One Week in Hong Kong

I’m probably the only person on Earth who can say this: I do not know if I’ve been to China yet. I keep lists of everywhere I visit (I take pride in my worldliness), so I can tell you I’ve been to precisely 23 countries, but I don’t know if China is one of them — oh, also, I cheat. In the spirit of inflating the number as high as possible, I count dependencies separately from the country upon which they depend. My logic is that visiting Bermuda is a separate enough experience from visiting England that, despite technically being the same country, they should be counted separately. So I can add a cheeky few not-quite-countries to the total.

See if you can name them all, kids!

Here’s my predicament, though: if I’m allowed to count Bermuda as its own thing because it’s different enough from Britain, then what do I do about Hong Kong? Hong Kong is a dependency of China, but it’s much more like China than Bermuda is like Britain. For one, they actually border each other, and the population of Hong Kong is overwhelmingly Chinese. No foreigner dropped in Bermuda would ever confuse it for London, but an American in Hong Kong would have a hard time differentiating it from China. In 2019 there was a whole series of protests over whether Hong Kong was or was not China, and while my reasons are not nearly so serious, I find myself wondering the same thing.

I flew into Hong Kong a week ago to sort my visa. Getting a visa here is much, much easier than in America (although still ludicrously tedious and expensive). Technically, I’m not moving from America to China. I’m moving from America to Hong Kong, and then from Hong Kong to China. The trip wasn’t nearly so grueling as I expected. Even in economy class, Korean Air is pretty snazzy, with some half-decent food as well as free wine and tea. I took the opportunity to get some work done and catch up on my reading, and while I can’t say that I slept per se, I definitely spent most of my overnight flight in some facsimile thereof. Unfortunately, it wasn’t quite enough. My dad gave me some absolutely fantastic advice to avoid jet lag which I utterly failed to follow. “Go outside, get plenty of sun, and don’t lie down no matter what!” Unfortunately, I had to stay in because I needed to stick close to my laptop to work on my visa application, and I couldn’t just fill it out and leave because I was waiting for confirmation from my employer. I lied down in my boredom, and even though I didn’t feel tired at all, I blinked and eight hours had passed. That was my action-packed first day in Hong Kong, and it only gets more exciting from here.

The next few days were on-again off-again monsoons. It rained so hard so consistently one day that I didn’t leave my hotel at all. I could tell that I’d get soaked even with an umbrella, and it’s not like I had anywhere in particular that I wanted to go. I only ventured out of the apartment twice in my first four or five days here: once to go to the visa office, and once to get dim sum at Tim Ho Wan. 

Left to Right: Rice Dumpling, Pork Buns, Green Tea, Pork Knuckles

Glutton (bon vivant? gourmand?) that I am, the food is far and away the best part of this trip so far, and Tim Ho Wan is the highlight. It looks like a fast food place. It’s even tucked into the same corner of the mall as 7/11 and Mos Burger, the Japanese equivalent to McDonald’s. So would you believe that it had a Michelin Star? If you said no, then you’re right — the star was revoked in 2021, although Tim Ho Wan is still recognized as a “Bib Gourmand” option on the Michelin website. Having eaten there, I don’t see how any restaurant can earn a Michelin Star if Tim Ho Wan can’t. For less than $15 USD, you can order three enormous portions of Dim Sum and hot green tea (which means this is technically Yum Cha). I got the pork knuckles, rice dumpling wrapped in bamboo leaf, and their famous pork buns, which were basically barbecued pork belly wrapped in cake-like bread. It’s hard to properly convey flavor through writing, but suffice to say that Tim Ho Wan left me with little reason to ever eat anywhere else.

But this is a travel blog, not a food blog! By sheer coincidence, a friend of mine happened to be in Hong Kong at the same time as me, and together we did some of my first traveling in Hong Kong. We started at the Botanical Park, a large recreation area with a number of different activities. We didn’t stay long enough to see all of it, but I noticed that they have a museum of teaware and an aviary — two of my favorite things, and therefore two places I’ll have to stop next time I’m in the city.

