I [...]]]> Well before Tom and I left for Hong Kong, I’d played up our trip to our kids by promising something all kids love to hear: presents! Since I’ve been reading my kids books about Hong Kong since just after their birth, they were well-versed in the types of gifts found in the Fragrant Harbor.

I do love shopping, so it was a pleasure to run around Hong Kong trying to find the various items on my list. Tom was a great sport, as were the friends we met there.

First off, Martin wanted an abacus. I know Hollywood Road is touristy, but with only four days in Hong Kong, we just didn’t have time to comparison shop. So when we found this handsome case, I was already game.

And when we peeked in, it looked perfect.

Next on his list was a Hong Kong bus. Again, we ended up on the Peak, probably the ultimate in tourist trap kitsch. If I’ve learned one thing from traveling, it’s to always buy what you want or else run the risk of never finding those items again. So here’s the new and improved China Motor Bus we bought him. (The real thing was not this modern back when I lived in Hong Kong. Just saying.)

When I was Martin’s age, my grandparents bought me some fancy dragon slippers. I remembered seeing them in Stanley and even in a tourist store next to Chungking Mansions when I lived in Hong Kong. Stanley has changed and that tourist store is no longer next to the Mansions. In fact, no one I met in Hong Kong knew where to find these slippers (if you’re in the know, please leave a comment or send an e-mail). So my friend Rita bought the kids the next best thing–toy dragons.

The kids wanted these little dragons to be photographed with their larger Cathay dragon (received as part of our special Year of the Dragon Cathay airfare).

I bought myself a bunch of cheongsams and a Chinese top (if I muster up enough courage, I might blog about those, too), but was also on a mission to buy Rachel a new Chinese dress. When I found a stall in an alley off Queen’s Road, I impressed Tom with my bargaining skills and bought the kids these Shanghai Tang knock-offs. (Boy did it feel good to be back in Hong Kong!) Martin’s red shirt has an embroidered dragon and Rachel’s pink dress falls just above her knees. They love their new clothes!

For Rachel, I was commissioned by my grandmother to buy a jewelry box like the rectangular one my grandma had bought for me 30 years ago. Again, with a time constraint, I didn’t have the luxury to traipse around Hong Kong in search of an identical jewelry box. So when I found this one at the same antique shop where I bought Martin’s abacus, I bargained for both items.

It’s fashioned after a traditional Chinese pillow and has an inside similar to that of Martin’s abacus case. Incidentally, when I asked the shop owner how old these pieces were, guess what he said?

“New.”

I love his honesty.

To balance Martin’s four gifts, I needed one more for Rachel. She’s into the Chinese zodiac animals, thanks to a book I read to her about this subject, so I found this colorful string of the 12 embroidered zodiac animals. It’s hanging with a scroll Jake’s grandfather in Hubei province painted last year.

It’s usually most difficult to shop for a 13 year old boy, but not in Hong Kong! Besides the requisite t-shirt (from my alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong Kong), I also bought Jake a Chinese name stamp. It’s not a traditional stone one, but a rubber one that is used all over Hong Kong these days. I also picked up a stack of 50 lucky red envelopes with his Chinese last name on it. My friend Erica gave me a Jewish mezuzah in the form of Hong Kong’s Ohel Leah synagogue. I’ll hang it next to Jake and Rachel’s bedroom door so they can enjoy it.

I also bought gifts for family and friends who helped with the kids while we were gone. Those have mostly been distributed, but I must say that tea, fans, Chinese silk jewelry cases, retro hotel drink coasters, and silk wallets have gone over quite well.

Since we’ve been back, the kids have asked me to return to Hong Kong to buy them more things. Ahh…

When I was in Hong Kong a couple weeks ago, my husband tripped on some stairs as we walked down a subway to ‘cross the street’. I screamed but couldn’t get to him as quickly as a young couple walking up the stairs. They stopped, helped pull him up, and asked if he was [...]]]>

When I was in Hong Kong a couple weeks ago, my husband tripped on some stairs as we walked down a subway to ‘cross the street’. I screamed but couldn’t get to him as quickly as a young couple walking up the stairs. They stopped, helped pull him up, and asked if he was okay. He was, and we both thanked them profusely.

I was relieved for a couple of reasons. Number one, Tom was all right. But it was also reassuring to see this kindness in people we didn’t know. On our first day in Hong Kong, it would have been a bummer if no one had stopped to at least ask if Tom was okay.

In the US, I’ve seen similar mishaps and people are usually good about helping someone in need. But I’ve also seen many people just walk past someone who has fallen. Guest blogger Stuart Beaton shares his experience about this subject after he witnessed an accident over the weekend. Stuart lives in Tianjin, China and has a fabulous podcast site at http://rastous.podomatic.com/. Here’s Stu:

I learned today that here in China, helping someone is almost unknown. Especially if helping that person won’t result in any direct benefit to you.

