<font color='black' size='2' face='arial'><b style="font-size: 10pt;">A shopping mall</b><br>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">There's the Mall of
America (currently in the Polar Vortex) in Minneapolis, and the Mall of Asia by
the Bay in Manila, but Hong Kong is one big tropical mall of a city that entices
everyone to open their wallets. The city
24/7 lives to make and access the social and physical value represented by the
Hong Kong dollar. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Put simply, the coolie
and the nanny, the neck-tied banker and the harried taxi driver, the numerous salesgirls
and the proud street sweepers, and all others within the urban triangle at the
mouth 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 not
ever sleep, hustle in earnest in search of the currencies issued by the Hong
Kong-Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC), the Bank of China, and the Standard
Charter Bank. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Our latest visit to
Hong Kong a week ago showed a terrain more bustling than it was in the 70s when
we frequented a tenement home on Kowloon's Ship Kip Mei and a <i>Hakka </i>village in the New Territories'
Sai Kung. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal"><span style="vertical-align: baseline;">I was in the staff
of NT's Nam Wai all-community approach Human Development Project. A resort developer came calling and the smart
villager<font size="2">s</font> sold their real estate for a hefty price. The grateful community presented a Rolex watch<font size="2"> </font>to
one of our resident volunteers; a daughter let me steer her Dad's Mercedes when
I visited them in the SF Bay Area where they migrated. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">A Canadian colleague
and I this past week took a commercial half-day tour of former familiar places
in Victoria Island. Aberdeen with its famed
floating restaurants was our first stop.
</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I visited Aberdeen
in the 70s. It only had a one-street promenade
that had a few tall buildings, one owned by a family who manufactured some of
Hallmark's votive candles. When I visited
the factory, I expected no more than 10 workers in a storefront melting
paraffin wax to a mold. The business was
in fact a multi-faceted concern that occupied the multi-story building, even providing
munitions' material for Vietnam. The owner's
family name is Lam, residents of exclusive Pok Fu <i>Lam</i> Rd, our clue then that the business was more than just a dismissible
one-line entry on a bank ledger. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Aberdeen was a floating
fishing village populated by <i>Tanka </i>boat
people who cleaned the daily catch in the channel. Now, the ladies steer their sampans for
tourists (at extra cost from basic tour fee) while navigating their boats
around sleek yachts of the rich and the infamous. The fishing had since moved elsewhere.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">A jewelry shop in
the Aberdeen industrial zone was next stop. No doubt the gold and jade, pearl and silver
necklaces and pendants engaged skilled workers and were guaranteed quality but
the operation was marketed hard to captive audiences and was personnel heavy, adding
cost to what was already too rich for my pocketbook. Chinese tourists, consumers of things glitzy,
were loose with their credit cards. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Deep Water and
Repulse Bays were next sights but the tour did not make a stop since the draw
card of the area was gawking at expensive dwellings and drooling over Ferraris. A tall condo built between the shore and a
steep hill has an architectural gap reportedly big enough for a helicopter to
fly through in films. But it is the
astronomic 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 the
U.S. one percent! Residents include many
ex-pats on company paid dwellings.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Stanley Market, a
day market, was next stop. I zipped my
back 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 and
affordable t-shirts to remain hanging, the knick-knacks and trinkets
resplendent on display, but left the limited HK$ secured.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The apex of the tour
was Victoria Peak, long the end destination of the HK tram if one came directly
from HK's Central District. The view of the
city's skyline is still fantastic, as it was more than a decade ago when we
last viewed the sight, but they had added more buildings since, and for HK$40
more, one offers a roundabout view in one place. I walked round the old public vantage points.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">Tsim Sha Tsui's
waterfront back in Kowloon, our tour's pick-up and drop-off point, offered a
view 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's
statue in front of a clear photo billboard of Victoria's skyline to avoid the real
but hazy one, a lot of Hong Kong was costly artifice, a really spruced-up Mall.</span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">The crowd that watched
New 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. </span></div>
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<div class="MsoNormal" style="font-size: 13px;"><span style="vertical-align:baseline">I stayed in Tai Kok
Tsui in West Kowloon's Mong Kok area where the low-income folks came out to eat
and 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 <i>hoi polloi</i>; kept company with them into 2014!</span></div>
<br>
<div style="font-size: 13px; clear: both;">Jaime Vergara<br>
<a href="mailto:pinoypanda2031@aol.com">pinoypanda2031@aol.com</a><br>
<div><i>yesterday, appreciate; tomorrow, anticipate; today. participate. In all, celebrate!</i></div>
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