My trip to Hong Kong

Photos are right here

I spent January 7-24, 1999 in Hong Kong with my ten year old son, Isaac. I was there to teach for DePaul University and Isaac was there for fun. DePaul has had an MBA program in Hong Kong for several years, and they just launched an undergraduate program; I was the first faculty member sent over for the new undergrad program and I taught first year composition and research writing to 24 students who are all employees of the International Bank of Asia, which sponsors both academic programs. I'll stay in contact with the students for a couple months via e-mail, reading their papers and giving them formative feedback.

The non-stop flight from Chicago to Hong Kong was in the air for over 16 hours and HK is 14 hours ahead of CST, and we were wiped out when we landed. We took the subway and a bus to our hotel, the Kowloon Hotel which is part of the Peninsula Hotel, checked in and went downstairs to the hotel restaurant for our first meal in Asia: Isaac ordered pasta with butter sauce (!) and I had some Chinese pasta and seafood. We ended up eating breakfast in the hotel every morning because they had a great "American style buffet" which was part of the package that DePaul paid for, and we also ate 9 of our 17 dinners there. While breakfast was clearly for the hotel guests, the dinner buffet was aimed at Chinese Hong Kong residents and probably 90% of the dinner business came from locals. It was always big spread and at about US$45/person it was a pretty good deal. There was always a good variety of Asian, American, and other dishes, and I ate well, gaining a few pounds on this trip. Isaac wasn't very experimental and ordered steak for most of his dinners. (He was VERY experimental and ate everything Chinese when we returned to China and Hong Kong three years later. More below.)

My fanciest and best meal was a dinner at Felix's in The Peninsula when Isaac was spending the night at the home of some Hong Kong residents. (More about them later.) The Peninsula is widely recognized as one of the top hotels in the world, and Felix is an incredible, shining restaurant with a beautiful view of Hong Kong island. The diners in the restaurant weren't people I normally spend time with - dressed to kill, obviously very wealthy, a European/American crowd right in the middle of Hong Kong. This was the only place I saw a big concentration of non-Chinese, except when I took Isaac to the American Club to watch a kid play basketball.

Isaac made several friends on this trip: one was a waitress who stole desserts for him; another was the short-order breakfast cook who prepared his morning omelette; a third was a 12 year old boy, Derek, whose mother works in the bank where I taught. The father is an American businessman and the mother is Vietnamese, and the family has lived in Hong Kong for about 15 years. Isaac and I took a taxi to the American Club to watch Derek play ball, and a week later Isaac spent a night at their apartment right before we left. (He said he had never realized that people had maids at home.) Having Isaac there made the trip much better for me in many ways. He was a great traveling companion, open to new things like hopping on double-decker buses when we had no idea where they were going, and he was also a magnet for kids and grown-ups interested in Western kids.

The hotel was very modern with Internet access in each room although the room was small. Our 18th floor room's view of the harbor and Hong Kong Island was partially blocked by the Peninsula Hotel, but that isn't really a complaint since the view was still the most interesting I've ever had from a hotel. The Internet access was great because we exchanged e-mail with Claire and Jack every day. The small size of the room didn't bother us much because the temperature was in the 60s every day and we were outside all the time. There were a couple days when it got down to the 50s at night, and the local papers and the government blamed the weather for about 20 deaths!

If you haven't been to Hong Kong, it is a wonderful, clean, energetic, safe, crowded city and we had a great time there. All the signs are in English and Chinese, and many people speak English and Cantonese. (Don't count on people in the street markets speaking English, but I'll talk about street markets below.) Finding our way around was very easy and we took mass transit everywhere except for a small trip I'll describe below. The subway is very efficient and relatively cheap, about a buck a ride. We also took double-decker trolleys and buses, and also the terrific Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor, the best ride in the world for 25 cents! The night before we left Isaac and I agreed to take a last trip across the harbor and back, and we both started missing Hong Kong even before we left.

I taught Monday, Wednesday, and Friday from 5-8 in the evening and on those days we usually got to the classroom around 2:00 so I could finalize my preparations. However, on each of the six days I taught, we took a long break before class started so Isaac could go to McDonald's or KFC for lunch. By the way, he claims that Sprite tastes different in different countries. We were in Isla Mujeres in Mexico in December and his taste buds supposedly remembered and distinguished a Sprite difference in each country. Don't ask me - I'll take his word for it. Anyway, my students all work for the International Bank of Asia and most were in their 30s and 40s. It was a very enjoyable class: The students (and administration of the bank) are clearly dedicated to the new undergrad program, committed, very intelligent and sharp, with good English language skills. They were also very humorous, challenging, and participatory, which belies the common notion of the placid, compliant Chinese student. Working with the students and reading their papers were high points of the trip, and I have very warm feelings toward my students and other people in Hong Kong. The next project for the students is to write a paper on language instruction and use in Hong Kong - should schooling be in Cantonese, Mandarin, English, or some combination? I am very interested in the topic for several academic and personal reasons, since I was trained as a linguist, but I digress...

While I taught and thought, Isaac did his homework for school. Every morning he wrote a page or two in his journal and sent postcards, and during my classes he worked on his worksheets, assignments, and papers in the professor's room next to the classroom. He probably didn't do all that much formal school work, but he learned lots of other stuff as a result of the trip - geography, the International Date Line and why it exists, similarities and differences between cultures, using math to translate prices from HK dollars to US dollars, etc. While taking the subway from the airport to the hotel on our arrival, Isaac said that all Chinese people looked alike to him; a week later he changed his mind and said they all looked different. How could this deep lesson be taught in school? Who knows what a kid really learns from such an experience? Or an adult for that matter! (I know - we don't learn from experience but from reflection on experience, but you know what I mean.)

