First Impressions of Hong Kong

"Hey Becka, let's go to Hong Kong"
"Ok"

So we went to Hong Kong.

But first we flew to Shenzhen. Shenzhen, 深圳, means "deep ditch" apparently. And, er, it is a bit of a hole. It's where Hong Kong has plonked all of  its mainland factories. It's also around 2 hours from Hong Kong island but in true Ryanair-esque fashion Becka and I flew there as it counts as an internal flight, and therefore is far cheaper than one to Hong Kong itself. Hong Kong is an integral and inseparable part of the PRC, hence why flights there count as international.

Wait.

Becka and I caught a bus to the border with Hong Kong which took around an hour. The border point is known as 罗湖, which we read as Luo Hu, but that was known as Lo Wu in Hong Kong. Spot the Cantonese. We whizzed through various border checks. British citizens don't need to get a visa for HK, but, as Hong Kong is an integral and inseparable part of the PRC, Chinese citizens still need a visa to visit. Almost like going to another country.

During these checks was the first time I've had a slight problem with my passport. In my opinion, and of those around me, I look very little like my passport photo. In the photo I have very dark hair and very dark brown eyes. I actually have blonde hair and blue eyes. No official has yet bothered with this but the Hong Kong ones, who take the time to do their job properly, looked a little confused and I had to take off my glasses and pull my hair back to reveal Me.

And then onto the metro and 40 minutes later we were wandering like lost lambs among the neon signs, and bustling crowds of Kowloon searching for Sincere House, Argyle Street. The streets in Hong Kong still maintain their original English names, all touchingly colonial like Argyle Street and Salisbury Place, with either Chinese transliterations or completely different names. I like this nod to Hong Kong's history. None of the roads in China retain their links with the past and are all named randomly after other cities, provinces or people. I think just about every city has a Zhongshan Park (Sun Yatsen to you and me).

Our room consisted of a tiny enclave with no window- which is to be expected in Hong Kong. Kowloon is one of the most densely populated places on the planet, and one of the most expensive, so even for a fairly large amount we weren't getting a lot. However it was clean and safe. And there was free wireless. So win.

Hong Kong is predominantly Cantonese speaking and uses traditional characters exclusively. This could get annoying as sometimes traditional characters are easy to read, but sometimes very difficult. Take 地鐵. This means metro. Note the second character. Compare to the mainland 地铁. 21 strokes as opposed to 10. As for 艺, why do the Hong Kongese bother writing 藝? Speaking was not much better as Cantonese, often misleadingly described as a Chinese dialect, is rather different to Mandarin. Which brings us to English, which was the language Becka and I tried first when needing to communicate. A lot of Hong Kongese speak English very well and it was noticeable how correct the English was in signs etc. When we were momentarily lost two locals helpfully led us the right way after saying "I'm afraid you have been misled". No one on the mainland would say that.

So Becka and I felt rather annoyed that our past two years of work weren't much use :P

Since Hong Kong was liberated or whatever the PRC calls it, Mandarin has been compulsory in schools. The metro speaks in Cantonese first, then Mandarin, then English. The impression I got was that most Hong Kongese don't bother with it.

One more thing was noticeably different from the mainland. Actually, lots of things were different. Hong Kong feels more like New York than China. But the biggest was the lack of censorship. There was a protest calling for the release of Ai Weiwei, the artist, from jail. The newspapers complain about the government and report the oppression of Tibetan monks. I don't need my vpn for facebook. I didn't realise how much I missed free speech.