[Oe List ...] ST Thursday from Jaime

[wangzhimu2031 at aol.com]

A shopping mall


 
There's the Mall ofAmerica (currently in the Polar Vortex) in Minneapolis, and the Mall of Asia bythe Bay in Manila, but Hong Kong is one big tropical mall of a city that enticeseveryone to open their wallets.  The city24/7 lives to make and access the social and physical value represented by theHong Kong dollar.  
 
Put simply, the coolieand the nanny, the neck-tied banker and the harried taxi driver, the numerous salesgirlsand the proud street sweepers, and all others within the urban triangle at themouth of the Pearl River, from Xianggang (HK) to the outskirts of Guangzhou (Canton)to Aomen (Macau), get going in the 24-hour cycle of a Metropolis that does notever sleep, hustle in earnest in search of the currencies issued by the HongKong-Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the Bank of China, and the StandardCharter Bank.  
 
Our latest visit toHong Kong a week ago showed a terrain more bustling than it was in the 70s whenwe frequented a tenement home on Kowloon's Ship Kip Mei and a Hakka village in the New Territories'Sai Kung.  
 
I was in the staffof NT's Nam Wai all-community approach Human Development Project.  A resort developer came calling and the smartvillagers sold their real estate for a hefty price.  The grateful community presented a Rolex watch toone of our resident volunteers; a daughter let me steer her Dad's Mercedes whenI visited them in the SF Bay Area where they migrated.  
 
A Canadian colleagueand I this past week took a commercial half-day tour of former familiar placesin Victoria Island.  Aberdeen with its famedfloating restaurants was our first stop. 
 
I visited Aberdeenin the 70s.  It only had a one-street promenadethat had a few tall buildings, one owned by a family who manufactured some ofHallmark's votive candles.  When I visitedthe factory, I expected no more than 10 workers in a storefront meltingparaffin wax to a mold.  The business wasin fact a multi-faceted concern that occupied the multi-story building, even providingmunitions' material for Vietnam.  The owner'sfamily name is Lam, residents of exclusive Pok Fu Lam Rd, our clue then that the business was more than just a dismissibleone-line entry on a bank ledger. 
 
Aberdeen was a floatingfishing village populated by Tanka boatpeople who cleaned the daily catch in the channel.  Now, the ladies steer their sampans fortourists (at extra cost from basic tour fee) while navigating their boatsaround sleek yachts of the rich and the infamous.  The fishing had since moved elsewhere.
 
A jewelry shop inthe Aberdeen industrial zone was next stop.  No doubt the gold and jade, pearl and silvernecklaces and pendants engaged skilled workers and were guaranteed quality butthe operation was marketed hard to captive audiences and was personnel heavy, addingcost to what was already too rich for my pocketbook.  Chinese tourists, consumers of things glitzy,were loose with their credit cards.  
 
Deep Water andRepulse Bays were next sights but the tour did not make a stop since the drawcard of the area was gawking at expensive dwellings and drooling over Ferraris.  A tall condo built between the shore and asteep hill has an architectural gap reportedly big enough for a helicopter tofly through in films.  But it is theastronomic cost per sq. m. that made us recall how the whole of NYC's Manhattan,and the golden mile off Chicago's lake front, are now only affordable to theU.S. one percent!  Residents include manyex-pats on company paid dwellings.
 
Stanley Market, aday market, was next stop.  I zipped myback pocket tight to keep my wallet in place. The shops did not differ from all the tourist traps I've been through,colorful and aerosol fresh so I window-shopped, letting all the cute andaffordable t-shirts to remain hanging, the knick-knacks and trinketsresplendent on display, but left the limited HK$ secured.
 
The apex of the tourwas Victoria Peak, long the end destination of the HK tram if one came directlyfrom HK's Central District.  The view of thecity's skyline is still fantastic, as it was more than a decade ago when welast viewed the sight, but they had added more buildings since, and for HK$40more, one offers a roundabout view in one place.  I walked round the old public vantage points.
 
Tsim Sha Tsui'swaterfront back in Kowloon, our tour's pick-up and drop-off point, offered aview of the legal fireworks set to go up an hour before and after New Year's midnight.  Not unlike taking a photo near Bruce Lee'sstatue in front of a clear photo billboard of Victoria's skyline to avoid the realbut hazy one, a lot of Hong Kong was costly artifice, a really spruced-up Mall.
 
The crowd that watchedNew Year's fireworks poured out of public transport, gathering as early as 6 p.m.since many thoroughfares closed early. The MRT ran till 3 a.m. for the revelers.  
 
I stayed in Tai KokTsui in West Kowloon's Mong Kok area where the low-income folks came out to eatand shop before midnight, occasionally lighting up banned firecracker in alleys,but are foundational to fanciful and fashionable Hong Kong.  I felt at home with my hoi polloi; kept company with them into 2014!


Jaime Vergara
pinoypanda2031 at aol.com

yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!

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