Wednesday 2/26 On to the
Other Side of the River
Full
day ahead. Same bad breakfast only
had watery oatmeal instead of the congee, which had been the best part
yesterday. The first three groups
presented, and as I suspected
it was mostly people talking about their own projects. They took us to lunch at a really nice
restaurant in the downtown Intercontinental Hotel which had a great harbor
view. It was a fancy 8-course
meal, each course tiny and delicate and incredibly good. They had the BEST fresh squeezed OJ I
ever tasted, we all kept getting refills.
Last
night Jon had dropped in our room to talk about the next day plans and said he
was skipping the university tours that were scheduled for today so I agreed to
do the same. Gin wavered about going
to see Macau on her own. I kept repeating to her, “Don’t bother,
I hear Macau’s a dump. It’s a
DUMP, man!!” So at lunch we got a message from a
waiter that she would meet us outside at 2pm.
They
made lunch into a Q&A session to make it more “conferencey” so 1-2 people
from each table stood up and asked a question to the “head” table, comprised of
various bigwigs from Hong Kong boards of education, arts/culture, commerce,
etc. Most questions were answered
by one loud obnoxious middle-aged entrepreneur/investor guy who kept saying
there isn’t anyone who can’t make money investing in China, he got totally rich
off doing it, he owned this building and that company etc etc. He kept saying, “I own that, I own this,”
so many times; when someone changed
the subject and asked where they could find a good steak in HK, he recommended
the restaurant at the top of Victoria’s Peak and Haskell whispered, “I own
it!” Sure enough, he said “I don’t
own the restaurant, but I own the mall beneath it, so please go and every penny
you spend there, a portion goes into my pocket, thank you very much!” Well that was reason enough for none of
us to shop there. By mid-lunch
he’d gone from being slightly amusing to a total turn-off and people began
openly asking almost hostile questions to him: “Can you tell us anything about what we can do in Hong Kong
besides make money?”
At
the end I stupidly asked Jon if he thought we should mention to someone that we
were skipping the tour, afraid they’d hold up the bus and wait for us. So he asked while I went to the
bathroom and when I came out, he was talking seriously to Gin in the lobby,
said we’d been told, “You should really, really come. This tour’s been all paid for.” Huh? What was
“paid” for, our seats on the bus?
We hesitated while people were boarding and finally I said we’d better
go.
On
the bus I met a supersweet girl from Stanford (also just graduated). We went to USC and for the first hour
looked at their library website in a
dim room. A library website? Right after lunch?
Couldn’t they have just sent us the link? I looked around and was definitely not the only one
struggling to keep my eyes open.
They had the largest collection of books on China in
the world. It didn’t look
so big to me, but I guess it is for all books on just one country. After being in the Yale Law building I have a tough time
being wowed by any other library from now on. We wandered around the stacks and I must say the quiet peace
of being among bookshelves brought back a strange yearning feeling—been so long
since I really studied. But had to
remind myself that I hate studying and will just sit there staring at the page
not absorbing anything.
View from the library:
Back
on the bus to the 2nd university, went a looooong ass way up windy
mountain roads that made me carsick.
Jon suggested we slip at the university because there was no way we’d make
it back in time to meet Ginger, we’d told her a spot and time. We found a double decker bus back to
the city, sat on top in front, which was really fun—felt so free!
We
walked up the same side of TST to get mango sago again (our HK “find”) and met
Ginger at the MTR. Took the Star
Ferry for the first time, another thing I’ve been waiting forever to do. In the station Jon found shades selling
for 10HKD! Gin and I were PO’ed that we’d been gypped at the night
market, but I didn’t see any I liked as much. On the ferry I was psyched to finally get good pics of the
skyline, but as soon as it started moving my stomach lurched and I had to sit
down the whole ride, praying for the 15 minutes to end. Rockier than I expected.
Everywhere on the HK side are great views of spectacular
buildings, really unique architecture, looming up at every turn. Looked more slick and Wall Street
professional (and we were in the financial district) and I said, “THIS is more
how I imagined Hong Kong. The
Kowloon side felt like, Hello are we still in Taiwan?!”
Went to the Central/Mid Levels, rode part of the long
escalator (the longest covered escalator in the world, but not the longest
continuous escalator), looked for the famous DanTat place my guidebook
mentioned but couldn’t find it, and walked through SoHo where we were amazed at
all the different ethnic/exotic restaurants—Nepalese, Argentinian Steakhouse,
Pakistani, a NY deli place that actually had egg creams, and a place called
Pizza Pizza Pizza that smelled/looked great. With places like this I could finally admit, you really
can’t argue against how HK is a better place to be than Taipei.
We eat
at a small wonton noodle place and try pumpkin pancake (is sweet and sticky),
then walk up and up to the mosque.
What with the windy bus ride, ferry, and escalator I was feeling
motion-sick-ill all night, so Jon goes up to see the mosque by himself while we
sit to wait. I’m really getting into my digicam, Gin shows me all
the cool options; she casually pushes a button to show me the sepia effect and
of course takes a pic that looks like it’s a professional ad or something.
I tired.