While China is such a big country and each area in China is at least as different as different states in the US, I would like to focus on the most unique area - Hong Kong.
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| Hong Kong from Victoria Peak |
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| Hong Kong Island |
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| Mong Kok - the most densely populated area on earth |
If you think cities such as New York represent "big city life" more than anything else, think again! Hong Kong consists of the city area that covers less than 40% of the area of the "country", as well as various greenery and national park areas that are forbidden to build on - so the city area gets modernized constantly, buildings are being demolished to accommodate bigger, newer and higher ones that look much more modern.
The population density of the "city" area reaches 340,000 people per square mile, compared to 27,000 for New York city. An average residential building consists of 50 floors with apartments sized 20 square meters on average, some buildings reaching 120 floors..!
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| Causeway bay on Hong Kong Island |
Hong Kong is divided into a few territories: the Hong Kong Island, which was originally the main Hong Kong city area; Kowloon side, which is the other main city part on continental China; New Territories - mostly greenery and national parks; hundreds of islands - they belong to Hong Kong, but often are not even populated.
Since I mentioned Kowloon, I would like to mention something very interesting here. Just 20 years ago there were no modern buildings to be found there. It had a place called the "Kowloon Walled City". A place that had no law, was controlled by the triads, that had its own economy where people worked for 10 cents per hour (as opposed to 8 USD minimum wage for Hong Kong thanks to the free market economy) and almost nobody getting in or out. It had some of the worst living conditions in the world, where people lived with their families in 8 square meter apartments with no windows, AC or indoor toilets. The history of that place is fascinating, if you would like to read more about it, here is a nice article with photos:
http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/episode-66-kowloon-walled-city/
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| Kowloon Walled city just before it was demolished |
Today Kowloon is a modern urban part of Hong Kong consisting of modern apartment buildings, bars, restaurants and many shopping malls. There's also a Kowloon Walled City memorial park that will take you through a memory lane of that place, with former residents playing traditional Chinese instruments like flutes and Erhu, giving free tours and explanations about what was once there.
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| View of part of Tsim Sha Tsui, one of the urban areas on the Kowloon side from Hong Kong Island |
Hong Kong is a mixture of traditional China with modern international feel and almost every major corporation housed there thanks to 0 taxes and free market economy. Most residents are trilingual - they speak Cantonose, Mandarin and English. It is not unusual to encounter older Chinese residents speaking fluent English. That mixture is easy to spot in Hong Kong's architecture. Most of urban Hong Kong consists of skyscrapers.. but somewhere in between, there are traditional buildings and parks to be found.
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| Hong Kong Park |
Along the western parts, there are also more traditional, Chinese neighborhoods, such as Sheung Wan. The streets have a much more "Chinese" feel to them, there are many temples and street markets.
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| Sheung Wan |
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| Sheung Wan |
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| Sheung Wan |
Sheung Wan is often portrayed on many movies and video games that show Hong Kong as a very Chinese-feeling place. One of notable places there is The Man Mo Temple - the oldest temple in Hong Kong, it was present in many movies and video games, such as Shenmue, which has a vocal group of die-hard fans waiting for continuation to the saga:
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| The Man Mo Temple |
There are also infamous areas such as Wan Chai and LKF, popular among adventurous foreigners and adventurous local girls, as well as immigrant girls from the Philippines, Thailand and Indonesia. They are bar and club areas where moral standards go possibly below Bangkok party areas.. but those places are easy to avoid and unless you are looking for a hard core, "trashy" party, there's nothing for you to see there. You shouldn't be concerned about safety, however, as Hong Kong is one of the safest cities on earth.
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| BBQ Pork with rice |
There are many great restaurants in Hong Kong and as opposed to Korea and Japan, people in Hong Kong love grilled pork, and they DO KNOW how to prepare it. It is delicious. It tastes like an entirely different kind of meat compared to pork in the western wold.
