Dad In Town

This week I was fortunate to have my Dad come and visit me here in Hong Kong. He got in on Saturday afternoon after a flight much like my own, no sleep. On Friday we kept things pretty quiet, just did a little exploring and acclimation with the neighborhood. Dad got to bed early, 32 hours with no sleep will do that to you. We spent the week doing the tourist things mixed in with just exploring everyday life. Hong Kong is an amazing city but in my opinion is not a city with a lot tourist draws, there are sights to see but the main draw of this city is seeing culture unlike anywhere in the world. We did do the tourist sights, we went to the top of the peak on the Peak Tram, this is probably the most well known sight in the city. Another trip we took was out to Lantau Island to see the Big Buddha, this is a massive bronze Buddha that unfortunately is only 17 years old, one wishes something this awe inspiring is an ancient feat of engineering. One of the highlights of the trip out to the Buddha is the cable car ride from the Tung Chung stop on the MTR. This ride is about 25 minutes and takes you out to the relatively isolated home of the Buddha, the ride provides amazing views of some of the housing developments and more impressively views of the airport. I have not talked much about the airport and looking back on that I wish I had, this is truly one of the most underrated features of Hong Kong. In the nineties Hong Kong built and island and put a new state of the art airport there, this project was the largest engineering project of the twentieth century. Before I really start rambling I'll be more than happy to tell the story of the airport to anyone who asks, but now back to the trip. The cable car provides a view of this entire complex that takes your breath away. The Buddha itself is a massive bronze statue if Buddha sitting, this statue is so large that on a clear day it can be seen from as far away as Macau. We saw the Buddha, the peak, our next stop on the tourists list was the Avenue of the Stars, this is the walkway on the Kowloon side that overlooks the famous Hong Kong skyline. This view is very humbling, it is a very imposing skyline, some of most amazing architecture in the world is on display here and we had a prime viewing spot. Probably the last thing that we did that may fall into the tourist category is the trips to the famous markets of Hong Kong, most notably the Stanley market and the night market. These markets go on for seems like forever, filled with everything and anything. While I did not do any shopping, I like to wait until the last minute to do my shopping, last year I did my Christmas shopping on Dec. 24th. My Dad on the other hand found a plethora of things to bring home for a wide range of people, he may have stolen some of ideas for gifts but hey no worries, I'm a resourceful person. Between the markets, the Buddha and all the other sites we found time to explore and walk through all of the major neighborhoods on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. We walked more in those few days than I have in quite some time but I did get to see some of the parts of HK that many don't have the chance to see. For more on these neighborhoods ask me directly as there is to much to write about. On Wednesday night we took part in the local tradition of going to Happy Valley for the horse races, If I have not mentioned it earlier let me say it now, Happy Valley is incredible. This is a massive complex filled football (soccer) pitches and various other athletic facilities all within a horse track. The complex is set in the middle of the city surrounded by skyscrapers and apartment complexes and sticks out like a sore thumb in this concrete jungle. The Happy Valley race course has more money wagered on horses than any other venue in the world, the residents of this city love horse racing and for only $1.13 US admission who could blame them. While I do not bet on horses, not my bag, I tried one race and lost. Dad on the other hand won a little bit on our last race of the night making for a good cap to the evening. We fished of my Dad's visit to HK with a great dinner on Thanksgiving, while it was not turkey, it was great and we went to a local bar and hung with a few of the other people on the trip and just enjoyed the night. It was a great few days and I had a great time during Dad's visit and am now ready to buckle down and get some work done. I'll be home in three weeks, see everyone then

Fin

Yes, it is true. I am done with classes for the semester. This past Thursday was my final day of classes until second semester resumes back at Nova in January. For ten weeks I had class here in Hong Kong and while class can be boring and strenuous at times it was one of the more fulfilling academic periods of my life. The end of the semester came upon me and all my classmates rather quickly and we all found ourselves scrambling to finish papers and presentations for finals week, we all eventually got them done. Myself, being the worst procrastinator not named Laura Collins (Laura on the slight chance you are reading this, you and I both know it's true, I do miss you and everyone else and will see you soon) got my work done with time to spare and can now breathe easy. For those of you wondering why I am not headed home if I done with class, I will now be beginning the third module of my semester here in China, the first two being the cultural seminar and classes being the other. For the third module I will be doing independent research, the topic of my paper will be microfinance as a tool for development in Indonesia, assuming Villanova approves. Hopefully I will get to do some field research in Indonesia and see how microfinance works first hand. Any questions or comments, feel free to ask.

Yankes Win, heee Yankees Win

I'm writing this post as a very happy man, for unless you are dead to the world you will now have noticed that the Yankees have won their 27th World Series title. I woke up this morning as I have been doing for the whole series and headed to a bar in SoHo to watch the game. Myself being the only real Yankee fan on this trip, ie: I'm the only one who cared enough to watch the games, made the daily trip to The Globe (the bar)with a diehard Philadelphia fan in every sense of the term. While he might not share the same views on baseball, Marshall made a good companion for the games. We both cheered all out for respective teams, sometimes to the astonished look of other patrons, and would ridicule the international broadcasters who were the doing the game on ESPN. I must say, I really miss Joe Buck. I don't have much to say in this entry I just wanted to assure everyone that while I might not be in the country I still got to watch the series. 27 is a big number and I only expect it to get bigger. Only 4 months until spring training!

