Small Space Livin'

Self-portrait taken in the living room of our flat. The street construction is happening immediately below the windows pictured along the back wall. You can see our ity-bity, cute, two-person couch. My editing suite (i.e. Tim's desk that he kindly lends me during the day) is directly behind me, in front of the desk chair with the JP Morgan towel draped over it. Our wardrobes are also in the main room, as there is room for only a bed in the bedrooms! I really like the amount of light and breeze we get in our place. It is refreshing and homey despite its small size!

This bathroom wins the award for smallest toilet-shower-sink combo ever. You have to do a little dance around the toilet to close the bathroom door and also to rinse off when you are showering. The drain in the wall doesn't really work so our policy is water-on only while you rinse; when you suds up, you have to turn off the flow otherwise you'll end up with a flood! The sink, funny enough, gets more water on the floor than in the bowl. It is a hilarious set-up.

This is our bedroom, which is outfitted by IKEA sheets and a down comforter. I can't complain about the cheap and trendy household products, they look nice, but I do wish IKEA would build their stuff to last. Half of what we've bought there has broken already. The left frame of the picture is where the wall starts in our room, so we have about a foot and a half of space between our bed and the wall. It makes it interesting when they are two people in the room. You kinda get stuck in there!

Our kitchen. It is a boil-only operation at this point. You may be surprised to learn that this one is actually a lot bigger than most of the kitchens I saw when we were apartment hunting. It makes our kitchen back in our house in Bozeman look absolutely HUGE.

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I remember when we moved into our apartment, our Chinese roommate Tim told us that when showing the place to other foreigners who were looking for a room to rent (or "to let", as it's often called here), he always attempted to first calibrate their expectations. "People want something clean, quiet, and spacious," he told us. Laughing in short bursts, he gave us his reaction to their quest, "You can't find that in Hong Kong. Not possible."

Case in point, in terms of cleanliness, I must say that apartment hunting in this city was an adventure, complete with ventures up and down narrow, dingy, dark stairwells; peering though cracked panes of glass that remotely resembled bedroom windows, complete with dust-coated sills, and witnessing paint flaking off white walls, falling into stained kitchen sinks and coating floors with a layer of fine dust. To be honest, the whole ordeal, which was supplemented by shady property owners and rental agencies, bordered on horrific at a few select moments in time. Couple that with the hostel we stayed in our first five days here (that unfortunately for us, increasingly smelled of sewage in the evenings, perhaps due to the rising temperature), and you can imagine that we were pretty desperate to find a place, anything really, that was better than what we had.

But don't get me wrong. There are actually a ton of posh penthouses and high rise apartments complete with doormen and swimming pools for the super rich. Hong Kong's population demographic, at least in terms of economics and personal finances, seems to be extremely stratified. Overall the city seems devoid of the poorest of the poor...there are no bulging bellies on babies, no children in rags. But you do see street vendors making roasted chestnuts and waffles on mobile kitchen woks fueled by charcoal and open flames at all hours of the day (and night) on area street corners, along with thousands of Filipina domestic workers, who are employed as maids in this town, flooding parks and highway underpasses on Sundays (their only day off), coexisting right alongside all of this wealth.

Peter and I were talking about this phenomenon the other day and decided that if you're not exposed to excessive amounts of wealth in your daily life per se, you don't know really know what you're missing, and consequently don't desire to own such extravagant items. Well, at least we didn't. Transplant yourself to Hong Kong, and it's an entirely different matter altogether. High-level consumer consumption hits you like a ton of bricks. I'll get back to this in a second. But first, let's backtrack a moment to our life and home in Bozeman to put things into perspective.

In Montana, we live a fairly simple life. I'll give a few examples to illustrate: 1) Half of the plates in our house are mis-matched, a conglomeration of numerous roommates' kitchenware in conjunction with some hand-me-downs from my grandmother, mostly chipped and cracked, but they hold a high sentiment value. 2) We're a one-car family. Our vehicle of choice: a 21-year old truck, yup that's right, a 1988 Toyota 4Runner, black in color, but the bands of brown rust around the rims and bumpers seem to ever encroach on the doors and panels. Most of the time, I don't even drive it, and elect instead to walk or bike around town. It's a great, low-carbon footprint method of getting around, although it's nice to have the car available when we need it. The 4Runner is usually reserved for shuttling hoards of friends and piles of camping gear out of town for weekend rafting trips on the Yellowstone, or for making trips to the grocery store in the winter, when icy roads make biking with groceries hanging from bags on the handlebars a bit perilous. We also love to drive the 4Runner up into the mountains and park it next to some hot springs in the dead of winter, put the seats down, and camp out inside the car. It's become one of our favorite weekend dates. 3) Unlike most people in town, we don't own a TV. We don't own expensive ski equipment. Both Peter and I buy used clothing at the local trift store in town, "Sacks," which donates a percentage of its proceeds to a women's center in town that assists sexual assault victims.