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| Jumbo, a floating restaurant |
There are also great places to spend some time outdoors on one of numerous beaches, islands or magnificent green areas in national parks, that cover almost 2/3 of Hong Kong (country) area
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| Sai Kung |
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| Hong Kong National Park |
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| South China Sea |
The main negative aspect of Hong Kong life, its dense urban architecture and having mainland China next to its boarder with over 1000 major factories within 100km next to the boarder is.. pollution, of course. It probably sounds worse than it really is, but you can see it almost all the time.
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| Water pollution |
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| A smoggy day in Hong Kong |
At the same time, people in Hong Kong are very healthy. The aging population gets accommodated by great health care with some of the best (and cheapest) private hospitals in the world as well as the public ones, which are free for residents. Also, the older people love practicing traditional Chinese "sports" in parks. A trip to the park can end up with you learning how to do Tai Chi or other branches of Kung-fu, traditional Chinese dances or just playing Erhu from one of the older citizens who are eager to teach. It's a rare occasion, as the Chinese people aren't usually as helpful or polite as their Korean or Japanese counterparts - usually they are their opposites as far as selflessness goes.
People in Hong Kong don't need cars. The transit system is phenomenal. You can get almost anywhere by metro (MTR), bus or taxi, the latter of which are everywhere and cheap - catching one takes less than 20 seconds regardless of where you are.
You can pay for everything with perhaps the most modern payment system - the Octopus card. It's an unified card for everything - all small payments (and big ones with an e-signature), all transit, online payments, literally everywhere, and can be connected to your ID card. You just need one card for everything, While at the same time if someone steals yours (which almost never happens in Hong Kong) it's not a big deal, you just get a new one at any Metro station 24/7 and the old one is instantly remotely cleaned and worthless, unless it's a prepaid variant - then you lose about 50$ in worst case. You can also have it on your phone through an app and NFC instead of a physical card. Seoul and Japan have similar ones but much more limited.
However, I would like to finish with some negatives I experienced about Hong Kong after staying there for a while. There is a pricing bubble related to housing - they are the most expensive in the world. Renting a cheap apartment costs about 9000HKD (about 3500 zlotys) a month. What you are getting for that price is something small even for Polish standards, and in one of the older buildings. Fairly modern apartments cost about 15000HKD a month, which is getting close to 7000zlotys a month. That is the reason why most Hong Kong residents live with their whole families in relatively small flats. Also, Hong Kong is a relatively small place and the city life seems to be all about work, restaurants and bars - there's not much else to do after a while of staying there (in these regards it seems to be like Singapore). The people are not as polite and some would say they are selfish, especially compared to Korea and Japan, as I mentioned before already. This proves that each country in Asia is very different, but each is worth at least a visit - it will be a life changing experience for you, if you truly try living their life with them.
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| A small part of Poland in Hong Kong |
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| Hong Kong sunrise above Victoria Harbour |
Finally some
questions: Have you ever seen a Hong Kong movie or played a video game where it was portrayed? Or maybe visited that place? What is your general opinion about it? Was it different from what I described?
Sources: Own experiences and photos
Unfortunately I have never been to Hong Kong… Need to admit that your article inspired me to see it. I’ll use Google Street View for a start. Maybe after moving to NZ I’ll be able to visit China too. Would love that, really.
ReplyDeleteI wanted to visit all the national parks when you mentioned them, felt hungry looking at the grilled pork and thought about how inconvenient is must be to live on 20 meters square with your whole family. I was also very intrigued by the Octopus card possibilities and I’ll definitely read more about it. How come is it so secure? How come Hong Kong is one of the safest cities on world? I would never have said that after all the action movies happening in China I’ve seen… How does it go hand in hand with “trashy, hard-core parties”? Need to say you woke up a curiosity in me! It was a real pleasure to read about your firsthand experience.
Thank you very much for your reply, Kasia. I am glad I was able to wake up curiosity in you. The Octopus card is basically one of the most modern payment methods even though it's a very simple concept (it started as a system of payment for transit). The fact that everyone uses it made all businesses accept it as a payment method. Also, as its issued and monitored by the public transit system and there's a stand for it at every Metro station makes it very easy to get, use and charge.
