Duality

Hong Kong reminds me of duality. It has an official dual existence, one country two systems. More, though, it feels like a duality. British and Chinese melded together but separate, a close cousin to Blade Runner. And my purpose here also exposes a duality: freedom and adventure travel, but also escape from life and normal existence. It's a place to go to find a new start.

What dualities exist in your own life? Are you mother and lover, child and parent, business and personal? Do you have disjoint lives, the one at work and the one at home, or maybe the one you share with family and the one you share with friends? Do you sometimes feel alone even when surrounded by people?

Food in Hong Kong is a delight for the senses, more an adventure than a necessity. At dinner near the night market it's sloppy and dangerous but interesting. You can choose your crab or lobster from large plastic buckets filled with water and crustacians. Maybe it is my choices that make food an adventure?

I get dim sum the next day. I have to ask for hot chili oil, and then they bring me a tiny thimble of it and I have to ask for 3 more. This is not Szechuan.  Are they insulted by what I am doing to their food, as if I am poisoning their favorite child? But they are amused by my gusto for their creations. Food here is different than Beijing, as are the people. Food in Beijing seems designed to assault the senses, while here food is finely crafted with delicate flavors, The difference, maybe, between spicy buffalo wings and nouveau cuisine? The people here are different too. There are still rich and poor, but it lacks the obvious class divisions in Beijing. Beijing reminds me of the class divisions in feudal Europe after true Franks conquered Gaul, with a distinct ruling class and several lower classes under their sway. Or maybe the antebellum south? It leaves me wishing that the Cantonese had won the Chinese civil war. But maybe that's why they didn't? They seem focused on living and enjoying life, unlike their warlike brethren to the north.

What do you think the Mediterranean would be like if Germany had won World War II? The thought seems brutal to us, impossible even to ask. But Hitler was only a man. He would have died eventually, as Mao Zedong did, and German rule would have softened eventually.

 

These precocious musings must yield to further adventure. I only have 24 hours left in Hong Kong. I visit several shopping areas, then meet up with an indirect friend who is also in HK. Her plan is to go to Victoria Peak right away, but I convince her that she has enough time and more adventure by joining me to a Aberdeen fishing village and a floating restaurant for lunch. We separate and then I go to another part of the island that has a local market, and finally make my way to Victoria Peak for dinner.