Now fast forward to Hong Kong and our minimalist lifestyle has suddenly, and very blatantly, been challenged. There are Bentlys driving around our neighborhood. Walk to the nearest shopping mall and you'll find store after store filled with glistening watches, diamond studded necklaces, knee-high leather boots, ornate hand bags, and designer clothes. Names I only knew from magazines are plastered across skyscrapers: Giorgio Armani, Louis Vuitton, Chanel, Prada. Suddenly we find ourselves wanting things we never wanted before. Is it a desire to fit in? Peer pressure? Angst over these huge and blatant disparities in wealth? A feeling of dismay at suddenly being relegated to the bottom end of the totem pole? Or perhaps just a pervasive feeling like we can't really participate in this little world here, since most of it's inaccessible to us?

Alright, I think I've exhausted the "clean" category and even managed to embark on a considerable tangent. So now back to Tim's statement of "clean, quiet, and spacious not being possible in HK." Example number two: quiet...or rather, the inability to find quiet in this bustling metropolis...while it had the appearance of being a sleepy little neighborhood on the Sunday afternoon when we first visited, King Street (where we live) and the surrounding grid soon exploded with machinery and noise. Street construction started outside our apartment just a few days after we moved in and still continues after almost 6 weeks of jack hammering though cement.

In additional to the construction, our neighborhood, while undergoing the process of gentrification, maintains a lively local clamor. You can find some nice wine shops, Asian restaurants boasting contemporary Vietnamese, Thai and Japanese food, and salons in the area, but it is the scattering of local shops that still really leave their mark on the place. Our neighborhood has a completely different feel from some of the expat hangouts we frequent downtown. Just around the corner from our building, for example, there is a little Chinese restaurant that I walk by every day on my way to the MTR (subway). Old men sit on red plastic stools and play cards all morning, and eat fish garnished with oil, peppers and chives at lunch. Come evening they are still sitting around talking over a few bowls of rice and steaming noodles. There are also a large amount of car repair garages and mechanics in our neighborhood. This seems to be the area where every single taxi driver in HK comes to get his vehicle serviced. So we definitely didn't get lucky in the quiet realm. You can escape up to the Peak or the surrounding mountains and beaches to hear the birds sing and to find some peace and quiet, but it doesn't really exist in our neighborhood. Be prepared to wake up at 6 or 7am to the sound of various mechanical operations, unless you're a sound sleeper, that is.

Last but not least, example number three: the notion of finding a spacious abode....well, just click on the IKEA website in Hong Kong and you'll find a whole section devoted to "Living in Small Spaces." In some ways it's been really good to come here and to realize that you don't need as much to get by and that the amount of space that most Americans have become accustomed to in their homes is really excessive in terms of how the majority of the world's population lives. I've learned this lesson before, but it is nice to be reminded, because every time I return to the States, I seem to slowly forget this notion over time. Here in Hong Kong, however, you really can't own, or aspire to own a ton of possessions because there simply isn't room to store them! I must admit I like the fact that I use up way less resources here in my daily existence. Speaking of using less resources, it's 2:30am, time to turn off the lights and head to bed.

More soon!
J

Rainbow Seafood

Here are some more photos from our hike on Lamma Island with Kelly and Christine. We had a fantastic seafood dinner in a little coastal village before heading home.

Photo captions (top to bottom):

Old vs. new. Once you start looking for it, you notice this juxtaposition a lot in HK. You can see the skyscrapers in city of Aberdeen, on the SE Coast of HK Island, in the background. Who knows, maybe these boats in the foreground off the village of Sok Kwu Wan on Lamma Island were used to catch our dinner! According to the Lonely Planet Guide, there are also many rafts in these waters that have cages suspended from them for farming fish.

Peter at Rainbow seafood restaurant.

Yum, prawns! These had a honey pepper glaze on them. Peter thinks food photos are disgusting, but I guess I've become too much of a foodie, I like them! These prawns were so delicious!

