Up The Hill

I had my bag with me.  I brought a large than usual bag this time.  My friend is nervous.  We are late to get to a meeting which he has set up.  He wants to go swiftly.  I have a bag.  I suggest a cab.  He insists that the MTR will be quicker.  I capitulate. 

The MTR with a big bag is a drag. We’re going to IFC at Central which is one line, straight across.  But the Central station is huge.  This means we need to walk all the way over to the IFC where the Airport Express station is located.  “No.  Really, it’s no big deal.” I insist.  My foot is starting to ache and I know exactly how much further we have to go. The escalator to another escalator and then outside to the pavilion. 

The IFC pavilion is full of Hong Kong bankers just off work, milling about, pints in hand.  My friend walks briskly into the bar, passing through people with drinks searching for his friend.  Reluctantly, disgruntledly, I plot my way forward with my luggage in-tow, looking rather out of place with this posh apres work finance folk.   Most of the people are European and some how I wax twice as pugnacious under the gaze of their judgmental, rolling eyes.  “Fuck yourself” is a gob of phlegm I’m ready to pass to the floor. 

We all share a drink and a pleasant chat but now its time to move again.  Where to go?  I am set upon dumping this bag at the hotel, which is over in my old neighborhood of Pok Fu Lam.  It’s not close, but I don’t care.  What I do care about is that the cab queue in the basement of the Airport Express Station has what appears to be a forty-minute wait.  OK.  Let’s find a restaurant then. 

We both know the restaurant selection up beyond Hollywood road along the escalator will start to get interesting.  We walk from the IFC to the base of the escalator, up some steps, across a walkway or two in order to find that for the first time either of us can remember, the escalator is, out of service.  OK.  I’m not pulling this thing any further.

But in the back of my mind I know we need to rendezvous with another colleague at the Foreign Correspondent’s Club.  I’d assumed we could walk over from a parallel position.  A cab two blocks up would be silly.  Let’s just find something here.   We descend from the escalator and stare up the steep incline.  All the restaurants I recall are up there; up the hill.   My friend feels guilty and begins searching on line.  “There’s a German place that’s up the that way.”  I’m imagining pig’s knuckles.  “How far?  Wait, what about this one, right here?”  Upon closer look it appears rather compromised.  We duck in a burrito joint and I quickly duck us right back out the way we came when I see what they propose to stuff the burritos with.  Once again I look at the stairs to Hollywood Road.  May as well. 

The steps are such that there is no other way to proceed but to carry the bag.  Each step is grinding until we reach the summit at Hollywood Road.  The familiar street, curves around the old Victoria prison and, as it is 7:00PM on a Friday so the streets are packed with glittering people.  My friend has bounded ahead and I pause to wait for him in front of an open-door bar that is alight with inebriated activity.  I feel as if I don’t want to take one more step in search of anything.  Where is he?  I am not going to search for him.  I wait and wait until finally he swings back.  I suggest the place I’ve spied, two doors down, whatever the hell it is, and we descend down in to a tapas place, which will have to do.

Friday, 11/03/17

Sitting in the Middle, Once Again

Waking up in Hong Kong.  The classic skyline is across the harbor.  I seem to remember Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront down before me has been a work-in-progress with one construction site or another for the last twenty years.  A call with three colleagues who are all here in Hong Kong with me, though they're staying in other places.  We’re speaking with a colleague from another era, who’s now at a new company.  I explain what we do these days and he is interested.  It is so much easier to pitch people at this later phase in one’s career.  

A cab to follow, across and up Nathan Rod to Shandong Road.  I tip the cab driver.  I always tip the cab drives in the mainland and never tip the drivers in Hong Kong.  Why is that?  Perhaps because the Hong Kong guys had always felt a bit more prosperous.  But this is less and less the case.  And their work certainly isn't any less grinding.

All day long in an office.  We order food to eat inside.  By the late afternoon a colleague and I need coffee so we plod over the nearby mall, up four floors of escalators, to the closest Starbucks.  There is one closer, we note, but crossing Nathan Road would introduce blocks of  plodding to place where we could do this.  We head back with a bag of coffees for the rest of the team. 

