Hong Kong: English past, Chinese future
I have decided that Hong Kong is like London, except with more interesting and effective public transport. Travel here not only includes tube (MTR) and bus, but old-fashioned trams and the futuristic ‘travelator’ – an escalator that takes people down from the hilly suburbs in the morning and takes them back in the afternoon.
Most of the public transport can be paid for with an Octopus card – it’s basically an Oyster card but much cheaper and more useful. For instance, any tram ride in HK (except the tourist trap that is the Peak tram) is just $2HKD…about 17p. The tube is about 35p a journey. Not only that but you can use Oyster to pay for everything from fags and a pint of milk (at the ubiquitous 7 eleven) to your MaccyDs.
It’s a dangerously cashless society. Dangerous because the cash you ‘save’ by paying for your groceries with Octopus can then be given away in exchange for more exciting goods; frittered away at many of the great shops here. My shopping addiction is now pretty much in hand (it has to be) but that doesn’t stop me having terrible ‘shopping neck’. I have almost stumbled into the road twice looking at sparkly shoes, and yesterday I was staring over my shoulder and simultaneously throwing my scarf around me: almost punched a girl in the solar plexus.
Shops – like restaurants and even my workplace – are random places to be as you hear people swapping so fluently and quickly between English and Chinese. At a stall where I was buying thermal underwear (It’s cold!) this week I heard a businessman and the stallholder change language every sentence, until I wondered if it was a strategic move – trying to unsettle their haggling opponent?
The magazine I’m working on is published in a combination of English and Chinese so every little bit of work has to be translated. I haven’t any Mandarin yet but I’m sure I’ll be fluent any day now. Oh no I lie, I know 2 words: 大 means big. 火 means fire. And people say you don’t learn anything from blogs.
Two more useless facts I have learnt this week:
1. Before Walt Disney created Mickey Mouse his main character was a bunny called Oswald the Lucky Rabbit
2. There is a real-life lift company called Schindler’s Lift.
So far I’ve been given loads to do at work and am loving being busy again. I take the tram to work because I can imagine it’s 1924, plus it’s cheap. I am working my way through the boxsets of West Wing that live in the flat I’m borrowing. And when I have a minute I’m fitting in all the sightseeing I can manage/handle.
And so ends my first week in Hong Kong. It’s a great, mad city and I love it.
