Hong Kong 2009-10

2010-10-18T14:11:00.001-07:00

Below is the journal I kept during the year that I was a Fulbright scholar teaching history at the Hong Kong Baptist University. In addition to my teaching duties I was part of a team of US scholars that advised Hong Kong universities on the development of their general education curricula in preparation for the transition to a four-year undergraduate program. I arrived in Hong Kong on the evening of August 28th, 2009 and departed August 12th, 2010. Since this is no longer an active blog, the entries have been rearranged in descending order from oldest to most recent.

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Morning in Victoria Harbor, Hong Kong

Arrival and First Days

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September 9, 2009 — I arrived in Hong Kong on a direct flight from Newark, NJ on the evening of August 28th and have been here for about a week and a half. My first impression of Hong Kong is that it is one of the most extraordinary places I have ever seen. Even before I touched ground I was able to get a good sense of how stunning this city really is. My flight came in southward over mainland China and banked eastward just past Macau to circle the city before landing at the international airport. If I had come here a few years earlier I would have had the thrill of buzzing the apartment buildings of Kowloon in a harrowing landing at the old Kai Tak Airport right in the middle of the city. Though deprived of that opportunity, I did manage to get a full view of the city when the plane made a sharp turn for a westward landing right over the harbor. We landed at dusk so I was able to see the city lit up while there was still enough daylight to notice the contours of the buildings and mountains. What I saw is one of the most breathtaking skylines in the world (not an easy thing for a New Yorker to admit). It is just starting to sink in that I will be living here for nearly a year.

I am spending the year on a Fulbright scholarship specially designed to help Hong Kong universities make the transition from a three-year undergraduate curriculum to a four-year one. This change stems from a government directive to standardize degree requirements at all Chinese universities. Now that a decade has passed since the handover of Hong Kong from Britain to China, the universities here have been given a deadline of 2012 to complete this transition. Since Hong Kong had such a smooth transfer of government in 1997 I suppose the bar has been set high for the educational system to do the same. The expansion of the additional year will focus largely on enhancing general education as a component of university curricula, many of which are still mainly pre-professional. My role in all this is to serve as one of the members of the Fulbright team of professors from US universities and colleges who are here to advise the HK institutions about developing their general education programs. My colleagues and I were chosen because of our experience in developing and maintaining these sorts of programs at our home institutions. We are each assigned to a different university but will be working together closely and visiting all the universities together to consult with them about their programs. In addition, we will each teach a course or two in our specialty at our host institutions. It is an ambitious undertaking in which we are involved and will undoubtedly require a lot of hard work. Yet, for me at least, this is the opportunity of a lifetime, both professionally and personally. I had always hoped to be able to visit Hong Kong and East Asia and now I will be able to live and work here for an entire year at an exciting time in the expansion of higher education in the city.

For the next twelve months I will live in an area called Sha Tin in an apartment provided by my host institution, the Hong Kong Baptist University. The apartment is in an eight-story building (a dwarf by HK standards) located at the end of Sui Wo Road which winds to the top a hill that is higher than most of the surrounding high-rise apartment buildings. From my apartment there is a commanding view of the entire Sha Tin valley (see below). My building is in an industrial neighborhood called Fo Tan that is part of the larger Sha Tin area located in the New Territories on the northern side of a mountain ridge that separates it from Kowloon where I work. Apart from its wholesalers and auto repair shops, Fo Tan is gaining a reputation as an artist colony (cheap rents for studio space) and definitely merits a closer examination once I get settled and get my bearings.

During the weekend I had the chance to explore my neighborhood and get to meet some of the other residents in my building. There is an outdoor swimming pool in the complex where many of the tenants and their families congregate on warm days. It has been incredibly hot and humid since I arrived and I really wonder how anything got done in this city before the invention of air conditioners. Indeed, the weather has been the hardest adjustment for me since I arrived. It is exceedingly uncomfortable to walk outside, especially when dressed for work. During the day I find myself moving back and forth between steaming heat and humidity outside and cold, dry air-conditioning indoors. I am told that the weather will slowly start to improve as the autumn progresses and, in fact, this weekend was noticeably better than the previous one. The weather this weekend was just bearable enough that I was able to walk around each day for a few hours and get the lay of Fo Tan and Sha Tin. After several meandering trips I managed to find a supermarket, taxi stand, dry cleaner, post office, and a Catholic parish with an English mass on Sunday. Gradually I am starting to feel settled in my new home.

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View of the Sha Tin Valley from 22 Sui Wo Road
9 September 2009

Happy Birthday, China

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October 9, 2009 — It has been exactly one month since my last entry and nearly six weeks since I first arrived in Hong Kong. By now my daily life has settled into something of a routine: morning commute to the university on the Eastern Line MTR followed by a day of meetings, lectures, and admin work at HKBU or with my Fulbright colleagues at other universities. In the evening I usually go out to dinner with new friends or pick up some take-away on the way home (I’ve cooked only one meal in my apartment since I arrived). The ubiquity and ready availability of amazingly good food—whether at five-star restaurants or streetside noodle shops—is huge disincentive to cooking at home. I have really grown to appreciate the variety and subtlety of Cantonese cuisine and will now probably never again be satisfied with Chinese food in the US. But the most remarkable part of my first few weeks in Hong Kong is the ease with which I have settled in here and begun to feel at home. In this city I have become accustomed to levels of convenience, service, and efficiency unlike any I have experienced elsewhere and which will surely be hard to leave behind when that time comes.

One new item that I can add to my list of life experiences is taking off in an airplane in the middle of a typhoon. On September 14th I was scheduled to fly out to London for five days to attend a conference. Initially I was worried that my flight would be canceled because the news that afternoon was that the Hong Kong Observatory—the city’s meteorology service—had issued a “signal 8” typhoon warning (whatever that is). This was for “Typhoon Koppu” which was due to make landfall that evening. As the afternoon progressed the sky darkened and the wind picked up, but all the trains and buses were still running and when I got to the airport the flights were still departing as scheduled. So I checked in and waited. By early evening the rain had arrived and it was almost impossible to see out the window of the terminal as sheets of water slammed against it. By now I was certain the departure would be delayed but the plane boarded on time and, despite the fact that we could feel the wind shaking the airframe, we pulled away from the gate. As we taxied to the runway the only thing I could see though the window were the strobe lights of the other planes lined up to take off. When we lifted off, the plane was tossed around quite a bit and there was a lot of lightning but once we got above the storm it was a smooth and quiet flight. It was amazing to think that the HK airport was still open and functioning through it all. In the US a similar storm would have closed all the airports and created major delays. I still haven’t concluded whether or not this is a good thing.

Since arriving in HK, I’ve been through a few typhoons and the people seem to handle them without too much fuss. The standard drill is to go home early from work or school, close up all windows and bring in flower pots, garden furniture and other outdoor belongings, wait out the storm, and then go outside the next day, clean up the mess, and get back to work. I suppose it’s the same attitude that residents of Buffalo or Minneapolis have toward snow storms: a fact of life that must be dealt with and not something that should prevent people from going about their daily lives. To be honest, I’ve come to appreciate the typhoons since they tend to blow out several days worth of hot, humid and polluted air and the weather is always nice afterwards, if only briefly. Maybe I just haven’t seen a bad typhoon, and will change my mind when I do.

Apart from the London trip last month I have been here the entire time. My office is at HKBU but my work often takes me to other universities around town. I really enjoy that my job allows me to move around and become familiar with different parts of the city. For such a relatively small area, Hong Kong has a striking diversity of environments. These range from the unmatched urban density and vertical growth in the north side of Hong Kong Island and Kowloon on the one hand and the mountains, lush forests and rural and seaside villages of the New Territories on the other. During the last few weekends I have managed to see quite a bit. I’ve explored the markets and alleyways in Mong Kok and Tsim Sha Tsui, hiked along the mountainsides of Shek Kong, dived around the islands off Sai Kung, and visited the monastery and giant Buddha in Ngong Ping on Lantau Island. Every day is a new discovery and most of the places I encounter will require many return visits for me to fully appreciate them. Even better is that in the intervening month since my last entry, the weather has improved considerably. It is actually pleasant to be outside nowadays, especially in the evening.

Last Thursday was the sixtieth anniversary of establishment of the People’s Republic of China. The occasion was marked by a massive parade and military review in Beijing and speeches by Hu Jintao and other Chinese leaders. The preparations for the parade left nothing to chance. Security was extremely tight and the international airport was shut down for three hours during the parade. Tens of thousands of soldiers and dancers practiced their routines for months in anticipation of the big day and the Chinese air force even seeded the clouds with silver nitrate to prevent rain storms. Yet the people of Beijing were discouraged from coming to the parade and were told to remain home and watch the event on television rather than on the street. In fact, the whole event seemed to have a made-for-TV feel to it. Sinologists in the West debated the true intent of the display. Some said the overt militarism was a sign to the world that an ascendant China is poised to embark on a more aggressive foreign policy while others argued that the display was meant mainly to bolster pride and a sense of unity among China’s diverse population.

In Hong Kong the anniversary was met with mixed reactions from the local people. Since the handover in 1997, Hong Kong has been a “special administrative region” within the People’s Republic. The British may be gone, but Hong Kong still retains its own currency, legislature, an independent judiciary, and a relatively free press. “One country, two systems” is the mantra one constantly hears, yet it is not clear to what degree Hong Kong people associate themselves with the mainland—at least politically. Like most things in this city, the answer to this question probably depends on the individual being asked. However the general trend seems to be a carefully cultivated sense of indifference to displays of PRC patriotism. In Hong Kong on Thursday there were a few official flag raising ceremonies but nothing compared to the meticulously choreographed pomp and pageantry in Beijing. The big event here was a spectacular fireworks display over Victoria Harbor—which I was fortunate enough to see from a 22nd floor apartment of a friend of a friend (see below). The celebration certainly highlighted China’s rising power and its new self-confidence, but it also underscored the still ambivalent relationship between Hong Kong and the mainland.

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Fireworks display over Victoria Harbor
PRC 60th Anniversary Celebration
1 October 2009

Life in the Fragrant Harbor

2010-10-18T13:41:00.000-07:00

October 28, 2009 — Before Britain’s victory in 1842 in the First Opium War, the name “Hong Kong” (香港 “Fragrant Harbor” in Cantonese) was how locals referred to the inlet between what today are known as Hong Kong Island and the Kowloon Peninsula. Until that point, the place had been a sparsely populated string of fishing villages along the coast and a few farming communities further inland. Some of these walled villages in the New Territories, like the ones in Fanling (see below), are still preserved as heritage sites. In its earliest days, Hong Kong was a geographically isolated and unimportant area compared to the nearby Chinese port of Canton (today Guangzhou) and the tiny island of Macau on the Western end of the mouth of the Pearl River Delta, which by then had been occupied by the Portuguese for almost three centuries. The undeveloped island on the eastern end of the delta was relatively insignificant and ceding it to the British seemed a good way for the Chinese to keep those troublesome, drug-pushing gweilo (“foreigners,” also “devils”) at a safe distance. From then onward the British began to use the name Hong Kong to describe the entire island that was now theirs. In 1898 the British gained a lease from China over Kowloon and the New Territories, thereby substantially increasing the size of their colony to 407 sq. miles. In 1997 the Hong Kong territory (no longer a “colony” in the truest sense) was handed over by Britain to the People’s Republic of China—or “reunified with the motherland” as the mainland Chinese insist. Today, over seven million people live in Hong Kong, making it one of the most densely populated places in the world. It would have been unimaginable a mere century and a half ago that the muddy banks of the Fragrant Harbor would become the foundation of one of the world’s greatest cities and a center of the international economy. Even now, Hong Kong never ceases to amaze.

Monday was Chung Yeung (重陽節), a festival held on the ninth day of the ninth month in the Chinese lunar calendar. The “double nine,” as it’s sometimes called, is an inauspicious date (too much yang) and many Chinese try to counteract it by engaging in such auspicious and worthy activities as climbing mountains, drinking chrysanthemum wine, or visiting the graves of ancestors to pay their respects. This weekend Hong Kong’s cemeteries were packed with the living as well as the dead, as thousands of families came to burn incense sticks and make other offerings to demonstrate their filial piety. There is no parallel in western culture, though it reminded me a lot of el Dia de los Muertos in Mexico when people leave candy skulls on the graves of their departed family members. It is also similar to the Tet festival in Vietnam that is celebrated during the lunar New Year. Many of Hong Kong’s cemeteries and mausoleums are located on the sides and tops of mountains and so the limited number of roads and paths were jammed with people. Because of the crowds the police closed off many of the roads to vehicle traffic, but this prompted complaints from the elderly and disabled who claimed that they could not walk such long and steep routes to visit their dead relatives. Maybe next year there will be shuttle service.

One of the more striking aspects of life here is the incredible attention given to public health. All day long one sees people going about their daily routines wearing surgical masks. These include waiters, chefs, librarians, receptionists, preschoolers, and hundreds of commuters on the buses and MTR. Public handwash stations are everywhere, not just at hospitals and clinics. Elevator buttons have plastic covers accompanied by signs declaring that these are wiped clean every two hours. Indeed, Hong Kong is regularly sanitized by an army of cleaners—many from the mainland—equipped with towels and disinfectant spray. Their ubiquitous presence ensures that most public spaces are spotless and, if possible, germ-free. But the health campaign relies on propaganda as much as Purel. Commercial time devoted to public health announcements is as common on Hong Kong TV as ads for Viagra and Cialis are on American TV. Viewers here are constantly reminded to keep sick children home from school, cover their faces while sneezing or coughing in public, and keeping their vaccinations up to date. Much of this no doubt owes to the worldwide onset of the H1N1 flu, but residents I’ve spoken to say that Hong Kong’s obsessive cleanliness really began in 2003 when the SARS epidemic broke out. That was one of the worst crises ever to hit the city and it really spooked the otherwise sanguine people here. The current H1N1 pandemic, by comparison, seems like it is being met with calm vigilance and the confident reinstatement of practices that were first employed to meet a much deadlier threat. For the record, I am being a good citizen and carrying a bottle of hand sanitizer in my backpack at all times and using it regularly. A practice that in other countries would mark me as a squeamish and pampered tourist now serves to help me assimilate with the locals. When in Rome…

The other health concern, unfortunately, is one about which nothing can be done: namely, the air quality. Hong Kong air is highly polluted. While much of this comes from local vehicle traffic, overall the city is energy efficient and relatively “green” for such a densely populated place. Most people use mass transit and conserve electricity whenever possible (air conditioners in the summer months excepted). The real problem is across the border. The province of Guangdong is one of the most industrially developed in China, which nowadays would make it one of the most developed in the world. Hundreds of factories and power plants along the Pearl River Delta spew a constant stream of smoke into the air which drifts southward over Hong Kong. The result is a haze that lingers over the city and never goes away except briefly after a typhoon (though it is not nearly as bad as Delhi or Mexico City). In my time here, I’ve noticed that one rarely sees a blue sky even when it is sunny all day. The best one gets is a washed out bluish gray or hazy white. Many of my photos from vantage points like Victoria Peak or the cable car on Lantau Island have a bleached look to them and colors that seemed vivid at the time come out dull and lackluster. Longtime residents say this recent development can be blamed entirely on China’s meteoric rise as an economic and industrial power. They insist that as recently as fifteen years ago Hong Kong residents would see the end of the typhoon season usher in several months of sunny weather with cobalt cloudless skies. While the Chinese government is beginning to introduce pollution reduction measures, it will be a long time before the bright blue skies of Hong Kong’s autumn and spring return, if ever. Meanwhile pollution levels continue to break records. Last Sunday was the highest ever recorded (174 on whatever scale they use) and people were warned to stay indoors. Indeed it is a cruel irony that the Fragrant Harbor of all places should suffer from such foul air. It would be like one of the most polluted and industrial regions of the US being named the “Garden State.” Can you imagine?

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A walled village on the Lung Yeuk Tai Heritage Trail
Fanling, New Territories, 17 Oct 2009

Home, Sweet Home

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November 6, 2009 — On July 1, 1997 at midnight, Hong Kong was handed over by Great Britain to the People’s Republic of China. After 155 years of British colonial rule, the Fragrant Harbor was once again formally part of China. The handover ceremony was presided over by the Prince of Wales and Chris Patten, the last governor of the territory, and attended by Jiang Zemin, the Premier of China, and Tony Blair, the newly elected British prime minister. Amid a monsoon downpour a British military band played “Last Post” (complete with bagpipe solo) as the Union Jack and Hong Kong colonial flag were slowly lowered. Moments later, a Chinese regimental band struck an especially spirited version of the PRC anthem as their national flag was hoisted. Alongside it was the new flag of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, an attractive design with a white bauhinia (Hong Kong orchid) set in the center of a field of bright red. The rain could not dampen the spectacular fireworks display over Victoria Harbor that began shortly after midnight, yet it was hard to describe this occasion entirely as a celebration. The handover, or “reunification” as the Chinese insisted, was met with mixed feelings by Hong Kong’s residents. While few of them embraced the elegies and nostalgia of the misty-eyed British community (many of whom had spent their entire lives in Hong Kong), they also viewed the territory’s incorporation into communist China with tremendous anxiety. It was a mere eight years after the Tiananmen Square uprising and at the height of Beijing’s hostility toward Taiwan, its “renegade” province. While Deng Xiaoping had earlier promised that Hong Kong’s autonomy and special role as a gateway to the West and capitalist powerhouse would be respected, nobody knew for certain what would happen when the British departed. Once the handover ceremony was done, the British delegation boarded the royal yacht HMS Britannia and sailed away at the same time that trucks and buses filled with soldiers of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) crossed into the territory from the now unguarded border post at Shenzhen. When the sun rose the next morning, Hong Kong appeared no different than the day before, but it was the dawn of a new era.

I have arrived in Hong Kong over twelve years after the handover and so I can offer no personal “before and after” observations about the territory. As an historian of the British Empire, I must say that I regret I never had the chance to visit Hong Kong in its former incarnation as a remnant of empire. Hong Kong has always been a puzzle both to those who ruled it and those who made it work. When the British took over in 1842, there were only a few thousand residents in the territory. Most of the seven million people who live here today are Cantonese-speaking Chinese whose ancestors migrated here from Guangdong and other regions of China once Hong Kong was already under British rule. They made a conscious choice to come to a part of China ruled by the gweilo. For their part, the British in Hong Kong administered (rather than ruled) a chaotic and prosperous mix of British, Chinese, and Indian entrepreneurs. The British—at first, more often Scots than English—governed with the usual mix of social insularity, military heavy-handedness, and attitudes of racial and cultural superiority. Yet they also eradicated piracy in the region, initiated an ambitious series of public works projects, and established a legal system based on English common law in which contracts were enforceable. All of this was good for business and Hong Kong soon became a regional commercial center to rival the Straits Settlement (now Singapore) and the great treaty ports of Shanghai, Tsingtao, Tientsin, and the other British outpost at Wei Hai Wei. Hong Kong thrived and its freedom (economic, if not political) attracted thousands of Chinese immigrants as well as the Sikhs, Gurkhas, and Irishmen who guarded the territory and the Parsis and Iraqi Jews who helped found its financial system. It is hard to believe that such titans of international finance as HSBC (the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation) and Hang Seng started out as small mom-and-pop operations in a tropical backwater, but that is how it happened.

To their credit, the British had the good sense not to try to fix something that wasn’t broken. The mystery of Hong Kong’s success continues to be debated, but as far back as the nineteenth century the British adopted a colonial policy of economic non-interference—perhaps a more successful version of the “benign neglect” shown toward the American colonies in the eighteenth century. The Chinese in Hong Kong chafed at their racial exclusion from high office but enjoyed the protection of a relatively honest and impartial legal system. By the late twentieth century, most of the racial prohibitions were gone and Chinese civil servants served at the highest levels of the Hong Kong government. On average, its residents enjoyed a higher standard of living and fewer economic regulations than people in Britain, so Hong Kong could not be considered a colony in any real sense. More importantly, throughout its history Hong Kong’s British keepers had mercifully shielded the territory from the worst horrors of modern China’s tumultuous and tragic history: among these the Taiping Rebellion, the warlordism of the 1920s and 30s, the civil war between the Kuomintang and the communists, the famines of the Great Leap Forward, and the insanity of the Cultural Revolution. The exception, of course, was Japanese occupation during the Second World War (more about that later). Yet toward the end of the twentieth century things in China were improving—somewhat. While the Beijing leadership in the 1980s and 90s seemed to be shedding its atavistic hatred for capitalism, it showed no signs of tempering its centralizing and authoritarian style of government anytime soon. The certainty and stability of British non-interference, such as it was, now functioned on borrowed time (perhaps it always had). Even as the countdown toward 1997 was well underway, nobody could say for certain what would come after.

The flow of capital and people out of Hong Kong in the run-up to 1997 never approached anything like a panic, but it was not insubstantial either. Hundreds of millions of dollars were transferred into banks in Europe, North America, Taiwan, and Singapore while thousands of Hong Kong’s wealthier residents bought property in New York, San Francisco, London, Vancouver, Sydney and Taipei. Some of them hedged their bets even further by taking advantage of their status as British subjects (while it lasted) to attain British citizenship. Ultimately, however, their worst fears did not come to pass. Hong Kong today is more vibrant, prosperous and stable than at any point in its history and its people continue to enjoy a substantial (though incomplete) degree of political and economic freedom. Officials in Beijing, like their British predecessors, seem eager to avoid killing the goose that lays the golden eggs. In fact, as far back as the establishment of the PRC in 1949, the communists saw the benefit of Hong Kong as a link to the West, especially during the days when Red China was otherwise virtually cut off from the western world. Perhaps more importantly, they want to reassure Taiwan that reunification with China can occur peacefully, amicably, and with the retention of substantial political and economic autonomy and historical distinctiveness. Taiwan has always meant more to Beijing than Hong Kong and thus a deft handling of Britain’s former colony may set the stage for a more important reunification sometime in the not-to-distant future. “One country, two systems” might easily become “one country, three systems.”

