China Epilogue and a piano

Thursday, August 5 Not home yet, but San Francisco seems pretty close. Staying with friends instead of strange hotels also seems very close to home. So how was Hong Kong? Well, after all I had seen and done it was at best not terribly memorable. Part of the problem was my planning. What was I thinking when I picked a hotel right in the center of things? Why shouldn't I expect it to look and feel like Times Square? Furthermore, I knew that prices were going to be higher, but somehow it was still a shock. I spent the first day by myself, having a leisurely morning and a swim (the hotel pool was one of the highlights of the Hong Kong visit, the more so because we finally encountered real hot weather.) No, I am not complaining -- I know New York had been in its worst heat wave in its history, and I intend to stay in California until I am sure it is over... That afternoon I headed up to Victoria Peak, the highest point on the Island of Hong Kong with grand views of the city. It was foggy when I got up there, but kind of pleasant given my mood, and I enjoyed seeing the city, if not through a glass darkly, then at least through a gossamer curtain. The next day Elene and I headed over to Macao, the tiny Portuguese colony which is due to be turned over to China this fall. I was interested to read that Portugal had tried to turn it over to China in 1984 but they refused, only to change their mind once the issue of Hong Kong itself was settled. Macau has a decidedly more European flair than Hong Kong, largely because so many more of its 19th century buildings are intact. There are lovely squares with pastel buildings frosted in white trim, looking very much like the Caribbean -- or coast of Portugal itself, I imagine. The trip across from Hong Kong in a jet foil was remarkable mainly for the absence of a lot of boats on the water. We saw a lot of containers as we entered Hong Kong, but they must be going on some supertankers or something, because we didn't see a many boats to or fro. Our favorite spot on that hot afternoon was a maritime museum which had a fascinating display about fishing from nets, showing all the different ways ships could trawl with nets, or fisherman could use nets from the shore. Indeed we saw a variety of net strategies in our travels this summer, but I hadn't really thought about all the different shapes and possibilities. I spent the morning of our last day in Hong Kong getting my still photographs developed, which offered a kind of fun review of the trip at large. On the whole, the video is a much better record, but there are some individual stills which I am very glad to have, particularly the few I sneaked in the Dazu caves. The last afternoon I had a fantasy of a lovely dinner at waterside, so we headed across the island by bus (a tunnel makes this a quick proposition) to the town of Aberdeen, where there are still junks in the harbor. Most of these cute little canvas-covered hulls are for tourists, but not all. We rented one for an hour and had the fun of cruising around the harbor, peeking into other people's boats as they were making dinner, hauling in nets and otherwise engaged in harbor life. The eastern part of the harbor, which was separated from the western part by an island, was the upscale harbor with lots of gleaming white yachts and a few garish "floating restaurants." We decided to have our junk pilot deposit us on one of them when our hour was up, but shortly realized that these restaurants were ridiculously overpriced, and didn't even have a bar or a terrace where we could have just a drink. Oh well, at least it had a free shuttle back to shore, where we headed for what was clearly a restaurant with a view, just to our right. Foiled again, this was a private club of the old Hong Kong variety, and they clearly took a dim view of us when we trooped through the door. A taxi and a bus got us back to Hong Kong, where I took Elene to a lovely cafÈ on the sixth floor of the Art Institute with a fabulous view of the harbor including the dramatic new theater. It was a fine last meal, something to take my mind off the fact that we had to get up at 5:30 the next morning for the flight home. What does one hope for on a long flight from Asia -- even more than an on-time arrival? -- an empty seat in the middle so you can stretch out a bit. It was indeed a fine flight. I spent most of it reading Wild Swans, a book about a family in China that involves so many of the cities I had seen. I arrived in SFO at 9:30 Saturday morning, still confounded by the fact that we had only left Hong Kong at 8:30 Saturday morning, but otherwise none the worse for wear. My main role in going to Santa Cruz was to help Christopher clean out his mother's house, but Elene and I spent one night having dinner with her mother, sharing the photos and videos of Harbin, where she had spent her childhood. I also got to hear Elene play THE piano. What piano? Well that is my last story: