TRAVEL HONG KONG ON THE RUN

“THIS IS NOT Hong Kong, and that is not Hong Kong,” said my guide, about nothing in particular, and I understood what she meant. Hong Kong can be perceived as a set of “nots,” each “not” conversely hinting at the character of the elusive Asian city.

Hong Kong is not China, but it will be when Great Britain’s lease runs out in 1997. Hong Kong is not exotic, strictly speaking- the waters of its famous bay are colored by the reflections of neon signs that blink out Toshiba and Esprit-but incense pours into the streets from Taoist temples. Hong Kong is not scenic, but it is filled with singular, heart-racing images, such as a stately junk drifting past a glass skyscraper. In fact, the whole city is a kind of odd double exposure: runaway capitalism on ancient Chinese shores.

The city is fast and disorganized, but charming in spite of itself. By turns it feels very old, very new. Like a proud expatriate, it flaunts its disconnectedness. It is pleased to be the half-breed child of China and Queen Victoria’s England. Hong Kong is also a hustler, and now, with the clock ticking on the China/Great Britain treaty, the hustler’s on the lam. Hong Kong is hot because it’s running on borrowed time.

THE CONSENSUS IS that things won’t change all that much come 1997. Hong Kong is the world’s third busiest freeport, a paean to capitalism and trade; those are its raisons d’etre. Its whole structure is based on Western-style business, and to abandon such would be all but impossible. The People’s Republic of China has guaranteed 50 years more of status quo, however insecure such a promise may be. Hong Kong, under China, will surely push the continent of Asia closer to the West, but not without some tradeoffs. What’s exciting-and frightening to some inhabitants of the city-is that no one can be sure of what will happen. So without anything really happening at all, Hong Kong has suddenly entered a golden age.

In The New York Times a fickle East Village nightclub owner bemoaned a “dying” New York club scene. His advice: “Hong Kong”-spoken like the man in The Graduate who tells Dustin Hoffman that the future is “plastics”-“the lease runs out in 1997. You can bet those people are having a good time.” Well, they are, or they were when I was there, but I didn’t see anything to challenge the East Village. Still, the man has a point.

I did watch the English rock group Span-dau Ballet film part of a video on the roof of the Regent hotel on the first morning of my stay. My companions and 1 heard that the band was in the hotel, so we wandered up to the roof out of curiosity. The “plot” of the video involved a press conference, and somehow we were asked to play the press.

We had to pass in order to make our harbor tour, but it was fun just watching what we could. Even the five men in the band-who probably have been most everywhere and didn’t seem impressed by much other than themselves-raved about the view of the city and the harbor below. This is an image of Hong Kong I keep: the glamorous rock group on the roof. But there are a few other equally special images. The rows of sampans in the nighttime harbor waiting to ferry diners from one kitchen boat to another for a floating feast. The spotless subway tunnel packed with thousands of people who, for the most part, weren’t bumping into one another. The chrysanthemum flower in my chrysanthemum tea. None of those mental pictures fits into the same frame, but that’s what Hong Kong seemed to be about-incongruity and surprise.

It’s also about shopping and eating, with some of the finest of both in the world. As for the food, variations on the theme of Chi-nese-Cantonese, Szechuan, Pekinese-abound and were foolproof, whether enjoyed in a rinky-dink sampan or at the top-rated Lai Ching Heen restaurant in the Regent. (I acclimated to the Eastern eating aesthetic during the half-day flight over: United Airlines offers inventive and delicious native dishes on all of its Royal Pacific Service Flights.)

The Regent is one of the youngest of several “deluxe” hotels on Kowloon and vies for the title of “best” with its neighbor, the Peninsula Hotel, the colonial grande dame of Hong Kong hotels. The Lai Ching Heen, just two years old, has established itself as one of the finest-if not the finest-Cantonese restaurants in Hong Kong. Our group savored “the chef’s specialties for the ninth lunar month,” according to the menu, a three-hour, 13-course experience that included such treats as shark’s fin soup, fried rice wrapped in lotus leaves and a sweet dessert called chilled almond tea. Less exotic dishes like the barbecued duck were as wonderfully eye-opening, and everyone at the table agreed that the chrysanthemum tea alone was reason enough to move to Hong Kong. That, and the city’s graciousness. Amid Hong Kong’s madness, there is a great tradition of hospitality and service, epitomized by hotels such as the Regent and the Peninsula, but also found in the city’s billion nooks and crannies.

HONG KONG IS actually two main bodies of land-Hong Kong Island and Kow-loon-each curving toward the other to form the magnificent crown of buildings and light that hugs the harbor so tightly. Behind the buildings are mountains. Beyond them, to the west, lies mainland China; to the east, more than 200 islands that are a part of the Hong Kong territory. More than 5.5 million people live squeezed into Hong Kong, and more than half of them live and work on the mere 35 square miles shared by Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. Even a pampered visitor can’t altogether escape the crowds and the crowding. In the harbor, boats crisscross one another’s paths dangerously close; large ships cut foamy trajectories from point to point while the sampans and speedboats scoot about in their wakes. (The regal junks move through the mayhem as if exempt from it.) Buildings nudge at one another like so many bathers at a very crowded beach. Street traffic whizzes and clogs, but never slacks.

Even our quietest evening-dinner on a sampan off Hong Kong Island-involved bumping up against boats and being hustled by strangers. For about 10 U.S. dollars per hour, we chartered a paddle-pushed boat equipped with a table and lawn chairs and plastic lanterns and went gliding through narrow channels up to various sampan kitchens. There we chose fresh fish and vegetables that were cooked before us and dropped on our newspaper-draped table. We went boat to boat for what we wanted, not knowing what we wanted until we saw it. of course-lobster at one sampan, shrimp at another, onions at a third. The beer and soft drink sampan came to us, as did the entertainment sampan, an amusing floating bandstand starring three women performing Beatles hits with the help of an electric organ. Their staccato, lifeless voices were more grating than soothing, but the spirit was right, and anyway, the food was perfect. What an escape-our floating dinner gave us the feeling of being lost among the hundreds of other sampans and larger boats, maybe never to be found.

By the way, the first day’s harbor tour was worth losing a chance for MTV stardom. The congestion of the city, and of the sampans and other fishing boats, evaporates on the open water. The tour provided otherwise inaccessible views of the city and the mountains, seemingly increasing the size and grandeur of Hong Kong. The weaving expedition took about an hour and a half, which, given the area covered, seemed very quick. That too was in keeping with the character of fast Hong Kong. The city is a tease. It guarantees more than you will have time to explore.



WE MADE ONE expedition out of Hong Kong, an hour-long Jetfoil trip to the nearby island of Macau, a Portuguese-governed territory owned by China. This popular day trip from Hong Kong provides a startling contrast to the modern, ever-moving mecca of the city. The island seemed small and knowable, the yang to Hong Kong’s yen for yen. And from a hilltop in Macau you can peer into mysterious China, or cross over for a day trip there.

Unlike Hong Kong, Macau thrives on its history. In Hong Kong, the destruction of what physical history there was has continued uninterrupted in the name of progress and land development. Hong Kong’s property boom spread to Macau some years ago, but was reined in by a concerned government before too much damage was done, and Macau has allowed its 400-year-old history to remain standing just where it was built. Macau is a Latin Orient, a slice of the Iberian peninsula complete with old churches and pastel-colored buildings. We spent half a day driving and walking around Macau, wandering down Avenida Almeida Ribeiro, the main shopping street; visiting the Temple of A-Ma, Macau’s oldest edifice, dating back to the I6th century and the Ming Dynasty; eating an authentic Portuguese meal in Macau’s new Hyatt Regency (one of the few hotels in Macau, and strategically removed from the center of town); and gambling in the Lisboa Hotel casino. While there is probably more money wagered in Macau casinos than in any casinos in the world, they are not fancy like those in Vegas or Monte Carlo. They’re noisy, smoky, tacky, but throbbing with gambling, and for many visitors to Macau they’re the only reason to make the trip.

If you had seen us running around Kow-loon during the several hours before our flight home departed, you would have thought our only purpose in coming to Hong Kong was to shop. We had heard three days’ worth of talk about the fantastic bargains in jewelry, fashion, electronics and silk-so much so that we thought it was going to cost us not to spend money. I swore I wasn’t going to get caught up in it, but there I was- three hours and counting-suddenly desperate for a new camera (I don’t own an old one), eager to try on slacks (torture after days of feasting) and positively obsessed with a friend’s quest for the lowest price on a telescopic lens. It became a game, writing down prices in one shop, running two doors down the street to compare, bargaining (if they say “hello,” you say “hi”), debating, rationalizing. Spending.

My friend got a Nikon lens for a song. I got a Canon Typestar 5 portable typewriter with 20-character memory for about half a paycheck. (I still haven’t used it, but what a bargain!) But there were victories. I bought a Japanese-made sweater that 1 wear all the time. Flying back, I regretted not buying a camera, but now I don’t. To me, photos never quite capture it; they certainly can’t capture Hong Kong, where the images keep shifting.

Here’s another image I have, from the last night of my stay: a moonlit city park illuminated by thousands of paper and plastic lanterns in the shapes of butterflies and fish. This was the Mid-Autumn Festival, a prominent Chinese holiday occurring on the 15th night of the eighth full moon, commemorating a 14th century uprising against the Mongols. It’s a festival of light and good will, and such fields of flickering color can be seen on this night all across Hong Kong. I was in a park Hong Kong side, as they say, surrounded by towering apartment buildings. The semi-tropical autumn air was cool and fragrant, and the lights were fantastic. The throngs of residents had come from their vertical lives to spread out over the parks and streets, no longer teeming, peaceful-for a night. Then…