Hong Kong to Beijing

End of June to mid July, 2006

Leaving Uncle Ho's Vietnamese fun house, I boarded yet another Cathay Pacific aircraft bound for Hong Kong. I didn't really know what to expect from the former British colony which sits at the southern end of its big bad new boss, China. What I found was an incredibly vibrant and very modern city, much glass and steel scraping the sky and most of it dedicated to the biggest financial institutions you can think of, (and lots more that you will never have even heard of). At least to the casual outside observer, the Chinese authorities really seem to have left Hong Kong alone, and it seems to function as the Western-style financial hub it was before it was handed back to the Chinese in 1999. The streets of Hong Kong Island, where the main financial activities go on, really could be those of any major North American financial centre.

Across the bay in neon-draped Kowloon, where I rented a tiny room and bathroom from an old Chinese lady on the top floor of a dilapidated tower block, the feel was very different although no less commercial. The streets were full of Indian immigrants, many of them stall holders at the indoor markets which take up the ground floors of the tower blocks like the one I was staying in. Some hung around on the building entrances, trying repeatedly to interest me in "Rolex" watches; maybe they thought my "functional" traveler fashion needed some sprucing up. Anyway, it was interesting that in the entire time I was in Hong Kong I didn't once see a Chinese trader hawking on the streets - only Indians. Sometimes it felt like being back in Delhi. Having said that, not all the purveyors of fine jewellery were from Mother India. The owner of King Fook Jewellery, for example, turned out to be a British ex-pat from Bolton...

In my view, unless you want to shop, Hong Kong is not much of a tourist city but it is none the less interesting for that. The only touristy thing that I did during my stay was to go in the cable car up to Victoria Peak, a point on Hong Kong Island 500m or so above sea level that overlooks the bay and the mainland, and offers some great views. The rest of my time was taken up with just being in the city, getting to know it and getting to really quite like it despite its horrendous cost. Actually things are no more expensive there than they would be in London, (in fact travel and tourist accommodation are cheaper), but after four months or so in southeast Asia I was used to getting away with it big time! At least the internet access was free at Hong Kong's very impressive central library...

So to see perhaps another side to China, I booked a flight to Beijing and stayed there for a week. Beijing was an interesting place, and the signs of the recent changes in China were everywhere. McDonald's had at least a couple of branches on the main shopping street, and the stores on that street reflected many of the consumer brands that we are used to in the west. This was not the stark, austere city described to me by people who had visited ten or so years ago.

There is much to see in Beijing, and although at first I wondered if I had been a bit enthusiastic by planning to spend a week there, it proved to be just right. On my first night there I became "adopted" by Li, who said that she was a student who wanted to practise her English. As the week wore on, I found that there were many such "students" looking to "improve their language skills", but they were also usually looking to sell you a tour or some tourist tat at the same time. However, Li never tried to sell me anything so I guess maybe she was just what he said! Li's English language skills were not that bad, but if she didn't understand what you had just said she would turn to you and snap "WHAT?!?!", as if you had just suggested something hugely improper. She seemed totally unaware of how abruptly this came across, and since I found it highly entertaining I decided it would be a shame to guide her towards the more polite expression of "pardon?".....

Li took me to Tiananmen Square at sunset, when they have a flag-lowering ceremony with much slow marching of soldiers etc., but the place was so thick with tourists it wasn't possible to see very much. Then, after a very good and really cheap meal in a local restaurant where Li's ability to order in Mandarin was an obvious advantage, we parted company but not before she had tried to interest me in starting up a business importing music CDs to China from the UK..... ahhhh! There you go!

I was to return to Tiananmen Square quite a lot over the next week. The square itself is quite impressive, but the buildings surrounding it are equaling interesting and include The Gate of Heavenly Peace, Chairman Mao's Mausoleum and the entrance to The Forbidden City. As I observed in my last posting on Vietnam, no visit to the capital of a socialist state is complete without viewing the wax-like remains of a former great leader, and so off I went to doff my cap to Comrade Tse-Tung. The funniest thing I saw that day was the sight of hoards of Chinese visitors buying expensive flowers at the entrance to lay at the prescribed place just outside the room itself. These were periodically collected up by staff, and returned to the same stall for re-sale! Well, I suppose at least that's recycling.

The Gate of Heavenly Peace and the Forbidden City were impressive enough, although the impending 2008 Olympics in the city means that the authorities have suddenly become very fond of covering major historical buildings in scrim and scaffold for restoration. This also included buildings in the Temple of Heaven Park, although most of the park was open and included a very good museum of music.

The presence of state security and police is very high profile, especially around Tiananmen Square. They don't take any nonsense either. On a couple of occasions I saw the police deal with unauthorised traders of tourist tat near the Square. The traders leg it as if their lives depended on it; apparently they can go to jail for selling little red plastic flags. One time I witnessed the bizarre spectacle of a young, fat, sweaty copper on a bicycle literally being given the run-around through the crowd by a sprightly old bird who must have been about 70, and who was carrying a bunch of said flags. It was extremely comical for the crowd, and even the old woman was grinning. However, the mood changed when he eventually ditched the bike, caught her and started screaming in her face. I would have taken a picture but more cops, soldiers etc. suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and instinct told me to keep the camera in the bag.

The best thing about Beijing, by far, was The Great Wall. Well, that and Beijing Duck, which I think I ate three times during my visit! I made two visits to the wall. On the first I walked 10km along it from Jinshanling to Simatai in the company of Canadian Diana, and the second time I visited Huanghua and just walked a small section high above a beautiful reservoir. The same day as the second visit, I also went to see the Ming Tombs, (nothing special), attended a "tea ceremony" which turned out to be a "tea hard sell", and also a jade factory which was pretty much the same as the tea experience!

Anyway, The Great Wall is just incredible. It is the most amazing thing to see it snaking into the distance across the hills near the Mongolian border. In some parts it has been meticulously restored for tourism, in others it has just been left as is, but in either case the wall is an amazing construction. Not very good at keeping enemies out though, apparently. As Genghis Khan is supposed to have observed, the effectiveness of a wall depends on the courage of those defending it. (Hmmm. Never thought I'd quote Genghis Khan in this blog.......)

So then after Beijing, and another brief stop in Hong Kong, I continued on to Japan.