A fine fine day in Hong Kong

Much of my time in Shenzhen is uneventful, a routine of work and minor pleasures rushed through until the relief of a wasted weekend, which comes with the familiar territory of Monday thru Friday jobs, dating back at least to Hong Kong. Still, I try to make the time for novelty, and often enough a change in the formulae comes with my monthly sojourns out to Hong Kong.

Again with the visa bureaucracy, but at least I got Monday and Tuesday off work. But first, let us begin with my Sunday night. I read in the Shenzhen Daily that a Beijing pop punk band, Recycle, would be playing a show here at the Base Bar, and even though it was a school night I’d been looking forward all week. It didn’t prove disappointing, the best rock show I’d seen yet in the fourth-and-one-half months outside of the West. Lots of friends were there, sweaty pogo-dancing and bruised moshing, expensive drinks compared to 7-11 prices but relatively cheap when I do the math and convert to US dollars. Like, thirty kuai to get in, which my first instinct is to complain but then I realize that equals less than five dollars.

Being a Sunday night, it cleared out quick. Midnight and empty, and I played pool with Olivia – two bad pool players makes for a game that takes forever, but I won for once, by virtue of the preemptive eight ball shot – and then hanging out outside smoking with Chris and talking about youtube movie ideas.

Unfortunately I got home late, and had to wake up very early the next day. It takes about two hours to get from Louhu to Tsim Sha Tsui in Hong Kong, waiting in line for customs and that nervousness when they stamp the last entry of the visa because there’s a chance they won’t let me in the country again. At least I gave my girl the spare key in case of emergency.

Tired and hungry, I went to the Sikh travel agent and paid 2000 Hong Kong dollars. Something I’ve done every two months since I’ve been here, but this time I was promised a six-month multiple entry for my troubles. No more L’s, I was to get an M! And be free! Now I had nothing left to do but wait until noon the next day to get my passport back.

Time and time to kill. By virtue of google, I’d finally learned of some American comic stores in Hong Kong, and took the train to Causeway Bay. Now, there is of course an abundance of Japanese nerd culture in Hong Kong, but most of this is translated into a language I am only in the marginal beginner stages of. Occasionally I’m lucky enough to get DVDs with poor English subtitles. But this time, I might actually catch up on Green Lantern, finish up Final Crisis, and fill the gaps in Justice Society.

It was heaven, but I spent all my money. All in all, plus buying the English editions of Naruto manga and the fascinating McMafia nonfiction real book, I spent about a thousand Hong Kong dollars (maybe 150 US), and this ever reminds me of the immense difference between my mainland Chinese salary where everything is cheap and how much things cost in a fully developed rich country. But I do what I must, and always spend too much money on books when I go to Hong Kong. Its worth it, and I make up for it in cheap bootleg DVDs back in Shenzhen.

Still, no matter how busy and cool a city, it can get quite boring in Hong Kong when I wander the same touristy Kowloon and HK Island locales every damn trip. I rarely have time to wander to the beach and surrounding islands and the more authentic Cantonese experience. I went wandering at Golden Fish Market looking for souvenirs, and window shopped all the cool anime toys in Mongkok. Eventually I met up with the couchsurfing.com people.

I was hoping for a free place to stay that night, but it was too last minute and I ended up only making it for drinks. I had sushi with Laetiticia and met up with some guys from the Netherlands and Thailand, and it was too much fun going out late at the wine bar and talking about US and Chinese politics. Well after 1:00 AM I was stranded, but I’ve been in cities before with no place to stay at this time of night and it always seems to work out. I found a cheap guest house, inbetween a hostel and motel, and it was only 150 (about twenty bucks US). With African guys drinking beers outside and call girls holding hands with Indians, it was not a good place to stay for a long time but the mattress in the small room was just right for my needs. I even got to watch some Hong Kong television.

Late at night is the only time to call overseas, and I used my HK phone to call back home. Mom wasn’t home, and I woke up Dad and talked for a while. I don’t even know how to call the US from the mainland, but I assume it’s more expensive and honestly I’m fine not talking to my family for month-long durations. It’s a nice buffer. I talked to Dad for a few minutes to catch up and say “hi I love you,” but I have the great excuse that it’s a pricey call and can’t talk long. Then I decided to call Raven, and talked for an hour. It was great; the only time I’ve called someone who wasn’t a family member, and well worth the keeping up with her. There are many friends I miss, and I try to email everyone on occasion, and Facebook is good for minor stupid comments just to remind you all that I still exist, but sometimes I require a long gossipy conversation like the old days. Raven was always my favorite to chat with.

