Hong Kong and Response

Hong Kong is nothing like Beijing. It was cold and rainy when I left the capital at 8 am and swelteringly humid at the Shueng Wan subway station where I first breathed the shark-fin soup smelling air. Ridiculous hills covered in tiny streets, traditional characters everywhere, and that feel of money food money food. Most foreigners that live on the Island are on the extreme "ex-pat package" and have a lot of wealth even by western standards. Cantonese is so pretty, and there seems to be a bit more hostility towards white faces than on the mainland. It was only 11 years ago that the British gave up control of HK.

I was fortunate to be able to stay with a fellow Tianjin '04 Madison student living in HK which greatly reduced the expense of my trip and injected me with a good dose of midwesternism. While catching up in a cafe in Central, we noticed a familiar looking boy on the sidewalk below who upon further interrogation turned out to be a Badger living in Hangzhou. What are the chances? We rode the tram to the peak, walked among the greenery up top and saw the sunset. That night I was treated to dinner at a restaurant where the whole HK skyline was visible...and again didn't bring my camera.

The next day E and I went out the an Island with a giant Buddha statue and I escaped into the wilds for several hours. It's always what I need.

Now I am on the way back to BJ, city of smog and concrete.

Due to the recent remarks by French PM Scozi, all of China is planning to boycott carrefor, a French owned company May 1 and show the world their economic power.


Thanks the responses!

DGH, I think you bring up some good points and for the sake of sake, I'm going to play devil's advocate. Kicking journalists out of tbet certainly didn't improve the world's image of China. It seems that the government wants to keep the western world (and everyone) as calm as possible about the situation. With the coming games, the best method is as little press coverage as possible. Ignorance is bliss.

The name calling is completely ridiculous. No intelligent person puts any merit to it....remember the U.S. is fighting a war on "terror" and trying to defeat "evil," which basically means entire populations of people. At least China has pinpointed ONE individual. Kidding, sort of. Like people in the U.S. who don't think we're in Iraq for democracy, there are common people here who don't really think the DL is evil. But they do want China to remain strong and unified, which will probably benefit them personally, and a free tbet will not help.

I hadn't thought about the lack of coverage during the games. However, I suspect it will be next to impossible to keep anything under wraps. There will be so many foreigners here and they can't kick out the press. Should be interesting, nonetheless.

I wish I didn't have to write tbet. I wish that people were able to say what they think and not be afraid of going to jail or getting killed. I wish that individual thought existed here, that corruption didn't, and that everyone every where could just get along. I don't want to think of myself as defending the country so much as trying to offer a different perspective.

But this situation does highlight an ongoing issue for me as well as many foreigners I've talked to who study China; I was originally amazed with the beauty and simplicity of the Chinese language and ancient philosophy and while the modern society is birthed from these ancient ideas, it's much more complex and there's a lot that's changed. Following the Dao and acting with wuwei, by doing nothing at all seem to be concepts that have vanished completely in the mad-dash for luxury goods and Hummers. I'm amazed by both the incredible detail of calligraphy and jade hairpins and the extreme passionate hate I hear voiced for Japan over and over again.