The Shuttles

I awoke in the late morning feeling like tiny accountants were typing tirelessly inside my skull. Our only real goal for the day was to eventually make it to Hong Kong, but even that seemed like a daunting task, so I got on a taxi to Wynn to buy a bathrobe. It seemed important at the time, and anyhow the Wynn Macau branded bathrobes really are the very best money can buy: thick and soft cotton interior, pin-striped silk lining, sleeves just the right length, breast pocket perfectly sized to hold an iPod while shaving.

Owning one of these prized examples of bathroom fashion, I had two hours to kill before boarding the ferry. I decided to spend these trying out Macau's free shuttle system. In Macau this is the closest thing to public transportation, even though there is nothing remotely public about it: various resorts subsidize busses, who'll take you, for free, from their hotels to and from the airport and both ferry terminals. If you're well-acquainted with the location of these terminals and the major resorts, you can go over most of the country for free using only those shuttles. I, of course, had no idea what I was doing, so I divided my last two hours in Macau between a 7-minute tour of the City of Dreams (a multi-thousand rooms resort complex opened earlier this month) and 113 minutes sitting in busses going to nowhere interesting. Eventually I boarded a CotaiJet express shuttle to Hong Kong.

The powerful catamaran got us there in about an hour. Hong Kong is one of the world's grandest cities, and I am sure it looks breathtaking no matter how you approach it, but it's hard to imagine a better way to discover it than Macau's ferries. The first glimpse they give you of the little country is probably quite similar to what Jorge Álvarez saw in 1531 when he decided to make this quaint and picturesque island part of Portugal. The south-western coast has retained quite a bit of its sixteenth century remoteness. Although a few villas betray the nearby modernity, it is still a coast of forests and beaches only sparsely sprinkled with small fishing villages. The sight is puzzling in a way: you were always told Hong Kong was a city of glass and steel, a bustling metropolis, so what on Earth is this simile of Sardinia? As you're pondering this, the boat rounds the island's west cape, and in an instant you're in Victoria Harbor, a seaside version of Ridley Scott's 2019 Los Angeles.

If you're reading this, you may never have been to Hong Kong but you surely have heard of it. It is one of those world-famous places we learn about years before we get a chance to actually see them for ourselves. We thus form an image that is often only tangentially connected to reality. For me, the kindling of such a picture usually comes from movies or songs, and these tend to linger past my first real impressions of the place. When I hear the name "Singapore", my first thought goes to Chow Yun-Fat, in full battle armor, slowly raising his head to hail: "Welcome to Singapore" in the third Pirates of the Caribbean. I have now been to Singapore. I know it as a glitzy cosmopolitan metropolis, super-efficient, super-clean, about as far removed from a lawless pirate haven as any place on Earth. And yet, my first thought still goes to Chow Yun-Fat.

Although I'm ashamed to admit it, because it constitutes such a sad comment on the extent of my erudition regarding contemporary cinema, my primary reference on Hong Kong comes from Lethal Weapon 4. In Jet Li's first speaking scene, as he watches Mel Gibson's retreating frame, he mouths: "In Hong Kong, you'd already be dead." For a very long time, I saw Hong Kong as a place where the law is of little consequence, and simply doesn't apply to a good proportion of the populace. (On a completely unrelated note, Lethal Weapon 4 is the first movie I ever saw that becomes more enjoyable when watched in slow motion. Even the dialogue sounds better.)

Yet Hong Kong is almost as far removed from a lawless mafia haven as Singapore is from a pirate harbor. Today it is, more than anywhere else, the capital of things-moving-fast. Twenty years ago, the courageously triangular Bank of China tower was the only 1000+ feet building standing outside the United States. Now it is almost lost among surrounding high-rises. It remains the fourth tallest building in HK, but yet is positively dwarfed by ifc tower 2 and the soon-to-be-completed International Commerce Centre, both of which being way more imposing than any building in the entire western hemisphere.

Hong Kong was given back to China in 1997, and arguably much of its British colonial atmosphere is now gone. However, anyone who has seen both Hong Kong and the rest of China will tell you that the former colony is still not Chinese. Although its population is 95% Han, it enjoys freedoms unheard of on the mainland, has been vastly more influenced by the outside world than any Chinese city, and thus its culture and society are unlike anything else in China. Most residents identify as Hong Kongers more than Chinese. Despite its international significance, the handover of 1997 only replaced the Man from London with a Man from Beijing, both having relatively little influence on how Hongkongese society actually runs. In a very real sense, Hong Kong is, like Singapore, a World Citizen among cities, an urban center so global in identity and purpose that it finds little need for a country to belong to.

To say that I like Hong Kong would be a ridiculous understatement. Earlier this year I was happy to reach it at the end of an agreeable fortnight spent ambling through the easygoing cities of South-East Asia. This time, after nearly a month in mainland China, it was heaven. It has that dynamic bustle of urban Asia that I find so energizing, sprinkled with a touch of British dignity and politeness that makes everyday experiences, well, nicer. People queue at bus stops. They say "pardon" and "excuse me", or the Cantonese equivalents. There are crowded street markets where people haggle over the price of tasteless curio, and most restaurants offer specials for High Tea. The mixture is quite fetching.

The convenience factor is also hard to overstate. Most people speak English. Signs are bilingual. Credit cards are accepted everywhere, to pay for everything. The metro system brings Paris' Métropolitain to shame. WiFi is everywhere. These may not seem like much coming from Europe, but spending three weeks in a country where booking a hotel room or a train ticket is an ordeal certainly makes you appreciate these little conveniences. So on our first afternoon in Hong Kong, that's exactly what we did. We had coffee in Starbucks while browsing the internet for hotels. We booked one and checked in, then went for a stroll along the water in Kowloon, looking towards Hong Kong island, the best cityscape in the entire world. We had dinner at an Outback Steakhouse, seemingly our first western meal since early childhood. We were nearly out of China, in every sense of the term, and that was more than a bit sad. But we couldn't have chosen a more perfect coda than Hong Kong.