And so Hong Kong continues to thrive. Mainlanders, western expats, and immigrants from other parts of Asia are arriving in record numbers. Some, like me, are transients, but many are here to stay and all of us need a place to live in a city where the population density is greater than almost anywhere else in the world. In overall terms of people per square mile, Hong Kong would seem to be less dense than cities like Calcutta, New York, or Sao Paolo, but one must keep in mind that almost ninety percent of Hong Kong’s dry surface is unoccupied. Hong Kong is no Gotham, nor is it an endless grid of urban and suburban sprawl stretching to the horizon. A satellite image of the territory reveals that most of the land is mountainous green and a scattering of islands; amid this green, patches of gray show the dense urbanized clusters. A similar image of New York City, by contrast, shows mostly the gray of concrete, buildings, and asphalt dotted with a few green squares and strips where the city parks are located. Likewise the tremendous sprawl that is characteristic of Los Angeles, Delhi, or Mexico City is a geographic impossibility in Hong Kong. To expand, Hong Kong has no choice but to grow upward rather than out, yet even this can only partially offset the intense demand for affordable housing. The key term is “affordable.” Not everyone here is wealthy and the legions of cleaners, maintenance workers, restaurant staff, taxi drivers, municipal employees, nurses, shopkeepers, and their families also need places to live. While this situation is similar to other notoriously expensive cities like London and New York, in Hong Kong it is even worse. The working and middle classes are left scrambling while the super-rich pay exorbitant sums for the best accommodations. Last week an anonymous purchaser paid the equivalent of US $56 million for an apartment in a new ultra luxury tower on Conduit Road in HK Island (I’m guessing it comes with a parking space, but you never know). Real estate speculation here is especially reckless and the oscillating waves of boom and bust are a well-established pattern. The plummeting value of property in Hong Kong over the last two years would make overheated markets in the US like San Diego and South Florida pale by comparison. Many property owners here are heavily mortgaged and are hoping just to recoup their lost value. Lately the government and private sector are both warning that Hong Kong’s emergence from the worldwide recession has already started to inflate the next real estate bubble.

For decades the government has taken an active role in ensuring adequate housing for a growing population on the territory’s limited space. At the end of the Second World War thousands of Chinese from the mainland crossed over into Hong Kong and these numbers increased even further with the communist victory in the civil war in 1949. The impoverished newcomers settled in large, overcrowded slums in Kowloon and the New Territories—many of these were built precariously on the slopes of mountains. A catastrophic fire in 1953 in Shek Kip Mei killed hundreds and led to the clearance of the slums and a massive project to build high-rise flats in their place. Even now the demand for low-rent housing continues. This problem was the focus of the recent policy speech by the chief executive Donald Tsang (that is his actual title; there is no “mayor” of Hong Kong). Mr. Tsang tried to assure the city’s residents that subsidized housing would continue, but everyone knows it will be hard to fill such a pressing need. Indeed, the law of supply and demand is not something that needs to be explained to people in Hong Kong.

In the end, the only solution seems to be designing residential buildings that squeeze the most possible cubic space out of the least amount of square footage of ground. The result, not surprisingly, is row upon row of very thin and very tall apartment blocks (see below). Despite their impressive stature, however, many of these buildings are not much to look at. They tend to be squalid and functional structures with little or no artistic flair. Their faded, rust-streaked and crumbling concrete or tile exteriors are pock-marked with ugly window unit air conditioners and fans while makeshift clothes racks hang from the balconies. In a way, though, I find these buildings and neighborhoods strangely appealing. Despite their ugliness they have character and a kind of humanity; this despite their being built on anything but a human scale. The ground floors are often rented as commercial properties and are occupied by rows of shops and small businesses. The dozens of stories above them are teeming with people and echo with babies crying and dogs barking while the streets below are crowded with shoppers and merchants. Parks are always filled with children playing games and middle-aged and elderly residents doing their daily tai chi. Yet these many details, both good and bad, are not noticeable from afar. In fact, on a grand scale the combined effect of dozens of these tall, thin, gleaming white (again, from afar) structures set against a backdrop of pristine green mountains makes for one of the most stunning cityscapes anywhere in the world. I am lucky enough to have such a view from my flat. Though I may be starting to feel like a “Hong Kongese,” the truth is that I have been spared one of the more onerous rites of passage for new arrivals: namely the search for an affordable place to live. My flat is provided by my university and it was empty and ready for me on the day I arrived. It is spacious and fully furnished with three bedrooms, three baths, a balcony, a laundry room, and access to a pool and gym. I have never lived alone in such spacious accommodations and that I have a flat like this all to myself, in Hong Kong of all places, is really amazing. It will be a sad day indeed when I have to pack up and leave it behind.

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Hong Kong high-rise apartment blocks (look closely)

♫ Everybody was Kung Fu fight-ing ♫

2010-10-18T13:34:00.000-07:00

November 11, 2009 — Chinese people rarely say “no.” Of course, they often mean “no” but merely prefer not to say it. I have asked around as to why this is and the closest I can get to a clear explanation is that “no”—as a concept and a word—is simply too blunt and confrontational to be culturally acceptable. Chinese society is deeply rooted in Confucian values and philosophy which emphasize the preservation of social harmony. This is achieved through proper moral conduct by the individual and respect for one’s place and duties within various social hierarchies (family, community, school, workplace, etc.). One logical outcome of the promotion of social harmony is that affirmative or seemingly affirmative replies to a request can have a wide variety of meanings. When one hears “yes,” one has to decode from tone and context whether it really means “yes,” “maybe,” “no,” or “hell no!” A colleague of mine explained that the most tried and true ways of saying no without actually saying no include “I will give your excellent suggestion the most serious consideration and get back to you” or “I think it would be best if you did [something other than what you have expressed a desire to do].” This is not meant to be disingenuous but is merely an acceptable way of communicating that you can neither have nor do what you want, but in a respectful manner that saves face for both parties. Of course, this subtlety is not readily obvious to the less-than-delicate sensibilities of most Americans and can be extremely frustrating until one figures it out.

Cultural differences notwithstanding, communication is generally not difficult in Hong Kong. English is widely spoken and it is easy to get by without knowing any Cantonese. In the old days under British administration, English was the sole language of government and most schools used it as the primary medium of instruction. Immediately after the handover, there was a push to promote Chinese (Cantonese, specifically) and schools shifted to that language. But people soon realized that not instructing children in English was putting them at a considerable disadvantage given Hong Kong’s international profile. It soon became clear that Hong Kong people would not be well served in international competition by embracing linguistic provincialism, especially since at that same time mainland China was aggressively promoting English instruction to make their educated citizens as marketable and competitive as possible. Nowadays the linguistic profile of Hong Kong involves three languages: English, Cantonese, and Mandarin. The last of these is actually called “Putonghua” here in China. Apparently Deng Xiaoping did not like the word “Mandarin” since it connoted elitism and class consciousness—neither of which had any place in a true people’s republic—so he ordered the change. Officials in Beijing want Hong Kong people to learn Putonghua since everyone is now part of the one China, but in keeping with their overall approach to the territory they are not pushy about it. In general, Hong Kong people speak English when they need to but prefer Cantonese. There is no longer any stigma of inferiority in speaking their own language (unlike in the colonial days) and Cantonese dominates while English is an indispensable second language. In fact, the latter remains the lingua Franca (or lingua Anglia, more accurately) in law, business, and diplomacy.

Yet not everybody speaks English. In certain parts of Hong Kong it is unusual to hear a word of English spoken or to see signs in anything other than Chinese characters. When one crosses Victoria Harbor from Hong Kong Island to the Kowloon Peninsula it seems like a transition from an international hub into the real China, and moving further into the New Territories even more so. In Sha Tin, where I live, it does feel like a foreign country. I am usually the only gweilo in the market or on the bus and I regularly encounter people who cannot speak a word of English. At times this can be frustrating, but in general I quite like the immersion in Chinese society and am happy to live where I do instead of in some expat oasis on HK Island or Lantau.

The only solution to the language situation for a gweilo like me is to try to get a handle on Cantonese. In the first month I was here I enrolled in a special Cantonese class offered by my university for visiting faculty. I was excited about learning a new language and hopeful that I could add Cantonese alongside Hindi and Swahili on the list of languages in which I can just barely communicate. Yet on the first day of class it started to sink in just how impossibly difficult this language is. Cantonese has nine tones across which any one word has nine completely different meanings. Most words have only one syllable and are not complicated—except, of course, for those damned tones. My problem is that I never know what I am actually saying, even if I get the word right. Because many words have such different tonal meanings, Cantonese is a language in which it is virtually impossible for the novice not to embarrass himself or give grave offense. On average, if I remember a word I still have only a one-in-nine chance of saying exactly what I intend and an eight-in-nine chance of saying something else. And because Cantonese uses Chinese characters (which we are not learning) even if by some miracle I am able to become conversant on the most rudimentary level, I will still be hopelessly illiterate.

My Cantonese class is very international. Our group of students includes three Americans, an Irishman, a German, an Indian, an Italian, a Czech, an Australian, and two mainland Putonghua speakers (for whom Cantonese is almost as difficult as it is for westerners). Our instructor has the patience of Job, the skill of whoever the woman was that taught Helen Keller, and a wonderful sense of humor—the last of which is much appreciated. My experience of struggling with a tonal language like Cantonese has given me a heightened degree of empathy for immigrants to the US who strive to learn English (another notoriously difficult language). I do not hold out great hope that I will learn more than what is commonly referred to as “survival” or “taxi cab” Cantonese. Actually, I am managing to pick up a few words and phrases just in my everyday routine. I learned how to shout out my stop on the bus only after the driver blew past my apartment building a few times. In the market, I have found that a command of numbers and a few choice words can really bring down the price. Finally, for what it’s worth, I’ve also learned my Chinese name; it is 大衛 (pronounced “Daai Wai”). Are you impressed?

Last week I was asked eagerly by a colleague if I intended to participate in the upcoming university talent show. I waffled a bit and then, in appropriate Chinese fashion, said I would get back to her (see, I’m learning). Later that day, I received a mass email message advertising the talent show and encouraging all who could sing, dance, play an instrument or do kung fu to sign up. That’s right, kung fu. In the US that last pitch in a talent show announcement would be a lame attempt to be clever or funny; here it is not. Martial arts are a big deal in Hong Kong—not surprising, really. The chair of my department is a martial arts expert and schools here offer a wide range of courses at every level and in various types. Many people of all ages are really into it. I am not. The best I might offer the talent show is a few verses of the 1974 chart topper “Kung Fu Fighting.” ♫ Everybody was kung fu fight-ing; ♫ those cats were fast as light-ning. ♫ In fact it was a little bit fright-ning, ♫ but they fought with expert timing…♫ Since I can’t sing, though, maybe even that might be asking too much from me. In any event, I’ll leave the talent to the locals.

The fascination with kung fu, if not the skill, is something to which even we gweilo can lay claim. In the late 1960s and early 70s kung fu became an international sensation. Much of this owed to the peerless fame of Hong Kong legend Bruce Lee. The martial arts film star elevated what had been a staple of Hong Kong cinema for decades into a worldwide phenomenon. Films like “Fist of Fury” (1971) and “Enter the Dragon” (1973) have become classics in the genre and helped inspire the American TV series “Kung Fu” starring the recently departed David Carradine. Bruce Lee was the consummate master of his craft, whether it was martial arts or filmmaking, and he remains the source of enormous pride among the people of Hong Kong. Adding in no small measure to his legend is the fact that he died suddenly at the age of 32. Forever young like James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and other cultural icons cut down in their prime, Bruce Lee went out at the height of his fame and physical prowess. Expert timing, indeed. In the years since his death Bruce Lee has remained easily the most famous Hong Kong resident ever. His pride in the Chinese culture and philosophy that was the foundation for his martial arts success has made him beloved by Chinese in the mainland as well as in Hong Kong. In 2005 an eight-foot-tall bronze statue of Bruce Lee was unveiled on Hong Kong’s “Avenue of the Stars” along the waterfront in Tsim Sha Tsui. After numerous requests to the government to honor the star had fallen flat, the Bruce Lee Club turned to private donors and the money came pouring in from fans across the world. The statue shows the master in his classic kung fu pose from “Fist of Fury” with his back to the harbor and a view of the city skyline behind him (see below). Quite impressive, really. However, as with the Venus de Milo or Mona Lisa, one can rarely get a clear view of him through the gaggle of local and international tourists crowded around taking pictures.

2010-10-18T13:32:00.000-07:00

Statue of Bruce Lee on the "Avenue of the Stars"
Kowloon Waterfront, Tsim Sha Tsui

Macau

2010-10-18T13:15:00.000-07:00

December 11, 2009 — It has been exactly a month since my last blog entry; normally a sign that I have been busy, distracted, and on the road a lot. In that time I’ve become a regular passenger on the ferries that go back and forth across the Pearl River Delta. My first trip into mainland China began on Nov 16th when I took the ferry from the China Terminal in Hong Kong to Zhuhai just north of Macau. I went there with my Fulbright colleagues to attend a conference and to give a presentation at the United International College. UIC is something of an experiment; it is an undergraduate college founded four years ago as a joint enterprise between my host institution, the Hong Kong Baptist University, and the Beijing Normal University. It aspires to nothing less than becoming the first liberal arts college inside the PRC. The faculty and staff are dedicated to this mission but they face serious challenges. These range from fundraising (a concern of private colleges everywhere) to dealing with the PRC Ministry of Education and its demand that the curriculum conform to the Communist Party’s political ideology. I will be back there in the spring as a visiting lecturer and I’m eager to see how they meet these obstacles. If they overcome them, and if their example takes root in China, it will indeed be an extraordinary milestone in the history of higher education.

A week after my first visit I returned to Zhuhai to meet with UIC administrators and to give another presentation to the faculty. Afterward, I left the campus and was driven to the border crossing at Gong Bei where I cleared passport control and crossed into Macau. It is interesting that even though Hong Kong and Macau are now part of the PRC the process of moving back and forth between these two places and the mainland still feels like crossing an international border. Foreigners can visit these two “Special Administrative Regions” without getting a China visa but once there they must get such a visa to cross into the mainland. Visitors go through passport control and customs each way. This reality (inconvenience, more accurately) underscores the point that status as an SAR is not merely symbolism but has actually allowed Hong Kong and Macau (the former especially) to retain a substantial measure of autonomy and distinctiveness in East Asia apart from the mainland. For me, however, it has meant a lot of visas (and fees) and passport stamps for someone who has technically been within the borders of the same country for nearly three months.

I arrived in Macau to attend an international symposium on Jesuit education held at the Ricci Institute. The institute is named for the sixteenth-century Italian Jesuit who came to Macau, founded the Jesuit China mission, and then traveled to Beijing to present himself to Emperor Wanli of the Ming dynasty. Ricci was the first European to enter the Forbidden City and remains a strong symbol of cross cultural contact between eastern and western civilizations. The symposium was enjoyable and some of the papers were interesting but many of us in the audience had to wear headphones for simultaneous translation of presentations given in Chinese. These translations were often fragmentary and confusing and my relatively childlike attention span was tested to its limits.

Although I timed my visit to coincide with the Jesuit education symposium, the real reason for this trip was to see Macau and to spend some time with my college roommate and his family. My friend Matt was my roommate for three of the four years I was at Georgetown. When we graduated he was commissioned into the Marine Corps while I went into the Navy. We lost touch over the years but recently reconnected. For the last couple of years he has lived in Macau with his wife and young daughter and works there as a finance director at the Venetian Hotel and Casino. He was generous enough to put me up in a very posh suite at the Venetian for the two days I was in Macau and then he and his wife treated me to an insider’s tour of this fascinating place. As a visitor, it was impossible for me to do Macau justice within the forty-eight hours I was there and I am already looking forward to many return visits.

Macau, like Hong Kong, is very much a cultural hybrid, but one with a much longer and more notorious history. The Portuguese were the first westerners to establish a permanent presence in China (note to Italians: Marco Polo’s brief visit in the thirteenth century hardly counts—no disrespect). The Portuguese took over Macau in 1557 and set up a colony and trading station there after they were ejected from the Chinese mainland. Thus the European presence in Macau (and China) predates that in Hong Kong by nearly three centuries. Portuguese traders, missionaries, and sailors set up shop in the tiny colony and built it up in their image. Macau soon joined Mombasa, Hormuz, Goa, and Batavia as the last link in the great Lusitanian merchant empire of the sixteenth century. The narrow streets and sunny praças of old Macau were marked by stately Iberian government offices, elaborate Baroque churches and convents, and luxurious villas with the requisite wrought iron grills, blue tile work, pastel stucco walls, and red clay tile roofs. In particular, the façade of St. Paul’s Jesuit church (the rest of the structure burned down, see below) is a masterpiece of Mediterranean splendor, but there are many other examples as well. Macau, it seems, has done a better job than Hong Kong of preserving its architectural heritage. This likely owes to the fact that its economy never thrived to the same degree nor did the desire for innovation and improvement ever take root here as it did in HK. There was simply not the same energy or money to clear away the old and make room for the new. In any event, many older buildings escaped the wrecking ball and the city has kept much of its distinctive Old-World style and charm.

Artistic expression in Macau is not limited to architecture. In its heyday it was a rich enclave of Lusophone culture and religious ferment. Luis vas de Camões is said to have lived there and written part of the great Portuguese epic Os Lusiadas (The Lusiads) while residing in the balmy colonial outpost, though there is no actual evidence that this is really true. Even now, the street signs and storefronts are still in Portuguese as well as Cantonese, although these days very few Macau residents can actually speak the former.

As in other Iberian colonies, the religious profile of Macau bore the firm stamp of Roman Catholicism. Yet in the beginning the Church’s most fervent fishers of men were not of one mind about how best to cast their nets. The Jesuits believed that the doctrines of the church were not incompatible with traditional Confucian values of filial piety, divine right of Chinese emperors, and some Chinese folk religious practices. The Dominicans took a harder line and declared these practices idolatrous and considered any accommodation by Catholics to be heresy. In the early eighteenth century Pope Clement XI sided with the Dominicans and the resulting enforcement of stricter ideology led to a substantial diminishing of missionary success in China. Of course, Macau remained firmly Catholic.

To their credit, the Portuguese were probably the least racist of any European colonizers. As the years passed, the overwhelmingly male Portuguese minority readily intermixed with the Cantonese majority and produced a mestiço community called “Macanese.” Some of these people still exist in Macau and preserve their own unique customs and traditions. Macanese cuisine, in particular, blends the best of Portuguese and Cantonese flavors and the ubiquity of great restaurants, markets, and pastelarias along the streets and alleyways of Macau easily matches anything offered by Hong Kong. Overall, the blending of cultures is both extraordinary and seemingly effortless. Indeed to walk through old Macau is to have one foot in Canton and the other in Lisbon or Porto.

Yet the recent history of Macau was not always as pleasant or tranquil as the local culture would suggest. By the beginning of the twentieth century, Macau was a soporific little backwater weakly controlled by the Portuguese and overshadowed in every way by Hong Kong, its newer and more energetic colonial neighbor to the East. The treaty ports of Shanghai, Tsingtao, Tientsin, and Canton also drew more international commercial and political attention than Europe’s first Chinese colony did. It would be safe to say that by then Macau was about as important in Chinese affairs as Portugal was in European ones. But the colony did gain some unwanted attention in the Second World War when Japan invaded China in 1937 and then in 1941 took over Hong Kong and the other international settlements of the Allied European powers. At the insistence of the Germans, the Japanese respected Portugal’s neutrality and kept their hands off Macau for the duration of the war. The result was that the colony became a sort of shabby Switzerland of the East. Its eleven square miles filled with refugees from HK and the mainland, leading to tension between residents and the desperate newcomers.

After the establishment of the PRC in 1949, China allowed the Portuguese to keep Macau. But the colonial government remained so weak, corrupt, and inefficient and the tiny enclave so dependent on the mainland that it was clear that Beijing was really charge, if indirectly (a very different situation than in Hong Kong). Portuguese sovereignty over Macau was a joke and during the Cultural Revolution Mao’s Red Guards repeatedly overran the colony, something that never happened in HK. When the dictator Salazar’s Estado Novo was overthrown in Portugal in 1974, the new thinking in Lisbon shifted away from holding on at all costs to the nation’s anachronistic overseas possessions. Instead Portugal sought to divest itself of these embarrassing reminders of its weakness and of how far the country had fallen from the glory of its distant past. The new leadership in Lisbon offered to give back the colony to China but the PRC would not take it. Macau had by then become a barely governed cesspool of gambling, prostitution, and organized crime—a sewer grating into which these vices could drain from the surrounding area. Lisbon didn’t want it, but Beijing seemed happy to have the Portuguese flag flying over it indefinitely. Finally in the 1980s, when the handover of Hong Kong was negotiated, the Chinese arranged to take Macau back as well. In December 1999, an appropriately smaller and less lavish handover ceremony took place in Macau as the oldest European colony in East Asia (442 years) reverted to the motherland. Unlike Hong Kong, however, this gesture was less meaningful since the PRC had more or less controlled Macau for decades.

It is easy for the visitor to enjoy Macau, but working in the territory is often a different story. My friend Matt was able to share many insights with me about doing business there and gave me a rare glimpse into the netherworld of the gambling industry in Macau. While he describes Hong Kong as a combination of the best qualities of East and West, Macau reflects the worst blending of these two cultures. Hong Kong has thrived because it is a product of its colonizers’ Protestant work ethic and Anglo-Saxon insistence on the rule of law imposed upon a largely law-abiding and entrepreneurial Chinese culture. In Macau, on the other hand, centuries of the Mediterranean “mañana” attitude toward efficiency and work along with a tolerance for corrupt administration enabled the Chinese penchant for nepotism and organized crime to flourish.