ReplyDeleteYes, Hong Kong is one of the safest big cities in the world. As a matter of fact it is true for many big East Asian cities such as Tokyo, Seoul or Singapore.
http://wikitravel.org/en/Hong_Kong#Stay_safe
It's a culture thing, and also it's hard to commit a crime when there are always some witnesses around because of the population density ;-) Anyway Hong Kong just feels safe. I was also joking around about those action movies and stories about Triad gangs but really, during my whole stay in East Asia whether it was during the day or middle of the night - I've never encountered people who looked like they were up to no good and nobody was really concerned about it, like it wasn't even a possibility.
The bad things I wrote about the party areas are related to white people districts, unfortunately. That is the case especially in Hong Kong where there are more westerners than in any other Asian country, probably. Disctricts such as Wan Chai or LKF are exactly "Westerner" districts and almost every bar and club there has about as many westerner guys as Asian girls there. The fact that these districts are literally all about western bars and clubs and moral standings there are pretty low, that's why people call them "trashy". It's still not unsafe to go there, it's just not pleasant to see. As long as you avoid those places, everywhere else in Hong Kong is very pleasant to hang around any time of a day.
Many thanks for the explanations... Sad to hear/read that low moral standards were imposed by white people.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, I'll read more about the Octopus card. Many thanks once again.
Very interesting overview.
ReplyDeleteUnfortunately, I never been to Asia, this huge part of land and culture is still on todo list. :)
As a fan of old Jackie Chan movies I've seen Hong Kong number of times on a screen. But I suppose it has changed massively from the times when Jackie was at his best :)
A worrying part for me - is number of people! could not stand crowds !
How could you survive and operate with so many people around you ?
in terms of video games , isn't the "Watch Dogs" happened in Hong Kong ?
Good to see aJackie Chan fan :) I remember the scene from one movie (which title i unfortunately cannot remember), where Jackie was on top of a speeding truck, while jumping over and ducking under these banners, similar (or identical?) to those in Sheung Wan district.
DeleteI love the Shenmue series and one of the focal points was the city of Hong Kong, which still is spectacular, despite outdated graphics.
Daniel, I believe you meant "Sleeping Dogs', set in modern Hong Kong. Good game, by the way.
Thank you for this article! Next year I'm planning to spend my holidays in China and now I'll do everything og to put Hong-Kong on my "to see list".
ReplyDeleteI think each asian big city has it's own atmosphere but during reading your article I had an impression that Hong Kong is very similar to Seoul. Definitely next year I have to go and check it, thanks again for a very helpful article!
Aga, don't you have enough? You're traveling to Asia almost every month :)
DeleteBut I definitely agree with you, this article made Hong-Kong one of my future travel points.
Great photos and story! You're so lucky to have been to Hong Kong and explored the culture. I must say I actually never seen the city before in movies, TV etc. (or I probably saw it but never noticed) but it looks very interesting and a great place to see. Thank you for providing practical info for the travellers, it's very helpful to learn at this point how expensive housing is and hence how expensive hotels will be. It seems that I won't be able to afford a trip to Hong Kong any time soon, but certainly that's an option to keep in mind.
ReplyDeleteI found the phenomenon of Kowloon Walled City very interesting and read the article you linked - even started watching a documentary about the place on YouTube. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lby9P3ms11w
It's fascinating how this kind of place emerged with it's own ecosystem and laws (or rather lack of laws, as the documentary says) and existed throughout the years, being completely covered in litter, unimaginably overcrowded and run down. I'm actually also very curious how the whole "city" didn't collapse by itself and had to be demolished.
So Simon, thank you again for the great article and for showing me Kowloon!
To be honest I had completely different image and opinion about Hong Kong. I have never been there, but my sister visited Japan and China and after hearing her stories I simply assumed that Hong Kong should be pretty similar to them. But now, when I’m thinking about it, according to the guidelines of deduction I should assume that we are very similar to Germans. I’m surprised that living there (besides rent) is cheap, for example traveling in Japan is very expensive(Yes, I’m aware that the distance between those 2 countries is almost 3000 kilometres :D). Your statement “While at the same time if someone steals yours (which almost never happens in Hong Kong)…”. I don’t know way, but I considered Hong Kong as a city of crime, mobsters and pickpockets. You change my perception of this city, for which I’m really grateful, because now I don’t imagine that I would get there stabbed in the back in the middle of the street or be reduced to beggary with high prices, but now I could consider Hong Kong as a place, where I would like to spend my holidays.