This evening, Ellen and I were casually strolling in towards Iestan Department Store, which forms one corner of the busy “Walk Street” shopping area, when I heard a fairly loud thud from across the road. A man on an electric bike had mounted the curb, and slammed into a tree. His bike lay in the gutter, the wheels still spinning, and he was face down in a crumpled heap on the pavement.

And no one even broke stride to turn and look at him.

Well, I stopped, which forced Ellen to stop, and I went to cross the road.

“Don’t”, said Ellen, “don’t help him.”

Given that he could have been seriously injured, I wasn’t going to stand around and let him die from neglect.

I dragged Ellen protesting across the road, and made sure that he was still breathing, and not unconscious. Then I quickly picked up his bike from where it’d fallen, turned it off, and took the keys out of the ignition, and placed them in his top pocket. By now he’d managed to prop himself against the trunk of the tree, and there were no obvious signs of fractures or gashes – I got Ellen to ask him if he’d lost consciousness, but he hadn’t. Eventually he got back on his bike, and rode off.

But during the whole time I was helping him, not a single person at any stage even slowed down to offer assistance.

After he’d gone, Ellen berated me for helping him, saying that “He could have said you’d knocked him off his bike and hurt him, or that you caused the accident. You did the wrong thing, it’s bad to help people in China.”

“What if it’d been you?”, I replied, stung. “If you’d come off your bike, and might have hurt yourself, wouldn’t you want someone to help you?”

In the past, I’ve raised the idea of rendering assistance at accidents with the medical students I teach, and every time I’ve gotten the same impression – none of them would lift a finger to help someone outside of a hospital, when they were going to get some sort of paid reward for it. The whole idea is totally anathema to me, and it disgusts me that a society so large will do so little to help the members within it.

However, it’s not just the locals who won’t help people, the expats won’t lend a hand either.

I’ve lost track of the number of times the same group of individuals have said to me that they “want to help Ellen to find a better job” – but they never do. Empty platitudes mouthed to assuage their guilt, after Ellen has helped them with fixing the little problems in their lives.

Of course, there’s also the people who swore blind they were going to refer me to their friend at another Tianjin Uni, “tomorrow, I’ll come see you, give you his name, it’ll all be sorted”… . Strangely enough, I’ve not seen them in weeks, either.

Altruism is dead in China.

Guan Xi (“connections”) is dragging the corpse away, to melt down the gold fillings in its teeth.

Spurrier mixes history with current attractions, and centers them around planned [...]]]> What better book to pick up after a magical four-day visit to Hong Kong than Pete Spurrier’s The Heritage Hiker’s Guide to Hong Kong (FormAsia, 2011). Yes, I read a Hong Kong guidebook after I returned to Chicago. But this isn’t an ordinary guidebook.

Spurrier mixes history with current attractions, and centers them around planned hikes/walks around the territory. The book is packed with beautiful photos of buildings from yesteryear and today.

I enjoyed reading about old favorites such as Ohel Leah synagogue, the Hong Kong Police Museum, Helena May, and Flagstaff House. Or others I’d passed many times but have never formally visited like the French Mission, the old Bank of China building, or Jamia Mosque. But most exciting of all, this book introduced me to dozens of new places in Hong Kong I never knew existed.

With all the construction in Hong Kong, I was amazed to read about old abandoned buildings that are still standing. A house used in the film Lust, Caution is one of these, as is Nam Koo Terrace, a Shanghai-style mansion above Wanchai that was used as a (free) brothel for Japanese soldiers during WWII.

Spurrier seems to find pieces of old Hong Kong on every turn he takes, be it on outlying Cheung Chau, remote Tai Po, or right in the heart of Tsim Sha Tsui or Central. His book proves that buildings and monuments from colonial Hong Kong–and even before–are still plentiful (enough to fill almost 400 pages!).

But he cautions that these treasures are at great risk if the government and developers (who work hand in hand) continue to knock down old structures to make way for mega malls. Case in point is Heritage 1881, which I walked by on my recent trip. The building (former Marine Police Headquarters) was something I had passed hundreds of times in the 1990s. But from what I remembered all those years ago, it was perched upon a hill out of reach to most people in Tsim Sha Tsui. Now it’s been turned into a hotel, complete with–what else?–a shopping mall.

This book is perfect for old Hong Kong hands, people who have visited Hong Kong and plan to return, and for those who have never been but are curious about this fascinating part of the world and would perhaps someday like to visit. I know it has given me a ton of ideas for my next trip back!

