Not Fog

Every year in the Fall, the winds shift direction. They change from blowing warm tropical air up into HK from the South China Sea to blowing slightly cooler air down from the mainland.

Surrounding HK a few hundred miles to the north are a few Special Economic Zones (SEZs) which are very favorable to foreign direct investment. It is in these zones where many multi-national firms have set up in order to take advantage of the Chinese labor market. This region is often referred to as the "world's factory floor" as these SEZ's are where a large amount of China's exports are produced.

The winds shifted last week and are now blowing down from the north. Along with the cooler air (which I appreciate a great deal) the northerly winds bring with them some pollution, a by-product of the intense manufacturing taking place close to here. To see the discreet change in the air that has occurred only over the course of the last few days has been a pretty profound experience for me. I've been to Beijing, so I've seen pollution before, but this pollution is different. It's not a result of millions of people driving cars and burning coal to cook and keep warm. It's not the result of massive construction efforts or a huge metropolis sustaining itself. This pollution is a result of the cheap manufacturing of goods mostly headed for the West.

Below are two pictures of the same little group of islands that can be seen from campus. They were taken about two weeks apart, both in the middle of the day. See if you can tell which was taken before the winds shifted and which was taken after.

(not fog.)

1408

Bumped into a couple of exchange students today who were on their way out to see a movie. I had just got out of 7 hours of class so decided that some mindless entertainment would be fine.

They had already decided to see 1408, a crappy horror movie where John Cusak does his normal thing as a cynical yet brilliant underachiever and Sam Jackson does his normal thing as piamp. The movie proceeds according to your standard locked-in-a-haunted-place-and-can't-get-out formula with a lot of really sudden noises to make you jump. I absolutely hate movies like this.

It was worth my fare though and I'll tell you why. (Stop reading here if you plan to see this piece of shit.) John Cusak is holding a representation of his daughter, who had died previously of leukemia or some other tragic disease. The ghosts are of course messing with his mind at this point and she dissolves into dust after saying a few creepy things. On his knees amidst her ashes, Mr. Cusak passionately cries out something like: "NOOOOO... I CAN'T LOSE YOU TWICE!!" It was the tear jerking line of the movie, a cheap emotional trick, (come on.. dead children?) and the absolutely predictable point where the protagonist decides that he's mad as hell and sure as beans will find a way out of this mess.

To our surprise, the audience erupted into laughter. We Americans looked at each other and shrugged. It was meant to be the saddest thing Hollywood could think of. One of those cases of cultural ships passing in the night.. I guess that's why you go abroad.

Last Man Standing

Yesterday was Annie's birthday. There's been drinking going on among the exchange MBA's since I've been here, but last night there was a good excuse to really go crazy. We drank for a bit in the dorms in order to blunt what we expected to be an expensive bar tab and then headed out to Causeway Bay at about 9.30pm.

A few of us were hungry so we stopped in for Thai food on our way to the bar. It was by far the best Thai food I have ever eaten.. So authentic that the pad thai wasn't called pad thai. We bought two large servings of fried noodles, a huge plate of chicken skewers with peanut sauce, shrimp spring rolls, and some French bread for about US$30. It was a ton of food for cheap.

Someone had found a bar with a karaoke room and we were allowed to bring in our massive bags of take out. Now here's the kicker. With nine of us we were able to negotiate an open tab.. all you can drink.. for about US$20 each with the birthday girl drinking for free. And they meant it. We had iced buckets of Carlsberg, a bottle of vodka, and a steady stream of colorful shots from the bar brought to us in large trays.

Needless to say we trashed the place.. And by we I mean the frat boy from California. I shudder to think about the outcome if there were a $20 all-you-can-drink bar in the US. I don't think that the damage was totally unexpected though. Toward the end of the night the boss of the place came in and had a few drinks with us. He seemed happy to have gui-lo (honkies) in the bar and not disturbed at all about the state of his karaoke room.

Eventually the cops came and we had to leave. I'm a little bit fuzzy on why law enforcement was involved, but I'm pretty sure it had nothing to do with us. It was very late at this point and the cornucopia of alcohol consumed was catching up with people. The French guy and I were the only ones still functioning, (He claims that Sinatra's My Way is a French song btw which a total lie.) so we herded what was left of our group into a cab and back to HKUST. I'm pretty sure everyone made it back to their rooms although some had to be carried.

Here's a short series of photos that almost tell the story.

Americans Suck

I took this picture on my way to class tonight. As you can see I was in a very fancy mall. I mentioned this in a previous post, but now I understand it a bit better. You can't not go to malls in HK. You have to walk through malls to get where you need to go. They are integrated with the subway system and are basically like normal sidewalks. This is how you cram so much capitalism into such a small place.

Class tonight was really bad. Some of my American exchange student colleagues have a tendency to put ignorance on display. I find myself often embarrassed by a complete lack of sensitivity and courtesy. I experienced this on my trip to China last Spring as well. It seems some American people are incapable of acting like guests.

For example..

During a lecture about the developmental history of China, the prof asked us with a smirk if we had ever heard of Kung Pao chicken. The French guy was lost, but all of us Americans surely had. The prof went on to explain that Kung Pao was a Chinese explorer in the 15th century who traveled around the world on behalf of the emperor. After a trip to Africa, it was decided that his travel was too expensive and that China, as the richest country on earth, basically had no need for the outside world. Thus began a 400 year period of isolationism from which China awoke to find itself no longer an economic superpower compared to Western countries.

As the professor began to talk about the events that shook China from this isolationist state, namely the opium wars with Britain, the American kid from UCLA Anderson raised his had and actually asked:

"Who was General Tso?"

Where's Waldo?

This is a picture that Cortilia took the other day. It says a thousand words about me walking around HK.

