Hong Kong: East Meets West

The view of the city on Hong Kong Island from the top of the peak at night.

Hong Kong is a big, fun, exciting city/region. It is a special administrative region of China, and consists of several small islands and a small coastal part of the main land.

The view of Hong Kong Island (on a very hazy day) from the ferry

One of the best parts about it is that it is a real combination of western and eastern culture. Parts of the city feel very modern, and very much like New York City. Others are more remote, and feel rustic and beautifully foreign. One of the coolest things is how close these two parts can be together.

One of the street markets selling clothes, food, trinkets and everything in between.

Hong Kong's "Times Square", in one of the shopping districts of the city

For example a few blocks from the business district are narrow streets full of shops selling everything from curios to whole octopus to all sorts of different ingredients that I would have never thought useful for food. There is the oldest temple in Hong Kong in between skyscrapers and apartment buildings, a few blocks away from the neighborhood of ex-pat bars and clubs.

The Man Mo Temple, the oldest temple in Hong Kong, in between skyscrapers and shops.

The official language of Hong Kong is Cantonese, but most things have English translations- like street signs, and metro stops. I have only run into a few restaurants whose menu doesn’t have an English version, and a few cab drivers that don’t know English at all. Although the ex-pat community is large, it is still a minimal percent of the population, and now that Hong Kong is a part of China, it is getting tourists from the mainland, and now Mandarin language is becoming important for tourism.

Something interesting you couldn’t help but notice in the city was the emphasis on sanitation. Many people wear surgical masks over their nose and face. On the subway, there are “sanitation mats” which you can step on to sanitize your soles, and the escalator handrails have signs on them saying how often they are sanitized. There is also a big pollution problem in the city. I never really noticed it, but there is a pollution index you can check daily, it’s by percent, and also has a rating from low to high. Some of the days I was there it was at the high rating, but again, I never noticed a difference in the air.

While I was in Hong Kong I got to see all different parts of the city, as well as visit some of the outlying islands. It is a truly incredible place, and has only given me more of a travel bug to see more of Asia.