Lost on Planet China - J. Maarten Troost [76]
And then suddenly I was in Hong Kong. What is this? I thought. Cars that remain in their lanes. Cars that do not honk. Who are you, Mr. Bus Driver, wishing me a nice day and to be mindful of the step? Are you trying to make me weep? Do you want me to hug you? Such kindness is overwhelming for the China traveler. And here, inside this hotel in Kowloon, is this, could it be, an orderly line at the check-in counter? Yes. No. There are mainland businessmen cutting in line now, marching up to the desk, insisting that they be served immediately, ahead of us, all of us. But the woman at the counter directed them: Please join the queue.
Oh ho ho, I thought. Sweet Jesus, take me home now. What is this place? Please join the queue. This is not China.
12
Such is the end of Empire,” wrote Prince Charles in his diary. The occasion was the handover of Hong Kong, the crown jewel of the British Empire, to China on June 30, 1997. It was, according to the Prince, the “Great Chinese Takeaway,” but this was not what he was lamenting in his ode to empire’s loss. It was the indignity of flying business class on British Airways while the English politicians, lowborn and common, who had attended the handover ceremony, were seated in first class.
Indeed, one senses from the Royal Family that they were only too happy to return Hong Kong to China. “If you stay here much longer,” said Prince Philip, he of the golden tongue, to an English student, “you will go home with slitty eyes.” But leave they did, and after 156 years of colonial rule, Hong Kong again became a part of China.
Except that, ten years later, it didn’t feel like China.
It felt like a vacation from China.
To say that I adored Hong Kong would be a colossal understatement. After weeks navigating the mayhem of the mainland, I needed Hong Kong. I had assumed Hong Kong to be a vast, teeming city, but compared to the megalopolises up north, Hong Kong is but a quaint English seaside village. True, it boasts an impressive skyline that every night lights up the sky with a laser show, but it lacks the madness of a true Chinese city. Technically, of course, Hong Kong is part of China. Indeed, when I arrived, Hong Kong was preparing for the “Celebration of the 10th Anniversary of Hong Kong’s Return to the Glorious Motherland.” But while Hong Kong today might be a little less English than it used to be, it did not at all seem any more Chinese.
On my way from the airport, I had asked a taxi driver how things had changed since Hong Kong had reverted to Chinese rule.
“Not many changes,” he said. “Hong Kong is still the same.”
His grandparents had come to Hong Kong from Fujian Province long ago and he spoke both Mandarin and Cantonese. I asked if he ever traveled north.
“Yes,” he said. “Across the border to Shenzhen. The shopping is much cheaper.”
If anything, Hong Kong, ten years after the handover, is even more like New York or London today than it was when it was an outpost of the British Empire. To be sure, Beijing has been quietly exerting its authority in Hong Kong. Judges are accountable to Beijing, not to the people of Hong Kong. And yet one can still see members of Falun Gong humming and chanting in Kowloon Park, a practice that would get them a thrashing and a stiff jail sentence elsewhere. While the rest of the country lives in an information bubble, Hong Kong enjoys a lively free press, and most newsstands offer the International Herald Tribune and various other newsweeklies, papers, and magazines from abroad, which I gleefully consumed.
“One thing has changed,” the taxi driver added. “The economy is different. All the jobs have gone to China.”
It is the worldwide lamentation. All the jobs have gone to China. Even in China itself.
Once, Hong Kong had been one of the great manufacturing cities in the world. Today, it is centered on the alchemy known as international finance, and while it may be more difficult