I love the "Special Administrative Regions"
I posted my last entry from an emial I sent to myself because I was unable to post it earlier. The Communist party now thinks it is prudent not only to stop people from reading blogs, but from writing them aswell. So be it, I will find a way.
Right now I am in Macao, a beautiful little city full of mixed people and mixed culture. Two days ago I arrived in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is in so many respects, an impressive city. First, there was the bus ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.
After we left the traditional Chinese cityscape of condos, shopping malls, markets, and unfinished buildings we found ourselves in an area full of densly packed medium sized southern Chinese style houses. This is normal for the suburbs of some Chinese cities, but to my surprise, they never tapered off. Before long we started seeing more and more factories. Dirty little things with worker's baraks attached. There were also huge numbers of unfinished houses and factories along with a few unfinished apartment blocks. As we kept driving along the Guangzhou Shenzhen highway, both the factories and the houses started getting bigger. Then there were the power plants with their chimnies poking up through the landscape. The further we went, the bigger the factories got and the taller the apartment blocks got. By the time we got to the border of Shenzhen the factories were full sized modern things and the apartment blocks were as nice as anything in most Chinese cities. Then came downtown Shenzhen: tall buildings everywhere, cars on the roads and a feeling of real wealth (by Chinese standards at least). However, none of this was anything compared to the beautiful site that is Hong Kong (which we arrived at some two hours later due to some border troubles with Rae).
I started to understand the wealth of Hong Kong. It is the place that does the highest level work. The financing, the design, the marketing, and the deal making leaving Shenzhen to do those things one step down on the value chain, and from Shenzhen to the next city on and so on. Hong Kong is at the head of a value chain that includes both smartly dress expatriates and countless millions of migrant labourers living in conditoins that Marx or Dickens would undersand much better than any of us. However, this means that Hong Kong is rich.
To say that Hong Kong is an lively city would be an understatement almost to the point of insult. Throughout both Kowloon and Hong Kong island the streets are more crowded than anywhere I can think of. In Kowloon, a mostly residential aread, the buildings are built right together and two or three floors up start to extend out onto the sidewalk. If this was not enough, large neon signs are strung out right into the middle of the streets, not just a few, but nearly every one. All of this combines to give the feeling of being in the middle of the world. This is where Rae and I stayed: a "hotel" on the fourth floor of a mid sized building that included a restaurant, a 7-11, a real estate agent, several clinics, apartments, and a "sauna" with only the restaurant and the 7-11 being on the first floor. Our building was typical, if small, for the area.
The next day we went to downtown Hong Kong. Getting off at Admiralty MTR station we found ourselves in a maze of interconnected office buildings, high end shopping malls, hotels and pedestrian overpasses. The amazing thing was that this area too was filled beyond my expectatoins with smartly dressed people walking quickly and talking with other smartly dressed people. Interestingly, around a quarter of the professional looking office people were not Chinese but expats from one place or another. I really got the feeling that this was a real world financial centre, and something that I want to be a part of. I also got the feeling that even though the whole country is trying to promote Shanghai as its business and financial centre that Hong Kong is just so much more developed that I am sure it will be many years before there is any real comparason between the two.
Of course we enjoyed Hong Kong. We ate a lot of Cantonese food, we went to the top of the mountain on Hong Kong island, we took the Star ferry, we watched the city light up at night from across the harbour at Tsim ta tsui. So, despite the prices being double or even triple Guangzhou, we managed to have a much better time in Hong Kong.
Throughout my time in Hong Kong, I could not help but imagine that many, if not most, of the things that make Hong Kong great (the mix of cultures, the wealth, the fashionable people, the trilingual population, etc...) are the direct result of openness. I can only feel sorry for those just two hours away in Guangzhou who will never live this sort of lifestyle.
Next time I will try to ditch the rant format and go back to something a bit more orderly...
More later,
Marc
I posted my last entry from an emial I sent to myself because I was unable to post it earlier. The Communist party now thinks it is prudent not only to stop people from reading blogs, but from writing them aswell. So be it, I will find a way.
Right now I am in Macao, a beautiful little city full of mixed people and mixed culture. Two days ago I arrived in Hong Kong. Hong Kong is in so many respects, an impressive city. First, there was the bus ride from Guangzhou to Hong Kong.
After we left the traditional Chinese cityscape of condos, shopping malls, markets, and unfinished buildings we found ourselves in an area full of densly packed medium sized southern Chinese style houses. This is normal for the suburbs of some Chinese cities, but to my surprise, they never tapered off. Before long we started seeing more and more factories. Dirty little things with worker's baraks attached. There were also huge numbers of unfinished houses and factories along with a few unfinished apartment blocks. As we kept driving along the Guangzhou Shenzhen highway, both the factories and the houses started getting bigger. Then there were the power plants with their chimnies poking up through the landscape. The further we went, the bigger the factories got and the taller the apartment blocks got. By the time we got to the border of Shenzhen the factories were full sized modern things and the apartment blocks were as nice as anything in most Chinese cities. Then came downtown Shenzhen: tall buildings everywhere, cars on the roads and a feeling of real wealth (by Chinese standards at least). However, none of this was anything compared to the beautiful site that is Hong Kong (which we arrived at some two hours later due to some border troubles with Rae).
I started to understand the wealth of Hong Kong. It is the place that does the highest level work. The financing, the design, the marketing, and the deal making leaving Shenzhen to do those things one step down on the value chain, and from Shenzhen to the next city on and so on. Hong Kong is at the head of a value chain that includes both smartly dress expatriates and countless millions of migrant labourers living in conditoins that Marx or Dickens would undersand much better than any of us. However, this means that Hong Kong is rich.
To say that Hong Kong is an lively city would be an understatement almost to the point of insult. Throughout both Kowloon and Hong Kong island the streets are more crowded than anywhere I can think of. In Kowloon, a mostly residential aread, the buildings are built right together and two or three floors up start to extend out onto the sidewalk. If this was not enough, large neon signs are strung out right into the middle of the streets, not just a few, but nearly every one. All of this combines to give the feeling of being in the middle of the world. This is where Rae and I stayed: a "hotel" on the fourth floor of a mid sized building that included a restaurant, a 7-11, a real estate agent, several clinics, apartments, and a "sauna" with only the restaurant and the 7-11 being on the first floor. Our building was typical, if small, for the area.
The next day we went to downtown Hong Kong. Getting off at Admiralty MTR station we found ourselves in a maze of interconnected office buildings, high end shopping malls, hotels and pedestrian overpasses. The amazing thing was that this area too was filled beyond my expectatoins with smartly dressed people walking quickly and talking with other smartly dressed people. Interestingly, around a quarter of the professional looking office people were not Chinese but expats from one place or another. I really got the feeling that this was a real world financial centre, and something that I want to be a part of. I also got the feeling that even though the whole country is trying to promote Shanghai as its business and financial centre that Hong Kong is just so much more developed that I am sure it will be many years before there is any real comparason between the two.
Of course we enjoyed Hong Kong. We ate a lot of Cantonese food, we went to the top of the mountain on Hong Kong island, we took the Star ferry, we watched the city light up at night from across the harbour at Tsim ta tsui. So, despite the prices being double or even triple Guangzhou, we managed to have a much better time in Hong Kong.
Throughout my time in Hong Kong, I could not help but imagine that many, if not most, of the things that make Hong Kong great (the mix of cultures, the wealth, the fashionable people, the trilingual population, etc...) are the direct result of openness. I can only feel sorry for those just two hours away in Guangzhou who will never live this sort of lifestyle.
Next time I will try to ditch the rant format and go back to something a bit more orderly...
More later,
Marc
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