The next day I checked out and went to get my visa. There were no complications, and I finally had it. My six-month pass, level M, with only thirty-day durations of stay but infinite multiple entries. For the next six months, I don’t have to worry. After all the troubles with the two-entries that I have to update every two months, and having to get my new passport in Guangzhou when the old one expired, and when they almost didn’t let me into Thailand, and finally I am free! No more bureaucracy until September! And we’ll just have to see where my life is at by then, and where I want to live...

I went shopping, I mailed some stupid Bruce Lee shirts back home, ate the last chance of delicious Western food before back in greasy mainland, and took the train ride back to Shenzhen thru the Louhu border. I had plenty of reading material along the way, so it wasn’t boring. With minimal problems with the new visa, though they did doublecheck to make sure it was real, and I went home. Another errand, I had to get a bank account – which the didn’t let me do because of the expired visa but this time it worked out – and then finally I was done slugging the super-heavy backpack and I was back at my apartment. It was only the morning before when I left, but it felt like I was gone for weeks. I proceeded to be completely lazy for the rest of the day, and I read some comics.

Now it’s back to the dull routines. I go to work at the different schools, I teach simple English to uncaring Chinese kids, I study Mandarin, I read on the bus, and I watch DVDs at home. And I beat myself up for not being more productive in the meantime. Really, I should work out more, meditate, do some writing. Sometimes I go to my girl Dawn’s house, sometimes she comes here, but mostly the weekdays are just a wait-out period until I can do something for myself by Saturday. This weekend perhaps ye olde expat pub, or a show, or simply catching up on my to-do list. I’ll fulfill all the social obligations, and I will checkmark the days on my calendar until the next vacation, and hope for the new, the novelty, the something interesting.

God and HK

God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.

God doesn't care if I like mainland China or not. There have been no direct affairs into my life. Sometimes I have minor good luck, sometimes bad, but little happens that is interesting.

As the mainstream Christian/Western theology of Augustine states, God created this world and then let us alone. He doesn't care. He lets it be.

And this is why I don't care to write about Shenzhen. There is no divinity, good or bad. It just is.

Occasionally though, forces in the universe intervene, and you fall in love or have a rotten day or win money or get your shit stolen. Good or bad, you sense the supernatural.

That's why I like to travel. That's when I sense something. At home, wherever I happen to call "home" at the time" nothing ever happens.

So: fuck Shenzhen. Damn my life of walking to work and entertaining small children and minor drama. Oh, I could write about the mainland. I could write and write. About the slightly interesting people around me, the white and Asian alike. The Chinese work ethic than I can't live up to (the teachers here work far more hours for far less money and I don't know how they do it). The babies peeing in the streets like dogs. The beautiful smog. The lack of ADD diagnosis - a good thing - as all these loud brats here would be surely hooked on ritalin back in the dreary States. The vagueness of my curriculum. The mustering of energy.

And the evolution of the world, as predicted by Neal Stephenson (but sadly without the romantic flairs of an anarchic post-governmental structure, most likely) - our future as "Hi-Tech Third World." You know that's how it will be in America, and I assure its closer than ever here.

To those in the know: I swear I live in a bloody burbclave!

And yet there's a freedom here in not carrying my ID, my papers, never ever been carded by bars or by authorities; as opposed to communist America.

The lack of free media. The lack of porn. (As thoroughly documented and proven by the internet, all subsequent information technologies from Gutenberg up are to come with an exponential increase in pornographics. Yet the statist government blocks this natural progression) No porn here, and yet still those seedy massage parlors...

I need to get my own computer already, and do that proxy server thing I've heard about.

Anyways

God really wants me to hate Hong Kong.

But, I flatly refuse.

I came off the train way too early in the morning, after waiting in line at customs and buying expensive train ticket-cards. Hong Kong is basically its own country you see, with money to exchange and declaration lines to wade through. Its pricey there, in Hong Kong dollars.

So then I stepped out into the East Tsim Sha Tsui station, armed with tourist map and printed directions to the underground visa shop where I was to pay the Indian guy and get to stay in the country longer, and it was raining so bad.

Terrible downpour. The worst I'd experienced in years. This is tsunami land, and I'll probably experience worse yet soon, but dammit I was spoiled by California weather all those years.

I was drenched immediately. Rain like this is worse than being submerged fully clothed. Its sticky. It won't end. I'm fragile, I don't like.

So I had to buy an umbrella. Then I went to the Chungking Mansions and went to the travel company where you get to buy visas. There's something strange about it, but that's how it works if you live in Cathay and you're not from there.

Its Hong Kong, such diverse and international flair, and I waited in line behind the Africans and Hindis and Canadians. I like international towns. Again, Hong Kong is so different than the mainland.

And then it turned out that I didn't bring enough money. I was several hundred Hong Kong dollars short. And this was after exchanging every cent (yuan) I own. Apparently American passports are the priciest of all. I don't think being born in Israel helps either. And though its a six month visa, its only two months entry and I have to leave at least once a month, and that means every two months I have to do this all over again.