As Macau’s importance as a trading center slipped into irreversible decline, the government tried to make up for the loss of wealth by legalizing gambling. The result revolutionized the local economy and turned many of its residents in the casino and hotel businesses into millionaires. The weak government and corrupt police, combined with the PRC’s permissive view toward what went on there, made it the ideal place for high-stakes gambling and its ancillary activities of prostitution and loan-sharking. When the Portuguese were in charge, the entire Macau gambling concession belonged to one man: Stanley Ho, a Hong Kong billionaire entrepreneur (now 89 years old and languishing in an HK hospital). Mr. Ho may have had the gaming monopoly, but in order for it actually to function a lot of people further down also had to get their piece of the action. For starters, the Macau government took a 35 percent cut of all gambling profits. It still does.

As in Havana and Las Vegas, the gambling economy in Macau was first built up and its rules enforced by clever and well-organized gangsters, here called Triads. Once a date was set for the departure of the Portuguese, the Triads fought amongst each other viciously for greater control over the territory before the PRC was due to come in and rain on their parade (which it didn’t, as it turned out). After the handover, Stanley Ho lost his monopoly and very quickly the major Las Vegas casinos moved in to fill the vacuum and bankroll future development. Nowadays in Macau one can visit the Sands, Venetian, Hard Rock, and MGM Grand along with the older iconic Casino Lisboa—a smaller, seedy, smoke-filled den that harkens to the less sanitized gambling culture of old Macau. It would be impossible to make room in tiny Macau for all the new developments so they are making new land instead. Many of the new casinos, hotels, racetracks, and golf courses, as well as the international airport have been built through land reclamation. In fact, so much of Macau’s dry surface these days is reclaimed land that the old islands of Coloane and Taipa are now one large land mass linked by a vast new area called the Cotai Strip upon which glitzy hotels and casinos shoot up like weeds in an untended garden.

On my first day in Macau I was given a tour of the Venetian by my friend. The building is an architectural wonder and much larger than the one in Las Vegas. I’m told that it is the third largest building in the world (the first is the new Beijing airport and the second is the Boeing plant in Everett, WA). Appropriately enough, the Venetian is like a city within a building. There are 9000 employees, 3000 rooms, hundreds of shops, and casino space that takes up the combined area of more than thirteen American football fields. The signature feature is an interior re-creation of the canals of Venice that wind around the building. The whole thing is really overwhelming. I stayed for two days and had a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner with Matt and his family in one of the complex’s best restaurants.

What I really enjoyed was learning from Matt about the inner workings of Macau gambling. First he took me around the main casino floor, a massive space shared by four gaming areas: the Red Dragon, the Phoenix, the Imperial, and the Golden Fish. Of all of these, the Red Dragon is always the most crowded since the red décor and the dragon pattern in the carpet are considered most auspicious by Chinese gamblers. The gambling itself is very much like Las Vegas, Atlantic City, or dozens of Indian reservations except that here the loan sharks stand directly behind the players at the tables (no joke; talk about pressure). Like many activities in Macau, loan-sharking is controlled by the Triads and while gambling debts are not legally enforceable (in other words you can’t get a court to order repayment of such a debt) these lenders usually have no trouble getting their money back.

Next we went into the “Paiza Club,” a place that would have certainly been off-limits to me had my friend not ushered me in. This is the inner sanctum: a VIP area for high-stakes betting. Opening bets are in the thousands (US$) and winnings and losses can be in the millions. Matt tells me that on average US$ 90 million circulates through this one area every week. Almost all of the high-stakes players are mainland Chinese and they are inveterate gamblers. There are no alcoholic beverages or sexy cocktail waitresses (i.e. no distractions) and many of the players try to sleep on the couches in the lounge instead of going up to their rooms so that they can keep as close as possible to a 24-hour gambling cycle. Sometimes the security officers have to wake them up and send them away (just like the Port Authority bus terminal in New York, except without the $90 million). Apparently more of the Venetian’s revenue comes from this small private suite of gambling parlors than from the rest of the hotel’s entertainment, restaurant, and casino activity combined.

Matt tells me that the Chinese are reckless gamblers and nothing that I have seen would lead me to think otherwise. But they don’t go in for blackjack or poker; instead they favor baccarat and other games that require almost no skill and are based primarily on luck. Enormous sums of money are laid down with very poor odds, all on the fleeting hope of good fortune. Matt describes the Chinese weakness for gambling like that of the Irish for alcohol. A stereotype perhaps, but the evidence is all around. Room occupancy in the Venetian is often at one hundred percent capacity and the overwhelming majority of visitors there and at the other casinos in Macau are from the mainland. The high rollers are generally from China’s new-money set in construction and manufacturing that have profited from the country’s unparalleled economic boom. A generation ago these people would have been holding up Mao’s little red book and denouncing capitalist imperialism. Now they roll up in limos to the casinos of Macau and throw down unreal amounts of money on the most ill-advised games of chance. Truly, it staggers the mind. While the US stimulus package may be helping to pay for bonuses at Goldman Sachs and keeping dying car companies on life-support, apparently much of the PRC’s stimulus money is ending up on the baccarat tables of Macau. Which is worse?

2010-10-18T13:13:00.000-07:00

Facade of St. Paul's Jesuit Church, Macau; completed 1602

In a Food Paradise

2010-10-18T13:11:00.000-07:00

December 21, 2009 — This is my final blog entry of the year. In a few hours I will depart for two weeks of scuba diving in the Philippines. I’m due to return to Hong Kong on January 6th, just a few days before the start of classes. Of course the end of this year is also the end of the decade, the first of the new century and millennium. As in most societies, such a milestone moment has prompted some self-reflection in Hong Kong. This has been the first full decade of unification with China and what was once the uncertain post-1997 future is now well over ten years old. Tempest fugit. As befitting the occasion, many of the local opinion makers on TV and in the newspapers have been looking back on what has happened and not happened. They agree that, overall, the HK SAR has fared quite well. It enjoys stability, record prosperity, and its peculiar place in the world is in no danger of disappearing. Hong Kong is now China’s portal to the rest of the world (rather than the West’s to China) and consequently its importance in the international market is greater than ever before.

Some here lament that there is no real democracy in Hong Kong, Certainly there is no institutional democracy, but there is an undeniably democratic spirit in the culture of this place—one that China has wisely allowed to continue unmolested. Hong Kong has its own imperfect legislature with “functional constituencies” in which elected members represent professions (teachers, businesspeople, civil servants, etc.) rather than districts based on census data and the principle of one-person-one-vote. The chief executive is answerable to party leaders in Beijing but also to the people of Hong Kong (albeit in a less formalized though equally real way). The media has substantial—though not unlimited—freedom and street protests against HK and PRC policies are a daily occurrence. The protesters, as a rule, are very well mannered—in fact, many are silent (we should be so lucky in America). Yet they can be quite sharp. One clever protest poster recently showed a picture of Donald Tsang as a desperado and underneath it in western cowboy lettering the words “unwanted dead or alive.” Ouch. Most important of all, the Hong Kong judiciary remains the final word in civil and criminal cases. This, above all things, is reassuring to foreign and Chinese investors who remain confident enough to incorporate new businesses in Hong Kong believing that if legal disputes must go to court they will do so in a place that upholds contracts and whose judicial system has integrity and is not leaned on by politicians. At least in this regard some things have not changed since the handover and any Briton looking at Hong Kong today should be proud of what has remained even after the Union Jack was run down the pole for the last time in 1997. However, in fairness to the Chinese it must be noted too that Hong Kong is more democratic now than it was during the overwhelming majority of the time it was under the British. In any event, the overall assessment of Hong Kong’s recent past and the predictions for its near future are largely positive.

Right now, most Hong Kong people do not seem terribly concerned with politics. It is just a few days before Christmas and the malls are full of frantic shoppers. In a society that can at times seem obsessed with commerce, consumerism, and the trappings of material success, the Christmas season is embraced wholeheartedly by Hong Kong people, Christian or otherwise. Public spaces are decorated in varying levels of tastefulness. As in New York’s Rockefeller Center, here in Hong Kong an oversized evergreen tree is shipped in (from Manchuria or Siberia, presumably), erected in the middle of Central, and lit up from top to bottom. The shopping malls have decked their halls and they continuously pipe in the most insipid Christmas jingles through their sound systems, just like back home. Christmas sales and advertising abound, but I have seen no department store Santa Clauses (Chinese children would probably be terrified sitting on the lap of a fat European with a white beard and red nose—and rightly so). Not to sound like Scrooge or the Grinch, but by now I have had more than my fill of it all and am starting to look forward to a more authentic and less commercial Christmas experience in the Philippines.

One thing that I will certainly miss while I am away from Hong Kong is the food. Since arriving I have never ceased to marvel at the culinary bounty of this city and have very quickly come to take for granted an endless array of delicious, varied, and easily available food. It is a challenge even to begin describing the gastronomical scene all around me. Suffice it to say that Hong Kong, like Paris or New York, is one of the great culinary cities of the world. It may even be the greatest. Food here is an integral part of the culture, economy, and aesthetic richness of this place; it is to Hong Kong what music is to Vienna or Nashville, art is to Florence, fashion is to Milan, or architecture is to Chicago. Those who dismiss Hong Kong as a slave to mammon and a cultural wasteland with its dearth of art galleries and writers’ colonies and its bland architecture should try to eat out more often. Hong Kong’s great artists may wear aprons and chef’s hats, but their creations are no less impressive than if they painted on a canvas or chiseled in stone. Many of the chefs are world famous and the disposable income in Hong Kong matched by its demand for luxury and fine dining makes this a desirable place to begin or to advance a culinary career.

Hong Kong people do dine out a lot. Most of them live in shoebox apartments and often choose to have parties and large family gatherings in restaurants where there is more space. It is a Sunday ritual for families to eat out and the thousands of restaurants here are packed with customers. Five-star restaurants are found throughout Hong Kong but it is as easy to find a cheap and delicious meal just about anywhere. Noodle shops and Dim Sum stands are a stone’s throw from most MTR stations and offer up steaming hot bowls of the freshest and tastiest Cantonese staples. Supermarkets have kitchens and can pack up meals to go just as readily as the takeaway stands. My experience is that eating out or bringing home takeaway is usually cheaper, faster, and better than trying to cook at home. In fact, since arriving in late August I have cooked exactly one meal in my kitchen—and that was during my first week here before I wised up. The centrality of food in Hong Kong culture and society is really amazing and was one of the easiest realities to become accustomed to once I arrived. In fact, I wonder if it is possible to have the reverse of culture shock: to experience in a new place a change in culture that makes me feel more like I belong and then to look at my own culture and wonder how I could have ever considered that to be normal. The one exception to all this is 7-Eleven. There is one on every other street corner and, just like at home, the morning commute would not be complete without a quick stop in. Except that here you can buy pork dumplings at the register, but no coffee. I still have not gotten used to that.

One can get any kind of food in Hong Kong. So far I have eaten at top-notch Spanish, Italian, Indian, Thai, Vietnamese, and Japanese restaurants. In particular, Hong Kong Island and Kowloon boast a wide array of tapas bars, New York delis, Texas steakhouses, Bistros, Trattorias, Irish and English pubs, teppanyaki rooms and every variation of Chinese eatery. While the western food here is quite good, it is ridiculously expensive… well, maybe not so ridiculous given that many of the key ingredients are flown in from around the world: mozzarella from Naples, chorizo from Madrid, top sirloin from the US, etc. Apart from restaurants, the supermarkets, street markets, pastry shops, and wine distributors clearly cater to a worldly and discriminating customer base. Certainly I have would no problem indulging my love of Spanish and South African wines were it not for my attempt to keep within a reasonable budget.

But of course, the real pleasure of Hong Kong dining is the opportunity to become familiar with the range, subtlety, and exquisiteness of Chinese cuisine. At the outset one should acknowledge that there is actually no such thing as Chinese cuisine in any real sense. To speak of Chinese cuisine is the same as speaking of European cuisine. It is simply too varied and complex to be characterized as one whole. The leading regional varieties such as Cantonese, Shanghainese, Sichuan, Hunan, Shandong, Fuijian, and Zeiyang are separate cuisines in their own right each with their own unique culinary traditions and sensibilities. While all these regional varieties are on offer in Hong Kong, Cantonese predominates, not surprisingly. Compared to other regional cuisines of China, Cantonese dishes are lighter and less spicy. The emphasis is on freshness and many of the dishes are steamed inside bamboo baskets. Dim sum delicacies are served in small dishes and washed down with ample quantities of tea. This sort of dining experience is called yum cha (飲茶 literally “drinking tea”) but I find that some of the local beer is just as good an accompaniment. Dim sum dishes include dozens of varieties of dumplings, wontons, rolls, balls, and buns made from every sort of meat, poultry, fish, and vegetable. Some Shanghainese dumplings are filled with soup along with meat or fish (I still haven’t figured out how it is even possible to make these). In South China there seems to be more of a preference for rice, pork, chicken and seafood while in the north one find more beef and duck specialties. In all cases, there is great emphasis on presentation and the best chefs learn quickly to develop an eye for detail and beauty. Tea is also a critical part of every meal and comes in dozens of varieties. I am not normally a tea drinker, but I have developed a liking for the jasmine and chrysanthemum varieties and find that they go nicely with a big meal as a digestive.

Since arriving in Hong Kong, I have been able to eat like a king. I have been spoiled, corrupted, and now wallow in my own decadence—at least as far as food is concerned. Many of the Fulbright meetings hosted at the various universities begin with a dim sum lunch that seems like a banquet. Dishes are selected for us and brought out continuously during the meal where they are set upon a glass lazy Susan in the middle of the table. Round tables are the norm here and nowadays on the rare occasions when I am at a western restaurant and seated with a group at an elongated rectangular table it feels strange and uncomfortable. Apart from Fulbright occasions, I have been able to dine regularly with my friends Xiaonan and Michael, who I have known for many years since my graduate student days in London. Xiaonan is from Beijing and Michael is from Guangzhou. They have lived in Hong Kong for a few years now and know their way around quite well. Sometimes they take me to their favorite Chinese restaurants, which often specialize in non-Cantonese regional cuisines and are popular with mainlanders. These are always off the beaten path and virtually unknown to westerners. I am usually the only gweilo in the place and the menus are all in Chinese. The wait staff does not speak English and all the ordering is done by my two friends. Thus I am able to enjoy another dimension of Hong Kong dining to which even some long-time expat residents are not exposed.

Apart from variety, Cantonese cuisine is distinguished by an almost obsessive insistence on freshness. Vegetables are always fresh and are steamed to keep in the flavor, texture, and vitamins. But the most astonishing use of fresh ingredients is in seafood. Most restaurants have a fish tank from which live meal ingredients can be drawn, but this is nothing unusual and by itself would hardly be remarkable. What is amazing, however, is the size of the tanks and the variety of the offerings. One of my favorite spots is the famous Hung Kee Seafood Restaurant located in Sai Kung, a pleasant seaside community on the eastern side of the New Territories. I occasionally eat there with friends from my dive club after our boat returns in the evening. Hung Kee is a local tourist attraction even for people who don’t dine there. It is like a trip to the aquarium and dinner, in the same place and at the same time. Indeed, if something swims or crawls in the ocean, Hung Kee has at least a dozen of them each in their own special tank (see below). On my last visit, one tank held a grouper that must have weighed at least a hundred pounds. As an avid diver, I consider myself reasonably well educated in marine biology, for a layman, but there are many types of species in the Hung Kee tanks that I have never seen (or tasted), although it must be said that there are fewer of these with each return visit. Patrons stand in front of dozens of tanks large and small and point to the creatures swimming, slithering, or scuttling obliviously inside, all the while a waiter dutifully writes down the names of the condemned. Step two is to review the selections and decide the way that each is to be cooked. Step three is to sit at one’s table and drink beer until the dishes are brought out. The wait is never long, but impatient and fidgety children are kept distracted by the horseshoe crabs that the management allows to crawl around on the ground in front of the tanks. It’s an amazing experience.

By now I am sure that I have managed to disgust and enrage any vegetarians that may be reading this. Alas, unlike Indian or Thai cuisine, the culinary sensibilities of the Chinese are not kind to vegetarians. Most dishes are a mix of meat and vegetables and even the strictly vegetable dishes are often prepared in chicken broth or fish oil. My vegetarian friends here all eat well, but it takes some effort and caution. Many of them shop in the local markets and cook at home. While it is easy to eat out all the time, one shouldn’t pass up a trip to the food markets of Hong Kong, if only as a spectator. My favorite “wet markets,” as they are called, are the ones in Tai Po and Shau Kei Wan. These are covered warehouses with hundreds of stalls selling every kind of food imaginable. Fruits and vegetables are extremely cheap and there is a seemingly endless variety. The butcher stalls are lesson in anatomy and apparently there is no part of a pig or chicken that cannot end up on someone’s dinner plate. The buckets of chicken feet, in particular, make me think of some "Far Side" cartoon whose punch line I can’t remember. Along with assorted chicken parts are wooden crates with live chickens inside. Many of the seafood stalls have aerated buckets of water filled with live fish, clams, lobsters, crabs, octopi, squid, cuttlefish, shrimp, turtles, and eels. If you wait long enough you will invariably see one of them climb or jump out and make a break for it before the stall owner grabs it from the floor and tosses it back in with its more apathetic brethren. Above and behind the buckets are tables laid out with trays of ice containing fish and freshly cut fish parts. Some of the sliced up eel pieces and octopus tentacles still squirm around while the gills and hearts of the decapitated and disemboweled fish still pulsate. Customers can even take away plastic bags filled with water and live fish back to their homes or to their favorite restaurants. In the US, some restaurants without a liquor license allow patrons to bring their own wine, but this is even better. I wonder if there is a fish gutting fee added to the bill instead of corkage; it seems only fair.

2010-10-18T13:09:00.000-07:00

The menu at the Hung Kee Seafood Restaurant
Sai Kung, New Territories, 15 Dec 2010

War, Occupation, Regeneration

2010-10-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

February 15, 2010 — 恭喜發財! Gong Xi Fa Cai! Happy Year of the Tiger. Today is the second day of the new lunar year and the holiday break has finally given me the opportunity to sit down and finish long-overdue projects, including this blog. This is my first entry of 2010 and the most recent since I returned from a two-week holiday in the Philippines over the winter break. I had meant to write something shortly after I came back to Hong Kong in the first week of January, but the semester began a few days later and since then work and other demands have kept me busy. Unlike last semester, I am now teaching in addition to my other duties. My course is an upper-level history survey of the British Empire. I have fourteen students enrolled and we are already in the fifth week of classes. The course itself covers different aspects of British overseas expansion from the early Elizabethan settlements in Ireland to decolonization in the latter half of the twentieth century. I am enjoying the class and the chance to get to know some of the undergraduates at my host university. In many ways they remind me of my students at Lewis & Clark but they also bring a different perspective to the study of history than I have experienced with American students. It is interesting to get the Chinese perspective on such topics as the Opium War and western imperialism in China. Our course will end, fittingly, when we examine the handover of Hong Kong in 1997. I am curious to see how the study of the British Empire will change the way the students view themselves as Hong Kong Chinese, if at all.

Last fall, as the winter break approached, I decided to take some time away from Hong Kong and experience a different part of Asia. Except for a brief trip to London for a conference in September, this would be my first time outside of China since I arrived here at the end of August. The chilly, damp, and overcast weather of Hong Kong in winter, combined with the urban intensity of this place, made me partial toward selecting a warmer destination and something a bit more off the beaten path. I thought about Thailand, Malaysia, and Vietnam but eventually decided on the Philippines. My friends who have been to the Philippines have consistently described it as one of their favorite countries and many insist that it is among the most underrated travel destinations in Asia. So with two weeks off and nothing to do in HK I decided that was the place to go.

My first reaction when I stepped out of the airport in Manila was of being in an environment completely different than Hong Kong and yet immediately familiar to me. In less than two hours flying time I had journeyed from one of the most technologically advanced cities in the world into a typical megalopolis of the “developing” world. Manila is a crowded, polluted, and vibrant urban sprawl of eleven million people with teeming slums, open-air markets, posh suburbs, shopping malls, office towers, and dreadful traffic. As my taxi inched through the gridlocked streets from the airport to my hotel in Malate near the waterfront I looked out the tinted windows at the scene outside. Dozens of motor scooters weaved in and out between rickety, overloaded and smoke-belching trucks. Street vendors, mostly children, walked alongside the columns of stopped cars peering into the windows to hawk their wares. Street-side stalls were selling newspapers and hot food to sidewalk pedestrians while stray dogs wandered around aimlessly. Above the traffic were billboards in Tagalog advertising home appliances, banking services, and luxury condos. These showed happy Filipino families enjoying the trappings of a lifestyle well beyond what most of the people on the street below could ever expect in their own lives.

In short, this was exactly the environment I have experienced many times before and in which I have spent years of my own life: a Third World metropolis. It reminded me instantly of Mexico City, Delhi and, most recently, Nairobi. Even the local transportation had a familiar feel. The streets of Manila are crowded with silver elongated jeep vans called “jeepneys.” These cost only a few pesos to ride and are packed with commuters, schoolchildren, and shoppers who jump on and off at each stop for the few seconds that the driver slows almost to a complete stop. The jeepneys are painted bright colors and festooned with decorations, portraits of famous people, and the occasional Bible verse. They reminded me a lot of the buses in India and Mexico and, especially, the “matatus” of Nairobi. While the matatus I saw sported pictures of Barack Obama, Kofi Annan, and Nelson Mandela, the jeepneys of Manila display images of Catholic saints and local pop stars and athletes. But the most common jeepney mascot, by far, is Manny Pacquiao—or “Pac-Man”—the international boxing sensation from Mindanao.

