Hong Kong and their mainland counterparts

February 16, 2015February 16, 2015 ~ Sean Rahui

There is an extremely sensitive issue, and i am by no means an expert or proclaiming to know all about this issue, so what I am writing are my initial observations and thoughts only, so no offence is intended. No doubt I will learn more about these issues the longer I am here.

It used to be that Hong Kong, much like other large Asian cities was a place you came to to buy cheap copies and fakes of designer goods. Think Louis Vuitton Bags and those cheap Rolex’s that used to roll out of Asia in their thousands. While you can still get copies of many designer brands, by far and away Hong Kong is now a destination for designer goods and their main customers are Chinese mainlanders who come in their millions to Hong Kong to shop. Fifty five million mainland Chinese visited Hong Kong last year, mostly to shop. That’s over a million people a week. A million people in a tiny already crowded part of the world. The new middle class rich of China no longer want copies, they want the real deal and they are prepared to pay, they come to Hong Kong because there are no sales taxes and they have confidence that what they are buying will be genuine.

Near us is, in Tung Chung is a large luxury goods outlet stores, you have all the big names their selling their wares. You name it, Armani, Coach, Burberry, Prada, Calvin Klein and many other luxury European brands i have not heard of. Thing is, even though they are outlet stores they are by my standards incredibly expensive. We were looking at a pair of shoes that were 70% off and still over $NZ600 a pair, good grief who would pay $NZ2000 for a pair of shoes? Apparently many people do. And when they buy, they buy in bulk. You can see mainland tourists with large suitcases that they are filling with goods as they go store to store. I saw one woman buy three $3000 handbags in one purchase. So malls in Hong kong often feel like big airport shopping malls, all big brands and for me, very little personality. It is a bizarre economic outcome.

The local Hong Kong people really resent the presence of the mainland Chinese. They see the mainlanders as uncouth, unsophisticated or rude. There is almost an elitism to the way they talk about mainlanders. A fear that they will “invade”. Disgust at their behaviour, when they spit, or heaven forbid when a mainland tourist got her child to pee in the gutter rather than take them to the toilet. ( It’s not uncommon for Chinese toddlers to not have nappies and to toilet on command).

If the mainland Chinese were not ethnically the same as Hong Kong Chinese you would call their attitude to mainlanders racist. But I suspect that is just a simplification and their is a lot more to this, fear perhaps also being part of the concerns that Hong Kong people harbour?

From time to time things erupt. This happened over the weekend

<http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-31483476?OCID=fbasia>

>Hong Kong Protests<

Clearly tensions are simmering. I think that some of this sentiment has also fuelled the Occupy Central movement, a fear that the Hong Kong way of life. That the systems, processes and freedoms(?) that the British instilled here are under threat.

It’s fascinating and scary at the same time. China is this huge nation with what enormous strength and control and yet Hong Kong is this little island of difference? Where will it all lead?

I will write about the Occupy Movement as well, I have managed to miss most of it and in some ways it is in hiatus, but again a fascinating and interesting element to life in Hong Kong.

Shenzen part two

February 12, 2015February 12, 2015 ~ Sean Rahui ~ 2 Comments

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So, Shenzen part two.

We woke up ridiculously late in the spa hotel. The whole place is like a Casino, no windows or clocks, and as you are only in PJ’s you wont have a watch on so you completely loose sense of time. We showered, ( used the mountains of complimentary toiletries) paid our bill ( about $NZ65 each) and hit the road looking for breakfast.

There is still a slight sense that fast food American chains like KFC, McD’s and Pizza Hut have a slight sense of luxury about them, I think it is the pricing, if it’s expensive, ( which by local standards it is) then it must be good. When faced with the options of live eels and tanks of the crabs, and the promise of “chicken faces” the night before, we decided for the safe option of a muffin at McDonald’s.

The service we encountered was not great anywhere, you have to pay for everything up front ( even at restaurants) and I even had to ask for my change, nothing at all was proactive about the service, but I suppose that’s just how it is… And the obeying the rules at all costs seemed to be as evident in Shenzen as it was in Hong Kong. I had ordered a muffin, and then decided i wanted to add to my order, but in the intervening 30 seconds, the clock had hit 10:30, and that’s when breakfast service finished, so no I could not add to my order from the breakfast menu. Oh well.

We then head off to our next adventure being Window of the World.

But first we had to find an address in Mandarin that we could show a taxi driver. To do that we would need wifi. And when we found Wifi we had to find a way of finding the place we wanted to go without using google, wikipedia, Facebook, twitter or a whole host of other “banned” websites. So no google earth, no GPS systems on phones, in fact, because according to my phone company I was no “overseas” even my texts did not work.

I remember being in China in 2008 and not having limited Facebook access then, it was at the time a minor inconvenience. This time however it was a real hassle. Clearly in the intervening years the internet now plays a significant part of everyday life. It is a tool for getting around, for finding things out, for even knowing where you are. Thankfully my much wiser and more techno savvy mate had heard of Bing, the microsoft search engine. It seems they are happy to share all your search history with the Chinese Government so they are allowed. So Bing it was and we were on our way.