ReplyDeleteAnd the BBQ Pork looks awesome!
I wanted to end with something from Family Guy or South Park, as I did with article about Santa and jealousy, but the only thing, which comes to my mind is this part of Russell Peters stand-up comedy (I know he has racist jokes, but I love the guy):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxciIyDf5nU
AND – I found this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkSCD8ZtHhg – enjoy :)
Great article. Excellent photos!
ReplyDeleteI have always dreamed of traveling to faraway countries. Now, thanks to you, also Hong Kong is on my ‘list to see’. Maybe someday?
I enjoy reading guidebooks about any countries. But definitely more valuable are direct relationships from traveling. Read about the population density is one but to see it on authentic photos - a huge difference!
Just like Kate, I became interested in the octopus card. From the description it seems to be a great solution.
Hong Kong - one of the safest cities in the world? I would never have ventured on such a finding. I was very surprise. As probably every commenters.
The combination of modernity and tradition, the skyscrapers and national parks, mixture of cultures, religious faiths, great kitchen – need to add something in order to encourage traveling?
As regards the films from Hong Kong in the background - the first that I have in mind is the Yip Man. The story is set in the 40's of the twentieth century. So it doesn’t show the image of the contemporary city.
Kasia S- you are welcome :-)
ReplyDeleteDaniel L - I think those Hong Kong movies are so wrong in portraying Hong Kong though. It's a totally different place. Nobody is fighting anywhere on the streets, obviously ;) BUT, the video game I think you meant was Sleeping Dogs. It's pretty good at showing Hong Kong actually, even though it's not a 1:1 interpretation of Hong Kong Island, the "virtual" Hong Kong Island presented in the game contains many of popular real buildings that actually are in Hong Kong, and the sounds are real and the feel of the city gets similar sometimes. Even better game at showing the place (even though from the 80s) was Shenmue 2. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8ZqnAUgfiYk
It's an older game for Dreamcast and first Xbox but it was phenomenal not only if it comes to the story and what it was for its time, but it was also very good at showing how the more "Chinese" districts look like. Even though the city districts and streets in the game were mostly fictional, they were based on real ones and some places were also 1:1 accurate.
If it comes to the amount of people, it is sometimes hard but to give you a better perspective, rush hours in Hong Kong feel like being in "Patelnia" (the place near the entrance to the Warsaw "Centrum" metro station), perhaps even a little less overwhelming as people in Hong Kong are more used to the crowds and more organized - they don't bump into you as much and the general coordination if it comes to the direction of walking is better, they are also great at standing in lines, which isn't true for Poland where there are usually no lines, for instance to the metro ;-)
Agnieszka - Thank you for your comment. I think, however, that Hong Kong is very different from Seoul. Obviously the biggest difference are the people - people in Hong Kong (and China) are (believe me or not) like a total opposite compared to the Korean people. Koreans are very polite and selfless, people in Hong Kong are rather impolite and don't care about anything around them, really. It's not as bad as I make it sound, it's just different culture and deep inside the Chinese people can be nice. They have a rude shell though so the general feel is very different.
ReplyDeleteAlso, the city looks and feels very different - Seoul is extremely organized and clean, Hong Kong is chaotic and sometimes dirty. Seoul feels very modern and citizens feel very modern, Hong Kong streets feel like you're in a third world country sometimes - Chinese stalls with all kinds of foods and other cheap products are everywhere, there are cockroaches and rats in the Chinese districts because of leftover foods. BUT it has a very specific atmosphere. Seoul feels like a very modern Asian City, in Hong Kong only some aspects feel extremely modern, some feel like China 100 years ago.
Magdalena - Thank you very much for your kind comment. I'm glad that Kowloon Walled City interested you. I also think it's a very interesting phenomenon. Visiting the Kowloon Walled City Park was a very amazing experience for me, seeing the remains of the city and learning about it from one of its former citizens. The place was a symbol of Hong Kong, even though it wasn't really a good symbol, it's fascinating to read about it and look at pictures now.