This immersion back into a world less sanitized and safe than what I have become used to in Hong Kong was something I found strangely invigorating. I could feel my levels of adrenaline and vigilance increasing by the moment, but I was excited about once again traveling in a new and unpredictable country. My first night there I stayed at a very pleasant guesthouse converted from a Spanish villa and that evening I walked around the old section of Manila. The next day I boarded a flight for Cebu City and once I arrived there it was another three hours by bus through palm glades and farmland to Malapascua Island to enjoy six days of scuba diving and relaxing by the beach.

Malapascua Island is situated in an inland sea surrounded by the larger islands of Cebu, Leyte, Negros, and Luzon. Diving in these waters was extraordinary. Each morning my dive group would depart from the beach on a large outrigger called a bangka and head off to the nearby reefs and islands. The marine life in these reefs is incredibly diverse and in twelve dives over a span of six days I managed to see dozens of new species including thresher sharks, sea snakes, and moray eels. Malapascua itself is a quiet white-sand, palm-fringed paradise and in the evenings after diving I would dine with the other divers at one of the beachside restaurants. On Christmas Eve I attended the standing-room-only vigil mass at Nuestra Señora Virgen de los Desamparados (Our Lady of the Forsaken), the local Catholic parish. The congregation made a great effort to welcome visitors and, although I was away from my family, it was a wonderful way to celebrate Christmas. Overall, the people of the Philippines were among the kindest and friendliest I have ever met anywhere in my travels.

The second part of my dive excursion was on Busuanga Island just north of the larger island of Palawan, which is a long thin section of the Philippines that stretches southwestward almost to Borneo. It is the least developed region in the country and one of the most spectacularly beautiful places I have ever seen. Jagged peaks rise hundreds of feet straight up from the sea and form a maze of inlets and coves. These giant rocks are covered with vegetation that from a distance makes them look like they are coated in dark green velvet. The colors are all the more vivid when set alongside the ribbons of white sand beaches and azure water. Even before we landed, as I stared down from the window in the propjet on the flight from Manila, I was amazed at how verdant, rugged and undeveloped the island seemed compared to Luzon and Cebu.

In Busuanga I stayed in a fishing village called Coron Town, a coastal hub that serves as the departure point for diving nearby wrecks—a local attraction that brings in divers from around the world. In the waters around Busuanga are the sunken hulls of at least a dozen Japanese warships. Most of these were sunk on the same day, September 24th, 1944, as the fleet tried to sail out to sea from the shelter of Coron Bay. The ships were relocating to support the Japanese defense of Manila but had hardly made it more than a few miles out from their anchorage when they were struck by repeated air attacks from the US Navy. The planes were part of Carrier Task Force 38 commanded by Admiral Halsey which had been waiting for the Japanese to sail out of Coron. Most of the ships lost were auxiliary supply vessls. The fact that they were sunk so close to shore means that the wrecks now rest at depths shallow enough that they can be reached by advanced open water divers.

In the six days I was in Coron I made eleven dives and saw eight different wrecks. These dives were deeper than my earlier reef dives, and the visibility and diversity of marine life was not as good, but in their own way they were an even more awe-inspiring experience. On these dives I was part of a group of four or five other divers accompanied by a local dive master. As we descended, the water became greener and murkier but when we neared the bottom the hull of the sunken ship would come into view. It was a breathtaking sensation to see these enormous hulks gradually appear in front of us. Some of them were resting on their keels while other lay on their sides. Their superstructures, cranes, and deck guns protruded from the hulls and some of the cargo holds still contained vehicles and oil drums. I had a particular interest in seeing these wrecks since earlier in my life I spent several years in the navy, most of that time on a destroyer as the ship’s DCA (Damage Control Assistant). It was a bit eerie to see firsthand these ships that had actually been sunk in battle; their watertight hatches and doors blown open by explosions or the force of water pressure and the riveted sections of the steel bulkheads pulled apart or crushed. Our group of divers seemed tiny as we swam above and alongside these wrecks and, in a few cases, even inside the open cargo holds.

The impact of seeing these wrecked vessels up close is hard fully to describe. In one instant I was conscious of the forces of nature and history, the passage of time and the humbling insignificance of human affairs when set against the leveling power of the sea. These warships, once the pride and terror of the Pacific, now lie powerless and prostrate on the bottom of the ocean, slowly being reclaimed by nature. Their enormous hulls are encrusted with corals and anemones while schools of fish glide effortlessly through the twisted and rusting steel (see below). It was an odd feeling, both calming and eerie, to swim above and into the wrecks, the silence punctuated only by the slow rhythm of my breathing and the bubbles coming out of my regulator. It reminded me of Shelley’s poem “Ozymandias,” that staple of high school English classes, about an ancient potentate whose monuments to his own vanity centuries later stand as ruins forgotten in a vast desert.

"Look on my works, ye Mighty, and despair!"
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away.

As an historian, I found the ghosts of the Second World War especially present throughout my journey in the Philippines, although maybe this is because I made it a point to seek them out. Apart from the wreck diving in Coron, I also visit the island of Corregidor and the section of Manila called “Intramuros,” the heart of the old Spanish colonial capital. Corregidor, in particular, was somewhere I had long wanted to visit and it was indeed a fascinating and haunting place. I took the early morning ferry out there and spent the day touring the ruined barracks and batteries along the hillsides of the island. The tour included entry into the underground command center and hospital used during the defense of the island as well as the Filipino-American war memorial and the Japanese cemetery. The views from the highest point were spectacular, especially northward toward the Bataan Peninsula. Even the small pier that Douglas MacArthur used for his evacuation in March 1942 has been left untouched. The Philippines park service has done a nice job preserving Corregidor. They have made just enough improvements so that the entire island is easily accessible for visitors but have otherwise left it alone and not spoiled it.

In Manila, the main war memorial is in Intramuros (literally “inside the walls”). This is the oldest section of the capital and was once a walled city similar to the ones that the Spanish built in San Juan, Havana, Cartagena, and St. Augustine during the height of their empire in the sixteenth century. Before the war, it was one of the great cities of Asia whose palaces, convents, and cathedrals distinguished it as a Madrid or Toledo of the Orient. When the Japanese invaded in 1942 they made Intramuros the center of their occupation government and it became the site of their last stand in 1945 as the Americans completed their campaign to retake the Philippines. The liberation of the Philippines, which began in Leyte in October 1944, finally ended the following February with the fall of Manila. The battle to retake the city resulted in a fierce Japanese defense by tens of thousands of soldiers (who fought almost to the last man) and one of the most punishing allied bombardments of the war in the Pacific. In the end it was among the bloodiest single campaigns of the entire war and resulted in a staggering 100,000 civilian casualties. Intramuros was almost completely destroyed (in the entire war only Warsaw fared worse in damage than Manila among major allied cities). Yet as I wandered through the pleasant streets of Intramuros I thought to myself that there is, strangely, no lasting sign of the war. There seems to be no remnant there like the cratered foundation of the Valletta Opera house in Malta, the skeletal dome of the industrial promotion building in Hiroshima, or the blackened spires of the cathedral in Cologne. In fact, old Manila has been rebuilt, but in a way that has never approached the splendor of its prewar existence. Historical photo displays along the streets of Intramuros show sobering before-and-after views that confirm this reality. Some local historians even suggest that psychologically the city never recovered from the war and that sixty-five years later there is only a squalid, second-rate Asian capital remaining where once stood one of the most beautiful and cultured cities in the world.

Whether or not Manila’s best days are behind it is of course debatable, and I am hardly in a position to judge, but there is no doubt that, by comparison, Hong Kong’s trajectory has been heading steadily upward. My first few days back in HK after two weeks in the Philippines reminded me of this reality very quickly. Yet this city too has had its dark days and, while it was spared the agony and battering of Manila, the experience of Japanese occupation in Hong Kong during the war was an ordeal as severe in quality, if not in scale, as far as the suffering of its people was concerned. Today, however, amid the prosperity, energy, and self-confidence of Hong Kong it is difficult to find any remnant of the experience of the war. The Hong Kong Museum of History and the Museum of Coastal Defence do an admirable job educating their visitors about what happened in the war, but the public memorializing of that experience is virtually non-existent compared to what has been done in places like London, Dresden, or Manila. There may be several reasons for this. The first is that the loss of Hong Kong was a bitter humiliation for the British Empire that was only exceeded in the East by the fall of Singapore a few months later. The second is that during the occupation the territory’s most energetic resistance came from Chinese communists. The third and most significant reason may have to do with the fact that British colonization in Hong Kong, as elsewhere in Asia, rested on the rarely questioned presumption of cultural and racial superiority of westerners over Asians. This presumption was completely demolished during the war and it could never again be believed.

The fall of Hong Kong began when Japan attacked the territory on December 8th, 1941 (this was actually the same day as the attack on Pearl Harbor since Hawaii and China are on opposites sides of the international dateline). Japanese land forces smashed their way across the border into the New Territories and within days had moved south and taken Kowloon. The British army units on Hong Kong Island had earlier been reinforced by Indian and Canadian regiments and they managed to hold out for two weeks, but the constant air attacks, the prospect of high civilian casualties, and the knowledge that they were outnumbered three to one and would not be relieved anytime soon forced them finally to surrender. The capitulation took place on Christmas Day 1941, just a few months shy of the one-hundredth anniversary of British rule over Hong Kong. Britain’s great trading center and flagship colony in East Asia was now lost to the enemy. To add further insult, the governor of the colony, Sir Mark Young, was forced to sign the surrender document in the lobby of the posh Peninsula Hotel—a symbol for the British and Chinese of Hong Kong alike of the former’s prestige, power, and racial exclusivity.

The three and a half years that followed were the harshest in the history of Hong Kong. British soldiers and civilians were rounded up and put into prison camps in which many perished from disease and malnutrition. Chinese residents of the territory lived in fear of the mercurial cruelty of their new colonial masters. Japanese soldiers randomly killed civilians in the street for no apparent reason other than to ensure that the population lived in a state of constant terror. Women and girls of all ages were randomly raped for the same purpose as well as to allow Japanese commanders a way to indulge the baser instincts of their battle-hardened troops and to keep their morale up. Those civilians who escaped such direct brutality were forced to submit to food rationing that often reduced them to near-starvation. They were also made to exchange their Hong Kong dollars for Japanese occupation currency whose unstable value caused sudden hyperinflation crises. The forced currency exchanges helped pay for the occupation but resulted in the widespread loss of personal savings for rich and poor alike. Fuel and medicine shortages meant that flu outbreaks and winter dampness carried away even more of the weakest and hungriest people, mostly children and the elderly. Japanese-run schools and newspapers attempted to indoctrinate residents with a sense of loyalty and respect for the new rulers of East Asia, meanwhile thousands of unemployed Hong Kong civilians were deported to distant parts of China to work as forced laborers throughout the Japanese-occupied areas.

Resistance throughout the occupation was minimal but small bands of partisans did manage to hide out in the wooded hills of the New Territories and wage sporadic attacks on Japanese military and government facilities. Most of these people were communists and operated independently of any support from the British, Americans, or nationalist Chinese. Japanese reprisals for partisan activities were directed against the civilian population but the attacks did not stop, nor did they have any significant effect on Japanese control over Hong Kong. The combined effect of the massacres, starvation, illness, and deportation over three and a half years resulted in a loss of more than half the population. Even the growing prospect of a Japanese defeat as the war progressed did not guarantee a return to the status quo ante for Hong Kong. The nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek made no secret of his desire to see Hong Kong returned to China immediately after the war and President Roosevelt seemed willing to concede this to America’s ally, the generalissimo. When the Japanese surrendered in August 1945 the British fleet in the Pacific made a beeline to Hong Kong at full speed in order to prevent the Americans from arriving there first. British soldiers liberated their fellow countrymen and women and as well as what was left of the Chinese population. The Japanese occupation governor of the territory, General Takashi Sakai, was brought before the Allied war tribunal and executed in 1946. In the end, British rule in Hong Kong was restored, but their image would never be the same.

Understanding the experience of the Second World War in such places as Hong Kong and Manila does help put a lot of things in perspective. The resilience of human beings is indeed extraordinary. Manila’s death toll in 1945 of 100,000 is more than thirty-three times the total number of people killed in the September 11th attack on the United States. Today Manila is a vibrant and energetic metropolis, although, admittedly, the recovery was slow and perhaps never fully complete. In Hong Kong the postwar recovery was remarkably swift. The apparatus of British administration was reestablished within a few weeks of the Japanese surrender and economic prosperity returned so quickly that within three months all rationing and price controls were ended. Much of the prewar colonial racial segregation ended as well. The spectacle of British humiliation at the hands of an Asian power ensured that any assumptions of western racial superiority were gone forever. Whites-only beaches in Hong Kong were abolished and Chinese people were allowed to buy property anywhere in the territory, even in the old colonial enclave of Victoria Peak.

Today there is virtually no evidence in Hong Kong of the Second World War. Maybe time does indeed heal all wounds—including physical as well as psychological ones. And maybe this can happen more quickly in a place like Hong Kong, with its relatively short history and its orientation toward the future rather than the past. Here the old is constantly being torn down to make room for the new and it may be easy to forget what happened in the war. The one exception to this is the Hong Kong Museum of Coastal Defence set inside the remains of the old harbor fortress built in 1887 by the British at Shau Kei Wan. For decades this massive redoubt on Hong Kong Island guarded the eastern entrance to Victoria Harbor and today its pillboxes, bunkers, and heavy artillery are preserved for tourists to wander around (see below). The Canadian war cemetery is located nearby on a quiet hillside facing the water. It is only a short distance from the ubiquitous traffic and high-rise buildings of the city, which even here can still be heard and seen in the distance. Yet, like the walled villages of Fanling or the fishing settlements on the outlying islands, it preserves well the history of Hong Kong for those with the patience to search it out.

2010-10-18T13:04:00.000-07:00

Wreck of the Okikawa Maru, sunk 24 Sept 1944
Off the coast of Coron, Palawan, Philippines

2010-10-18T13:02:00.000-07:00

Coastal battery at the Shau Kei Wan Fortress, HK Island
(currently the HK Museum of Coastal Defence)

The Vanishing City

2010-10-18T12:58:00.000-07:00

March 29, 2010 — Hong Kong may have the strangest weather of any place in which I have ever lived. A week ago the city and its residents were suffering in a cold, gray, and damp miasma. Yet, a few days later the temperature increased by twenty degrees Fahrenheit while a warm and choking haze settled over the city breaking all previous pollution records. The most recent 72 hours have seen fierce winds blow in from the mainland clearing out the smog and leaving behind cool, dry, blustery air and some of the clearest visibility in the entire time I have been here. When it comes to winter weather, I never know what to expect. It has been like living in London, Mexico City and Chicago at the same time. T.S. Eliot said April is the cruelest month, but then again he never lived in Hong Kong. If he had, maybe March or February would have had that dubious honor.

The worst days of a Hong Kong winter are when the temperature drops while the humidity index increases. It is impossible to dress for this miserable climate and, unlike in the summer heat, there is no relief indoors. This is because most Hong Kong homes do not have central heating and thus the chill of the outdoor dampness becomes inescapable. Inside my flat I walk around in layers of sweaters and fleeces while sweating from the humidity and shivering from the cold at the same time. At night I pile blankets on top of myself but this does little to warm me up. It feels like I am camping inside my own home. (I suppose I could buy a space heater or dehumidifier, but in my case laziness trumps discomfort).

The irritating part of all this is that it never actually gets very cold. Even though temperatures rarely drop close to freezing, they still have a bone-chilling effect because of the humidity. On the worst days, every cold surface is covered in condensation. The moisture in the air settles like morning dew on floors, wall tiles, and most metal and porcelain fixtures. The effect makes it appear as if the walls are sweating and the floors are constantly being wiped by invisible mops. Everything is wet all the time and it is impossible to hang clothes to dry since a week later they are still wet and beginning to smell of mildew. Because there is no effective way to get rid of the condensation, the custodial staff in offices and apartment buildings dutifully set out the “wet floor” signs normally used while mopping. They also regularly wipe down the walls with disinfectant. At first I thought this was more hyper-hygienic Hong Kong overkill until I realized that it is the only way to keep black mold from starting to grow on these surfaces. Without such vigilance, many places would quickly become serious public health hazards. I have never considered severe dampness to be in the same league of dangerous weather as sub-zero temperatures or scorching heat waves, but as with many aspects of Hong Kong life I have now have been sufficiently educated. It is easy to see how, without constant disinfection, this sort of climate might quickly become deadly. It reminds me of the first pages of Frank McCourt’s famous memoir, Angela Ashes, in which he describes the ubiquitous dampness of Limerick and the toll that it took on the residents:

"Out in the Atlantic Ocean great sheets of rain gathered to drift up the River Shannon and settle forever in Limerick. The rain dampened the city… It created a cacophony of hacking coughs, bronchial rattles, asthmatic wheezes, consumptive croaks. It turned noses into fountains, lungs into bacterial sponges… the walls of Limerick glistened with the damp… Clothes never dried… In pubs, steam rose from damp bodies and garments..."

Rereading this passage after spending winter in Hong Kong gives me a new appreciation of the ability of weather to be a constant nuisance and a health risk. But there is not much that one can do about it and in the end Hong Kong people, perhaps like the Irish, bear it stoically and get on with life.

Last week I was pleased when the temperature began to rise. The humidity was still there but it was nearly 80°F and a bit more bearable. It seemed like an improvement until the smog came in. For forty-eight hours Hong Kong experienced the worst pollution in its history. The pollution index was nearly 500, easily breaking earlier records. Meteorologists blamed a series of sandstorms in northern China that exacerbated the already high levels of pollution in the city. The effect was stunning. I first noticed it while having breakfast on the balcony of my building when I saw the high rise towers on the other side of the Sha Tin Valley shrouded in a sickly brown haze. Later that day, I was at the waterfront in Hung Hom on the Kowloon Peninsula and could just barely trace the skyline of Hong Kong Island, less than a mile across Victoria Harbor. As the Star ferries disappeared into and reemerged from the haze it really did appear as if the entire city was vanishing (see below). Public service announcements on radio and television warned residents to minimize any time spent outside and to keep a close eye on children, the elderly, and people with respiratory problems. As an international news item, this story was reported in the New York Times and the BBC. The really disturbing part of all this was that the smog merely made more visible what we normally breathe in but don’t see. Overall though, I didn’t mind it too much and must admit that, even at its worst moments, the pollution of Hong Kong is still better than what is the norm in Mexico City, Delhi, or Nairobi. A day later the smog cleared and now the cold air is back, though mercifully it is drier than before. The wind is picking up a bit and visibility is good. Yesterday my dive club went out to Sai Kung for the first boat dive of the spring and I noticed that the air is already starting to warm up even if the water is still quite cold.

Last month I was able to enjoy my first trip into China beyond the Pearl River Delta. I spent four days in Beijing with my parents, who were visiting from New Jersey for two weeks. It was a wonderful trip and we managed to pack a lot into a short amount of time. We stayed in an upscale hotel centrally located less than a mile from Tiananmen Square and were able to walk to most places. Our itinerary included the usual tourist sights: the Forbidden City, Tiananmen Square, the Mao mausoleum, the Temple of Heavenly Peace, and the Great Wall. We also wandered around the hutongs (alleyways) and markets in Qianmen and Dongchen. The weather was freezing, but also bone dry and sunny with clear blue skies (see below). I had been warned of Beijing pollution, but the frigid air seemed to drive it away. Since we were properly bundled up it was actually quite pleasant and invigorating to walk outside in the cold air and we spent most of the days outdoors. It was also really satisfying to return to a toasty warm hotel room and relax in the evening. The air was so dry that I actually got static electricity shocks while taking off a sweater or touching a door handle (something that I had altogether forgotten about while living in Hong Kong).

It was wonderful finally to get to Beijing, a city whose history has long excited my imagination. China’s capital presents a stark contrast to Hong Kong. Where HK appears as dense, vertical clusters of mountains and skyscrapers, Beijing is a grand sprawl of parks and boulevards. HK’s geography is a jumble of islands, inlets, hills, valleys and coastlines while Beijing’s is a massive flat grid moving out in all directions in nearly perfect symmetry and balance. I found Beijing an easy city to navigate since it was always sunny and clear and the intersections acted like points on a compass. Depending on the time of day and the position of the sun, it was simple to determine in what direction one was heading. It helped that the signs were almost always in English as well as Mandarin.

My first impression of Beijing is that it is a city clearly proud of its history and status as a major world capital. It is stately and grand in a way that Hong Kong—impressive as it is—could never be. In Hong Kong the constant energy of commerce and a forward-looking attitude give scant attention to the preservation of the past (though this is changing, thankfully). Beijing, by contrast is an imperial metropolis of monuments, fortresses, and palaces in which the passage of centuries is effortlessly showcased from one end of town to the other. Beijing is to Hong Kong what Delhi is to Mumbai, Jerusalem to Tel Aviv, Rome to Genoa, or Mexico City to Acapulco. Actually, in a way this might make Hong Kong the more impressive city of the two. Its rise as a world-class city in a mere 150 years from its humble origins as a colonial backwater (relatively unimportant, at first, even to the empire that established it) was an uphill battle that Beijing, the center of the Middle Kingdom, never had to fight.