This is the "before dinner" pic. This little village, Sok Kwu Wan, had restaurants lining its shoreline and along with them came tank upon tank of seafood creatures, kept alive right up until the moment before cooking. Lots of brightly colored fish, lobster, clams, scallops and more!

This was an incense offering outside of the Tin Hau Temple (1826) on the path leading up to Sok Kwu Wan. I made a mistake by buying only one stick...when there were clusters of three set up.

"Just Friends" and other internet forays

I never thought I would resort to making friends online. Maybe resort isn't quite the right word, it's just I've never really done the online thing before and wasn't quite sure what to think of it. But after spending a week alone in Hong Kong while Peter was away in China, most of which was spent inside my apartment working on my computer and coming into little or no contact with other human beings, I started to get a little desperate for some socialization. So I decided to take the situation into my own hands. I set up accounts on some social sites, like MeetUp.com and AsiaXPAT and started cruising around the "Just Friends" sections. My post was pretty simple, "Hi, I'm an American girl in my late 20s who just moved to HK. My husband works in China during the week and I am hoping to meet some friends to hang out with. I like going to cafes and restaurants, watching movies, working out, hiking, beaches, boating and exploring! Let me know if you'd like to meet up!" Initially I was a little sketched out and worried that I might meet some weirdos online, but making arrangements to meet women in public places seemed like a pretty safe bet. That's not to say that there weren't some strange posts in the "Just Friends" section. One started off with "I am a vary prety girl looking for someone to show me around the city..." Spelling errors included. Hmmm.

I have started to meet some awesome people here, though, which is the good news. There are two really cool American women that I've been hanging out with as of late, in addition to a few Chinese girls, a Puerto Rican girl, and hopefully soon a Swedish girl (Louise and Jonas, I'm still trying to meet up with Sandra!) My perspective on meeting American friends abroad has really changed. When I was studying abroad in South America during college, I tried to spend as much time as I could with Ecuadorians and Chileans, largely because I really wanted to improve my Spanish and also to learn about the culture of the host countries I was living in at the time. You can have a night and day experience if you go to a foreign country and hang out with Americans, or conversely if you hang with the locals. But I'm definitely finding that hooking up with other expats has its merits. It seems like I automatically have a lot in common with other Americans who have chosen to leave the motherland: a love of travel, a strong interest in other cultures and languages (not to mention international cuisine!), an open-minded mentality, global perspective, and a real sense of adventure!

Hearing about some of these women's work experiences in Hong Kong and the corporate environment has been very enlightening. I'm particularly fascinated by my friend Christine's job: she moved here from San Francisco to take a gig with a small NGO that works with torture victims and refugees. As she put it, she could never have gotten a job like this back in the States, just four years out of law school, but here in HK she is actually advising the government on creating a policy for dealing with these human rights cases. Not that they necessarily take her advice, but how cool to be able to work with government officials to try and shape or change policy. Right now the situation is pretty horrific: the HK government basically assumes that all these claims are fraud (a "they just want money from us" mentality) and ships these people back to their host countries as fast as they can, just to be tortured again. Yikes. Maybe with Christine's influence, they'll start to develop a policy that at least provides a way to analyze and assess these cases, instead of just defaulting to automatic deportation.

It's also been really interesting to hear Christine's perspective on what it's like to be an Asian-American in Asia. Turns out, it's not as easy as you might think. Her parents are originally from Taiwan and she speaks Mandarin, but Hong Kongers speak Cantonese, which is one of eight dialects of Chinese. Here arises the first problem: everyone assumes upfront that she understands the language, which she doesn't (Cantonese pronunciation and vocabulary is totally different than Mandarin, so it's basically like a foreign language). Second problem: if she tries to speak Mandarin, she sometimes faces racial stereotyping, as Hong Kongers tend to look down on the "Mainlanders" (mainland Chinese). She was told it was actually better if she spoke English here -- crazy! Third problem: some Americans back home have this idealistic notion that she is going back to her roots by coming here, when she has lived her entire life in the States and doesn't identify with being Chinese at all. Last problem: being mistaken for a prostitute. Christine is divorced, but her ex-husband was Caucasian. To put this into context, in these parts you see a lot of white guys totting around pretty Asian girls. It's very common. So people thought she was her husband's hooker, rather than his wife! Sounds like it would get really annoying, not to mention degrading, after awhile!