Window of the World. Where to start?

It is a theme park set over a very large estate and it seeks to provide miniatures of many of the worlds famous sites. Although, some are not that minature at all, the Eiffel tower for example was bloody huge, a one third scale, and could be seen from miles away.

We knew it was going to be kitsch, and we knew it was going to be odd, but it was for those reasons we were there.

It was a Tuesday, and it was not all busy, we did not see one other foreigner the entire time we were there, in fact we did not see any once we left the train station. I’ll let the pictures speak for themselves. Some of the replica’s were quite amazing, some were odd, ( why for instance if you were doing a copy of New York would you include the twin towers, I cant confirm but i am sure the park was built post 2001).

The Oceania section was a nightmare. The “Maorish” dwelling was pretty awful. It was a characture of Maoridom. There was a marae, with a variety of Maori pictures on the wall and then a few pacific nation flags. Aloha was plastered on the walls but there was nothing else Hawaiin. The imagery outside was really like a kids drawing. Genitals were cut off carvings and even the descriptions seemed to lack any accuracy ( apparently Maori were known for their pre european livestock management?)

There was a show and we decided to come back and see it. There was a powhiri of sorts, but instead of Maori complete gibberish and mumbling was used. Some “warriors” with sticks i assume to represent Taiaha then came on stage ( one almost looked part Maori but we found out after he was Chinese, lucky, cause if he was a kiwi he was going to get an earfull!). There was a lot of stick waving, and then some grass skirts were put on and everyone was taught the greeting “aloha” while, wait for it, doing the “hang ten” surfing salute. There was a lot of audience participation where the warriors scared teh audience by poking out their tongues and then the ritual humiliation of an audience member who was made to wear a skirt, and also poke his own tongue out. It was awful.

I found myself getting more and more tense and upset as the 15 minute show went on, it was such a butchery of our beautiful culture and so sad to think that hundreds of people a day were seeing this incorrect representation of our people. But there you go, this is China and this was made in China. I will raise it with the consulate, and perhaps also mention it to some media, it would be so easy to design something that was at least a little more accurate and authentic, but there were so many elements that were wrong, ( the representation of Taonga, the language, the whare), I wonder if even that is possible. I am no expert on Tikanga (culture) Maori, but I know enough to know this was extremely denigrating.

In between we noticed an “Alps” area, so in we went, it was a full Olympic sized ice skating rink, if that was enough, we noticed signs to the skiiing area? Skiing? Really? There were two snow areas, one for kids and a full sized adult ski field, we paid our $4 each and went in, took a few photos and went down a large slide…It was fun. And again so unexpected and surreal.

Anyway, post Windows of the World we again looked for coffee, thankfully a walk across the road and we found another Starbuck, right next door to a brand new Apple store. ( of course), we had a look around, found a second ice skating rink and decided we would start heading back.

The underground station was right there so off we went, less than 90 minutes later we were in central Hong Kong.

Shenzen is a brand new city and is tipped to be on the World’s new mega cities. It did not exist before 1978. It now has a population of 9 million, and is projected to grow to 40 million by 2050. The pace of growth and development is palpable. We noticed a large building under construction, it’s due to be finished next year and will be the second tallest building in the world and the tallest in China at 108 stories. Kinda says it all doesn’t it? One thing is for sure, this change will impact on us all!

I enjoyed my time in Shenzen and I will be back, I have been surprised by the number of people who have lived here for years and never been before. I met David in the city and on the ferry back to Discovery Bay, she asked how my trip had been, I said it was great, had she ever been. Oh no, she said, I could not go alone, it would not be safe. But the reasons behind that type of comment are a whole different blog post.

Shenzen

February 11, 2015February 12, 2015 ~ Sean Rahui ~ 3 Comments

Hatched a plan with a friend to head up to Shenzen for a couple of nights.

Decided we would try and avoid the crowds and head up on a Monday. It’s a very easy trip up, only 45 minutes by train up to the mainland border where the fun begins.

You are instantly assaulted by a new way of doing things, starting with the Visa, you have to complete your cards, queue forever to submit your application and be photographed, then queue to pay and finally queue to actually get your visa. Then you do the usual immigration procedures. It was not busy and it took us the best part of an hour, I would hate to have to do this when it was crowded. And no, you cant do this in advance.

One good thing about this process is the discounted cost, we only pay aprox RMB 160, ($20NZ) whereas others including US citizens pay up to 600RMB for the privilege of a one time visa. ( Thanks Phil and Helen, Winston for that!)

Shenzen is a SAR or Special Administrative Region that was set up in 1978, then it was a sleepy fishing village. Now less than 40 years later it is a vast metropolis of nine million people. Imagine that, from nothing to twice the population of New Zealand in 40 years. Staggering!

So we steeled ourselves for the the train station, expecting to be approached by all manner of people for all sorts of things. Apart from the usual taxi and transport calls we got through unscathed. Our anxiety levels were relatively high and we were expecting to be heading into some wild west type of scenario, but it was not like that at all.

By now it was lunch time and we decided to get something to eat and work out our game plan. We decided to look around the area around the train station and then just have a look at the shopping.

