| Jun. 21st, 2005 @ 04:27 pm Hong Kong |
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For those of you that haven't been to Hong Kong since before 1997, I wouldn't imagine you'll find it much changed. At least, to be pedantic, the things that are changing are the same things that were changing before: more and more people flooding in; skyscrapers getting higher and higher; the island getting bigger and bigger as they reclaim more land. You still need a visa and a passport to get in or out from the rest of China, and it's still got its own currency and its own government. It also still feels quite recognisably British: English remains an official language and is used almost everywhere, and all sorts of funny things are familiar, from the few odd coins in circulation that still have the Queen's head on to the shapes on the road signs. The streets and buildings remain named after former governors or places in the UK. ("There is no Mao Tse Tung school in Hong Kong - not one!" said my tour guide, and waited for the gasp.) In lots of ways it's not really possible to separate out the two cultures: they really do regard the British traditions as part of their heritage too. When I bought an egg tart, I was told by the very enthusiastic vendor that it was a traditional local delicacy made of "local Hong Kong pastry, British egg custard" and (with obvious pride) that Chris Patten had eaten one every day.
I have to admit that I wasn't prepared for the degree to which western culture has embedded itself in Hong Kong. I'd expected them to be familiar with the concepts of the Happy Meal and the regular latte (and oh, how they are!) but, for instance, there were advertisements on the tube playing on western images like the Mona Lisa and that shot of Marilyn Monroe with her skirt all over the place. Maybe those are internationally familiar images these days, but I wouldn't have expected them to be the first icons that Hong Kong advertisers would turn to to sell soap with. There's also a markedly Western notion of beauty. Nearly all the models on billboards and in magazines seemed to have western-looking features (slim noses, wide eyes) and much paler skin than the average Chinese.
Still, since I've already had complaints that there are not enough quaint Chinese bits in this journal, nor enough cicadas, be it here recorded that the men of Hong Kong do sit around playing Mah Jong and SLAMMING the bits down on the table; that they do indeed build those enormous tower blocks with bamboo scaffolding; that the clans persist ("not like mafia", as I was repeatedly told, but nobody explained how) and their ancestral halls remain important to them; that feng shui experts are consulted every time anybody does anything, and that (this will surprise you no end) they all use chopsticks to eat with. Oh, and I did manage to find one man who had trouble speaking English, although even he knew numbers up to five and the word 'dollar'.
Everyone says that SARS and the financial crisis have had a much bigger impact than the handover had. I'm sure that's true in the short term. Because British were essentially benign dictators, there's no history of democracy, although we did scramble to try to get some democratic institutions in place before the handover. Some Hong Kongers don't seem to mind what amounts to a Beijing-appointed section of their legislature, and a lot of those that mind emigrated ten years ago. Some remain, of course - Tommy spluttered into inarticulacy when I asked him about it. Anyway, there are alarming rumblings. They're meant to be moving towards direct elections for the whole legislature, but Central Government have announced that this will not be happening any time soon. There are rumours that Beijing forced their last leader to resign before the end of his term - and despite the fact that there were regular demonstrations about the fact that he wasn't democratic enough, the democratic movement was worried by his resignation because they feared that the Chinese government would impose someone worse. And there's a bit of a pattern of Chinese warships happening to be in the area whenever Beijing does anything particularly outrageous. It will be interesting to see what happens. |
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