I had to go to a payphone, in the rain, and call my "boss" person. I didn't even know how to call long distance, I had to figure this all out asking random people. People speak English there though. So different. And, armed with no working cell phone here, I had to call a friend of a friend to borrow five hundred HK dollars from. Meet at a trainstop at 5:00 - hours and hours later - with no phone and hope it works out.

To do this visa thing you have to stay overnight. You pay extra just to get in processed in one day. I mean, I couldn't even go back and forth if I wanted to but I had to get in by the next day. Thankfully, Indian dude was nice and let me pay partial. They say because of the Beijing Olympics it was even worse a few months ago, but I hope they make the rules easier soon. What's the harm in just letting me stay in your damn country?

Soaking wet and stressed from the bureaucracy, I now had six hours to kill. Fun times. I know no one in this city. I'm almost totally broke. Ah yes, and I mean that with no sarcasm, its a good feeling and it was the time to explore.

Fed by cheap Indian food, with the rain mercifully having let up, I wandered. I took out my tourist map and train cartograph and scribbled places of recommended spots. I epically window shopped at Nathan Road. I looked outside the museums, and found a public library (a public library! They don't have those in the communist mainland), and I peed and read magazines and checked my email.

I found Avenue of the Stars. Its a bootleg Hollywood starwalk, but actually nice. With a statue glorious of Bruce Lee; and starprints of such Hong Kong cinema stars as Wong Kar-Wai, Jet Li, and Jackie Chan. I think I may have recognized more names than the outdated 1940s stars on the LA Boulevard.

Kowloon park where the junkies bug you and the birds are beautiful. Harbor City mall where everything is far too expensive for me to have a chance of buying anything. Took the train to the other side, Central HK island, found North Point. And many other places that I can neither pronounce nor recall how to spell.

I love Asian cities. They're so ridiculously huge. While the biggest thing in America is probably Times Square, compact crowds to drive you mad, a proper Asian city seems to have dozens of Times Squares. I can only speak for Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Osaka, but none of those are even the biggest cities of their respective countries. Everywhere is a downtown, multistory, gleaming lights, rotting future. I like this cyberpunk science fiction landscape.

Hong Kong is an amazing country. As said, its basically its own country. Sorta China, not Britain anymore, its own thing with its own money and travel rules. Ethnically diverse, helpful to English speakers, but still weird and Asian. I can eat food. I'm not stared at as the only white guy (or at least, less so). And a diversity of landscapes: mountains and beaches and inlands.

I say this everytime I visit a new city, and I always mean it, but I really want to move here. Its so expensive though. But how did all these other people make it? Like, how does that guy from New Jersey working at the fast food place afford rent and travel? I need sponsorship, or something. I need an in.

And so at 5:00 I went to the last stop of that line at Chai Wan or somesuch, and met this lady and borrowed money. I get paid on Monday and have much to de-lend. Then I went all the way north to Tai Po market to meet at the couchsurfing.com pad I was to stay at. I played some video games up there, searched the new area, met some Austrian chicks that were also staying, ate junk food and so on.

Next day was shorter. I had a good couchsurf, wrote a review, and parted ways with the other travellers, and made my way back to East Tsim Sha Tsui. I paid and I made it. Another near miss for Ray. But it always works out. Who knows how close to deportation I was. It would have sucked, because all my stuff is back at the apartment. Ahhh... these minor adventures... like that time waiting in line in Israel to make sure I wouldn't be drafted just for being there, and when I forgot my passport but they still let me out of Mexico, and when that British guy yelled at me at Heathrow for having a ripped up passport and said he didn't have to let me in (I still have that same passport, but I've glued it since then).

The bureaucracy isn't over yet. I didn't get a receipt. I am a special kind of idiot, although this, unlike the weather and the economy, can only be blamed on me and not God. So I've emailed and called back and forth to get a scanned jpg version of receipt, and I might get reimbursed, but I still have much stuff to work out.

And then I caught a cold. No doubt from the rain I wasn't used to. Last night I had the worst sleep ever. I couldn't breathe. All night in a cold sweat half-awake with interrupted fever dreams. I felt like that scene in Trainspotting. Should be a fun weekend now.

Oh yes. And the voting. I must say there is a part of me that's glad I'm not in America and not forced to be a news junkie. Doesn't seem real. Well, good for Obama. There's not much I feel inclined to say. He's a lesser evil but he's no Messiah. I'm not comfortable with it. But whatever, much has been written already.

I wish my land the best, but I just hope America can stay cynical. Its our greatest cultural strength.

I mean, if we can't hate the President, than just what's the point?

So... America and all that... but I'm not there...