Perhaps what made my trip to Beijing especially enjoyable was the chance to share the experience with my parents. This was their first visit to East Asia (my mother visited me when I was living in India ten years ago) so it was interesting to get their impressions of the city and of Chinese culture. We all had a good time. The weather cooperated, we had some outstanding meals, and we managed to see a lot of the sights. I especially enjoyed Tiananmen Square. It is the largest open city square in the world and is surrounded by the Forbidden City (to the north), the Great Hall of the People (to the west), the Mao Zedong Mausoleum (to the south), and the National Museum of China (to the east). In the center stands the Monument to the People’s Heroes. Above the Gate of Heavenly Peace at the southern entrance to the Forbidden City sits the famous portrait of Chairman Mao, the “Great Helmsman,” staring out into the square. On the opposite end of the square one can enter the mausoleum and view his mortal remains. To enter the mausoleum one must surrender all bags, backpacks and cameras, pass through a security screening, and present a photo ID. After that the queue shuffles through into an atrium where, if one wishes, one can leave flowers at the base of a large plaster statue of a seated Mao (not unlike that of Abraham Lincoln in Washington DC). Then one passes through the viewing room where a waxen Mao lies in state encased inside a refrigerated glass box. The Chairman is on view for only a few hours every morning and then he is lowered back into a deep freeze locker. There are rumors that the body on view is actually a wax effigy because the attempts to embalm him after he died were so badly botched that the remains are no longer presentable. For an excellent account of this incident, as well as of the more salacious details about the Great Helmsman while he was still alive, be sure to read The Private Life of Chairman Mao by his personal physician, Zhisui Li.

Apart from its history, an even more fascinating aspect of Beijing is how the dynamics of capitalism and communism today coexist in the same place. Not a mile from Tiananmen Square is Wangfujing, a pedestrian arcade of department stores, outlets, hotels, and shopping malls. For centuries it was a market area and these days it is a place where Prada and Louis Vuitton window displays jockey for the attention of passing shoppers and where new money is not shy about being seen. It is mind-blowing that this type of luxury and conspicuous consumption exists openly just a stone’s throw from the spot where Chairman Mao stood at the balcony during the Cultural Revolution and exhorted masses of China’s youth to purge the nation of any traces of western capitalism and imperialism. These boys and girls of the Red Guard then set about dutifully to punish and humiliate those among their elders in whom bourgeois or counter-revolutionary tendencies were merely suspected. Could they have imagined then that the youth of the next generation would be cruising shopping malls in Wangfujing with cell phones and the latest designer clothes? Maybe they never thought that China would be rich.

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View of Victoria Harbor through Hong Kong smog
22 March 2010

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Sunset behind the Gate of Divine Might
North entrance of the Forbidden City, Beijing
18 February 2010

Hong Kong's Living Room

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April 29, 2010 — Last week was the end of classes at my host university and final exams begin on Friday. The semester has seemed to fly by and it is hard to believe that it is nearly over. I very much enjoyed the opportunity this spring to teach Hong Kong undergraduates and to learn a bit about this city and its history from their perspective. After our exam review session on Monday my students presented me with a lovely thank you card that contained a collage of photos from the class and was signed by all of them. It was a wonderful gesture and the card will be one of my most prized souvenirs of my time here. The end of classes has also reminded me, sadly, that the end of my year in Hong Kong is not far away. I am certain that my remaining days here will pass quickly. Once I give my final exam on Friday I will leave for ten days in Vietnam. I return in mid-May to more administrative work and then a consultation visit in South India in mid-June. The end of my Fulbright assignment is on June 30th but I plan to do a bit more traveling in Asia before finally returning to the US in August.

On Sunday, the benefactor of the HK Fulbright program in general education, Po Chung, hosted a special dinner for our group of Fulbright scholars. Po is the retired CEO and co-founder of DHL Asia Pacific and is deeply committed to education in Hong Kong. He has given generously from his personal fortune to support educational projects like ours. His goal is to broaden the intellectual experience of undergraduates through a liberal arts curriculum in order to create a new generation of Hong Kong youth able to think critically and imaginatively. This is what business leaders here desire in their junior managers but often achieve only by hiring people educated overseas. Po is eager to turn Hong Kong into nothing less than the education hub of Asia, one to match its profile as a center of international finance. This is an ambitious goal but one that seems possible given this city’s many other achievements. Hong Kong definitely punches above its weight in the world arena.

Po’s dinner was held at a seafood restaurant on Lamma Island and so we had to take his boat from HK Island to get there. Our group met at the posh Aberdeen Marina Club to board the boat, but since I wasn’t sure how long it would take to get to Aberdeen from Sha Tin I gave myself too much time and arrived early. On my way there I got off the MTR in Admiralty to transfer to the Aberdeen bus line. I noticed a sight that by now I have seen many times and which I realize is as distinctive to the Hong Kong experience as anything else here: namely, the presence on Sundays of thousands of women sitting outside in small groups throughout the city’s public spaces.

Every Sunday Hong Kong’s domestic helpers take over the city. Tens of thousands of women spend the afternoon sitting outside in the parks and sidewalks and along the pedestrian overpasses and subways. The most public spaces in the city are suddenly domesticated and transformed into thousands of private social clubs. These women sit together in small clusters—often inside makeshift cubicles assembled from oversized cardboard boxes—chatting, playing cards, doing each other’s hair and nails, and eating their picnic lunches (see below). It is a remarkable sight and one that the many guests who have visited me never fail to comment upon.

Domestic helpers (maids, nannies, cooks, etc.) comprise a substantial demographic subgroup in Hong Kong but one that is rarely seen in public, except on Sundays. Many middle class Hong Kong families maintain a live-in housekeeper who cleans house, prepares meals, shops for food, and tends to children (including dropping them off and picking them up at school). Most of these women are from the Philippines, but many are from Indonesia and Malaysia as well. A recent news article placed their numbers in Hong Kong at 271,000. A family can employ one of these women on monthly basis for a one-time fee of US $1200 and then $500 per month after that. This rate is set by law and for many Hong Kong families it is well within their budgets. To a family in which both parents work this is a low cost to keep a full-time housekeeper for an entire month. And while it may not seem like much of a salary in Hong Kong, it is substantially more than what many educated Filipinos, like teachers and nurses, can earn in month working in their own country.

So these women come to Hong Kong in search of better economic opportunities—indeed, that has always been the main motivation for most people who have come to HK throughout its history. Years ago, I first encountered contract laborers from the Philippines when I was in the navy and saw them working in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. They are in Hong Kong too, but things are better for them here than in Saudi and some of the other Gulf States where their employers can shamefully exploit and abuse them with impunity. In Hong Kong they are well organized and keenly aware of their minimum pay rates and legal protections. They have networked among themselves extremely well and their proximity to Manila (less than two hours by plane and a relatively cheap airfare) helps them stay linked to their families.

In conversations with them one frequently hears heartbreaking stories of family separation. These young women are often the main earners for their families back in the Philippines and most of their wages are sent home as remittances. Some of them have small children living back home with grandparents or aunts and uncles. These mothers go without seeing their little ones for months at a time. Hong Kong law requires employers to give them extended leave during the Christmas holiday and many are able to go back more frequently, but only for short visits. Some of the women have husbands who, like them, are contract laborers in the Middle East (in Hong Kong much of the “men’s” labor like construction and road work is often done by mainland Chinese). It is a testament to the strength and endurance of Filipino family values—a phrase that admittedly is often more trite and hypocritical in its American usage—that they are able to carry on like this for years, albeit at great personal cost. Yet the prosperity and opportunity of Hong Kong is too good to pass up, and what appears merely to be cheap labor and, perhaps, exploitation here is often the best path to financial security somewhere else. Of course this is a story a million times told and one that resonates throughout history. It is the story of Irish laundresses in England, Bengali plantation hands in Fiji and Guyana, Chinese railroad workers and Mexican fruit pickers in the US, and Sikh policemen in Hong Kong and Singapore: well-worn paths of migration and globalization—before that latter word became a cliché—with all the attendant hope, sweat, and sacrifice.

I often see these women at the English-language Sunday mass at St. Benedict’s. Alas, Catholic parishes in Hong Kong sometimes reinforce the soft segregation between employer and servant that characterizes the rest of daily life. This is not intentional but rather a natural consequence of the language dynamic in this society. My parish has five masses during the weekend: four in Cantonese and one in English. The Cantonese masses are attended entirely by Chinese families while the congregation at the English mass is comprised mostly of Filipina maids along with a random assortment of Western and African expats. Since they are away from their loved ones in the Philippines, the maids use their parishes as a natural support system and a good place to network and socialize in addition to nourishing their spiritual lives.

The ubiquity of live-in servants in Hong Kong is such that many houses and apartments here (mine included) are even designed with the hired help in mind. Behind the kitchen one will usually find a small room the size of a walk-in closet with an even smaller (airline-sized) bathroom adjoining it. These spaces are the servant’s quarters and are meant only for sleeping and storage of a modest amount of personal effects. I use this space in my apartment for storage and it remains an uninhabited corner in a remote part of the house. I honestly can’t image anyone living in there. On Sunday, their day off, the women leave the house since they generally are not allowed guests and even if they were their rooms are too cramped to entertain visitors. Away from their employers’ homes they have nowhere of their own in which to meet. They could rent social halls or meet in restaurants but these expenses would dip into the remittances they send home and they are keen to economize in every way possible. So en masse they make Hong Kong’s streets and parks their temporary homes.

To describe these Sunday outings as an invasion is not too much of an exaggeration. The parks and promenades in the residential areas fill up quickly and soon the business districts—only a few MTR stops away—take up the overflow. In no time at all the sidewalks, atria, and pedestrian overpasses in Central and Wan Chai become as crowded on a Sunday afternoon as during the weekday rush hour; only instead of harried cubicle slaves rushing to and from work one sees the same spaces given over to people lounging around and enjoying the most relaxed and leisurely activities. This would be unimaginable in other financial epicenters, like Exchange Place in New York City or Canary Wharf in London, which become veritable ghost towns on the weekend. Yet in Hong Kong the maids descend on the public spaces almost like a force of nature. If it was only a handful of them they might be asked to leave, but who can enforce this upon 100,000 people all over town? They even set up camp inside the colonnades of the main courthouse and at other government buildings. The “no loitering” signs in English and Tagalog have no effect and, in any event, are never enforced. I must admit that nowhere in America have I seen the right to free assembly exercised in such a meaningful and regular way. In some sense this phenomenon seems to be the opposite of what occurs in many US towns and cities where suburban sprawl has done away with public spaces. In cases where urban planners create public gathering places in a deliberate attempt to build a sense of community, these projects often fall flat and the places remain unused by an increasingly individualistic and atomized American society.

Hong Kong, in stark contrast, witnesses those who spend the week cleaning other people’s homes suddenly transform the city center on Sunday into their very own living room, turning the most public of locations into their intimate and personal spaces. On this day one sees an entire community of people who normally toil in obscurity determined to enjoy their time off in public and to grasp the best quality of life that their limited circumstances can offer. Actually, the sight of the walkways of Central and the parks of Sha Tin on a Sunday afternoon makes more sense to me now that I have spent some time in the Philippines. These crowded spaces are no different than the waterfront promenade along Roxas Boulevard in Manila or the town squares that I walked through in Malapascua and Coron. It seems like every family in the Philippines goes out on the town for a weekend picnic and the Sunday outings in Hong Kong are meant to replicate this practice. The only difference is that here one only sees young women; there are no children, men, or elderly people. Sometimes Filipino pop-stars come to HK to give free open air-concerts (these events are usually sponsored by cell phone services with cheap rates to the Philippines). In fact, so demographically significant is this Filipino contingent that politicians in the old country actively court the HK expat voters since their absentee ballots can tip the balance in close elections. The dynamics of this community would be a wonderful topic for a study by a sociologist or geographer and would make for an interesting documentary: such a strong and vibrant community forming to liberate hundreds of thousands of young women from the otherwise sad and solitary life of a housekeeper living in a foreign country far away from her family and friends.

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Filipina maids enjoyed their Sunday off in Central

Vietnam, Past and Present

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June 6, 2010 — The monsoon has arrived in East Asia. On Tuesday the skies over Hong Kong darkened and the rains fell. For hours the rainwater rinsed the smog out of the sky and washed off the soot and grime from every surface. When it was over, the skyline view from my flat was the clearest it has ever been. High-rise apartments gleamed like dishes straight out of the dishwasher and the mountains were more verdant and lush than I ever imagined they could be. Indeed, the monsoon can be as much a blessing to city dwellers as it is to farmers in their rice paddies or herders bringing their livestock to the watering holes.

In the US, the Memorial Day weekend signifies the official start of summer. In Asia, the arrival of the monsoon is a much more auspicious event signaling the beginning of a new season. The monsoon, or rainy season, tracks from the Western Pacific across the Philippines, South China, Southeast Asia, into the Bay of Bengal and up through the Indian subcontinent. It varies from place to place and lasts about three months overall. I experienced the monsoon years ago when I was living and traveling in India and so it has a familiar feel. Monsoon rains are not like summer thunderstorms in North America. There are no gusts of wind or whipping rains, only steady gentle showers for a few hours each day. The beginning of the monsoon season is a pretty big deal—maybe not so much in Hong Kong, but elsewhere certainly. The volume and distribution of monsoon rains can mean the difference between bountiful harvests and famine for hundreds of millions of people. Its importance in the cultures and economies of Asia cannot be overstated.

In the coming months I will begin something of a monsoon journey. Next week I return to India for the first time in over ten years. I arrive in Chennai and head southward to a college in Tiruchirapalli to conduct an educational consultation visit for the Fulbright Foundation. I am also planning side trips to Madurai, Pondicherry, and Calcutta. When I lived in India I never travelled to any of these places. In fact, I have never been to any of the locations on my upcoming itinerary so my trip to India is as much a first time adventure as any other traveling I have done during my year in Asia. I am especially excited about seeing Calcutta. For an historian of British India, visiting Calcutta is like a biblical scholar visiting Jerusalem. I will only have four days in that city and already I have a long list of sights to see. After my trip to India I will return to HK for a week and finish up work. In early July I will return to Beijing and then travel onward to Mongolia for a tour of the steppes and to attend the Naadam, the annual Mongol horsemanship and sports tournament. In late July I will head off to Bangkok and begin a three-week journey through Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia. I am hoping to travel by boat down the Mekong River from the Laotian border to Phnom Penh. Years ago Alexander Frater wrote a book about his travels in Asia called Chasing the Monsoon. My own wet and muddy travels may mimic this to some extent. We’ll see what happens.

Actually, my Asian travels have already begun. Last month I made a ten-day visit to Vietnam. Since I gave my final exam on the first day of the two-week exam period I decided to take advantage of this unusual commitment-free period in my calendar and experience a new part of Asia. Vietnam was a logical choice since it is right next door. I flew out of Hong Kong in the afternoon and was having dinner in Hanoi a few hours later.

Vietnam is somewhere I have always wanted to visit. Part of this is because the country casts such a long shadow over American history and our own self-image. To Americans, the very name Vietnam still conjures up the worst fears of a military and political quagmire abroad, a bitterly divided society at home, and, above all, tragic miscalculation and waste. It is our sad epic of failure. Even now, the lessons for Americans of the Vietnam conflict—if there are any—are not fully understood. For me, an added appeal of this trip was the chance to experience the preservation and presentation of this history from the perspective of our former enemies and in the place where this tragedy unfolded. I also wanted learn more about the people and culture, and to view them not just through the lens of the war. Vietnam did not disappoint.

I arrived in Hanoi but it was just for a brief evening stopover before another flight further south. My trip really began in Hué, the old imperial capital of the Nguyen dynasty. Hué is the historical and cultural heart of Vietnam and is located just a few miles south of the former DMZ, the ten-mile demilitarized corridor that separated North and South Vietnam for two decades. I found Hué to be a very charming provincial city and its occupants extremely friendly. Apart from constantly dodging motor scooters whenever I crossed the street, it was a surprisingly stress-free place. The city is situated along the banks of the Perfume River and centered on the old Hué Citadel and imperial city, which the Nguyen kings occupied through most of the French colonial period until 1945. In 1968, Hué was almost completely destroyed during one of the longest and bloodiest battles of the Vietnam War. For weeks South Vietnamese soldiers and US marines fought to drive out the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces from the city. Thousands of civilians and soldiers died during the battle which, along with the Tet Offensive, helped diminish American public support for the war.

Today Hué bears very few scars of the battle. Most of the city has been rebuilt and the imperial palace has been designated a UNESCO World heritage Site. It is undergoing a major renovation to restore it to its former glory. The walls of the citadel are still badly pockmarked from the artillery bombardment. Above the main entrance of this scarred monument flies a giant flag of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, a bright red field with a large gold star in the center. Within its walls are displayed the rusting hulks of captured Patton tanks and jeeps and the weather-beaten and faded airframes of Bell UH-1 “Huey” helicopters, that ubiquitous icon of the Vietnam War.

On my second day in Hué, I took a tour of the DMZ and the ruins of the Khe Sanh marine base. It was about a three hour drive to get to Khe Sanh, which is a remote plateau in the hills near the border with Laos. It is an amazing vantage point and one can easily see why the marines chose to build their base here. It offers an unobstructed line of sight for miles in all directions. Helicopters based there during the war were able to patrol the DMZ to the north, conduct surveillance over the Ho Chi Minh trail to the west near the Laotian border, and make quick trips to and from Hué in the South. The battle of Khe Sanh in 1968 rivaled Hué in its ferocity and although the US and South Vietnamese forces prevailed the base was eventually abandoned. After the unification of Vietnam, the government rebuilt the base and turned it into a memorial for the heroic Vietnamese who were killed fighting the Americans and their puppet collaborators (at least that is how it is presented). The museum offers a predictably one-sided view of the battle with many black and white photos of marines running for cover and conducting helicopter evacuations in the face of enemy fire. This of course did happen, but it is not the whole story as any marine who fought there can tell you. The grounds of the memorial contain the usual collection of decaying US military hardware, but the displays in the museum gallery are much more interesting. Glass cases contain personal effects left behind by both sides. These include dog tags, armed forces ID cards, cigarette lighters, sketch pads, combat boots, sandals, pamphlets of Ho Chi Minh’s sayings, magazines, group photos, portraits of loved ones, helmets, and dozens of weapons and ammunition clips. The display is all the more moving for its seeming randomness. The theme of the exhibit is the bravery, tenacity and sacrifice of the Vietnamese fighting man and woman against the foreign aggressor. Again, not untrue but also not the whole story.

After Khe Sanh my tour group headed north across the DMZ. As we cruised past the rice paddies and palm glades I was struck by how tranquil and bucolic it all seemed. Gentle hills rose up in the west and the glistening paddies reflected the mid-day sun. Peasants in their trademark conical hats crouched down planting rice or occasionally pushing a plow behind a lumbering ox. Our guide mentioned that the chemical defoliant used around the DMZ led to thousands of cases of incurable cancer and a generation of children with birth defects and severe mental retardation—children who, if they survived, are now approaching middle age. Unbelievably sad. We even saw places where farmers had turned the bomb craters from B-52s into fish ponds rather than trying to fill them up and level the ground again.

When we arrived at the northern side of the DMZ we stopped in the village of Vinh Moc to see the famous tunnels dug by the Viet Cong. This was one of the most impressive sights of the entire trip. The tunnel entrances are shored up by wooden beams and lead to a maze of subterranean corridors and chambers that stretch out for miles. The tunnels are about five feet high and shoulder-width, with dimly lit caged bulbs strung along every few feet (these would have been gas lamps during the war). Anyone who is claustrophobic or who cannot stand dampness and dirt would not last long inside. Except for electric lighting and signs, there has been little done to make them tourist-friendly (which to me increased their authenticity and appeal). Given these conditions we were told that muddy clothes and hair, scraped elbows and knees, and wet hands and feet were to be expected for those who chose to go inside.

The tunnels themselves, primitive as they may be, are an extraordinary feat of engineering. They are like a giant ant farm for humans. Our guide pointed out the chambers that formed an underground hospital, complete with a maternity ward and operating rooms. Other areas had schoolrooms for children and dorms for entire families. Throughout the complex there are numerous wells and ventilation shafts that sustained the conditions for people to survive inside. A few tunnels stretched all the way below the DMZ and led to secret openings on the southern side that were used for smuggling fighters, arms, and information back and forth. The purpose of the Vinh Moc tunnels was to enable an entire village and military support station to function along the DMZ where aerial surveillance and bombardment would have otherwise made that impossible. The fact that the entire network of tunnels was dug by hand was, to me at least, the most remarkable part of Vinh Moc. One does have to admire Charlie’s ingenuity and determination. I wonder, if Robert McNamara and Lyndon Johnson had been given the opportunity to crawl from one end of the Vinh Moc tunnels to the other would they have still been so optimistic about defeating the NVA and Viet Cong?

After two days in Hué, I returned to Hanoi. The next morning I took a bus down to Halong City to board a boat for Cat Ba Island. The boat journey took a leisurely eight hours to sail through Halong Bay and it was the most relaxing and beautiful part of my journey in Vietnam. Scattered across the length of the bay are hundreds of karst peaks that stick up out of the water. Like giant serrated stone knives coated in vegetation some of these formations rise over a hundred feet from the surface. Nestled among these rock formations are floating fishing villages, entire communities who live in wooden huts perched on pontoon platforms. My boat was one of dozens of junks and fishing vessels plying these gentle waters (see below). This idyllic setting is world famous and is without a doubt Vietnam’s biggest tourist draw. The most well-known image among westerners of Halong Bay probably comes from the French movie Indochine, which was filmed there. Having lived in East Africa last year, I am very much reminded of the similar effect that Out of Africa had in Kenya. Both films created a highly romanticized version of life in a troubled colonial enclave. Yet while the scripts may have taken liberties the camera doesn’t lie, and in each case the movies captured quite well the breathtaking beauty of the locations in which they were filmed. Out of Africa single-handedly gave Kenya a boost in its tourism industry that has continued to the present. Vietnam tourism seems to be enjoying the same residuals, so to speak, from Indochine.

