Hong Kong

We expected Hong Kong to be dense, and only somewhat pleasant. Boy, were we surprised! This place is great!

Hong Kong consists of Hong Kong Island, 230 little islands, the Kowloon peninsula, and the New Territories, which borders mainland China.

Hong Kong is a very vertical place. The islands rise abruptly from the sea, with just a little sea edge for buildings before towering into tall peaks, as much as 3000 feet high. Virtually all of the people are clustered densely into Hong Kong Island and Kowloon, leaving 40% of the space wooded forest and park. It is really quite startling to see the sharp transition from the dense living with crammed office and residential buildings (30-80 stories) to the woodland --they abut with no real transition zone, such as suburbs and homes. Everything is either a skyscraper or woods. This makes it quite a remarkable place! I don’t know whether it was great land use planning, or just dictated by nature, but the result is that Hong Kong is very livable even for outdoorsy people.

We stayed at a hostel up at the top of Mt. Davis (thanks for the tip, Rob!). It was a great place --we were able to meet fellow travelers and swap stories. We also did yoga on the roof, overlooking the view of the harbor. Very beautiful! We saved a little money cooking our own meals. The only downside is that the hostel is a ways away from town, so it takes some time getting back and forth.

We expected Hong Kong to be a very urban city. It was, but we also did a couple of things we did not expect: we visited a World Wildlife Fund bird reserve, and went backpacking up a mountain! Not normal urban activities!

First the tourist things: the flower market, bird market, and fish market. Each of these is a district in Kowloon a few blocks long with shop after shop.

We went to the flower market first. Transportation is pretty simple, so we just hopped on a bus and were there. The area is full of flower vendors. One street is for cut flowers, and another for potted plants. The cut flowers are first-rate. There were gorgeous roses, orchids, mums, bird-of-paradise, or whatever you want. But the very first stall was the one that stopped us dead in our tracks. I had never seen such perfect roses. Within the most elegant bouquets, each rose was exactly the same color, the same size, and at the perfect stage of just starting to open. Each rose was more perfect than you can usually find anywhere, and then the whole set were matched to be identical! The rest of the booths were great, but we kept comparing them back to the very first one, and nothing could measure up. It was a real treat for us to see.

Next were the potted plants. Nothing very exciting here, just the usual houseplants plus the types of exotics you expect here. That is, nothing much, except for the single best bonsai specimen we could ever hope to see in a single lifetime. It was crated up (sold) so we couldn't get any good pictures. Let me describe it, but please realize there is no way I can do it justice.

The bonsai was a pine tree, probably hundreds of years old. The trunk was incredibly striking --it was bleached white, perhaps three inches thick. Only by looking around the backside could you find the narrow strip of living bark that nurtured the tree. Likewise, the largest branches were also jagged and white. Whole sections of tree had grown and been removed over the years, leaving a gnarled and aged framework, including split and torn dead wood. The tree above filled a canopy perhaps four feet high and on each side. Each branch was perfectly trimmed, in balance with the rest. I don't really know how to describe it. I sat and looked at it, knowing that I couldn't get pictures through the crate, and tried to craft the words to describe it so that I could write it down and remember. Then I tried to just memorize the picture of the tree itself. But it defied such attempts to simplify it. There was just too much detail, too many twists and turns, too many perfectly trimmed twigs. This really isn't a plant; it is a heritage, even a treasure. Very few people could have the talent to dare to trim it --but the high price (US $30,000) will certainly ensure that the new owner will hire the best caretakers available. There is no way that any plant could be worth such a sum, but this one was worth every penny. You could spend hours just staring into it, with peace and wonder washing over you.

The next market is the bird market. This is either really cool, or a bit tragic depending on your point of view. Every imaginable bird was there, from parrots to lovebirds to finches, and scores of birds that we didn't recognize. Many were cared for in excellent cages and looked healthy and happy, ready for sale. But other booths were definitely going for the low price, and just crammed a zillion birds together. We saw some shoe box size cages with birds pretty much just stacked up like cord wood inside. We are probably a bit more twitchy about this than most people, since it really seems like all of the birds would be much happier to be free, and aren't so sure that keeping birds captive is a good idea at all. We left having enjoyed the opportunity to see such a diversity of birds, but a bit put off for the poor birds.

Lastly, we visited the fish market. This is both a tropical fish market for aquarists, and a fish market for food. That makes an interesting mix! Most of the shops were pretty mundane. They had the basic fish, but there was nothing particularly special about them. There was the full range of quality. Some shops had extensive aquaria systems, with elaborate support for coral reef flora and fauna. Others shops consisted of just a few sheets of pegboard with fish, one to plastic bag, hung all over them. Clearly the later was suitable just for quick turnover of high-demand fish, since there was no means for feeding or cleaning, or even for oxygen other than the shopkeeper opening and re-closing each bag.

As with the flower market, there were some excellent standouts. At one shop, I saw the best, healthiest collection of freshwater aquarium plants I have ever seen (and I kept aquaria for over thirty years). It wasn't just the selection, but the health that blew me away. It is notoriously difficult to keep some plants thriving (more difficult than freshwater fish), and these were flourishing. We also saw some great coral reef tanks (gee Jim, how's that salt water tank doing?), and one shop that specializes in arowanas, one of my favorites. (An arowana grows to several feet long and is basically a huge, powerful silver slab with a giant mouth that opens like a trap door --they become a bit of a pet.)