En Route - Borders

Just passed the north pole a little while ago, slipping across a border between hemispheres. What was approaching midnight is now coming up on noon, without the passing of time. The border of night to day is usually one of time, thought of as and seen in a moment of sunrise. When traveling this route, it's more of a movement thing. But rather than the movement of the earth on its axis defining the day/night border, it's the movement of the plane across that axis. Rather than a line as a border that moves to you, it's a point that you cross over.

But enough waxing poetic or philosophic, probably triggered by my inability to sleep on planes and being in the middle of my usual strategy to pull an "all-nighter" so my head is ready for the pillow at sleepy time in our destination.

This is our fourth trip together to Hong Kong since my sister first brought us there in 1996. Other than long weekends to Ocean City, these trips have constituted the sum of our vacations for the period. Funny, but I've got an aunt and uncle who always used to go back to the same place year after year for vacations, and I always thought that was silly, with such a wide world out there. But here we are, hitting our same place yet again.

Now admittedly, Hong Kong is more of a base of operations for these trips; 96 was Hong Kong, Macau, and Beijing, 98 was Hong Kong and Japan. In 2000, we redid Japan, adding Nara and Kamakura to the initial Tokyo and Kyoto, but that time starting in the land of the rising sun, and then moving on to "relax" and recover at our home away from home in the city of the fragrant harbor (with a side trip to Guilin on the mainland). Returning to Tokyo and Kyoto a second time was fantastic, exploring more on our own after we got to know the basics of the places the first time around. But even with the use of the place as a jumping off or decompression location, this being the fourth time for us back to Hong Kong (fifth for me -- a conference in 2002), we do still get the "Your going back there again?" queries.

I think the fascination with Hong Kong is that -- getting back to my opening theme -- it's a border town. It's probably the final border between the classic colonial era and a today's global sensibilities. The significant remnants of British influence makes it a relatively porous border between two of the world's major languages -- English and Chinese. When you have streets named Salisbury, Nathan, Jordan, and Queensway and neighborhoods like Admiralty and Central next to places like Wan Chai, Tsim Sha Tsui and Mong Kok, the other borders between the Anglo and Sino cultures are a bit easier to negotiate. For Americans abroad, the exoticism of Hong Kong is made far more accessible due to the wide acceptance of English.

While it's no longer a "property" of another island nation thousands of miles away, it's also not fully assimilated into the motherland to the north, the relationship with which is defined the political and economic border known as "one nation, two systems." On this trip, we'll be visiting China's major home-grown response to the success of Hong Kong -- Shanghai. It'll be interesting to compare the two.

Some other borders...I tend to classify cities by four categories. First is the business hustle bustle of New York and Chicago and London, full of energy. Then there are the cities whose character is dominated by their natural locale...San Francisco and Rio de Janeiro are obvious choices (while New York's rivers and harbor also give it some of that feel as well). Third are the grand monumental cites...Washington, Paris, Rome, Mexico City, and Beijing come to mind. And finally are the cities for which, as Gertrude Stein once quipped, "there is no there there."...the sprawl of Los Angeles and Tokyo, which require the exploration of neighborhoods to get the full picture of the place.

Like New York, Hong Kong clearly sits on the border of the first two groups. It is as energetic and frenetic as any I've seen, and from the green of the New Territories to the uniqueness of the outer islands, to the drama of a harbor setting, as visually stimulating as well. It seems the energy cities tend to come with skylines and the locale cities, nearby water. And as much as I admire the skylines of NYC and Chicago, there is none so dramatic as that of Hong Kong Island seen from across the "fragrant harbor" from which it gets its name. Hong Kong' commercial character brightens the skyline with a lot of illuminated signage that somehow manages, in the context of the city, to avoid feeling crass. And the newness of these fascinating buildings are right across a paper thin border from the old traditional open air markets and temples.

The business hustle bustle, grown over the years due to its proximity to the no-longer slumbering giant on the mainland, has resulted in a highly affluent society, with a non-trivial Rolls Royce per capita ratio and extravagances like gold-plated bathrooms. These modern riches also share a border -- as many such cities do -- with a considerably less affluent population down the block and around the corner. Hong Kong-based blogger Big White Guy recently commented on this juxtaposition of grime and gleam. Definitely two worlds in one.

What makes anything interesting are the contrasts associated with it. While some might be satisfied with returning to the same island or beach or mountains to crash or chill-out for vacations, for us, it's more about stimulation. Contrasts, frontiers, edges, diversity, and borders are a great source of that stimulation and Hong Kong is full of them. We've still got more to do in Japan before we feel we'll "be done with it" and there's still other areas in Southeast Asia that appeal (once we're too old for the 16-hour plane rides, we might get around to more of Europe). I'm sure that, given our comfort, familiarity, and appreciation for Hong Kong, it'll remain our vacation base of operations for a while longer.

OK, finishing this up at about 1:10 AM/PM, I look up at the video map on the bulkhead. We're somewhere over northern Siberia, approaching someplace called Novosibirsk, with Ulan Bator beyond it (across another border in Mongolia). I wonder what kind of cities they might be.