We began our self-guided tour at Chung [...]]]> On our third day in Hong Kong, Tom and I met my college study abroad roommate Rita for a trek up to the New Territories to visit our alma mater, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. (I would return there after college to study for my master’s degree.)

We began our self-guided tour at Chung Chi College, which sits at the foot of the mountain on which CUHK is situated. To me it’s the most scenic college on campus.

The lily pond has been expanded since I graduated in 1996.

But the pagoda has been there since I first arrived at CUHK in 1990.

While we waited for the university bus up to take us to the top of the campus, we saw a Hakka woman who helped keep the grounds clean and beautiful.

We strolled around New Asia College on top of the mountain. It’s dotted with bamboo groves.

Next we visited United College, where I lived that undergraduate year and attended most of my graduate classes. This is the dorm where Rita and I lived some 22 years ago.

My grad school department is still located in this building. When I studied here, most of the buildings were walk-ups. Now they all have elevators.

We entered the third floor and briefly looked around.

Next we made our way down to the central part of the campus, where we would meet with the great folks of the Alumni Affairs Office for a dim sum lunch.

And what a bountiful lunch it was. Back during my years in Hong Kong, I ate many a lunch and dinner at the same staff canteen where we enjoyed dim sum that day. While the campus seems more crowded now with many new buildings, it’s nice to return to familiar territory.

For dinner that evening, we headed back to Hong Kong Island to meet up with six amazing friends, including Rita, at the uber-cool Tsui Wah on Des Voeux Road.

And then I somehow ended up behind the Cathay ticket counter at Central’s Airport Express terminal.

Never a dull moment in Hong Kong, eh?

And the never-ending construction in [...]]]> We spent our second day in Hong Kong mostly on Hong Kong Island. Thanks to jet lag, we were up bright and early. On our way up the mountain to visit Ohel Leah synagogue, my favorite building in Hong Kong, we passed this outdoor market. It’s so Chungking Express!

And the never-ending construction in Hong Kong.

We met Erica Lyons, the publisher of Asian Jewish Life magazine, who took us to Ohel Leah and gave us a fabulous tour of the temple.

Ohel Leah was built in 1901 and has been in use ever since, except for several years during the Japanese Occupation (when it was used for something else, but no one is quite sure what that was). The inside has been restored to its original interior. Stunning.

We then took a winding cab ride up the rest of the mountain to the Peak. Fortunately, we picked the clearest day of our trip to visit the Peak and see the views from it.

And the houses on it.

Erica and I stopped for a quick photo on the observation deck.

Here Tom and I stood before another view of Hong Kong below.

This observation pagoda has been around for decades and is something I remember from my first trip to the Peak more than 20 years ago.

After lunch down the mountain at the Foreign Correspondents’ Club, Erica took us shopping on Hollywood Road, which sells antiques and used to be the only place in Hong Kong where one could hear Mandarin. Times have certainly changed since then! We finished our afternoon at the Man Mo Temple, a little oasis in the middle of urban Hong Kong.

I’d never been inside Man Mo, although I’d walked by it many times when I lived in Hong Kong.

It was dark inside, yet very colorful.

Here is the temple’s altar.

A very peaceful start and finish to our day on Hong Kong Island. Next up–the New Territories!

Kai Tak Airport, 1925-1998

But is a 14 year absence really something to cry over? After all, it’s hardly been more than a decade. Recently a friend returned to Hong Kong–where she’d lived much longer than I had–after 44 [...]]]> When I think of returning to Hong Kong–on the plane about to land–I tear up.

Kai Tak Airport, 1925-1998

But is a 14 year absence really something to cry over? After all, it’s hardly been more than a decade. Recently a friend returned to Hong Kong–where she’d lived much longer than I had–after 44 years. And I remember when my mom first went back to Japan after moving away 26 years earlier.

Mom in Japan, 1965

My most memorable grand return was as an observer on a flight from Kuala Lumpur to Saigon in 1991. One of only a few foreigners, I took notice as we approached Tan Son Nhat Airport and the Vietnamese on the plane (it was at most 1/4 full) stood up and leaned over to peer out of the window to see their motherland for the first time since they fled in 1975.

It had been 16 long years since the fall of Saigon. From our conversations, they were all southerners now living in the US (mostly in California and Maryland). When they left South Vietnam, many feared they’d never go back.

Thinking about their return all those years ago still makes me tear up.

While mine is purely sentimental, theirs demonstrated a thaw in government tensions. The US and Vietnam didn’t have relations back in 1991, and the Vietnamese were searched for gold and foreign currency at customs (whereas I was just waved through), but I think we all felt a sense of hope.