Really Big City

Yesterday we made our first real expedition into Hong Kong proper. It was amazing. The trip went something like this..

We left from HKUST on the 91m bus at about 1pm. It was one of those double decker buses like you see in London. The girls thought it would be cool if we sat up top, and I secretly agreed, as looking out bus windows in Asia is one of my favorite pastimes. I can't really be sure, but I think that in HK mostly kids sit on the top levels of buses. At least on this bus, everyone up there was under the age of 16 and wearing a school uniform. There were almost no seats left so I stumbled to the back bench. The ceiling was really low, I am not graceful, and the bus was already moving, so it was awkward. Surrounded by tiny Hongkongese school children, this was one of those moments where I felt like I wasn't really blending in so well.

We arrived shortly at the Po Lam shopping mall which has an MTR station (a green station) beneath it. I was snapping pictures of the apartment buildings that towered above us as we walked up to the mall. There are massive apartment building skyscrapers everywhere in HK. The kind of building that are so tall they make you dizzy if you look up at them. We have zero apartments of that size in Seattle.

We emerged from the MTR at the Wan Chai station. Annie forgot the power chord for her Dell laptop back home in Seattle, so she did some research and found a computer store in HK where she thought she could get a new one. We found the place in a mall on a huge floor of tiny stalls all selling computers and electronics. The tiny stall we walked into was probably only 75 square feet. The walls were lined with computer components and different types of chords. Honestly I thought it would be a futile exercise actually to find the exact right part, but sure enough they had a Dell branded power chord in stock of the exact specifications required. Never underestimate Hong Kong's ability to get you the right good, of Annie's ability to do research on the internet.

We decided to hike up to Central from Wan Chai so that we could check out the heart of downtown and locate the building we would have to return to later for our Econ class. (HKUST has most of it's night classes downtown in order to accommodate part-time students' work schedules.) I was completely blown away by the scale of the city. Every building is huge and elaborate in some way. It seems like the HK's architects have been engaged in a pissing match for decades over who can build with the most style. Style is a big thing here. Not in a bad way either, it's just in the DNA of the city.

We found a restaurant in the guide book and sat down to eat. The place was bright yellow with crazy mirrors on the ceiling and flashing lights embedded into the decor. We ate rice with scrambled eggs and shrimp, vegetable curry (with a fried egg on top), and fried rice noodles with beef satay. It was fracking delicious. Not that I was on the fence or anything, but that lunch was what made me know I love HK.

We needed cell phones to use during our time here. We headed back to the MTR (a red station) and took a quick ride over to Mong Kok in Kowloon. When we emerged on the other end it took a few seconds to get over the immediate sensory overload. Ladies with large signs were trying to hand us fliers, there were people everywhere, and colorful advertising and shops filled our fields of vision. We checked several cell phone vendors looking for cheap phones that weren't too crappy. Heidi tried unsuccessfully to bargain. Eventually we got tired and went to Starbucks to get a boost. Once caffeinated we made our way through a row of tents full of really cheap goods.. mostly stuff for women I guess.. belts, jeans, watches, jewelry, etc. Annie bought a wallet and bargained successfully utilizing the old i'm-walking-away-now tactic. I think she saved two bucks on her $8 wallet. Was it Chanel? nvm. We eventually found cell phones and paid the list price. Oh well.

It was getting late and we still had to get to class. We got back onto the MTR (a blue station) to Pacific Place in Admiralty. We felt lucky when we got off the train and realized that the station was actually connected to the building that our class was in. We felt confused when we emerged from the station into that building and found ourselves in another shopping mall. Apparently malls make up the ground floors of lots of building in downtown HK. And not crappy malls either.. We're talking Gucci caliber malls. After taking a series of zigzagging escalators we eventually found our way to the elevator that brought us to our classroom. And what a classroom. If only the UW would treat us so nice. There was coffee, tea, ice water, and Mentos set our for us, and the huge pane glass windows looked out at the Bank of China building which was doing it's crazy nightly light show. I must admit I felt a little important.

Class went on for four hours. The subject was econ in China. It was interesting and the prof was a very funny Shanghainese guy.

After class we got back on the subway, got off at Hang Hau, and caught a mini-bus back to UST.

The pictures that I took (in chronological order) are here.

First HKUST Snapshots

Some photos of the campus.

Smoking harms your children.

Okay.. I tried to be calm about this but 24 hours in it's wearing on me. The whole damn campus is non-smoking. Had I known this I would probably be in Taipei right now.. Seriously.

That said, I made the hike today to the nearest ashtray/tobacco vendor just off campus and discovered that the Honkongese have the most brilliant scare tactic warning label.

Big Man on Campus

I thought that it would be beneficial to have my flight to Asia take off at 2am, as I figured I would sleep through the hellishly long flight and wake up almost in Taipei. This plan did not take into account the fact that airplanes are designed for midgets and are impossible to sleep on. So I arrived here in HK at about 9am (~5pm Seattle time) having had almost no sleep.

It was actually not a problem to get from the plane to the taxi to HKUST to my dorm room. I was settled into my tiny room by about noon. I walked around the campus a bit looking for a discreet place to smoke (the entire campus is non-smoking) and maybe a place to eat. I was so out of it that all I really found was a bunch of really humid air and some sweaty clothes. By about 2pm I could take it no more. I decided to rest my eyes for a bit and was out for the night.

I got a chance to walk around and take pictures this morning before everyone else woke up. The campus is amazing. It's a little city carved out of a tropical mountainside overlooking Clearwater Bay. It's organized vertically up the side of the mountain. All directions are given according to the 'lift' that a campus destination is associated with.

I'll post more pictures when I figure out how to make my American electronic devices work.