After this we went to the beloved expat bar district Lan Kwai Fong. I said earlier that Hong Kong is overwhelmingly Chinese, which is true of naturalized citizens, but there are many, many foreign tourists, workers, and students as well. I’ve heard from friends who visited China that Chinese people see foreigners as novelties, staring and taking pictures. That’s hard to imagine in Hong Kong, where non-Chinese are so prevalent that the signs and storefronts have English text (poorly translated, albeit). I would say thus far I’ve been using a lot of “Chinglish.” Chinese people default to English when they see me, but sometimes they are difficult to understand and I can only effectively communicate in Chinese. My ear isn’t quite attuned well enough to understand everything they say, but I’ve had no trouble expressing my own needs, at least. China is one of few places in the world in which it’s difficult to get by on English alone. Further complicating matters, most Chinese people speak putonghua 普通话, the common speech, but some don’t, especially in the south. We actually encountered a woman who spoke only guangdonghua 广东话, also known as Yue or Cantonese. 

Lan Kwai Fong is a small space, but Chinese people make the most out of small spaces. Every street is lined with stores and restaurants the size of a small room, and every square inch is packed with goods or decorations. People have told me that China will be crowded with people, but the density of human beings doesn’t seem all that much crazier than an east coast city in America. It was really the density of things that surprised me. We spent a long time drinking cheap liquor and shooting the shit in cramped bars — not a terrible night, in my opinion. When it came time to pay, my friend covered for me, explaining that Chinese people don’t pay meticulous attention to money. Usually one person pays the whole bill and then the other person pays next time they go out. This seems like a healthier attitude than the sort of thing we do in America.

My friend says that Chinese drinkers clink glasses with every sip, and that the lip of the older person's glass must be higher than the lip of the younger's.

The next day we went to Kowloon. Hong Kong is much larger than I realized. It has three administrative divisions: Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, and the New Territories. The entire territory is a single city, but the districts on Hong Kong Island feel like their own thing, the international city of Hong Kong, where Kowloon feels like another city entirely. My friend told me that Kowloon is far closer to mainland China than Hong Kong. He meant this as a compliment — he argued that Kowloon, like mainland China, is more prosperous, friendlier, and cleaner than Hong Kong. While I’ve enjoyed my time in Hong Kong thus far, I have to admit that a lot of his criticisms seemed pertinent, especially with the Kowloon comparison. Kowloon has many fewer expats, most of whom are of South Asian descent. We only met a handful of English speakers there, and those who spoke only Chinese were considerably kinder. An old man invited us into his tiny storefront shop to try some iced jelly and tea he had made, and spent the whole time chatting with us in a mixture of Cantonese and Mandarin. That seems like an improbable occurrence in the district where I’m staying. Parts of Kowloon looked pretty advanced, with futuristic malls and enormous skyscrapers, but others were worn. It’s a different kind of worn than Hong Kong, though, which I would call dilapidated. Kowloon looks more like a well-loved book, full of people whose love for the city and each other had left its mark. Every side street was packed with merchants’ tents and tables.

This is relatively spacious by comparison.

Is Hong Kong China? My friend, who has visited China many times and lived here full time since March, would say no. I guess I’ll know how similar they are soon enough. Today is Sunday; tomorrow I pick up my visa and enter Shenzhen in mainland China, where I’ll undergo teacher training ahead of my job in Guangzhou. My expectation is that, though Hong Kong and China have their similarities, they each offer experiences you can’t find in the other. Hong Kong is effectively its own country in all but name (consider that I apparently need a visa to move from one part of China to another?) It has its own set of laws, its own currency, its own military, and by every reasonable metric constitutes its own separate entity. I certainly expect to return to Hong Kong a few times this year to enjoy its unique qualities. But at this point, I am excited to move forward, and to see China for what it really is.