In the evening my boat arrived in Cat Ba Island and I settled in at a nicely appointed beachside hotel. The next morning I signed up for an 18-kilometer trek through Cat Ba National Park. There were four of us in my group and it was an enjoyable though arduous hike. We managed to see several endangered species of monkeys and stopped for lunch in a village that was situated in the middle of a patchwork of rice paddies surrounded by green karst peaks on all sides. It was like a paradise. As we hiked out of the park, our guide showed us a large cavern that was used by the NVA as a hospital and munitions storage area during the bombing of North Vietnam. Even in this idyllic setting, traces of the war could still be uncovered. After a few days on Cat Ba Island, I took the hydrofoil to Haiphong and then a bus back to Hanoi. I remained in Hanoi for the rest of my trip and was able at last to explore the capital and see what it had to offer.

The first thing that struck me about Hanoi was how beautiful a city it is. Some of the neighborhoods are like a tropical version of Paris, although more humid, crowded and chaotic (see below). Grand, tree-lined boulevards crisscross the city at all angles and there are parks and open plazas every few blocks. The opera house and some of the old colonial hotels and government offices are stunningly ornate and beautiful. They rival anything I have seen in Europe. The mix of French and Asian culture is everywhere to be seen. Trendy bistros serve classic French cuisine while delivery girls with conical hats on bicycles pedal along with enormous sacks of freshly baked baguettes slung over their backs. Along the streets and alleyways food stalls dish up steaming bowls of phơ noodles which are consumed while crouching on plastic stools along the sidewalk.

Yet despite the colonial French splendor and charm of Hanoi, the evidence in this city of the war is never hard to spot. There are monuments all over town commemorating the “martyrs” of the nation, civilians and soldiers killed between 1954 and 1975. Some statistics place this number as high as two million, one out of every ten people in the country. By comparison, US casualties were slightly higher than 58,000, though the agony of Americans who lost loved ones was no less acute. Much of the city has been rebuilt after the devastating bombing that it experienced along with Haiphong during “Operation Linebacker” in the early 1970s in the run-up to the Paris peace negotiations.

While in Hanoi, I visited the mausoleum of Ho Chi Minh. “Uncle Ho,” who died in 1969, is still revered by the Vietnamese. Like Chairman Mao, his remains are available for viewing in the morning hours. I stood outside in a very slow moving line along with hundreds of Vietnamese school children waiting my turn to file past the embalmed body of Ho. I must admit, it was a bit of a letdown after having seen dead Mao in Beijing back in February—perhaps even more so considering that Ho had clearly communicated that he did not want his remains made into such a memorial and had preferred a simple cremation. (Nehru had made a similar request and it seems that the Indians respected their leader enough to honor his final wishes.) While I had mixed reactions to the mausoleum, I did like the nearby museum dedicated to Ho and the restoration of the house in which he lived. After independence, Ho refused to move into the opulent French governor’s residence. It was re-designated the presidential palace but it remained empty while Ho moved into more modest quarters nearby. In the summer months he even stayed in a small wooden house on stilts that he had specially built. For postcolonial leaders this sort of thing was not unheard of. Nehru had similarly refused to occupy the viceroy’s house after becoming the first prime minister of India and opted for a more subdued government residence in Delhi. Such gestures of humility went a long way to endear these leaders to their impoverished countrymen.

My next stop in Hanoi was to Hoa Lo Prison, a colonial French compound in the middle of the city that was used for decades to incarcerate, interrogate, and execute Vietnamese nationalists and communists. The prison was later used briefly to hold American POWs, mostly pilots shot down during the bombing of North Vietnam, and is known to most Americans by the nickname “The Hanoi Hilton.” Incidentally, the new Hilton hotel in Hanoi is located next to the opera house and is called the “Hanoi Opera Hilton.” There is no real reason not to call it the Hanoi Hilton but that name has acquired such notoriety that the Hilton chain wisely decided to go with something different. Most of the Hoa Lo prison compound was later torn down to build a glass and steel office tower, but the section that remains is a national museum and heritage site. A tour of the prison leads through cellblocks and interrogation chambers. The shackles and torture instruments used by the French jailers are displayed as is the guillotine used to execute prisoners. It is a ghastly exhibit that leaves little to the imagination. There are also photos of communist and Viet Minh prisoners and displays showing the tools used in successful prison breaks (similar to the display in Alcatraz, I suppose).

Toward the end of the museum tour is a gallery dedicated to the incarceration of US POWs. The display shows clothes, letters, and personal effects of the prisoners. The flight suit and parachute belonging to Lt.Cdr. John McCain are prominently displayed in a glass case. Along with these items are photos of the prisoners playing volleyball, having Christmas dinner, and receiving packages from home. Not surprisingly there is no mention of the years of solitary confinement and torture (“enhanced interrogation techniques”?) inflicted on these men. What is even more interesting is that the US POW section also displays unexploded bombs dropped by US aircraft and numerous photos showing the terrible damage done to Hanoi during these raids along with appalling statistics of the death toll. Pictures of bombed out schools and hospitals are especially prominent. The museum spares no effort to communicate to its visitors exactly why the pilots were imprisoned there and for so long.

What was most eye-opening about these and other exhibits was not that they were so one-sided. This to be expected and, really, it is only fair. Winners write the history, at least in their own country. The surprising part was how familiar the Vietnamese remembrance of this war might seem to Americans if only another war were substituted. They understand the history of the final Vietnam conflict (there were many others before) just as Americans remember World War II or the American Revolution. It is a triumphalist story pure and simple: good vs. evil, national freedom vs. foreign tyranny, David vs. Goliath. In these museums and battle sites it appears as if a Vietnamese Stephen Ambrose has written the narrative and packaged this historical cheerleading for public consumption. What is offered is a tale of the unwavering bravery of the common soldier and civilian alike, of a united people’s determination to achieve righteous victory whatever the cost, with the unassailable leadership of Ho and Giap filling in for FDR and Macarthur. Moreover, the Vietnamese take special pride in their role of technological underdog, in some cases using stone-aged weaponry (booby traps made from sharpened bamboo spikes and animal tendons) against an enemy armed with laser-guided bombs and helicopter gunships. For them there is none of the tragic complexity, moral ambiguity, historical second-guessing, or unhealed wounds that we associate with conflicts like Vietnam or the Civil War. None whatsoever. The Bombing of Hanoi was their Battle of Britain and London Blitz, the Tet Offensive was their Guadalcanal, the entering of Saigon their Liberation of Paris. In fact, this sentiment expressed at the museums and battle sites in Vietnam is uncannily similar to that of the American World War II memorials I visited in the Philippines in December. For the Vietnamese, the war against the Americans was merely the last chapter in an age-old struggle for independence from foreign occupation. Before the Americans were the French, the Japanese (briefly), the French again, and, for centuries before that, the Chinese. Each was defeated and driven out in its time and in 1975 the people of Vietnam achieved final victory.

While I was in Hanoi I noticed hundreds of banners celebrating the thirty-fifth anniversary of national unification and liberation (April 30th, 1975, known more commonly by Americans as “the fall of Saigon”). The celebrations lasted for a week and were marked by concerts, parades, and veterans reunions. While walking across Hoan Kiem Park I regularly encountered groups of men in late middle age who had donned their old, saggy, and thread-bare uniforms with rows of medals. They looked tired and prematurely old. One can only imagine what they lived through. I wonder if the Vietnamese born after 1975 (the large majority of the population) appreciate the suffering and sacrifices that their elders had to endure. Vietnam is an emerging economy and a place that nowadays exudes youthful brashness and self-confidence. Investment is flowing into the country and construction in Hanoi and around the country is going at a nonstop pace. The future is bright and the past is not. These are the ideal conditions for the forgetting of history. Vietnam’s older generation seems intent on not allowing this to happen. One can only hope they are successful, and that we in America are as well.

2010-10-18T12:48:00.000-07:00

Fishing boats at anchor near Cat Ba Island
Halong Bay, Vietnam, 8 May 2010

2010-10-18T12:44:00.000-07:00

Street in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, 11 May 2010

June 4th in Hong Kong

2010-10-18T12:33:00.000-07:00

June 10, 2010 — Last Friday was June 4th, the twenty-first anniversary of the crushing of the Tiananmen Square student pro-democracy protests. Since the early 1990s, this day has been the occasion of the largest annual demonstration in Hong Kong. On Friday, over 150,000 people (according to local estimates) crowded into Victoria Park on the north side of Hong Kong Island to commemorate this event. It was the largest turnout ever recorded in Hong Kong for a Tiananmen anniversary rally. Two friends of mine and I were among the crowd.

In the weeks leading up to June 4th, I had heard a lot about this event and was curious to see just how far the freedoms of assembly and speech can be pushed inside this “Special Administrative Region” of China. Even before the handover in 1997, Hong Kong had long been known for its tumultuous local politics and heady street protests. Not much has changed. During my year here I have seen televised news coverage of demonstrations against such things as unpopular court verdicts and the proposed razing of villages in the New Territories to install a new rail line. There have also been numerous pro-democracy rallies led by members of the Hong Kong legislature over the touchy issues of electoral reform and executive control. However, all of these events pale in comparison to the annual June 4th demonstrations.

From the outset, I noticed that even the terminology of what is being memorialized is more delicate and subdued than in western accounts. Chinese people, even in Hong Kong, rarely refer to what happened in Beijing in the summer of 1989 as the Tiananmen Square “massacre,” “crackdown” or “uprising.” Nor do they even speak of it simply as “Tiananmen Square.” Instead, they usually call it the “June 4th Incident” referring to the last day of military operations when the protests were finally quelled. Or they merely say “June 4th,” similarly to the way Americans invoke the date September 11th, the mere mention of which brings instant collective understanding. For reform-minded Chinese in Hong Kong and the mainland, this is their date that lives in infamy.

In 1989, the brutal response of the Chinese government to the Tiananmen Square demonstrations sent chills through Hong Kong. This was natural since the territory had always existed on borrowed time, its administrators and residents knowing full well that when the lease of the New Territories ran out in 1997 Britain would have to hand it over to China. During World War II, Chiang Kai-shek had made no secret of his desire to take back the territory as soon as possible. In contrast, after 1949 the communist leadership of the People’s Republic cultivated lukewarm relations with Hong Kong; respecting the territory’s colonial sovereignty while waiting patiently for its time to run out. In 1984, Margaret Thatcher and Deng Xiaoping met to formalize the “Joint Declaration” that began the process of British disengagement from the territory that would culminate in the handover thirteen years later. Initially many Hong Kong people were cautiously optimistic about Deng’s “Four Modernizations” following Mao’s long reign. The insanity of the Cultural Revolution was over and China’s new economic liberalization, combined with its outreach to the rest of the world, seemed to bode well for Hong Kong’s still uncertain future. This optimism was crushed in the summer of 1989 and a new sense of fear and anger set in. June 4th was a shocking reversal from the direction in which Beijing had seemed to be headed. Where was China now going and to what exact fate was Hong Kong being abandoned?

The protests in Hong Kong that followed the Tiananmen Square demonstration were especially energetic. Indeed, Hong Kong was the only place other than Taiwan, where Chinese people not living abroad could publically continue the pro-democracy movements begun in Beijing. Of course the protests in Hong Kong were not just a show of solidarity with pro-democracy people in the mainland but were also directed at the colonial government and expressed the helplessness that many residents of the territory felt about their own uncertain future.

Since 1997, the protests have continued unabated and have actually increased. From a practical standpoint, they are a good way to gauge the true level of autonomy from China that exists in the new Hong Kong SAR. My own observation is that it is substantial but highly conditional. Clearly there is no way that these protests could be outlawed in Hong Kong (as they unequivocally are across the border in the mainland) but how far Beijing is willing to let them go in Hong Kong is never entirely clear. Indeed, the HKSAR government walks a fine line. Some exiled dissidents have been allowed into the territory to attend the rallies, but the most wanted are forbidden to enter. Replicas of the Goddess of Democracy statue (the white plaster model of a woman lifting a torch with both hands that was first displayed by student protesters in Beijing) were often seized by the HK Police in the days before June 4th. The reasons given were bureaucratic rather than political (fitting for Hong Kong) and usually listed safety violations and failure to obtain the proper permits. The rally organizers, many of them students, cleverly hid multiple statues in safe houses around the city. In one case, when a publically displayed statue was confiscated, a young woman wrapped in a white robe, wearing face paint, and raising a paper maché torch stepped up to take its place. The whole thing was quite dramatic, though the police and protesters alike seemed remarkably well-behaved and restrained. The Chinese authorities kept out of it, for the most part, but the HKSAR government did acquiesce in at least one sense by preventing some of the more inflammatory exiles from entering the territory to speak at the demonstration.

On Friday evening, before the demonstration, I met my friends at a restaurant in Causeway Bay a few blocks from Victoria Park. The sun was setting and the air was cool but with a good dose of summer humidity. The MTR was absolutely packed with people, more than I have ever seen. I waited in the queue on the Admiralty MTR platform and was finally able to board the fifth train that passed through. The streets of Causeway were like New Orleans during Mardi Gras or Times Square on New Year’s Eve. In fact, the only thing that I have seen in Hong Kong that has come close to drawing such a crowd is the fireworks display over the harbor during Chinese New Year. Many of the streets were closed to traffic and filled with art displays, performers, and folded tables covered with pamphlets and petitions manned by young activists. The police were few and far between.

After dinner, we followed the crowds to Victoria Park. It was about 8PM and the sun had set; the lights of the surrounding skyscrapers compensating somewhat for the cloudy, starless night. In the middle of the park, a sound stage was set up and enormous banners were hung from metal scaffolding on either side of the park. At one end of the assembly ground was an old statue of the park’s namesake, Queen Victoria seated on her throne with crown, scepter and orb and a stately, serene gaze. Facing her at the other end was a large, brightly lit plaster replica of the Goddess of Democracy, her arms outstretched and her hair and robe flowing. Seeing these two female archetypes within a stone’s throw of each other was incredible moment; Hong Kong’s past, present, and uncertain future poignantly captured in a single instant.

The demonstration continued as speaker after speaker took the stage. The speeches were all in Chinese and some of them went on a bit too long. Thankfully, these were interspersed with performances by Chinese musicians (some of these were quite moving). The keynote speech was by Xiong Yan, one of the original 1989 student leaders and now an exiled activist living in the US. He declared that the annual Hong Kong demonstration must continue since it is the only public response on Chinese soil preventing the Beijing government from wiping the memory of the Tiananmen massacre from the pages of history. As he and the others spoke, everyone in the crowd held lit candles. Tens of thousands of flickering specks of light stretched from one end of the park to the other. It was indeed quite a sight (see below). I expected the crowd to be mostly students but it was much more diverse. Many of them were young adults, but there were also middle-aged and elderly people and lots of families with small children. The crowd was overwhelmingly Chinese with a few gweilo like me here and there. When the demonstration ended we filed out into the street. People were calm and quiet as the police corralled the crowds along the main avenues sealed off to motor traffic. Again, there were surprisingly few police and not a single one in riot gear (though surely these were waiting nearby but out of sight). People filed into the MTR and onto buses, forming orderly queues as usual. By midnight I was home.

The June 4th demonstration was a remarkable event. I was amazed and impressed that such a protest could take place in Hong Kong, which is technically within the People’s Republic of China. Beijing knows well that it is politically unviable to prevent this demonstration. It may rule the mainland with an iron hand, but Hong Kong is different—it always has been—and it jealously guards it legal, economic, and administrative autonomy. To violate Hong Kong’s special status would in the long run do China more harm than good. Like the British before them, China’s leaders don’t want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs. In fact, they don’t even want to ruffle its feathers as long as it behaves. So they tolerate a political protest that is so public, bold, and accusatory toward the government that it would be unthinkable anywhere inside the mainland. Freedom of speech and assembly does indeed exist in Hong Kong and is regularly exercised by its people. Friday night was the most dramatic example of this but certainly not the only one. In fact, last week the South China Morning Post published excerpts from the newly released diaries of Li Peng, the premier of China during the 1989 protests and the individual most closely associated with the government crackdown. Apparently, the diaries are quite revealing and their authenticity has been corroborated with other reliable sources. Clearly the release of the diaries was timed to coincide with the twenty-first anniversary of the protests.

Yet despite all this, Hong Kong is not free to do whatever it wants and, though its bounds are considerable, if the HKSAR government does overstep then the authorities in Beijing will surely intervene. Hong Kong officials seem to know where the line of tolerance is and how far they can let their people go. In the end, it remains a delicate balancing act in which each side has much to gain or lose. I would wager that the limits have all been agreed upon ahead of time.

For images of the demonstration see
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_pictures/8083971.stm

2010-10-18T12:27:00.000-07:00

June 4th anniversary demonstration
Victoria Park, Hong Kong Island

Glass, Steel, and Bamboo

2010-10-18T12:21:00.000-07:00

June 20, 2010 — Hong Kong is a place that seems like it is constantly being made and remade. It is virtually impossible to go from point A to point B in this city without passing a construction site or cordoned-off road under repair. Across the street from my office at the university is an open lot in which the foundation is being laid for a high-rise tower of offices and classrooms. One block further south, the new art academy and communications building is nearing completion. During the day, I work at my desk with the muffled sound of jackhammers, pile drivers, and cement mixers in the background. At the lunch canteen there is always the usual mix of students, staff, and construction workers lined up to get a steaming bowl of noodles or a rice & duck take-away pack. Around campus, it seems like hard hats, reflective vests, and steel-toe boots are as much a part of university fashion as are neckties and mini-skirts. My own project in general education and curriculum development is part of the larger effort to help my host university be ready for the shift to the four-year curriculum in fall 2012—which much of this construction is meant to accommodate. As such, the daily racket outside my window—while it can be an irritating distraction at times—is a constant reminder of the urgency and importance of having everything ready in time for this transition to occur smoothly.

The construction going on at my university is merely a reflection of this larger phenomenon throughout the city. Looking out across the skyline one sees dozens of high-rise cranes along with skyscrapers and mountains. Amid the glass and steel towers that defiantly shoot skyward are hundreds of construction sites as well as overhaul projects for structures already built. One of the most curious things I have noticed about Hong Kong is that the most sleek and ultra-modern buildings—some of them thirty or forty stories—are often encased in the most primitive-looking yet intricate bamboo latticework scaffolds (see below). It is really bizarre and anachronistic: the most aesthetically and technologically modern structures covered in the same type of scaffolding that, from appearance at least, would be more appropriate for building the great pyramids or as a set from "Gilligan’s Island." The explanation, it turns out, is quite simple. Bamboo poles are the ideal scaffolding material. There is no other synthetic or natural material that combines the same advantages of strength, flexibility, light weight and low cost. The key to being able to put together a safe and secure bamboo scaffold is the reliability of the ties and fasteners and the effectiveness of weight distribution. Hong Kong construction teams are experts at designing these scaffolds and then putting them up and taking them down. The poles themselves can be reused many times, and hundreds of them can be loaded onto a single flatbed truck. If the construction team knows what it is doing, the use of bamboo scaffolds helps keep project costs down while also decreasing accident rates as well. I’ll say it once again: this city never ceases to amaze me.

The impulse toward relentlessly clearing out the old to make way for the new and improved goes a long way to explain Hong Kong’s dynamism and success. Yet the historian in me laments how blithely the unique architectural heritage of this place is consigned to memory (if it is even remembered at all). In museum exhibits, I have seen black and white photos of Hong Kong in the 1910s and 20s. These show handsome colonial buildings, with their whitewashed Victorian colonnades and arches, lining Des Voeux and Hennessey Road while pedestrians, rickshaws, and streetcars zip by below (see below). Nowadays, one would be hard-pressed to find these buildings in the same neighborhoods (though some do still exist). This is not the same state of affairs in many European cities, which by contrast have lovingly preserved their distinctive architectural heritage. To look at an impressionist painting of the Champs Élysées is to see much the same as what appears today. The same is true of central Madrid, Rome, or London. Even in cities that were almost completely destroyed during the war, such as Warsaw or Dresden, the style and atmosphere of the old architecture has been painstakingly recreated. Skyscrapers and other modern glass and steel buildings are often restricted to the outlying areas of Europe’s great cities such as Canary Wharf in London and La Défense in Paris. This sensibility seems to be that innovation and improvement can take root and prosper, but not if it overshadows past glory, civilization, and accomplishment.

In Hong Kong, it is a different story. The real estate on the North shore of HK Island is so valuable that it is almost impossible to justify the preservation of a four- or five-story building where a fifty- or sixty-story office tower or high-rise apartment block could stand in its place. Exceptions are made only in the case of the most significant historical or cultural importance—there are less than a hundred declared monuments in all of Hong Kong. Notable colonial-era buildings that have escaped the wrecking ball include the Legislative Council, the old Central Magistracy, St. John’s Anglican Cathedral, the HK Observatory, the old Central Police Station, the main building at Hong Kong University, Government House, and the KCR Clock Tower in Tsim Sha Tsui. In the New Territories, the walled villages of Fanling and some of the older temples were isolated enough to avoid the covetous eye of real estate developers and now efforts are being made to preserve them as well.

Of course, there are exceptions to this pattern. Hong Kong, somewhat contrary to its obsession with improvement, years ago wisely decided to keep its unique double-decker streetcars. These quaint, boxy modes of transportation rattle along Des Voeux and Queen’s Road on the northern side of HK Island from Causeway Bay through Wan Chai, Admiralty, and Central all the way to Sheung Wan. If I am not in a rush, I often ride on the upper deck and take in the sights as the streetcar lumbers along in the midst of all the cars, buses and pedestrians (if I am pressed for time, as is often the case, I take the MTR Island Line that runs beneath these same streets). The city has also kept and maintained its steam-powered Star Ferry Line that runs several times an hour back and forth across Victoria Harbor. Many of these boats were built in the 1950s and entered service at a time when there were no bridges or tunnels connecting the various islands and peninsulas of Hong Kong. Nowadays there is not the same need for intra-HK ferry service, and these antique vessels could have long ago been consigned to the scrap yard. I’m happy that this never happened. It is a wonderful sight to take in the panoramic view of Victoria Harbor and see the distinctive green and white paint schemes and smokestacks of the Star ferries as they dutifully shuttle back and forth amid all the other maritime traffic. It is equally a pleasure to hear the bells and clanking of the streetcars or to turn a corner and see and see that rare colonial or Chinese building that is now a heritage site. These things make Hong Kong distinctive and the mere sight of them evokes the atmosphere of an era gone but not completely forgotten.