That night after dinner we look for a place to drink. If we were on the Hong Kong side that would mean one thing.  But here in Kowloon, coming down from Price Edward MTR, just where, precisely are we heading to?  I’m following someone else who isn’t from Hong Kong either, who is suggesting we go to the same place we went to “last year.”  Ned Kelly’s Last stand is a bit of a dive.  But I don't have any better ideas.  It will do.  We find a place up in front, before the stage.  The same old rag time band that I think I saw last year and every year before that are up on the stage.  The bald guy does his Louis Armstrong impression and  the guitarist sings a song as well.  It’s not such a great place to talk but I try to stick together two  disparate conversations, sitting in the middle once again.         

                                                            

My one friend is nervous.  He is going to miss his last ferry to Lama.  I suggest he sleep in he extra bed in my hotel room.  That suits him and after the last round we walk over to the Sheraton together.



Thursday, 11/02/17

This Rich, Regal Blue

Landed in Hong Kong.  It’s a three hour plus ride down and it was long enough of to finish off my time with Guy Crouchback.  “The Sword of Honor” seemed to confront the Second World War II from the periphery of the conflict.  Guy seems to probe into the war in Africa and again in Crete but rarely if ever come into direct combat with the Nazi’s themselves.  Like Waugh in Abyssinia we don’t really get to meet much of anyone besides the British themselves. 

I am all alone, on the train.  The song “All Alone” by Mal Waldron is on my mind. It’s so terribly sad it’s unforgettable.  I can’t listen to music as my phone however, as its drained itself to life support mode.  It’s late but the Airport Express into the city is oddly stuffed to the gills.  At first I have my bag on the seat next to me, but I quickly remove it so a young woman can sit rather than stand. 

For a while I couldn't figure out how to properly get on the train.  I went up to an ATM when I got in which promptly told me they couldn't help me.  This had me immediately convinced that my problem had to do with my bank.  They must have put a hold on my card because they were suspicious that I was using an ATM in Hong Kong.  I called, the call dropped mid conversation.  I called back and finally twenty minutes or so into the adventure I spoke with someone who confirmed that there was nothing wrong with my card.  They charge in question had never hit the account.  I should have simply tried another ATM.  When I did, I was fine. 

Checking in to the Sheraton Hotel. There is the classical Chinese painting in the hallway.  It’s of a big, sturdy Mandarin with pensive eyes and turned up shoes.  I love this painting and always remember it not for the man himself, but for the colors behind it, this rich, regal blue.  I couldn’t tell you why this blue is so commanding, but for as long as I can remember, it has always insisted I stop and consider it before turning to board the elevators.   

Wednesday 11/01/17

A Bit Hard To Explain

It’s Halloween in Beijing but you wouldn’t know it.  There cabs are partly painted orange.  Somewhere to the south of the city there is a grove of persimmons that is no doubt in bloom with bright orange fruit.  But this has nothing to do with All Hallows Eve.  The club house at our compound has seasonal decorations but the big celebration was held last Saturday night.  There won’t be much evidence of the day as we head down town. 

But it is the season, certainly.  The leaves on the trees out the window are all yellow.  Not a particularly compelling yellow like back home.  The leaves just look dead.  The tall poplars that frame Jingmi Road, they are still green.  But not for long.  The next cold night will wind them up.  I notice that the on line news outlets I read have all pepper their pages with ghostly stories.  It must all seem rather odd and crass looked at from afar.  The bloody zombie masks all over the club house are a bit hard to explain.  “It’s for the kids.  It’s for the kids.”  What else can you say?

When I was a kid we loved the day.  And it was a day when I always got sick, year after year.  The air was turning and germs were in ascendancy.   But it's not as though a cold could stop you from candy.  The other night my friend brought his four-year-old niece and two-year-old daughter over.  They’d been out trick or treating.  They were happy.  Surely it is for the kids. 

The counterpoint of Christian culture that needs an evil to combat and define itself as in opposition to.  There must be an evil that lurks the earth and gets the upper hand once and a while.  China understands evil but apparitions aren't tied to the calendar the same way.  Here foxy fox spirits come and corrupt unsuspecting young intellectuals.  I haven’t read Pu Song Ling in a while but I’m sure they operated as the horror stories in their day.   But Horror (nor candy) doesn't get its own day of the year.   Horror is a hard one to reconcile with the Chinese national agenda.  The CCP will be unlikely to ban Halloween as long as its a fringe affair.  But it's hard to see how they'd manufacture a national, patriotic alternative.  Perhaps, at this very moment they are considering how to reclaim horror with Chinese characteristics.  

Tuesday 10/31/17