Thursday, January 8, 2009

Still in China

After a night and day of traveling, I've made it safely to Hong Kong. HK is a city like none other that I've been to in the world. I really am at a loss as to how to describe it. It has the narrow, brightly lit alleyways that look like the China of the movies. It has apartment buildings soaring high enough to block the sunshine. It has coastlines cluttered with docks and whatever the technical name is for those big cranes that work on the docks. It has a definite British influence, as well as other foreign elements. Ruth Chris and Mortons steakhouses can be found within one block of each other. It's crowded and packed full of overstimulation. Yet it's still China. Upon entering my very nice hotel room (this is definitely the splurge portion of the trip), I was unmistakeably greeted with this fact. On the pillow, on a very nice laminated paper with English and Chinese, was a note informing me that the water would be turned off for several hours today and tomorrow "owing to the regular cleaning of hotel water tanks". Ahhh, yes, in some ways this is still the China I call home.

3 comments:

Mink said...

Aww, bummer - my box is going to linger longingly on your doorstep, or wherever they keep temporarily orphaned boxes at your home...

Unknown said...

I just realized that I do not have your email address. Could you send it to me (zgridley@tiu.edu)?

Barbara said...

Can you imagine the outrage of American guests if an Amer hotel turned off the water for a few hours? We Americans can't deal w/ an ebb & flow of our conveniences!
I'm afraid that I am in this group.