2010-10-18T12:18:00.000-07:00

Scaffold on the HK Performing Arts Centre
Tsim Sha Tsui, 19 May 2010

2010-10-18T12:17:00.000-07:00

Des Voeux Road, Hong Kong Island, c.1920

India Revisited

2010-10-18T12:15:00.000-07:00

June 30, 2010 — Last Thursday I returned to Hong Kong after a two-week visit to India. This was my first time back in that country in over ten years (I last left India in June 2000 as a graduate student after ten months of dissertation research). This time I was there to conduct an educational consulting visit as a Fulbright scholar at a college in the city of Tiruchirapalli in Tamil Nadu. For weeks I had been looking forward to this trip. India has been the only Asian country on my itinerary this year that I have been to before. Yet my trip there did not feel much like a return visit. In fact, none of the places I visited in India this time were ones to which I had ever traveled previously. I didn’t have the chance to return to Delhi, Lucknow, or Udaipur nor did I reconnect with any of my Indian friends and colleagues. On top of that, my knowledge of Hindi proved virtually useless since Calcutta residents generally speak Bengali and in Tamil Nadu they insist upon Tamil. The latter group is particularly defensive about their language and resent deeply what they perceive as the North Indian majority forcing Hindi upon them (a language to them as alien as Danish or Korean). I didn’t score any points with Tamils when I instinctively spoke Hindi to them. Conversations quickly switched to English. Overall, while much of the feel of the country was familiar, the trip was filled with new experiences and observations.

My flight from HK to Chennai included a nine-hour stopover in Singapore; just enough time to for me to see a bit of that city. I was especially interested to see how this city-state—once a colony, fortress, and entrepôt of the British Empire—compares to Hong Kong with its similar past. Both places have much in common: a shared British colonial origin, strong roots in southern Chinese culture, an entrepreneurial population overseen by a competent and honest civil service, and a strategic location for commerce and for projecting political and military power. Where Hong Kong became a western gateway to China, Singapore remained the British link between South and East Asia.

From the airport I took the metro into the city center and began with lunch at the Raffles Hotel before hitting the streets. The Raffles is one of the oldest and best known landmarks in Singapore and is today considered among the most posh and exclusive hotels in the world. In its long and storied past the hotel has briefly been home to dozens of celebrities and statesmen as well as some of the greatest luminaries of British literature, among them Joseph Conrad, Rudyard Kipling, Somerset Maugham, and Noel Coward. While I was there I had a wildly overpriced gin and tonic at the famous “long bar” inside the hotel. This space oozes character and history: every surface seems to be covered with polished wood and brass while hundreds of pieces of colonial memorabilia hang from the walls. These range from old P&O steamer posters and advertisements to regimental group photos and civil defense placards from World War II. The windows face onto a wrap-around colonial veranda filled with wicker furniture and potted palms. Slow turning ceiling fans and rattan shades help keep things cool in the noonday sun. The whole place seemed like the set to a movie.

After the Raffles I visited the “Battle Box” in nearby Fort Canning Park. This is the underground bunker complex used by the British and Australians to coordinate the defense of Singapore during World War II. The facility has been meticulously restored by Britain’s Imperial War Museum and is now a fascinating and very moving tourist attraction. It was here that General Percival made the decision to surrender to the Japanese in February 1942 and consigned over 100,000 British and imperial troops to becoming prisoners of war. The fall of Singapore was even more devastating to British morale than the fall of Hong Kong. Winston Churchill called it the worst capitulation in British history. Singapore was Britain’s Corregidor, and now that I have seen both places the similarity is even more striking. After the surrender, most of the POWs were housed at the notorious camp in Changi, near the site of the new airport. Hundreds were executed there by the Japanese and thousands more died from disease, starvation, and exposure. Many others were shipped into Southeast Asia and used as slave labor in building the “death railway” in Thailand and Burma. Most did not return. Singapore civilians fared no better than the POWs at Changi. Throughout the city there are numerous monuments to the victims of the war. The placards and engravings are in English, Chinese, Malay, and Tamil.

With just a few hours remaining in my Singapore stopover, I headed to Chinatown and then onward to Little India and the Arab Quarter. The ethnic diversity of Singapore is really striking, much more so than Hong Kong. Indian, Malay, Chinese, and Arab Singaporeans mix freely and no one group seems to predominate. I liked Singapore, but I definitely prefer Hong Kong. The former is orderly, clean, and safe but the latter is by far more vibrant and interesting. And despite Hong Kong’s inclusion in the People’s Republic of China, Singapore has a much more autocratic and watchful government.

After leaving Singapore, I arrived in India. My first stop was Calcutta (Kolkata since 2001), a place I have for many years wanted to see. While the very name of this city conjures the worst possible images in the minds of many westerners, I found Calcutta to be a pleasant surprise. It is not a garden spot, by any stretch of the imagination, but neither is it the hell on earth of poverty, overcrowding, and filth that it is often envisioned to be. Actually, it seemed relatively relaxed and friendly compared to other cities in India like Delhi and Varanasi in which I have lived and traveled. I stayed at a nicely appointed hotel near Chowringhee Road along the Maidan and spent four days walking around the city and taking in the sights—and in the process having many of my preconceptions about Calcutta corrected. The city traffic was dense but generally better managed than in New York or Washington and I was almost never approached by beggars or panhandlers (I should be so lucky in Portland). The streets were lined with wonderful examples of colonial neo-classical and Victorian architecture—in various states of preservation or decay—and there were several very nice parks throughout the city. I enjoyed most the grand Victoria Memorial (see below) built in the early twentieth century and the Park Street Cemetery with its eighteenth-century graves and mausoleums of British East India Company officials and their families. I also visited the Missionaries of Charity mother house, which contains Mother Teresa’s tomb and a museum about her life and works. A humbling experience indeed.

What was most surprisingly about Calcutta was how walkable a city it is. While it is a grungy town that lacks the grandeur of Delhi, it is also spared the latter’s sprawl and inconvenient distances between points of interest. In my entire time in Calcutta I never took a taxi except to and from the airport. It was really an enjoyable visit. I managed to see a lot of the city, find a few excellent Bengali restaurants and coffee houses, and meet some of the local residents, who were unfailingly friendly, helpful, and interesting.

My time in Tamil Nadu was equally enjoyable, however there I had to combine work with sightseeing. After flying from Calcutta to Chennai I took a train to the city of Tiruchirapalli (“Trichy” to most locals). I stayed at Bishop Heber College where I gave lectures in history to the students and faculty and delivered a presentation on the Fulbright program in India. I was also asked to give a lecture at the nearby Jesuit college, St. Joseph’s. Afterward I was invited to the Jesuit residence on campus to have coffee with the priests and scholastics (shades of a previous life). I really enjoyed my time at both colleges as well as the eye-opening conversations I had with the students and teachers. One thing I learned is that caste discrimination remains a problem even among Indian Christians. Many of them with low-caste origins feel alienated and rejected by the higher caste clergy and laity. Apparently caste sensibility is so firmly rooted in India, even among non-Hindus, that a religion whose doctrine holds that the first shall be last and the last shall be first cannot eradicate this practice. One of my hosts, a professor, is a low-caste Catholic who described to me his own difficult experience dealing with such attitudes in his own community that are so seemingly antithetical to their shared faith.

On Saturday, after two days of lecturing and meeting with faculty and administrators, I boarded a bus headed to the temple city of Madurai. The centerpiece of this city is the Sri Meenakski temple complex, a spectacular network of towers, courtyards, and shrines built in the sixteenth century. The temples are in a distinctively South Indian style and the towers rise above the city, not unlike Mayan pyramids. They are covered from top to bottom with hundreds of brightly painted sculptures of deities and other figures. Over the weekend I made three visits to the temples yet still felt like I was only able to take in a small portion of what was on view.

Two days later I finished my visit to India with a stop in Pondicherry, the former French colony and seaport on the Bay of Bengal. Throughout British rule in India, the French retained control of Pondicherry and maintained it as a tropical Gallic enclave up to the time of independence in 1947. Even now France maintains a consulate there. I enjoyed the chance to stroll along the tree-lined streets and admire the Indo-French maisons with their pastel colored walls and tile roofs. The churches, government buildings, parks, and the waterfront promenade were even more impressive. The best part of Pondicherry, to me at least, was the abundance of excellent French restaurants. I had a delicious steak au vin and a passable Bordeaux on my last night there (steak in India is usually taboo, but Pondicherry seems to be the lone exception to this rule). The next day I returned to Chennai and twelve hours later I was back in Hong Kong.

My return from India left me with just few hectic days to finish up work and finally to allow the realization to sink in that my year in Hong Kong is coming to an end. Last week was filled with farewell lunches and dinners. It was sad saying goodbye to my colleagues at the university and especially in the Fulbright program. The Fulbright General education cohort was a great team and I enjoyed working with them and getting to know Hong Kong with them and their families. I will miss them very much. On Wednesday I packed up my office and returned the key and my ID card. Yesterday was a public holiday so I headed out to Sai Kung for a final boat trip with my dive club. The weather was wonderful and we spent the day diving near one of the islands at Tsim Chau and lounging on the deck taking in the sun, the sea, and the mountain views. After we returned to Sai Kung our group had drinks along the waterfront and then Tricia and I went to the Hung Kee seafood restaurant, one of my favorites and yet another wonderful attraction of Hong Kong that I will sorely miss.

Not much else to tell. I have to sign off now since today is the day I move out of my flat and there is still much packing to do. Tomorrow Tricia and I head to Beijing and then onward to Mongolia. I’ll be back in HK in mid-July and then off to Southeast Asia for more travels. I leave Hong Kong for good in mid-August, but I don’t need to think about that just yet.

2010-10-18T12:14:00.000-07:00

The Victoria Memorial, Calcutta
Completed 1921, designed by Sir William Emerson

Mongolia

2010-10-18T12:13:00.001-07:00

July 17, 2010 — On Wednesday I returned from a two week journey to Mongolia. I had been planning this trip for months and it proved to be one of the highlights of my entire year in Asia. I have long been fascinated with Mongolia—or, more accurately, with the image I had of Mongolia. To me, it has always seemed like one of the last unspoiled places on earth. It is still one of the most sparsely populated and undeveloped countries in the entire world. Though it is size of Western Europe, it has a population of only 2.7 million—slightly more than a third of Hong Kong’s population. Apart from the capital, Ulaanbaatar, there are almost no real cities in the entire country and very little infrastructure. In fact, there is no inhabited place on earth that I could have visited that would be a greater contrast to what I have experienced in Hong Kong. In the span of a few days I went from one of the most urbanized, technologically advanced, and densely populated places in the world to one of the least.

After a three-day stopover in Beijing, Tricia and I arrived in Ulaanbaatar in the middle of the night. The taxi drove us 17 km from the airport to our hotel in the city. After months of living in Hong Kong, it was a bit eerie to be driving through the night and staring into the pitch darkness of open space on either side of the road. As we approached the city we started to see streetlights along the road and lights from factories and apartment blocks. We checked into the hotel at about 1AM and went straight to bed. The next day we had a chance to explore the city a bit. The weather was wonderful and, for a change, it was actually pleasant to be outside. Warm, dry air and clear blue skies were a welcome departure from the steaming humidity and white haze of Hong Kong followed by the scorching heat and smog of Beijing. It was very much like a perfect Oregon summer day. We began in the middle of the city and worked our way outward. In the center of Ulaanbaatar is Suhkbaatar Square which is surrounded by an impressive parliament building and a few older Russian-built hotels. Further away from the center are a few old Buddhist monasteries. Otherwise the city’s architecture is unremarkable (though I suppose “this is really dull” qualifies as a remark). In any event, it was still nice to walk around town. The city seemed laid-back and unhurried compared to Hong Kong and Beijing and there were plenty of open-air beer gardens in which to relax. It was a good introduction to Mongolia, but of course one day in the middle of a city hardly gives one a sense of a country—especially one whose people are not naturally city-dwellers.

Early in the morning on the second day we met our guide and driver and headed out into the steppes. Our guide, Tsolmon, was a young woman of eighteen about to begin her university studies in the fall. Her English was excellent, and of course this has made her highly desired in the lucrative tourist industry. Hers is a good job since she can work as little or as much as she likes and can set her schedule around her studies. I was really impressed with her poise and maturity and how responsible she was. It is hard to believe that she is younger than my students at Lewis & Clark and HKBU. Our driver, Dembee, was an older man who had retired from a career in the Mongolian army. He spoke only a few words of English, but with Tsolmon as a translator, Tricia and I were able to communicate quite a bit with him.

As we drove eastward away from Ulaanbaatar, we noticed that in many of the residential neighborhoods on the outer edge of the city (not quite suburbs) people still lived in gers rather than buildings. Gers are the traditional nomadic huts that the Mongolian herders have lived in for centuries. The lingering preference for this seemingly primitive type of housing at first made little sense to me, but over the next few days it would become clearer. Once we were out of the city, the scenery quickly transformed into the Mongolia of my imagination (fuelled, admittedly, by countless National Geographic photos spreads and Discovery Channel documentaries). Less than 15 km from the city center the scenery gave way to rolling green plains and distant mountains. The land was completely empty except for herds of horses and sheep and the occasional ger. In the distance we could sometimes see power lines strung across the landscape and tire tracks in the grass, but apart from these there was nothing that made what we saw any different what we might have seen hundreds of years ago. It was breathtakingly beautiful; similar in some ways to the “big sky” country of Montana and Idaho but somehow more impressive.

Our first night was spent in a ger in the Terelj National Park. When we stepped inside, we were amazed at how spacious and comfortable it was. Gers are round huts built around an accordion-like wooden frame and covered with thick felt panels over which are layers of waterproof cloth (see below). They usually have linoleum floors laid over the ground and covered in carpet. In the center is a fuel stove with a pipe leading up through a hole at the top of the ger. Furniture is usually arranged against the wall and occupants can easily stand up and walk around inside. Outside, the round walls help deflect the wind and with a fire going inside the structures are warm and comfortable even in sub-zero temperatures. The best thing about a ger is how highly mobile its occupants can be. Gers can be put up or taken down in less than an hour by people who know what they are doing. Since they are constructed from lightweight materials (no masonry or metal) the parts can be packed onto horses or camels and moved long distances without too much effort. Most Mongolians, even many city dwellers, still live in these structures.

While we were in Terelj we hiked through nearby birch and pine forests to a Buddhist shrine at the top of a mountain. The mix of forest and mountains in Terelj was more like what I have seen in central Oregon than the steppes we drove through on the way there from Ulaanbaatar. After Terelj we continued eastward into a more remote area called Gun Guluut, which is a broad treeless plain with a river winding through it and surround by rolling gray mountains in the distance. The hundreds of square miles that make up Gun Guluut are occupied by what cannot be more than a few dozen people. Once we arrived there we got settled into our ger encampment and the next morning we shifted to horses to continue our journey. It took us the better part of the morning to arrive at the nearest ger, where we were welcomed by the nomad couple living there. Inside the ger we seated according to gender and shown photos of the couple’s children and grandchildren, including a son in India who is undergoing studies to be a Buddhist monk. Their daughter and granddaughter who lived in a nearby ger stopped by to say hello and we were all treated to batch of freshly heated yogurt (delicious) and some hard cheese (vile). We were also able to sample some fermented mare’s milk, a Mongolian favorite (truly foul—to this visitor, at least). Overall our hosts were among the most hospitable and unpretentious people I have ever met. Our guide later explained that Mongolians routinely call upon strangers from whom they can expect food for themselves and their horses. Once they are settled into their gers, they must reciprocate this hospitality to other visitors. This system allows nomadic people to move across the land with minimal supplies and has been practiced for centuries. After saying goodbye to our hosts we continued across the steppe in a circular path back to our camp. At one point the river emptied into a flood plain that had become a grassy marsh. This was an ideal spot for bird watching since marsh protects birds from natural predators and is a good resting place on the migration paths from Siberia to the warm climes of Southeast Asia and back again. We saw a few Siberian cranes and several other smaller birds which I could not identify. We returned to the camp at sunset and then departed by car for Ulaanbaatar the following day.

Throughout our brief time on the steppes I was often dumbstruck by the natural beauty of the land and sky. Mongolia is unlike any place I have ever seen in any of my travels, except perhaps Lakadh in the Indian Himalayas. It really seems like a land that time forgot. I was also impressed by how easy going and friendly were the Mongols that I encountered. It is hard to believe that they are descended from the same people who terrorized half the world in the thirteenth century. Indeed, the history of the Mongol Empire is remarkable considering how remote the nation of Mongolia has become in the modern age. At its height, Genghis Khan’s empire reached across all of Asia and into Europe. From Mongolia it controlled all of Central Asia, Iran and China. It reached into Vietnam, Korea, North India, and all the way to Palestine and Turkey. In Europe it reached the Baltic Sea and the gates of Budapest and Vienna. Mongols and their descendants became emperors in China, Persia, and India as well as the Czars of Russia. The Mongols created the largest land empire in history, but they did not bequeath a legacy comparable to other empires. They left no roads, waterways, or buildings like the Romans did (but they did build quite a few bridges—even nomads could find these useful). Likewise, they lacked the Spanish and Portuguese zeal for conversion or the British genius for civil administration. They never tried to convert anyone to their blend of shamanism and Buddhism, but mostly from indifference rather than a spirit of tolerance. Their administration was never more sophisticated than what could be done from horseback. Mostly their subject peoples were left alone so long as they paid their tribute on time and in full. If they didn’t they were killed in the most brutal ways imaginable (rolled up in carpets and trampled on by horses, boiled or buried alive, etc.) An uncomplicated system of imperial management, when one really thinks about it. Not unlike how Tony Soprano and his crew run things in North Jersey. One can shake one’s head at the brutality, but as empires go is this really worse than the slave ships sailing from West Africa to the Caribbean, the diamond mines at Kimberley, the Belgian ivory trade in the Congo Free State, or the rape of Nanjing?

The most interesting about the Mongol Empire is that nowhere in their vast holdings did they build any cities (though they managed to sack a few—Baghdad in 1258 being the most notable example). Even their own capital, Kharakoram, was composed mostly of gers and wooden structures. Today it is a marginal town, even by Mongolian standards, of interest mostly to tourists and archaeologists. At the height of their power, the Mongols never shed their nomadic instincts. Even Genghis Khan demanded that when the time came his burial would be done in secret and no monument left behind. He did not want his memory to be rooted to one particular place. Even today, Mongols know that he is buried a certain region of the country, but have no idea of the exact spot. It seems that all the blandishments of empire—property and other immovable forms of wealth as well as the ability to spread their culture, religion, and language—were not worth giving up the most prized of their freedoms: mobility. This sensibility is alive and well today among Mongolians who settled down only out of necessity rather than preference. Nearly half of the population is still nomadic and, as mentioned earlier, many of the urban dwellers still choose to live in gers. Even the borders of the nation-state of Mongolia make little sense when one considers how geographical diffused the ethnic Mongolians are today. Many live in Inner Mongolia which is a province of China and others live in an area of Siberia that adjoins Mongolia. Likewise within the western reaches of Mongolia most of the people are ethnic Kazakhs who speak their own language and are Muslims. But national borders matter little to nomads, and the vast and the almost sublime emptiness of that part of the world is nature’s mockery of human attempts to divide and allocate territory. This is hard to describe, but to see it is to sense it instantly.

If the Mongols were unique as conquerors, their history as a subject people is equally interesting. As they declined in power they faced the wrath of some of the same people they had once terrorized. The Chinese who had earlier built a wall to protect themselves from Mongol hordes occasionally sent their armies into Mongolia and eventually annexed half of that territory. Until the twentieth century, the Chinese controlled all but the west of Mongolia. In the nineteenth century, Imperial Russia spread eastward across Siberia to the Pacific in a pattern of conquest not unlike the westward “Manifest Destiny” of the United States across North America. Outer Mongolia, now reduced to a fragment of its historic reach, became a useful buffer zone between rivals Russia and China. It has retained this value into the present day. In 1911, the Bogd Khan, the vassal ruler of Mongolia declared independence from China, but this did not last long. After the Russian Revolution and the creation of the Soviet Union, Mongolia briefly became a haven for fleeing White Russians. Eventually Mongolia became a satellite state of Moscow, largely as part of a Faustian bargain to keep the Chinese out for good.

The history of communist Mongolia is a curious one. In a sense, the Mongols are well suited for communism since they are among the most naturally communal and least materialistic people in the world. Their notion of collective ownership of land is imprinted into their cultural DNA. It stems from centuries of history and inescapable geographic circumstances, not the forced application of the writings of Marx and Lenin. Yet by the same token, they would seem to be the least amenable to a powerful centralized government known for forced collectivization and paranoid surveillance of the population. Even Genghis Khan spared his conquered subjects this fate, to say nothing of his own people. Sadly, the Russians found willing Mongolian puppets and the country soon experienced one of the most traumatic and destructive transformations in its history. The Bogd Khan was overthrown and Khorloogiin Choibalsan, a former Lamaist monk and convert to communism, took over. He and his successors, following the order of the Comintern, began the collectivization of livestock and liquidated hundreds of monasteries (the only really permanent structures in the country). Recently unearthed Soviet records make clear that their interest in Mongolia was in the land itself; the sparse population was an inconvenience to be dealt with accordingly—not unlike English attitudes toward Ireland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Stalin’s purges of the 1930s were repeated in Mongolia as the government there executed over 30,000 people, mostly monks. The Russians also introduced the Cyrillic script for writing the Mongolian language. This had mixed results. As a cultural intrusion it firmly stamped the country’s status as a satellite of Russia. Yet the unique and beautiful Mongolian script is also a difficult and demanding one that for centuries was the preserve of scholars and monks. Its replacement with the easily-learned Cyrillic alphabet would enable literacy to increase rapidly, eventually leveling off to the rate of 96 percent, which is impressive by any standard. During the Cold War, Mongolia remained firmly in the communist camp and strengthened its ties to Moscow during the Sino-Soviet split. After 1990, like many former Soviet client states Mongolia began the path to democratization and engagement with the West. Today Mongolia is feeling the effects of globalization and is beginning to reap the benefits of its vast and largely untapped oil, coal, and natural gas reserves.