Getting back to the subject of Cantonese, I have a funny story to tell you that Christine told us when we were hiking on Lamma Island over Halloween weekend (see the photo captions for info on that trip, it was our first island excursion!!!) Anyhow, have you ever wondered why there are so many Asian musical prodigies? Well, this may be one reason why. From birth, Chinese speakers acquire perfect pitch. The ability to distinguish tones is essential to be able to communicate in both Mandarin and Cantonese. Let me explain: in Mandarin there are four different ways to pronounce the vowel "a", or four tones, so-to-speak. For example: there are rising tones, falling tones, neutral tones, and so on. (Cantonese is even harder: nine tones!) What that boils down to is if your pronunciation is not absolutely perfect (i.e. exact pitch and rhythm), you end up saying a completely different word.

I debated for a long time which language to try and learn. Cantonese is spoken throughout Hong Kong by 7 million people. However, Mandarin is spoken on the mainland by 1.3 billion people. In the big scheme of things, it's probably a lot more useful, but hard to learn here because I don't hear it spoken that much in my everyday life. In any event, while I'm meeting up with a Chinese girl named Helen on Fridays (I'm helping her "fine-tune" her English to improve presentations she gives for work, while getting some basic Mandarin instruction in return), Christine is attempting to learn basic Cantonese. She was telling us how a friend of hers was helping her learn numbers, which she repeated after he said them to her. She got to number "four" and tried to mimic his pronunciation (the word is "sei"). He said, "No, that's not right, you just said "shit"! Listen again and try to say it." She repeated the word a second time, again to her friend's dismay, who said, "No, now you just said "die"!" So what's the take home message here? If your Chinese pronunciation is off, you might just tell someone to "shit and die." I think I'm staying far away from the number four. At least in Cantonese.

Signing off for now.
JJJ

Lamma Island Stroll

Photo captions from Lamma Island excursion (top to bottom):

Peter with Christine (L) and Kelly (R), our two new American friends. Christine came to HK from San Francisco after taking a job working for a NGO that provides legal assistance to refugees and torture victims. Kelly is a consultant. She launched the BBC in Singapore before coming here. They are both really cool women!

Our hike wasn't exactly a wilderness adventure -- the "family trail" was paved and a mere 4km in length. But it was a lovely little excursion into the outdoors all the same, complete with gorgeous views of the island and the seaside, and some nice beaches! Lamma Island is the closest inhabited island to Hong Kong Island. ~5,000 fisherfolk, farmers and ex-pats call this place home.

Street Scenes

Photo captions (top to bottom):

A beautiful little Cantonese girl rides the tram home after school. These cars roll along the main drag on the northern coast of Hong Kong Island.

These double-decker street trams date back to 1904. They are my favorite form of transit here. A bit slow at times, but you can't beat the cost - 25 cents a ride - or the views of the city.

Hmmm...street food. This particular stand displays their menu only in Chinese characters. Most of the items I can't identify. But everything I've tried has been good so far, as long as you don't mind not knowing what you're eating.

A local favorite consistently draws a crowd. As displayed by the woman pushing the wheelchair, you don't leave home without a mask if you have a respiratory infection.

Greetings from Hong Kong!

This is the start of a little travelogue about my new abode, which I am slowly starting to fall in love with after some initial adjustment battles waged against the likes of property managers, pollution, and what I'll call "the masses."

I am in a unique position here in Hong Kong. I am not simply a tourist because I live and work here, but I don't have a business visa that legitimizes my work per se or Cantonese colleagues to go to happy hour with after the business day closes. I make my own hours and work out of my small and increasing noisy apartment (gotta love the escalating street construction and repairs going on directly beneath my living room window!) I'm here working with a small team of biologists and filmmakers that make up the group Untamed Science. We spent the last six months traveling across the US filming a series of short science videos for middle school kids. Highlights included mushroom hunting in South Carolina, whale watching in Washington, and white water rafting in Utah. After shooting wrapped, I picked up my laptop and loaded nine hard drives into a roller carry on bag and hauled them halfway around the world with me to embark on a few months of intense editing in a new and exotic location: Hong Kong.