Jakub - I think it's very usual that many people think that most Asian countries are fairly similar ;-) China and Japan are entirely different places, however. It's much more than like a difference between Russia and Germany, because Japan is one of the most culturally isolated places on earth, and each Asian country is really entirely different, only the architecture seems to be similar. Also, the diversity between different regions of China is MUCH bigger than between states in the US. I think it's very interesting.
ReplyDeleteYes, I was also surprised to find out that Hong Kong is one of the safest cities, but it really feels extremely safe - most East Asia feels extremely safe. An interesting thing is that most police officers in Hong Kong are undercover - they look just like casual people. Naturally low crime rates and the fact that you have no idea who might be a police officer means that there's virtually no crime other than home violations and hit-and-run pickpockets (but that is also rare).
Thanks for the videos as well! They were funny, and I think the stand up show was very accurate ;-)
Mariusz Szewczak - Yes, I think there are many great reasons to go, but that is true for any big East Asian city as well. Hong Kong is fairly unique because (to add another reason to visit) it is very easy to survive there with English. Almost everyone can speak decent English. You can live and work there for half of your life without the need to learn even basic Cantonese. Every written word is written both - in Cantonese and English. English is also the official office language there, even though most people communicate with Cantonese and it is their de-facto language.
Infact another good reason to visit. :) It must be amazing to go to the city where 95% of the population are Chinese, and no problem to communicate everywhere.
DeleteHi Simon,
ReplyDeleteI find this article great! You've presented the city very interesting way. Amazing photos! And the travel aspect of your story!
Good job!
Judging by the photos alone this place has a great, distinctive atmosphere. For me a little bit to dense to be there, but worth the admiration.
ReplyDeleteAnd when it comes to movies set in Hong Kong my first though was - "Blade Runner". Which is wrong, of course, but not entirely. Although the movie wasn't set or made in Hong Kong, Ridley Scott (the movie's director), refers to the "Blade Runner's" scenery as the landscape of "Hong Kong on a very bad day".
The second Honk Kong movie reminiscence was "The Dark Knight" and the great scene in Two International Finance Centre:
http://youtu.be/tFnJGt-uYlw
Good article. Thanks for that. And great photos. It's nice to see that you wanted to show a bit of life in HK, not only tourism places ;).
ReplyDeleteBut...ifelt some kind of inner instincts, telling me "is that really so?" while reading it. For instance - polish accomodation standards are really, really high for our far eastern friends. And it's not the high rent that makes chinese people live in small apartments, because they lived in small apartments long before any average chinese could see real dollar bill :). That thing with "no cars because they don't need it" is false as far as I know. Car number is still rising there, as the society grows richier. 8 USD is a joke as well ;) Officialy it's 30 HKD as i remeber....it's about 3.8 dollar. Never been higher...
Mostly I watched movies with Jackie Chan about his adventures in Honk Kong. That moves where old so the town was much less present as you described it. There was a lot of exploding things, flying people and car crashes… I think that that view of a city was more humoristic than your opinion of it. I admire the views that you attached to your presentation and I started to thinking about making a trip to Honk Kong in future.
ReplyDeleteI've been to China and Mongolia, bit I've never been to Hong Kong. It sounds fascinating and... pretty much like the exact opposite of Mongolia. In Mongolia the population density is extremely low - less than 5 people per square mile. Even in the capital, Ulan Bator, it's only about 270 people per square mile - more than 1200 times less than with the Hong Kong city area. I don't remember any tall buildings in Mongolia, and a big percent of the population still lives in traditional yurts - there are huge yurts quarters even within the city. There are few "parks", but much of the country consists of steppes, which often seem endless. It also isn't very industrialized.
ReplyDeleteThere is however one similarity I noticed - you found a Polish product in a store in Hong Kong. That's a very common experience in Mongolia. In fact most of the assortment in Mongolian convenient stores seems to be imported from Poland. I'm not exaggerating. Mongolia's climate doesn't lend itself to coltivation of most plants. That is probably the reason why the Urbanek company is huge in Mongolia.