Five things I’ve learnt after 24h in Hong Kong
1. HK oozes money
I have seen more Teslas here in a day than I had seen before in all the other days of my life together.
The only places where I had seen Tesla cars were California and Beijing. According to this extremely accurate and comprehensive survey of mine, 87.2% of all Tesla units sold worldwide are in HK. After Tesla, Lexus and Porsche Cayenne seem to be popular, affordable alternatives. Everything else is either a BMW or an Audi (lame!).
Cars are just one sign of wealth here — apparently, you can’t walk five blocks and not bump into several exclusive clubs (Chinese guilds, international correspondents), five-star hotels, glamorous residential towers, branches of American and European luxury brands, etc.
2. “Entropy” is the word here (too)
Here is an idea for a research project: assess the level of entropy associated to cities based on the analysis of public photos of those cities on the web.
Tokyo ranked at the top of my personal entropic short-list: skyscrapers, little businesses, offices, bars, arcades; their menus, promotions, human billboards, neon, LCD screens… the crowds, the traffic with its many layers and signs… Then, I travelled to Seoul, Beijing, Kuala Lumpur… and noticed that entropy is a trait of Asian capitals.
Hong Kong is no exception.
If anything, and because of the extreme scarcity of real estate (the “city” here means anything that is not water and not the top of the surrounding mountains), stuff is even more packed in HK.
The streets are very steep, and narrower than in Tokyo (and definitely much narrower than in Beijing). Low-end housing looks even less spacious than in Tokyo; stories are lower, towers are higher. The rules for advertising in the public space don’t seem very stringent, and in some areas signs and billboards hover over each other and overlap. Damn, Kowloon Walled City was here, after all.
All this is to say that if your average cityscape photo weighs x MB, I bet you that your HK pics are around 1.2x MB. Camera manufacturers, TV engineers, researchers on the field of compression algorithms: test your stuff in/with Hong Kong, and you’ll make sure it’ll work anywhere.
3. Nobody knows where the word “soho” comes from
The British claim they called London’s Soho “Soho” for the first time in the 18th century. Hongkongers on the other hand argue that, their Soho being located “South of Hollywood Rd”, clearly the name originated here. New Yorkers just love their portmanteaux, and can’t conceive that Soho doesn’t come from “South of Houston St”.
The British are certain to look down their noses at everybody else, regardless of what explanation turns out to be the right one.
4. Nightlife is wild in Hong Kong
I landed very late last night. I took a train to my hotel near Central Station, checked in the room, and left again to buy water and snacks.
I found myself in Lan Kwai Fong. Around 2am. On a Friday night.
Let’s just say Sodom and Gomorrah were havens of virtue and self-restraint compared to what I saw last night on the streets (I can only imagine inside the joints).
5. WM/AW is definitely a thing
“White man, Asian woman”. This isn’t news, really. There seem to be far more interracial couples where he’s “white” and she’s “Asian”, than the other way around. You know, that image of the West as male, and Asia as female; the stereotype of manly Europeans and androgynous Asians… There is strong scientific evidence that sexual preferences between different races aren’t symmetrical (I’m not judging this phenomenon, simply commenting on the facts).
With lots and lots of young male immigrants from Europe and North America living here¹, it is really striking to see most of those men holding hands with Asian-looking girls.
¹ Yes, rich white people are immigrants, too. Either that, or we start calling unskilled dark-skinned migrants “expats”. Apparently, the subtle discrimination behind these otherwise innocuous synonyms is more acute in Hong Kong.
Originally published on Medium