went to Victoria Peak, a 552-meter-tall hill, to get a good view of Victoria Harbour. You take a cable car to get there, the Peak Tram, which has been in operation since 1888. Nearby, there's the Hong Kong Park, a pleasant little park with many trees, flowers, a greenhouse and aviary, an artificial waterfall, and the Flagstaff House Museum of Teaware (as expected, full of teapots, teacups, and other equipment used to prepare or serve tea).

Hong Kong may look beautiful from a distance, with all those tall commercial buildings, but up close most residential buildings look like vertical slums. And there are lots of alleys and backstreets that don't appear particularly inviting. Every large city has places like that, of course, but in Hong Kong I saw it everywhere. A big contrast with the fancy shopping malls you also find here.

I visited two other museums, both large and free. The Hong Kong Museum of Art had a great view of the Victoria Harbour, and a few interesting exhibitions of painting, calligraphy, ceramics, bronzes, lacquerware, jades, bamboo carvings, furniture, and even snuff bottles (used to carry finely ground tobacco leaves, which people would sniff and think was a great idea). The Hong Kong Heritage Museum had some great exhibitions. A Man Beyond the Ordinary: Bruce Lee celebrated the life and work of one of the most famous people from Hong Kong. The Magic of Hong Kong Comedy Comics was an homage to a bunch of local comics I had never heard of. And the Jin Yong Gallery honored Hong Kong's most famous writer, author of The Legend of the Condor Heroes and The Deer and the Cauldron, among many others.

And the food?

I stayed away from dishes made of ingredients I don't like, which are very common here: liver, tripe, tongue, that kind of thing. Fortunately, it's also easy to find those dishes we know from Chinese restaurants in Western countries, like stir-fried beef, sweet and sour chicken, sweet and sour pork, and barbecued pork. There's also dim sum, which are small buns or dumplings filled with some sort of meat (I preferred the ones with pork or shrimp).

Macau

To move from Hong Kong to Macau, I decided to take a bus, just because I wanted to travel on the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macao Bridge. It's actually a system made of three bridges, an undersea tunnel, and four artificial islands, all connecting Hong Kong to Macau, with a total length of 55 km. And it's beautiful too.

There are two official languages in Macau: Chinese and Portuguese. But I couldn't find anyone here who spoke Portuguese. And they don't speak English either. At least most signs are written both in Cantonese and Portuguese, which sometimes is a source of amusement because of the peculiar kind of Portuguese they have in Macau. For example, "restaurant" should be "restaurante", but instead they call it "estabelecimento de comidas" ("food establishment"). My favorite is their name for noodle soup: "sopa de fitas" ("ribbon soup").

The currency in Macau is the pataca, the best name for money I've seen. It has precisely the same value as the Hong Kong dollar, and every shop accepts either currency.

I walked a lot, exploring the whole Macau Peninsula on foot. I didn't go to Taipa Island to the south, and stayed in the peninsula, which is the oldest and most populous part of Macau.

I visited the Fortaleza da Guia, a fort from the 17th century with a chapel and lighthouse, and the Fortaleza do Monte, another 17th-century fort which now hosts the Museu de Macau. These forts had a good view of the sea and cannons ready to shoot at pirate ships. The museum tells the story of Macau in objects and dioramas (they seem to love dioramas around here). Nearby, there are the Ruínas de São Paulo, which are what's left of a 17th-century catholic church (basically just the façade and a few foundation stones).

I also went to the Templo de A-Ma (A-Ma's Temple), which apparently gave Macau its name. The story is that when Portuguese navigators arrived here and asked for the name of the place, the locals gave them the name of the temple, "A-maa-gok" ("Pavilion of the Mother"). The Portuguese adapted that to "Amacão", which eventually became "Macau". Anyway, A-Ma is one of the names of the Chinese sea goddess Mazu.

Other museums I visited were the Museu Marítimo (lots of ship models and more dioramas), the Museu de Arte de Macau (they had a completely uninteresting exhibition of contemporary art), and the Centro de Arte Contemporanea (displaying the work of Serge Bloch, a French illustrator whose work reminded me of the great Sempé).

And the food?

In Macau, you can find both Chinese food, similar to what is available in Hong Kong, and Portuguese food, which fortunately is one thing they preserved from colonial times (unlike the language). Their most famous dessert is the Portuguese egg tart, the same pastry tarts filled with creamy custard that you find in Portugal by the name "pastel de nata". I ate some Chinese food (the best one was salmon and crabmeat fried rice) and some Portuguese food (the baked duck rice was easily the best meal I had since I left Japan, just like the original arroz de pato ao forno I used to eat in Lisbon, and I also had the traditional bacalhau à Brás).

Wrapping up

I started this trip with the idea that Hong Kong and Macau would be very different places, with their specific cultures shaped by their colonial pasts. However, I now see them as just two facets of the same country, with Chinese culture dominating daily life on both sides of the Pearl River Estuary.

Ten days were enough for me to see what I wanted to see, and I'm glad I visited both places. But I don't think I would enjoy living around here, because of some of their cultural habits. I'm sure this is all fine for the locals, but for me it was something that didn't make my days better. I will list a few things, from the mildest to the worst. First, you don't get your own table at restaurants, you have to sit with strangers. I'm not talking about large communal tables like it's common in some places, but a table for two, you on one side and someone you've never seen before right in front of you. You may get lucky and meet a nice person to have a conversation (if you speak Chinese), or you can get that guy who chews on a chicken foot with his mouth open. Second, people on the street try to walk through you. It's like they deliberately set a path of collision and expect you to somehow get out of the way. They will bump into you, and sometimes they will actually push you out of the way. That didn't happen just to me, they do it to each other all the time. Third, people spit on the sidewalk. I'm not talking about some quick and innocent emission of saliva. No, they noisily scoop the thickest, most viscous substances found in their mucous membranes, and project them away like little sins that need to be expelled from their bodies and shared with the community, leaving that monumen to to gunk on the sidewalk. Things like that erode my quality of life. Anyway, at least both Hong Kong and Macau have free museums. It's something, isn't it?

And after China?

Well, I'm already living in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines. But that, as you know, is a story for another time. Mabuhay! (That's a Filipino greeting meaning something like "long live!", similar to the Hawaiian "aloha".)