Hong Kong

I must finish up with China. I am making mistakes, posting the same pictures, writing the same narratives. I leave for Africa in one week, and I must get ready for that.
Hong Kong was an add on part of the tour, and only half of the group went. And in Hong Kong, everything fell apart. The first night there, against my will, we ate at a Kentucky Fried Chicken. I did not want to eat there, but I did not want to be a spoil sport, either. The next day, half the group was sick. We were going to Macau. It would be fun. We would take the famous Star Ferry. We did not realize how difficult re-entering mainland China would be. We thought that since Hong Kong had been taken back, that is was China. But it isn't. There has been some sort of grace period to allow people to get used to things, I guess. Those from the Mainland cannot travel so easily to Hong Kong, so the border is carefully controlled. We stood in line in a hot cement bunker for hours with thousands of others, barely moving, sweating, holding place while bits and pieces of our group ran to the restroom.




Finally we were there. Macau was dreadfully hot and stale in August, and the group split up. Some went to the casinos where the air was cool and dry. I walked the tourist route, the "old" streets, and drank beer and got dizzy with heat, dehydration, and exhaustion. We walked high up a hill to a park run by old men. There was a heirarchy, it seemed, for some sat up high where it was cool, while others stayed in the lower reaches where the air was warm and not as fresh. Cheap radios played tinny popular music.


And after dropping back down the hill, my companion and I came to an old church. We walked through to the walled grave yard where a lone woman tended to the grounds. Maybe I was drunk with heat and beer and fatigue, but the old grave sites affected me terribly. Most burried there were killed by disease at an early age. Some came from England to be killed by "pirates." Those with long lives were mainly admirals and administrators. What brought these men here in the early parts of the nineteenth centurty, I wondered? It must have been horrible, yet they came to conquer for god and country.
That night we ate a tremendous restaurant, the Cafe Paris. It was a perfect bromide to what had become the usual cuisine.
The next day, I went to Kowloon and saw the markets and the porn shops. Kowloon, apparently, sells everything.




But this narrative is not interesting and I will simply quit rather than try to tell the last day with any verve. It is not possible now. I am thinking of Africa. I shall take my Imperial camera there and see what parts of the older world I can bring back. Selavy.

Shanghai to Hong Kong

Shanghai's importance in China's history is short, but for me powerful. Not really the history, but the images that emerged of an exotic, cosmopolitan society where Russians and French and Americans rubbed shoulders with Chinese culture. Like all border towns, it was decadent. Or so it seems in movies like "Shanghai Express" with Marlene Deitrich or Bartle Bull's novels set in that era. But you cannot find old Shanghai. It is gone but for a small area only part of which I saw. The Bund. There are a few colonial buildings standing, a few old mansions, but Shanghai is a modern city looking forward, not back. Along the Bund, scammers look for hapless tourists, but it seemed no worse than any other big city. People strolled about and shopped in the large outdoor mall a few blocks away, and people were exceedingly friendly. There were groups of young Chinese, art students, they would say, at the University in Xi'an, who would stop you and engage in chat. They would ask if you wanted to come see their exhibit just a few blocks away. I would always talk for a minute and then pull out my Polaroid camera and soon we were all having fun.Some of the group, however, had read that these "students" would lure you into a bar where they would order drinks that were hugely expensive or that they would take you down an alleyway where you might be mugged. The guide books say that you should not talk to anyone who approaches you on the street and wants to practice his/her English skills. And of course, others on the tour came back with harrowing tales of being taken from building to building in search of the art exhibit before they realized what was happening. "Shanghaied" flashed in their incredulous eyes.
Being a foreigner in a far away place can be unnerving, I guess, but I never felt much danger. Once when I was walking through an alleyway in a hutong, I saw a group of men and felt my spine tingle, but who knows if there was any danger there. I told my companion to turn around and we left without incident. Often enough the men would stare and I would raise my camera and gesture and they would either say yes or no. Sometimes a rough group of workers would gather about and laugh as the Polaroids shot out, obviously making fun of whomever was in the portrait.Somewhere along our tour, I asked our guide if it would be possible to rent a car or driver and go into the country to photograph all the things I was seeing through the windows of the bus. He told me that it would be dangerous, that the villages were controlled by the mafia and that I would not be welcomed warmly, that indeed, I "might be overwhelmed." Lovely phrase. When I got home from China, I wrote to a photographer who has a wonderful book about China, and recounted this story. Here is his reply.

"It sounds to me like the officials were just covering themselves
or trying to ensure you stay with the program.

All the time I hire taxis or take a local bus, ask it to stop,
then wait by the side of the road when done to return.
China is safe. The people are not physically aggressive,
except in commerce!

So, your physical safety in China is very, very rarely an
issue during daylight, especially in the countryside.
Also, people are particularly merciful to a hapless
looking foreigner. So, I keenly fullfill that roll.

I remember getting an earful like that my first time through
the 3 Gorges of the Yangtze River. It was a merely ruse to
keep me on an awful ship. I eventually went AWOL and
travel immediately became both less stressful and more
fruitful."


I am certain, though, that is what you would have guessed.