A sleepless night's thoughts on Hong Kong

Jetlag is one of those words that people use a lot, but I don’t really know what it means. Likewise, my body doesn’t know what time it is. I didn’t sleep last night. Each time I closed my eyes images of Hong Kong danced on my eyelids, Chinese characters kept me from sleeping, flitting around, each to their own beat, rhythmically obeying their respective tones, inflecting different meaning with each subtle step across the dome of my eye. I remain enchanted.
Despite being from New York City, the greatest city in the world, Hong Kong makes little sense to me. Nine days is only nine days and I didn’t expect to leave with definite conclusions, but my reactions are more confused than I anticipated. New York hardly seems like the city that never sleeps; not only does Hong Kong not sleep, it doesn’t appear to rest.
Meeting Jon at the airport was the sweet reunion I had anticipated, an old friend who, at times, knows me better than I know myself, our common history readily apparent from our first step in the same direction – goofy body language, obnoxious volume to our voice, painfully obvious stares at passing women, a random jump shot and an undeniable camaraderie that is founded in time spent together. Yet it was weird seeing him in Hong Kong. I know Jon is Chinese. His last name is Chan, I take my shoes off before I go into his house, and his parents have told me their stories of immigration. Doi, Jon is Chinese. But never before did he look so white. This struggle to unite with a culture that he identifies with but feels he does not own was apparent in his face. In showing me around, he wanted to speak Chinese and facilitate an experience as authentic as possible, but he has just a hard a time facilitating it for himself as he does for me, a gangly white guy a head taller than everyone in the crowd. I drowned in my cultural illiteracy, content to rely on Chinese speakers for help and to stand out on the train. Jon struggles to swim in a culture his eyes and last name indicate are his own, but western mind and language skills tell him otherwise.
I do stand out in the train. I really stand out. No matter the time of the day, if the train is open it is crowded. Like the streets, there are always people packed around you bustling somewhere, children, bags, partners, and trendy shopping bags in tow. Each train is divided into cars, but doors do not separate the cars so you can see from the head of the snake to the tail, watching it wend its way through the well-planned underground. It is evident that the subway has been planned flawlessly, moving millions of people throughout the day without breaking a sweat. It is a good thing for me because the last thing I want to do is look at a map with a blank stare drawing more attention to myself. I am the only not-Chinese person in sight. I stand where the snakes stomach would be, can see both ends, and it really is true, I am the only non-Chinese person in sight. My head is cocked slightly to the right, clearing the ceiling by no more than four inches as the stale train air is exhausted on my neck. In that moment, I feel like Gulliver, landed in a foreign place where I am unlike anyone around me.
But, I am not attacked, tied down, or stared at. As I gaze around the train, I realize that no one gazes back. People chat on their cell phones, kids play with their parents, the guys in suits look uptight and stressed, the little grandmas look so adorable – I want to scoop one up and pinch her wrinkled little cheeks – teens negotiate their sexual tension through awkward touches and suggestive stares; I don’t stop anyone from doing what they normally do. People don’t care that I am standing there. So what, there’s a big white guy standing in the train. They notice me, but their attention is nothing more than a fleeting glance, more concerned about what stop they need to get off at, what’s for dinner, or the woman’s cleavage on the other side of the car.
My feeling of being out of place is entirely self-imposed, a creation of my mind, a narcissistic obsession to think that my skin color might be of consequence to people. It is almost as if I want people to gawk at me, but they have better things to do than worry about some almost-bearded American with smelly armpits. That being said, it answered a question that so often is raised in discussions on race: Why do all the black kids sit together? With each stop I look around the car to see of any people who are not Chinese get on the train. I won’t know them and probably won’t talk to them but there will be an undeniable moment of eye-contact solidarity between any non-Chinese person and me. I know that the Chinese people don’t care; I too am preoccupied with that woman’s cleavage, but I seek that empathy in the eyes of people who I think are like me. Constructed and contrived, I still feel out of place and yurn for my comfort zone.
Ironically enough, it is only the look that I seek from the other non-Chinese people on the train, in the street, or at a bar; I don’t actually care to know them because I can see we look alike, but I hope so badly that we are not actually alike. During my stay there is a massive rugby tournament on, The Sevens, and the bars, clubs, and streets are overrun with Western tourists hoped up on imported beer and sunburns. With all of me, I hope I don’t look like them, pathetic white people in Hong Kong to get drunk and watch rugby, a real change from a British pub – good thing they took an 11-hour flight to do it. Chop sticks? Yea right, may I have a fork. They don’t say please, they don’t say thank you, and they don’t really care about being in Hong Kong. The neon signs make for a good photo, the Filipina prostitute makes for a good story and the cheap Carlsberg makes for a good drunk. They flaunt their money and say hi to their queen on the back of the coins, imposing their culture with their obnoxious ethos, sweating an air of cultural superiority that has never left the island, it has only spread to the other western countries. American exchange students don’t know who the woman on the back of the 100 dollar bills is, but are just as happy to spend them at Happy Hour.
I look the same, but want so badly to be received differently, as a person attune to cultural distinctions, foods, and languages. I want people to know that I respect them, that I am not just another obnoxious guy along for a good time. I will use chop sticks – I swear. But, I use them poorly, and no matter how badly I want to deny it, reject it, or admit it, to a certain degree I am just another white guy.
Western influence looms large in Hong Kong, not just in the arrogant approach of foreigners who couldn’t care less about anything Chinese. It is hard to walk more than two blocks without seeing a 7-11. Louis Vuitton, Mark Jacobs, Ralph Lauren, Armani, Lacoste, Fendi, Chanel, and Burberry are just a few of the stores that dominate opulent malls across the city. Capitalism, implemented and perpetuated on western terms has become part of Hong Kong. In these stores the salesmen and women are Chinese, but their English grammar is better than mine, their clothes were designed in France and made in a factory in China, but the label is flaunted with a classist air that stinks of neo-colonialism. The irony is stupid. Hong Kong is hardly independent.
Many of the malls and high-end shops are housed in the lobbies of Hong Kong’s famed skyscrapers. HSBC, The Bank of America, Standard Charter, and The Bank of China, to name a few, rise over the island, imposing their presence in an unmistakable way. They finance the Western-planted consumer cult that infects Hong Kong. Their buildings dance each night in the world-famous light show but these lights also blind the picture-taking tourists from the harrowing reality – Hong Kong island has been methodically stripped of its culture. The people look different, but they don’t care that I am there. There is nothing new about me, the West has been here for a long time, the presence has become natural and people continue to buy it.

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Yet I remain enchanted by a city that looks, tastes, smells and most defiantly sounds unlike anything I know. What a complex place, full of so many different vibrant people. Of course my conclusions about the ghosts of colonialism and western influence are premature. I think also, partly right. But, more than anything, they are wholly insufficient. I still don’t understand that city, the language, the people, or the customs; each is too beautiful and complex, but I delight in trying.
My trip was not an anti-Western diatribe. It was two of the best weeks of my life, complementing a new city with great friends, laughing the entire time.