Peter's job is actually what brings us here. He designs camping gear - sleeping pads and waterproof bags - for a company called Pacific Outdoor Equipment (POE). POE was started initially by a Chinese family and all the products are made at a factory in Foshan, China. The closest big city is Guangzhou, a city of 10 million people in southern China that is essentially a HUGE manufacturing center. Factory row. Yeah, that's right, it's where all our stuff comes from...or a significant chunk of it, anyway. POE also has an office here in Hong Kong, where we've set up home base. It's a bit of a commute to the factory, 4-5 hours via train or bus depending on how fast you make it through the border, but we decided get an apartment here because Hong Kong is an absolutely amazing place, comparable perhaps to New York, while Foshan/Guangzhou is like, well, Gary, Indiana or Detroit. Hong Kong is also a lot easier to get around and I have a lot of freedom here. Since it was a British colony for so long (Hong Kong was officially handed back over to China in 1997), there are lots of "round eyes" around here, as they're jokingly called, so no one stares at you. English is also one of the national languages, in addition to Cantonese, which is a dialect of Chinese, so many signs, store displays, and restaurant menus are all bilingual. I also have free roam of the internet! I didn't know that was a luxury until I came here. Sites like Facebook and YouTube, and maybe even this blog - pretty much any websites that give you an avenue for personal expression - are all banned by the Chinese government and inaccessible in Foshan.

But back to Hong Kong. We are now in the midst of what will be a 3-month initial stint in this glitzy, cosmopolitan metropolis, where the East meets West and neon signage, luxury shopping malls, and a myriad of finance towers coexist alongside open air street markets filled with designer fakes, sex toys, live animals, unidentifiable dried sea creatures and medicinal herbs. It's a bizarre combination, to say the least. The climate is warm, humid and breezy, with tropical vegetation from the surrounding mountains encroaching on the city around every turn. Fig trees love to grow out of cement here! The air is thick, often smelling of dried or raw seafood, and the exhaust from diesel buses and ferries hangs in the air. In the late afternoons the streets are filled with school children in white uniforms and plaid skirts, and business men and women sporting chic office attire. Hair gel, dark square plastic frame glasses, and Blackberries are all the rave. Pink and purple button-down shirts for men seem to be a fashion must, and women like high heels, leggings that come down to mid-calf, and very very very short skirts.

Hong Kong is a city that seems to be on a never-ending march towards growth and development. They absolutely love the wrecking ball here. I've seen a few old pictures of what this place looked like in the late 1800s and early 1900s - absolutely gorgeous - but 99% of the colonial architecture from that era has been knocked to the ground and built over, paving the way for taller and taller skyscrapers. There are still a few colonial churches and tiny Buddhist temples tucked in between a smorgasbord of often unremarkable and deteriorating high rise apartment buildings, but you have to know where to look for them, otherwise you might just walk right by.

HK is not just building up, they are also building out. "Land reclamation" is a fancy way of saying filling in Victoria Harbor. While in many ways their environmental record seems a bit atrocious, they recently implemented legislation that imposes a fee on plastic bags at the supermarket. The cashiers at the "Wellcome" store wear aprons with the words "Say "No" to Plastic Bags" on the front, and it seems to be working. As minimal as the 2 cents surcharge may be in the grand scheme of things, it guarantees that I don't forget my canvas bag anymore when I go to the store!

For better or worse, money makes this city go round. Every other person I meet here seems to work in the financial industry, sharing a save money, work long hours, and get ahead mindset. I had a Mandarin lesson yesterday from a Chinese girl named Helen who expressed great surprise upon hearing my tales of volunteering in Kenya with Engineers Without Borders. She claimed that global citizen mentality doesn't really exist here.

The lack of volunteerism set aside, Asia is completely exceeding my expectations and then some at this point. The cleanliness, organization and efficiency of Hong Kong society is stunning. People are very kind and respectful. They arrive to appointments early. Instead of shoving to board buses and trams before passengers have disembarked (completely the norm in Africa and South America), they wait patiently in single-file lines at bus stops. A "stand on the right, walk on the left" rule is observed by all escalator passengers traveling down to the MTR trains. Parks stay open late at night, are well lit, patrolled by guards, and very safe. Photography is a favorite pastime enjoyed by many, so it is very common to see expensive SLR and digital cameras slung around the necks of the very young, the very old, and everyone in between. And no one steals your stuff. I love it.

More coming soon!
J

Initial Adventures in the Land Where East Meets West

Photo captions (top to bottom):

Even in a bustling Asian city, Caucasian faces (and bodies) dominate the advertising. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why skin whitening products are so popular here.

Evening view of Victoria Harbor and the Kowloon side of Hong Kong (New Territories).

I'm just a 10-minute walk from the heart of Causeway Bay, which is one of the main shopping districts on Hong Kong Island. This place never sleeps.

Despite being a very dense city, Hong Kong boasts some beautiful parks. This is Victoria Park, which is just north of where I live. I like to go jogging here in the evening.