White Power?

No, now before you jump to any conclusions to what the title of this entry suggests I want to say that this is not an article concerning white supremacy or anything of negative relations of race. This is an entry about the everyday facets of Hong Kong life that find their routes deep in the history of this fought over land. Again it has nothing to do with racist views on skin color. It is a look at a piece of life that finds its origins in the history of China.

Now that I have cleared up this title I can movie onto what is really important, the story. When I arrived in Hong Kong, it was hot, sticky and humid. As I wandered the streets exploring the city I found that many people, carried umbrellas with them at all times, it didn't have to be raining or cloudy, people had them when it was hot and sunny. Day after day went by and day after day I would see people put up their umbrella when they entered the sunlight and take it down when they got to the shade, they would repeat the process over and over as they moved down the street, up, down, up, down... Seeing this I just assumed that people here preferred portable shade and never had I given it much thought after that.
Days turned into weeks and soon the umbrellas were nothing more than another obstacle in the daily commute of life. You went under them or around them when people moved too slowly and carried on about your day. In Taipei as it happened, I found myself talking with the rather blitzed Australian I had mentioned earlier in this blog and the topic of the "all purpose" umbrella came up. Now it had been almost two months since the purpose of the umbrella had entered my mind but the Aussie brought new life to the use of this object. Now, please don't think of this man, no matter how drunk he may have been, as an idiot. I know I might have shed a bad light on him earlier but he does do research at University in Singapore and has a pretty good idea about what he is talking about. He told us that the reason the umbrella was used so frequently was to keep the skin white. This tradition we were told was because back when Hong Kong had a large portion of laborers in the field the people who worked in the offices and stores wanted to differentiate themselves from the lower class of field workers. Since the laborers spent the day under the sun their skin became darker and more tan, in an effort not to be associated with this lower class the upper tiers of society did anything possible to stay as pale and white as possible, even using an umbrella at all times of the day. Hong Kong was and still is a city divided by class and those in the upper echelons want do not want to be confused with anyone considered low enough to do manual labor. In modern Hong Kong there is little to no fields to work and most work is done indoors making it almost impossible to distinguish class from skin color. This being the case one would think then that the umbrella would be an obsolete tool since everyone is essentially the same hue. It seems however though that while many people don't even know why they use the umbrella it is something that is so ingrained in the culture that people don't even know how it started, at least most don't. Upon hearing this explanation I was disappointed in myself for not taking the time to come to this conclusion on my own, I think with some real thought I would have figured out the umbrella riddle. This is a culture that was raised on "white is good" and so was ours at one time, it probably stills is to a great extent. I the U.S. however though there has been a slowly growing to what beauty is, no longer is just white. Tan, the idea that scared so many Hong Kongers is something in the U.S. that is now associated with beauty. Will Hong Kong soon follow?

A side note: this idea of white is good might not just be confined to Hong Kong; during my time in Vietnam I saw a few billboards for skin whitening cream. Now this is a country with a great deal of workers in the field and it is probably a good look at how Hong Kong was a hundred years ago.

Hope this article was satisfying, feel free to ask any questions you might have, I'd be glad to answer them.

Non Sequitur! Part Deux

The weather in here in Hong Kong seems to have settled at rather comfortable temperature that makes everyday life quite enjoyable. The weather has settled around 75 to 80 degrees during the day with low humidity. It has also become bearable here at night where before you couldn't two blocks without breaking a sweat, now it is possible to make to your final destination with only mild discomfort. People say the weather here is only going to get better and I am quite happy it is cooling down. I will say though that I miss the slow cool down of autumn and the eventual cold chills of Thanksgiving. It will be interesting stepping off the plane in December after 5 months in a relatively tropical climate, hopefully by annual adaptation to winter won't be affected and I can continue relishing in the ice cold weather that bothers so many.

The Elderly- Hong Kong is a city with a large population of senior citizens, at least my neighborhood is. While I have not spent nearly as much time in NYC as I might have liked I have noticed in my time there that there is a large population of residents over 65, maybe I'm missing something but the subway never seems to be filled with people you have to surrender your seat to or have to walk around because they are moving to slow. This may have to do with the long standing tradition of senior citizens heading down to Florida to relax and not pay as much in taxes. Yau Ma Tei is quite different; it seems that you can't go through one stop on the MTR without an elderly person looking at you coercing your seat from you. It is quite interesting to see the elderly sprinting from the door to the seat to beat the others from the generation for a spot. One thing that was mentioned to us during our orientation here is that many elderly people from greater Hong Kong and mainland China move into the city whereas in the states it would seem to be the exact opposite.

That's all I have for today's post. Hopefully more will come soon.