On the days I taught, we took small trips around Kowloon or Hong Kong Island, visiting the bird market one day, wandering the streets almost every day, and going to Kowloon Park several times so Isaac could play catch with himself while I sat outside and graded papers. Since we ate breakfast and read 4 newspapers until 10am every day, my teaching days went by very quickly. On the days I didn't teach we made trips to mainland China, Victoria's Peak, local museums and street markets, and various other parts of Hong Kong Island.

Hong Kong's reputation is "East meets West" and I suppose there is some validity to that, especially among the highly educated and in the giant, modern shopping malls, but I saw many parts of HK where the Western influence was minimal: English was non-existent in the crowded street markets where Chinese locals shopped, and the restaurant/grocery display cages and bags displayed animals (and parts) which the Chinese seem to enjoy eating - chicken feet, eels, frogs, snakes, peculiar looking fish, etc. I did try Peking Duck (tasty and very rich) and small bites of strange foods, but never got past small bites. The street market scene reminded me a bit of markets in towns in Guatemala - our presence was noted but we were ignored unless we wanted to buy something.

Our trip to mainland China deserves special attention. Americans need visas for China but not for Hong Kong, so we got one-entry visas from the Chinese embassy and took the one hour train ride to the border. (We rode first class on the train and Isaac was nervous that we didn't really belong there.) I had heard that the mainland was very different from Hong Kong, and some people suggested taking tours, but I reckoned we could survive for a day in Shenzhen, a border town, without assistance. The first hint of difficulty came in Chinese immigration where there were no signs in English except one, "NO PHOTOS." In the space between Hong Kong and China, I was already lost and disoriented! When we finally made it through Chinese customs, I expected to find a smallish border town but discovered instead a city of almost 4 million people, and I had no map, no plan, no Chinese, and no help! I also had no Chinese money because I didn't see a place to exchange Hong Kong money for Chinese money. I was intimidated and worried that we would never get beyond the highways and huge squares that surrounded the train-bus-border area. We ended up walking and walking, eventually finding side streets and alleys that gave us a small view of another world. We found a large square filled with tents and tables selling everything from clothes to jewelry to furniture. We obviously stood out and many people greeted us with "Hello, hello", trying to get us to buy something. I wish I had checked out the prices of trinkets and souvenirs in Hong Kong first because things are much cheaper in China, and of course much more authentic, right? (I saw a "Made in Thailand" sticker on some Chinese knick-knack and felt "betrayed".)

There were many differences between Hong Kong and Shenzen beyond the absence of anything in English, and part of the difference was just a feeling that's hard to describe: Hong Kong drives on the left, China on the right; Hong Kong has a Western influence and there were usually a few Westerners on the streets, but we saw no Westerners in Shenzhen. The strangest thing was the way dozens of people stared at Isaac. I cannot even estimate how many people came up to him, peered at his face below his baseball cap, said something to him/me in Cantonese, and then started laughing and smiling and pointing at poor Isaac. What the heck were they talking and laughing about? Of course we never figured it out, and Isaac dealt with the attention after I explained they were just unused to seeing kids like him wandering around. I haven't traveled in other Asian countries or Africa, so my experience is limited, but Shenzhen felt very different from anything I've seen before. Huge skyscrapers were going up everywhere, and lots of people were everywhere, but I felt this city was just different and I think the difference is more than language and food preferences. I'll have to think about this - and return of course!

Shopping is what you're supposed to do in Hong Kong, and we did it in malls and department stores and street markets. Ralph Lauren shirts for $5! A Timberland vest for the same! North Face for $10! Sure, the owners of the trademarks would not approve, but I don't support the idea of intellectual private property so the rip-offs didn't bother me. Just looking at stuff with Isaac was fun especially since I rarely go to American stores with him. Isaac loved looking at CDs and hats and sweatshirts with sports logos. I got a suit and three shirts made for a great price, and I'll probably fax the tailor to order more if I ever get a job where clothes matter. Looking around the markets was as much fun as actually buying anything. Unlike people working in one of the many malls or tourist-oriented department stores, vendors typically spoke no English and when I asked for a price they punched it on a little calculator and then handed the calculator to me for my counter-offer. I hope my family and friends like Chinese incense because that's about all I ever got around to buying.

As you can imagine, we had a great time. I didn't worry about my work at Northwestern or Northeastern Illinois; we slept until 8 or so every day and then wandered and played and goofed around outside while Chicago froze and had more snow; we saw wonderful things and ate delicious food; we met good people and saw things that made us think. Isaac had a stomach ache and couldn't sleep our last night there, and I was reluctant to enter the hotel and finish packing for the trip home. We weren't there long enough to really know the place, but it was long enough to feel comfortable and realize Hong Kong is a unique place, well worth knowing. I'd sure like to return with the whole family.

 

PS: In February 2002, Isaac and I spent about a week in Zhaoqing, China and then returned to Hong Kong - another great experience for us both. We met a friend there but were otherwise tour-guide-free. Isaac was 13, a big kid now, so he spent several hours wandering around Zhaoqing by himself, shopping, sightseeing, bargaining, and whatever else American kids do when they have time to kill and money to spend in Zhaoqing... Isaac flew from Hong Kong to Chicago without me, and I stayed for three more weeks, lonely without my daring, observant teenager. QuickTime videos from that trip are posted on my home page.



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