"Home on the Range"
Knee How Mah, my Persistent Peligrinos!
Woke up and opened the broken blind of my cabin, saying what my father said for years, after hearing it on a radio talk-show: "It's a great day in Chicago!" Except I didn't honestly know where I was. All I saw were more of my beloved tugs:
Once I got off the ship and got my (ball) bearings, there we be: the MV Explorer in Hong Kong!
The first best thang to do is take the Star Ferry across the harbor; it's as cheap and historical as the Staten Island Ferry in NYC. Here, take my hand and I'll help you onto the gangplank:
HK is an architectural paradise of sorts, but many people don't always find that "beautiful" and "comfy" mix here. You be the judge. Let me stroll you around:
I won't risk boring you with the history of each building, but here's a famous one built so that it can be taken apart and re-located anywhere it needs to be:
Have you seen this building before?:
The old and the new try to pal up, as best they can; can you see the squatty former city hall, at the feet of these steel and glass giants:
Look again at this photo. Any city with severe verticals needs relief from the vertigo and claustrophobia:
As we speak, hard work's afoot to fill in more of the harbor through a system of locks, to make more ginormous towers:
And whether it's Central Park in NYC, or other, smaller ones in Hong Kong, open, green spaces matter. We find them by following the trees, many in bloom:
Here's one of my faves:
In case you forget:
The many fountains of Hong Kong create a happier soundscape:
Flowers provide color, fish movement:
And those of you like Lesti and Jim, who have a tortoise addiction, can get a daily fix from that cliche of turtles on a log:
As you can see in this photo, the parks sort of extend out to wide sidewalks, with plenty of trees.
The ever-present banyans, casting their ten thousand, rhizomatic cousins across the walls at the edge of the parks, also provide a sound barrier:
In the tradition of the Jian, that wizard who makes a garden more "natural than nature," there is art at the edge of the parks, even on the walls:
Of course, there's also the tracery of the empire, with detailed signs about who/what must not be in the park:
Here's a statue of the closed fist, sign of white flag:
Perhaps the best way to view the big green U of the harbor, with its skyscrapers, boats and ships is to ride the funicular train up to Victoria Peak. Follow me. First we'll go up an quasi-ingenious, short-term solution for commuters who live higher up, and work below—a very long escalator:
Let's get on the train:
It's a foggy day, but we can still get the long-view of the city:
As you can see, I'm actually taller than these buildings:
Looking the other way, there's a smidgin of nature left:
Let's go back down to the city center and take a ride on the old double-decker buses:
From across the harbor on the ship, there's a macro view of the building you ought to recognize as the one Batman jumped off in the last movie:
Yet, high as it is, it's still far behind four other buildings, including the monster being built in Du Bai, which should be the new Tower-O-Babel, looking for a lightning storm. When Frank Lloyd Wright designed his mile-high skyscraper, the main problema was actually the pressure on the plumbing. These days the heat and plethora of buildings in Shanghai is causing weird convection currents of turbulence between the expanding towers.
I passed a theater, and wondered, as you might, what the audience would make of W:
But if the run-o-mill Chinese may not know much about W, how much do we Norte Americanos know about China's leader, ———————(fill in name here).
Care to stop into a neighborhood Buddhist temple?
Walk with me to the altar:
It's going to take us awhile to burn all this coiled incense, so you might as well jump down a photo and say a little pre/post-pagan prayer (the ancestor worship is allowed here, along with Buddhism):
Feeling a might peckish after all that praying? Then let's stroll by some markets, so you can pick up a snack:
How about a bite of Peking Duck from Hong Kong?:
Escargot, anyone?:
Squid?:
Fish?:
Hanging around the markets is also the way to capture more pix for my lazy dog fetish:
And with very little space for garbage, there's always the world's most prominent and maddening scavenger:
Here are a few more things I decided not to buy any of you:
The gas and water main covers continued to provide me with material for my design coloring books:
If you're in the mood for conversation, you might join all the Fillipino nannies, who spread their blankets downtown, under a skyscraper near the ferry, on Sundays—their only day off:
After buying Chinese hip-hop, jazz and pop music at Rendezvous Records, I did a little window-shopping and imagined myself as a Cantonese gangster—kind of like Christopher Walken as The Continental on Saturday Night Live—in this nasty smoking jacket (if only I'd had enough petty cash to add it to my theme-party prop fund):
Walking alongside the harbor, I visited the film-star Walk-O-Fame. For some reason my mitts were muy mas grande than Jackie Chan's or Jet Li's:
Look carefully and you'll see the disturbing and inseparable comparison between the Greenman and Bruce Lee:
Thinking of the family Empire, I took the obligatory picture of palm trees that will need replacing before we know it:
Nearby I took a picture of the famous Penninsula Hotel para mi hermano Jorge, who was once there. Now it's mostly for Chinese bazillionaires having massive tea parties. I scored some free cookies before the concierge gave me that look that means the same thang in every culture, roughly translated as "scat!"
Continued my hand photo fetish with a pic of this quilt:
And, in the fancy mall next to the pier where the ship docked, I found the bizarro and ridiculous collision of cultures that explains the animosity between the British and the Chinese during their colonial spats. My theory is that it all has to do with potty training. The Brits begin that even before the baby's born, while Chinese babies run around without diapers for a few years. So in the men's room at the mall, beyond the old-style holes in the ground for adults, I found this nearly Disney oversized playroom for children:
Back at the ship, night was falling, and we had taken on enough bunk fuel to head for Shanghai. I played pool with some of the students in the Whale Pub, which had decent draft beer. And there were a few games of back-alley ping-pong, where I really was King Kong playing ping-pong in Hong Kong.
I'm up here on the crow's nest as we head out to sea, ready to give a loud shout when Shanghai looms up...
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