We stumbled into a huge mall like complex filled to the brim with small shops selling every conceivable item. Handbags, watches, glasses, tailors fabrics tea you know it. You have to be prepared to fend off approached, on a quiet Monday we had the place pretty much to ourselves. If you are after copies and/or what appear to be “diverted” originals then this is the place to go, I gather that this particular building is a favourite with Hong Kong tourists who just want to “dip in” to the Shenzen markets and bag a better deal than they can get in Hong Kong.

It really is nice to be able to just look, no pressure to buy now because I can always come back, it made the experience quite nice.

I did buy a couple of pairs of sunglasses, one of them were prescription ready in 20 minutes, they set me back about $NZ80, absolute bargain. We also came across a very helpful woman who shared her list of favourite stalls, she clearly shopped there a lot, the list was very, very long.

We then decided to get a cab to the Minsk aircraft carrier in the port. This was about a 30 minute cab ride away so we got to see some of the streetscape. What we did see was really well laid out, wide open roads, wide footpaths and what looked like nice modern apartments, many of which were clearly two stories. The roads were not too busy and after Hong Kong, well, it just seemed a bit empty. Where was everyone?

The Minsk is a Russian aircraft carrier built in the 1970’s that suffered some sort of “accident” in the 1990’s that led to it being sold to a Korean business man who in turn sold it to a Shenzen company that now markets it as a tourist attraction. As my travelling mate said, a ” bit of cold war tourism”.

It’s really bizarre to be on the deck of such a huge ship, it is clearly not being maintained and is basically deteriorating quite quickly. It includes a fighter plane, helicopter and a lot of the torpedo’s and missiles that I can only assume have been disarmed. It was surreal thinking about the lives of the people who may have worked on her over the years, what did they think? I found the remaining pictures of crew onboard to be almost as interesting as the ship itself.

So, after our self guided fossick around an aircraft carrier, we went to Starbucks, who have just opened up down the road.

We then decided we would head to the art district, an area where armies of artists can reproduce anything and everything available. Had a very funny moment where someone was trying to sell me an “original” for $NZ50,000 but when I asked who the painter was, he said he was one of the “pool” painters. The fact his “original” was not attributed to an actual artist seemed to be lost on him. Good luck with that sale mate!

Then it was the spa hotel. Ah, the spa hotel, where does one start on that?

I had heard a few days earlier that you could stay at these spa places where you could also sleep the night. Sounded completely sleazy and dodgy but my source seemed legit, so we started looking around on the net.

We decided to go to the aptly named Queen Spa. This place is five stories high and seems to take up a whole city block. As we entered we were greeted by a row of women in long white, high collar coats set off nicely by a tiara. The men were equally dressed well preened in coats straight out of the matrix.

Details and passports obtained, we were led to the changing rooms. No one spoke English, but it was clear that we were to disrobe, being modest kiwi’s we kept our underwear as we were led to the showers and the pool room. This level was made up of banks of showers, hot pools, warm pools, jet pools, plunge pools, dry sauna’s, hot saunas and an army of attendants. Having no idea of what was to come next, we hung out here for an hour before venturting forth.

Traumatic memories of being provided with hanky sized towels and robes that would go around one of my thighs were relieved when I was provided with a fetching pair of large pyjama’s not dissimilar to what I imagine may be the national costume of an East African nation. And off we went to the mysterious third floor!

This seemed to be the lounge of the spa. And what a lounge it was. There was a huge cinema room, bars, restaurants, gaming room and a rest area with giant fully electric reclining chairs. Think business class seats and then make them 50% bigger. People were resting, having manicures, pedicures eating and drinking from the buffet or just sleeping.

We decided to get a full body massage. When we were presented with a touch screen to choose our masseuse it should have been a warning sign! Off to our private rooms we went. It was probably one of the worst massages i have ever had, and it was 90 minutes long. I just wanted it over, it was clear that more than massage services were on offer.

Thinking we may be able to stay in our rooms and sleep, we were ejected and told to go upstairs. We both tried to sleep on one of the rest chairs, and then noticed that in the dim light there were some other activities going on. Clearly some of the massages that were being offered there involved a great deal of frottaging. It wasn’t overt, but you didn’t have to be Einstein to work out what was going on. There were many others around, women and younger people but no one batted an eyelid.

Thinking that we were going to just have to accept that this was going to be the rest of the night, we asked if there was anywhere quieter we could go to rest. We were led downstairs to another level to the “sleeping quarters”, rows of large, very comfortable semi enclosed single beds, sheets, pillows and blankets. In a word. Heaven! By now it was 3am and we were completely knackered. I woke up, thinking that it was 7am only to find out it was 9:45am……

Day two was about to kick off!

	Sean Rahui on Bolivian bits and bobs
	Stephanie on Bolivian bits and bobs
	Stephanie on Bolivian bits and bobs
	MRP on Bolivian bits and bobs
	Juliet on Bolivian bits and bobs

Hong Kong Hui

Musings and obsevations of a new Hong Kong immigrant

Month: February 2015

Hong Kong and their mainland counterparts

Shenzen part two

Shenzen