This evening, I'm going to the pub quiz at Bulldogs in LKF, as I've done a few times recently, hoping to regain the form we showed the first time we entered, when we won - we've been mid-table most times since. While searching for their site, I came across a post on a tourist site describing someone's visit to Hong Kong in 2004 - they were apparently here for 3/4 days and a little underwhelmed. Incidentally, and as an aside, should, by a random chance, anyone from Upstart wander by, you might want to have a little look at the Google-friendlyness of that site - having the homepage come about half-way down the second page ain't great, I think, particularly when most of the hits above it are mentions of events which took place there. Anyway...

So, to be fair, the full paragraph the title of this post comes from is:

However, compared to other Asian cities I have visited (such as Seoul, Hanoi, Bangkok, Taipei, Fukuoka), Hong Kong really lacks the Asian character I have grown to love. Except for the the markets and temples, Hong Kong could be any Western city. The food, despite many different varieties, was somewhat bland. There is very little history beyond the last 150 years. The nightlife had a few great spots, but on the whole was a little disappointing.

I do understand the point being made, but I disagree with it - or at least, it's not a fair point. The post goes on to describe walking around Tsim Sha Tsui, eating in the mall next to the hotel, going to Temple Street Market, various bars in Wanchai, Lan Kwai Fong and TST, walking around Sheung Wan, going up the Peak, and for a walk around Hong Kong Park. In London terms, I would consider that similar to spending time in the West End, going to one or two of the city centre parks, and wandering around Soho and Leicester Square, both during the day for local colour, and at night for drinking - and then complaining that London doesn't feel like the country of Shakespeare and the Beatles.

This is not meant to be a complaint against the original poster. Hong Kong is a major world city - it calls itself "Asia's World City" - and is the direct result of 200 years of British control and development of a city which is, and was always, essentially Chinese. The first thing to say, therefore, is that yes, the tourist and and expat-heavy parts of town do feel very 'Western' (being, of course, a completely non-geographic term), because, in a feedback loop, they are the areas designed for and frequented by the tourists and expats. Going a little outside those areas does, quite quickly, show somewhere a lot less western - almost all of Hong Kong is a fusion of western and Chinese, with the feeling dictated by the amount of each in the mixture.

I work, for now, in Tsuen Wan. Going back to the start of this blog, I said that Hong Kong wasn't a city, and mentioned that things in Tsuen Wan are a lot more 'Chinese' than in town, and it's still very true. Walking around today at lunchtime, I looked for a simple thing - the amounts of English and Chinese on shop signs, price tags, shelf displays and so on. It's very clear, very quickly, that with the exception of big chain stores (banks, phone network stores, electronics places, etc.) almost nothing is written in English - apart, slightly strangely, from shop names themselves, which are commonly in both English and Chinese, and not uncommonly in just English. I suspect - although I have no real way of knowing for sure - that until recently, and possibly even still now, there was a certain cachet associated with an English company name, in the same way that the use of a little Latin in the UK gives an air of sophistication. Tsuen Wan is very Chinese - but in a Hong Kong way. I, speaking and reading effectively no Chinese, can still get around quite happily, even if my shopping is a little constrained by the language gap and, importantly, I don't feel like a foreigner. Yes, I'm in a bubble, simply because I can't understand the conversations or signs around me, but a lot of people know a little English, even if it's just enough to say 'hello', name a price, and say 'thank you' - and even if they can't, their cash registers or calculators still use regular ('Arabic') numerals, not Chinese ones. I've been in places - Soweto comes to mind - where I felt like an outsider, a foreigner, and that's simply not the case here, even in Tsuen Wan. Maybe that's a sign of it not being hardcore 'Asian', being too 'Western' - maybe I've been here long enough to feel comfortable in a heavily Chinese (albeit urban) area - but either way, it's not a bad thing, I think. Yes, in the evenings I go out to areas which are mainly expat/tourist areas, but I know that, and I know I can always jump on a bus, tram or ferry and be in 'Hong Kong' in a few minutes.