"Elevator safety is easy to learn and easy to remember"

August 20, 2007 - Day 2 in Hong Kong

Because I chose a hostel far off the beaten path, I had to take around 1.5 hours worth of public transportation to get to the PRC's visa office (though I'm pretty sure I still saved money, if not time, by not staying on Kowloon). Hong Kong's public transportation system is the opposite of Beijing's (and of most cities') in that it's clean and pleasant. Like Beijing's, HK's city government is working to make its city clean, safe, and orderly past the point of ridiculousness. The hefty fines for smoking in non-smoking areas are great because of their effectiveness. On the other hand, when you're passing through an MTR (subway) stop, you hear instructions on elevator safety announced to you in three different languages. It's great that they don't want anyone getting hurt, but MTR seems to think that "Grandparents" can't handle escalators and should instead take the elevator. I saw many a grandmother and grandfather manage to take the escalator without killing themselves.

Once I arrived at the visa office, I spent a good 2.5 hours of my morning waiting to apply for my visa and hand over the hefty sum of money that Americans must pay to get a visa for mainland China. (The PRC uses reciprocal prices for visas, so because the US government charges so much for visas, Americans get charged multiple times more than citizens of any other country). Thankfully, even though it was past noon, I could still have my visa processed by 4:30.

Understanding without words

While wandering around Wan Chai (the area of HK where the visa office was), there were two moments of note. The first was on a second story passageway above one of the streets, I walked right into the middle of a F*l*n G*ng protest (fill in the vowels yourself). They had posters condemning the Chinese government and were passing out leaflets. I passed by hours later and they were still there. While the CCP has certainly been expanding its reach into HK's political affairs since 1997, the party has still have left the city's dwellers with a much greater degree of freedom than their mainland counterparts. Such a protest in China would have been broken up within two minutes. Additionally, I could get on to BBC news in the internet cafe without any problems.

My second moment of interest was more anecdotal and amusing. I had been on my way to McDonalds to use the bathroom when I had run into the protest. Apparently, many other women had the same idea, as there was a line of about 10 Chinese women of all ages when I got there. As we waited, them chatting in Cantonese, me standing silently, we all eventually noticed that not only was there no line in the men's room, but the men's room had two stalls, while the women's room had one. Seriously, who builds more stalls in the men's room than the women's? It really doesn't make any sense. At one point, when there weren't any men inside, the two older Chinese women start pointing and talking, and everyone begins to laugh, including me as I totally understood their plan without understanding any of their words. One went into the men's room while another guarded the door. When the second woman went in, a line of men actually did start to form. When she came out, I understood my first sentence of Cantonese, "不好意思," which had only slightly different tones than in Mandarin. (There's no direct English equivalent, though it's close to "sorry, I'm embarrassed.").