My travels in the steppes of Mongolia confirmed many of the images I had of a romantic and timeless land and culture, but my experience of Ulaanbaatar had the opposite effect and often left me scratching my head. In many ways Ulaanbaatar is an ugly city. This is not surprising since the Mongols have never been builders. The main buildings in town were built by foreigners (in almost all cases Russians) and owe nothing to Mongol culture or aesthetic sensibility. In the center of the city there are the typically stark and brutal Stalinist government buildings (the ministries of this and that) and further out are vast, soul-crushing blocks of Brezhnev-era apartment buildings situated along oversized treeless avenues. The apartments are impressive in size but the crumbling concrete and weathered surfaces are as depressing to look at as they are, I imagine, to live in. It is not hard to see why Mongols, even in the city, still prefer to live in gers. These cozy structures are built on a human scale and reflect distinctly Mongolian artistry as well as being pleasant to live in. The cloth covers often have intricate embroidery and the wooden doors and ceiling beams are lovingly painted in bright floral patterns and heavily lacquered in a way that make them seem more suited to a Bavarian tavern or Pennsylvania Dutch farmhouse. Even more beautiful and distinct are Mongol costumes and jewelry, the best examples of which are found in Ulaanbaatar’s national museum. The artistic genius of Mongol culture and its best expression has always been reserved for that which is easily portable; thus is it not surprising that architecture is not high on the list. The remaining monasteries not destroyed by the Soviets and their Mongol collaborators stand out as wonderful works of art, but these are few and far between.

Yet, the city of Ulaanbaatar is a much more cosmopolitan capital than I expected. The new money from natural gas, coal, and other resources, in fact, is turning the capital into something of a boomtown. There are glass and steel office towers being completed throughout town and the main thoroughfare, Peace Avenue, boasts dozens of restaurants offering every sort of cuisine. A local wine store offered tastings of some excellent wines from around the world. They even had a 2001 Montecillo gran reserva—a personal favorite from family dinners and which I have only seen in a wine store in West Orange, NJ. Now I know that I can also find it in Outer Mongolia. How convenient. Apparently there is enough disposable wealth to warrant the building of a shiny new shopping mall with Louis Vuitton, Burberry, and Armani outlets as well as breaking ground on an Ikea store on the other side of town. That’s right, an Ikea. Is the arrival of the world’s most famous furniture chain here a sign that the Mongols are finally starting to settle down? Honestly, given the number of times I have moved my own Ikea bed, dresser, and bookshelves around the US since college, I don’t really know if this signals the end of the nomadic life or a further reinforcement of it.

After eight days of experiencing Mongolia, both city and country, Tricia and I left for the airport in the dead of night just as we had arrived. In the days since, I still don’t know what to make of Mongolia. In some ways it reinforced or exceeded my expectations as a land of timeless beauty and a people holding onto a distinct culture and sense of their place in world history. In other ways, it revealed the unstoppable force of globalization and the rising tide of Asian economic power that apparently can reach into the most seemingly inaccessible crevices and remote peripheries. Granted, it is not like anything that I saw in Ulaanbaatar was remarkably different from what I have seen anywhere else. It is that Mongolia has, in my mind at least, always been synonymous with the furthest reaches of the earth, the ultimate in remoteness and isolation from the rest of the world. As with many of the places I have visited, I came away from Mongolia with a lot of preconceptions corrected but with many more questions than when I arrived.

2010-10-18T12:09:00.000-07:00

A Ger on the central Mongolia steppe
Gun Guluut, Mongolia, 9 July 2010

Southeast Asia

2010-10-18T12:06:00.000-07:00

August 9, 2010 — I’m back in Hong Kong after three weeks traveling through Southeast Asia. This was the final adventure during my year here and the last chance to see a new part of Asia before I return to Portland at the end of the month. A few weeks ago, as I was planning this trip, I decided on a circular route through Southern Thailand, Laos, and Cambodia to be followed by a week of diving on an island in the Gulf of Thailand. The objectives of this trip were to travel part of the way along the Mekong River, see the temples at Angkor, do some reef diving, and get off the tourist track for at least some the journey to experience a bit of village life in this part of the world.

I arrived in Bangkok around midnight on July 17th and spent the next day wandering around the riverfront near the Wat Traimit and Wat Pho temples. I had less than twenty-four hours to soak in what is among the most modern and energetic cities in all of Asia, but I knew that this whirlwind stopover was not the last time I would be in Bangkok during my trip so I didn’t feel pressured to do too much or to move at a frantic pace. That afternoon I booked my airline tickets to Koh Tao for later in the trip and then later in the evening I boarded an overnight train. I got to the Thai-Laotian border early in the morning and then crossed over by bus and arrived the town of Pakse that evening. Pakse is the former French capital of southern Laos; a pleasant town situated on the banks of the Mekong River. The center of the town contains an old French church, some colonial-era office buildings, and two very beautiful Buddhist seminaries. The novice monks were dressed in day-glow orange robes and all of them looked really young—some barely teenagers. I had dinner that evening at an open-air restaurant along the riverfront and watched the sun set over the Mekong River.

The Mekong River is main geographic and commercial artery of this region. It runs the length of Southeast Asia from its headwaters in the mountains of Yunnan Province in China all the way through Laos, Thailand, and Cambodia, finally fanning out into the Mekong Delta in South Vietnam where it empties into the South China Sea. Many of the region’s most important cities are located along its banks. This river is to Southeast Asia what the Danube is to Europe, the Ganges to India, the Amazon to South America, and the Mississippi to North America. The water is often a rich brown color and the currents can be quite strong. During the Vietnam War, US Navy riverine squadrons that patrolled the muddy and dangerous waters of the Mekong Delta were known as the “brown water navy.” Though I was not returning to Vietnam, I was nevertheless determined to travel the river’s length from Pakse to Phnom Penh in Cambodia.

The next morning I took a bus to Si Phan Don along the border with Cambodia. This is a point where the Mekong expands into a web of smaller rivers that reconvene about fifty km downstream from the point where they first split apart. The result is cluster of small islands and sandbars within the Mekong system, many of which support small fishing and farming villages. The waters here contain crocodiles as well as the small Irrawaddy dolphins, a rare and endangered freshwater species. From the bus stop at Ban Nakasang I took a motorized sampan out to the village of Ban Hua Det on the island of Don Det and then checked in to my guesthouse.

I had planned to explore the village and surrounding waters that afternoon, but I was feeling really exhausted and instead lay down for short nap. When I awoke it was dinnertime and by then I knew something was wrong with me. I had a fever and every part of my body ached. I was also starting to get a bad headache. I tried to eat dinner but the smell and taste of what would have otherwise been a delicious meal made me nauseous. I returned to my room and tried to sleep some more but was now in severe pain. I had a high fever, cold sweats, and it felt like every bone in my body was breaking. My headache was now so intense that it was like my skull was in a vise. I thought I might have malaria, but I had been dutifully taking my Malarone tablets so I didn’t think that the symptoms could be so severe or their onset so sudden. The next morning I awoke and tried to get down some breakfast and a bit of tea. The guesthouse owner, a Frenchmen, gave me some Paracetamol tablets for the fever and brought me water throughout the day as I convalesced in his hammock under a palm tree near the river’s edge. The fever had passed that morning and the aching and chills were diminished. That evening I was well enough to eat dinner and the next morning I was able to walk around the village and the neighboring farms. The next morning I had almost completely recovered and was able to leave Don Det for the trip to Phnom Penh. I had hoped to make that journey by boat, but my health was such that an air-conditioned bus seemed the wiser if less romantic option. I never did find out what knocked me out for that forty-eight hour period but given the symptoms as well as the speed of onset and recovery I am almost certain it was dengue fever. A sobering reminder of the risks involved in traveling in the tropics. I am glad that I recovered as quickly as I did and that it wasn’t more serious.

Once I arrived in Phnom Penh I checked into a really lovely boutique hotel converted from an old French colonial villa, had dinner, and went to bed. The next morning I walked to the waterfront and begin to explore the city. Phnom Penh is really charming and cosmopolitan—though on a very small scale compared to Bangkok, Hanoi, or Ho Chi Minh City. It is hard to imagine that in 1975 the entire city was forcibly evacuated by the Khmer Rouge. That was also the year that the pro-US republic in South Vietnam finally fell apart. In Cambodia, almost at the same time, the US-backed government of Lon Nol collapsed after years of a devastating civil war against the pro-Chinese communist insurgents of the Khmer Rouge. Within days of their triumphant entry into Phnom Penh, the Khmer Rouge instituted one of the most terrifying and genocidal totalitarian regimes in modern history. Nearly the entire population of the capital and other cities was forced out into the countryside and condemned to backbreaking labor in a nationwide system of agrarian communes. The Khmer Rouge leader, Pol Pot, executed his enemies in the Lon Nol regime and continued by eradicating the entire intellectual and political class of Cambodians. Summary executions were carried out for people with professional degrees and positions in government, law, journalism, medicine and academia. Anyone who resisted was killed as was anyone deemed by the Khmer Rouge to be even remotely suspect. It got to the point where people were killed for wearing eyeglasses. Entire families were executed along with individual suspects.

From 1975 to 1979 as many as two million people were killed in Cambodia. Like many episodes of genocide in the last century, the exact number is impossible to know for certain. The intent of the Khmer Rouge was to wipe the slate clean and restructure every aspect of society into a single Maoist agrarian utopia. The country was renamed “Democratic Kampuchea,” all currency was abolished, and the new calendar was set at “Year Zero.” Everyone wore plain black pajamas while Khmer Rouge party members adorned themselves with red and white checkered scarves to distinguish them from the rest of the population. The entire country became a giant prison camp almost completely cut off from the rest of the world. Anyone who resisted or whose cooperation appeared less than enthusiastic was eliminated. Hundreds of thousands perished in the torture/interrogation centers spread throughout the country or in at the site of mass graves out in the countryside. This history is well portrayed in the 1984 film The Killing Fields about the news photographer Dith Pran and his imprisonment and escape from Cambodia in the 1970s.

On my second day in Phnom Penh I visited the dreaded S-21 Security Prison, more commonly called “Tuol Sleng” (Strychnine Hill), which had been hastily converted from an old secondary school. The prison is now a memorial to the victims of the Khmer Rouge genocide and is probably the most disturbing place I have ever visited—even worse than Auschwitz. The rooms are shabby and dirty and nothing has been done to sanitize them—either physically or psychologically. Placards describe every detail of the dehumanizing prison routine and the unspeakable tortures inflicted on thousands of people. The torture chambers and detention cells (crates, really) were bad enough, but the worst part of the experience were the thousands of black and white photographs of prisoners taken by the prison staff at the time of their incarceration. Like the SS during the Final Solution, the Khmer Rouge were meticulous record keepers. In Tuol Sleng, dozens of photo boards contain individual portrait shots of desperate and terrified men, women and children with their arms bound behind their backs staring into the camera. To see row upon row of these photos was truly upsetting. Really, the stuff of nightmares. It is unbelievable how cruel this regime could be to its own people.

After Toul Sleng I needed a break from sightseeing. I went back to the hotel and took a nap and then went out for dinner. The next day after breakfast I steeled myself up for the second Khmer Rouge site on my list: the Killing Fields of Choeung Ek. Located about 10 km outside the city, the pleasant rice paddies of Choeung Ek give no indication of the horror that took place there during the rule of the Khmer Rouge. The Killing Fields are the site of several dozen mass graves that contain the remains of thousands of people, most of them taken there from Tuol Sleng to be executed. The memorial tower contains thousands of exhumed skulls and mountains of clothing scraps worn by the victims. Many of them were driven there in the dead of night and shot or bludgeoned to death (bullets were too valuable to the impoverished government). Sometimes mothers and fathers saw their children killed immediately before they were. Many of those killed during final years of the regime were Khmer Rouge officials whose loyalty had become suspect as Pol Pot and his inner circle became ever more paranoid. In 1979, the Khmer Rouge collapsed when Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia. In 1982, the exhumation of the Killing Fields began, as did a full accounting of the genocide.

To walk the grounds of Choeung Ek was a chilling experience. The sun was shining and the birds were chirping. Wild flowers were in bloom and swayed in a gentle breeze. It is impossible to get one’s head around what happened in this very same spot a mere thirty years ago. Even more sobering is the knowledge that the executions that took place in the killing fields were a fraction of the total deaths at the hands of the Khmer Rouge. Hundreds of thousands more died from famine and disease because of government mismanagement and ideological inflexibility. Countless people died from lack of medicine and access to the most basic medical diagnoses and treatments (Western medicine was forever suspect and most doctors were killed). To secure the country against invasion, the Khmer Rouge laid millions of land mines, making Cambodia the most heavily mined place on earth. It has taken many years to clear these most of these mines and many areas are still off-limits. In the meantime thousands more Cambodians have been permanently maimed years after the collapse of Democratic Kampuchea.

When I returned to Phnom Penh from Choeung Ek I tried to clear my head by walking around the city center near the main market. It was amazing to see people happily going about their lives; children playing and young couples strolling hand-in-hand. Upscale restaurants, hotels, and art galleries line the streets and boulevards. To me, this was an incredible sight considering that Phnom Penh was a dead city and virtually deserted when the Vietnamese liberated it in 1979. I often found myself looking at older residents, imagining what they had lived through and how they survived it. As in Vietnam, I also wonder if the younger generation really understand and appreciate what their elders had to endure. I suppose, though, that nobody can understand it really.

The day after I left Phnom Penh, the UN-backed Cambodia war crimes tribunal handed down a verdict on one of key figures in Pol Pot’s inner circle. Kaing Guek Eav, or “Comrade Duch” as he is more commonly known, was the head of “Special Security” in the Khmer Rouge government and the commandant of Tuol Sleng prison. Of all the Khmer Rouge defendants, he was the one most clearly implicated in that regime’s crimes against humanity. After a trial lasting several years, Duch received a 35-year sentence with sixteen of those already served. He is 67 right now so if he lives past 86 he will be a free man. The surprisingly lenient sentence was met with disbelief and anger by many Cambodians whose relatives are counted among the tens of thousands that disappeared in Duch’s prisons.

After three days in and around Phnom Penh I boarded a bus for Siem Reap, the site of the world famous Angkor temples. This is a dream destination for most travelers and I was eager to see it finally. As the bus made the nine-hour journey through central Cambodia I was able to enjoy the scenery rolling by (see below). Central Cambodia in the monsoon season is a patchwork of emerald-green rice paddies and palm glades with gentle hills rising in the distance. During the monsoon, the often dark-gray skies actually bring out the color of the vegetation better than the hazy sunshine that one usually sees when it is not raining. Actually, I found traveling during the monsoon to be quite pleasant. Often it was cool and refreshing; the rains, though heavy, came only in short bursts during the day.

Angkor was magnificent; it really does live up to all the hype. The temple complexes are enormous and sprawl out over a distance of at least twenty miles. I spent three days on bicycle trying to see as much as possible while spending enough time at each site to really appreciate it. The exquisite beauty, refinement, and humanity of the artwork and the sheer majesty of the temple buildings were a stark contrast to the squalor, banality, and inhuman cruelty of Cambodia’s recent rulers (see below). It was a pleasure to be transported back 900 to 1200 years to a golden age of human achievement among one of the world’s great civilizations. The centerpiece of the temple network is Angkor Wat. This is by far the most beautiful and well-preserved complex, but it is also crawling with tourists. The outlying temples, though more modest, were more to my liking and often had only a handful of visitors when I was there. Some were a bit overgrown and dilapidated, but to me that added to their appeal. If I let my imagination go it almost felt like I was the one discovering them.

From Siem Reap it was a one-hour flight to Bangkok where I connected to another flight to the island of Koh Samui in the Gulf of Thailand. The next morning I took the catamaran ferry to yet another island, Koh Tao. There I spent a wonderful week diving the reefs and the open ocean around the island. It was a marvelous way to end what had been a stimulating and at times overwhelming journey. After suffering through a bout of dengue, enduring exhausting days of travel, and coming to grips with mass torture and genocide, it was nice just to relax. Each day I went out on the boat and made two dives, then afterwards lounged around on the beach in the late afternoon and read my book. Dinner at the dive resort was usually freshly caught seafood that was cooked on an open grill out on the beach. The reef diving was not as spectacular as what I have experienced in Tanzania and the Philippines. Many of the reefs I saw around Koh Tao were badly bleached, a consequence of a slight rise in the summer ocean temperatures this year. The ocean diving, on the other hand, was incredible. My dive group and I would submerge about fifty feet into the open blue amid giant schools of mackerel, jack, and barracuda. Thousands of fish would swim close together and move in unison so quickly that they appeared as one large silvery cloud changing shape in an instant as we approached. No whale sharks or manta rays, though; not the season, alas.

On my final day I caught the catamaran back to Koh Samui and boarded a plane to Bangkok. I spent the next few days enjoying that city before returning to Hong Kong. Bangkok was a lot of fun and, like Hong Kong, it is a culinary paradise. There is a seemingly limitless array of delicious and fresh food readily available on street stalls throughout the city. In Bangkok one can eat like a king for days on end and never set foot inside a restaurant. The stalls sell fish and prawn balls, chicken and beef skewers along with broth seasoned with fresh lemongrass, cilantro, ginger, coconut, and chili paste. A cold Singha beer or lemon soda is an excellent accompaniment. In addition to the food, Bangkok is impressive in many other ways. Thai art and architecture can be really exquisite. The buildings I visited were magnificent, though at times a bit over-the-top. The gold and mirrors in some of the pagodas, temples, and palaces were overdone and seemed a bit gaudy. I actually prefer the more subdued and elegant architectural style of Cambodia and Laos. I also found Bangkok to be a much more modern city than any others I have visited in Southeast Asia. It is not as sanitized or modern as cities like Hong Kong or Singapore, but at the same time it does not feel like the “developing world.” The international airport is a brand new state-of-the-art facility that outclasses just about any US airport. The same is true of the subway system. The highway network around the city and the skyscrapers are also really impressive. Yet some of the neighborhoods along the waterways with their stilt houses and corrugated metal roofs evoke an older, more exotic Asian city. It is reassuring to see that in pursuit of modernization and prosperity, Bangkok has not lost its character and distinctiveness.

After two days in Bangkok I flew back to Hong Kong. I am now less than seventy-two hours away from my final departure home and the reality is beginning to sink in at last that this grand experience is about to end.

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Rice fields of Siem Reap, Cambodia

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Ta Keo Temple Complex at Angkor
Siem Reap, Cambodia, 28 July 2010

Borrowed Time

2010-10-18T11:53:00.000-07:00

August 12, 2010 — It is a rainy afternoon in Sha Tin as I count the minutes before I have to leave for the airport. I am in Tricia’s flat in the university staff quarters trying to finish packing my bags. Tricia left for Germany this morning so I am here alone. As the afternoon has passed, I have often stopped to stare out at the view of the Sha Tin Valley with its high-rise towers and the green Sai Kung mountain ridge behind them. This view took my breath away the first day I moved into my flat and I have never ceased to be awestruck by it, even after seeing it hundreds of times. To set one’s eyes upon something of real beauty is an experience that can never be diminished. Whether it is a person, a work of art, a city skyline or a landscape, one can see it a thousand times and each instance is like viewing it for the first time. This is what Hong Kong has been to me.

I have spent my final days in Hong Kong saying goodbye to my new friends; a bittersweet process that I have experienced many times before (India, London, Kenya) but which seems to become more difficult as I get older. I wish I could say that I am ready to go back to the US and to my old life and that I can conclude my time in Hong Kong with a real sense of closure, but this is simply not true. I have been very happy here and would like to have stayed longer. There is so much I have not yet seen (and so much that I have and still do not understand). Every day has been an adventure and even when things didn’t go according to plan, at least they were interesting. It is impossible to be bored here and so much of this city remains a mystery to me. I still don’t understand what makes it work and why it has such power to attract. Nobody I have met has been able to explain to me the secret of Hong Kong’s success. Maybe that is why the British took such a hands-off approach to it and why China has done the same.

The clock is ticking and soon it will be time for me to go. I will most likely post this entry once I am back in the States. My flight leaves at midnight, so as soon as I am done packing I plan to ride the MTR down to Tsim Sha Tsui and take the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor one last time. This will be my final chance, for now at least, to take in the view of this magnificent city while I am still a resident. I expect that I will be back again soon, but it won’t be the same as living here. During this past year I very quickly came to feel at home and settled in, though I knew even before I arrived that it was not permanent. Just another gweilo who came, stayed a short while, and then left. That has been an integral element of the Hong Kong story from the very beginning: the transient foreigner.

Yet if my time has been ticking down since the moment I arrived, this is no different than the past and present of Hong Kong itself. This place is no stranger to the concept of borrowed time. The anxious, uncertain and prolonged wait for 1997 is over, but the Joint Declaration that has secured Hong Kong’s autonomy and special status after colonial rule will last only until 2047. After that, who knows? Right now, for me at least, the borrowed time is up. I will never forget my year here and I will keep my memory and longing affection for Hong Kong with me forever.

Joi Gin Hong Kong.
再見香港

2010-10-18T11:45:00.000-07:00