ASIA - HONG KONG: FALLING IN LOVE ALL OVER AGAIN
by Ursula & Eldrid Retief



It's not hard to fall in love with Hong Kong. It's not just about food and shopping, of hustle and bustle, the place where the dollar is king, although those things are all there and then some.

There's also a warm heart beating there.

Pour over a street-map on a corner of Nathan Road and within a minute at least three passersby have stopped to ask smilingly if they can help. Glance at a street-side food stall with puzzlement and someone will stop to give advice.

Our own love-affair with Hong Kong had its beginnings some 30 years ago when we "discovered" The Peak, Stanley Market, Repulse Bay, Wan Chai, the jade market and Temple Street night market and so much more.

Since then we've been back often. Each time a little bit has changed, but not too much. Stanley Market is still there, although the designer clothes are too. No longer can you buy a shirt for the loose change in your pocket.

On the Peak there are new restaurants and shops, the old Repulse Bay hotel (home of that wonderful Sunday buffet brunch) has long gone, replaced by highrise condos. But then, progress and Hong Kong are bed-fellows. It's not one of the modern world's most vibrant economic success stories for nothing. There are more cellular phones per capita here than anywhere else in the world, ditto Rolls Royces.

Its many changes are on show under one roof at the Hong Kong Museum of History in the "The Hong Kong Story" Permanent Exhibition – an historical and cultural journey of 400-million years.

This is one of many wide-ranging museums in Hong Kong, among them the Hong Kong Heritage Museum with its comprehensive exhibitions on history, art and culture and the Coastal Defense Museum formerly known as the Lei Yue Mun Fort, built more than 100 years ago.

Immortalized by English playwright Noel Coward in his song Mad Dogs and Englishmen, Hong Kong’s Noon Day Gun is still fired at noon every day as it has almost every day since the 1860s

The fabled harbour, crisscrossed by the "Star" ferries, is as magical as always, the ferries and the freighters, the sampans and the tenders, the cabin cruisers and the junks, a colourful moving jig-saw.

You can still hop on one of the quaint trams trundling at a sedate pace along the length of Hong Kong Island's northern shore as it has done for some 100 years. Temples and shrines, medicine and herb shops, street markets cheek by jowl with skyscrapers and shopping malls, the traditional Chinese lifestyle comfortable with so many Western imports. Where else would you turn to the Yellow Pages for a long list of Snake Dealers?

It may still be "fast-lane city", but tranquility is on the doorstep – although "tranquility" isn't a word you use loosely at the ferry terminals on a Sunday morning.

They are a seething mass of humanity, packing the ferries to the islands: to dumb-bell-shaped Cheung Chau, to Lantau, home of the Po Lin Monastery and the biggest outdoor bronze Buddha in the world, to Lamma for some of the best and cheapest seafood in the world.

Change is everywhere, yet, compact and pedestrian-friendly, some downtown shopping districts and rural communities have changed little over the years and are still packed with the sensual delights of traditional Chinese lifestyles. The urban and rural sights, sounds and sensations can be explored easily using the Hong Kong Tourism Board’s self-guide booklets for do-it-yourself walking tours.

Changed yet unchanged. Perhaps that's why it always feels like coming home.

Photo courtesy Hong Kong Tourism Board


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