A Lasting Impression

Originally written April 7, 2007

Hong Kong is an impossibly unrealistic city. What gives this place purpose are the contradictions between reality and those that can escape from it.

Reality here is a disgusting place to live. I have no fear of China amounting to something of a superpower. Say what you will about a billion people theoretically willing to fight for the Red Army. The Chinese do not have the mentality or the modern culture to involve themselves in a conflict with the landlocked country of Laos let alone engage in international showmanship.

The barbarians are at the gates of dawn. The Great Wall was built to keep them out of the country, but it neglected that the wall would also keep the heathens within the borders. From an elementary perspective on what is appropriate public behavior, the people I meet here in reality are as backwards as the Mongols a thousand years ago. The lack of courtesy, not just towards the foreign white man, but toward their fellow Chinese, is startling. Crude bodily noises, shameless and inappropriate groping, a complete lack of hygiene and a disregard for personal appearance. Chinese women see us westerners as the golden ticket to freedom; there is a reason why you will never see a white woman out on an evening stroll with a male of the Chinese persuasion.

The reality is that most of these people died many years ago, but they haven’t caught up to that fact just yet. A serious problem in the city is the high suicide rate among the elderly. If they do not collapse serving as the makeshift garbage men pushing their handcarts through the streets during the day, they throw themselves in front of the subway trains. The government realizes this is a problem, not as a matter of human preservation, but of delaying train schedules, and disposal of the remains.

In the afternoon, the streets are as crowded as if a football game had just let out; except this is the everyday reality, people going about their business, or pretending they have business to go about. Navigating through these crowds becomes a daily adventure, where you will always encounter the same type of people. The old man walking with his arms folded behind his back, one hand holding the wrist of the other. The slow unsteady pace of their walk, staring at the ground as if time would not notice if it skipped them by the wayside. You look into the faces of these people, young and old with the same folded hands, the same distant look in their eyes. They have given up all ready. Time has all ready forgotten their names.

Reality is a backwards civilization that is on the brink of disrepair. Not from internal uprising or political backlash, far from it. The people here do not have the voice, or the passion within, to care enough about asserting their beliefs, if they ever had them, to enjoy freedoms we casually disregard. The environment, housing, transit, culture…it cannot survive the population, it cannot survive the last grasp upon a dying way of life. The young want to live the lives they see in the West, but they are trapped in a reality that forces them to practice the ways of the past. Their dreams die more every day, replaced by the dreams set out for them by others.

They look at me with some sort of envy and awe, and I try to play up that image whenever I can. I came to this island and became everything they are not, and in the end, I still have option to leave it all behind. I got to live a life they can only dream about, and I will return to a life they have no concept of. Reality to them has been a vacation for me, and with this I take my lasting impression; I will see you once again my friend.