I set out at 7:30 this morning to wander around the neighborhood and see what was happening early on a Sunday when things were fairly quiet. It was another cool and gray day, a good one for heading up the hill toward Hong Kong University. I climbed up 4 or 5 wide sets of stairs on Sands Street, walking between apartment buildings toward a dark green leafy canopy and what I thought was a park. But there was no park. Instead a tall wire fence barricaded the trees and a series of angled concrete slabs and giant drainage pipes among them. An oversized sign warned of flash flood danger beyond the fence. That reminded me of reading about heavy rains causing landslides that often claimed lives in the various squatter settlements on the Hong Kong hills in the not-so-distant past. Being a product of the prairie--and feeling overly warm after only a few minutes of hill climbing on a damp morning--I had fleeting fond thoughts of flat land and gusts of cold, dry air right about then.
Turning at the barricade there were more wide stairs heading uphill between more apartment buildings. A little further on I looked down on the backside of an ancient temple, climbed more winding stairs and eventually came to a wide 4-lane road. Clustered on the road were 8-10 serious bicyclists out on heart-thumping Sunday morning ride up the hill. I passed by the Jockey Club Student Village, a gleaming new complex hinting that I was getting close to the university. This is the third time I've come across something related to the Hong Kong Jockey Club within the last day. Yesterday I had walked past a Jockey Club clinic and also a sports field, and when I mentioned this to Terry he commented that one of his business partners belongs to the Jockey Club.
Reading online about this organization, it appears that the Jockey Club runs the betting on horse-racing, that it's the largest taxpayer and also the largest private charity donor in Hong Kong. Here's a place where British and Chinese interests meet. The English set up the Jockey Club for the amusement of the upper classes here in Hong Kong in the late 19th century. The Chinese seem to have a greater-than-average attraction to gambling, which James Fallows has written about. A couple days ago I walked through a newish arcade off Belcher's Street and noticed that the largest tenant was a race-betting outlet, with several windows for placing bets and a series of monitors replaying horse races. The Jockey Club had done a good job making it appealing, judging by the intent faces staring at the screens and the lines to place bets. Knowing now that this activity is supposedly generating tax revenue as well as funding community projects like the ones I'd walked by makes it seem less distasteful.
Once I reached the Hong Kong University campus I walked past several solid blocks' worth of construction projects. Finally the sidewalk disappeared into the dark recesses under a building. I turned around and headed downhill, taking a series of steps, walkways and landings through some trees and down one side of a high-rise development and large multi-story shopping mall. On one of the landings I watched a couple of elderly men doing their morning exercises, one rotating hips hula-hoop style and the other rotating his arms. The incongruity of their healthful activity right outside a big KFC in the mall made me smile.
Once down the hill I took a small side street past the curiously-named "Wonderland Nursing Home". Terry says he's walked past at least 10 nursing homes close by our apartment. I've only seen one other, "The Springfield". (Who thinks up these nursing home names, anyway?) These will likely be relocated after the subway line opens up. This short side street connected with Queen's Road West, the first familiar street I'd walked on since setting out an hour earlier. Queen's Road is the street Terry takes to walk to work in the Central area, and it's the street we'd currently take to go to the nearest subway stop about a half-hour's walk from our apartment. I noticed a few people out wheeling suitcases and imagined that they were heading home today after spending the last week or so on their Chinese New Year break. I wonder if tomorrow will be an especially grim Monday back at work here in Hong Kong, similar to what people in the U.S. feel after the Christmas holiday season is over.
I turned the corner on Belcher's Street, the main street heading back toward our apartment. More people were out than an hour earlier, a few buying newspapers, a few of them after food. Some were sitting in tiny noodle shops having breakfast, some were buying fried breakfast breads to eat out of hand, and some were stepping into bakeries to get fresh egg tarts or wife cakes to take home. An egg tart is barely sweet custard in a small individual pastry shell, and a wife cake is a hockey puck-sized pastry filled with winter melon paste, also mildly sweet. I've had both and liked them. The ParknShop grocery store was open, and just inside one of the clerks was wrapping up a gift box of some treat that a customer was buying for a Chinese New Year present. I noticed a poster in the window of this store encouraging people to ask for a sticker to put on their gift boxes in lieu of having them wrapped. The sticker said "Save the Earth. Use less wrapping paper" to make it obvious that the gift-giver hadn't been negligent. Finally I reached the Fortuneland Realty corner on Sands Street, where we turn to go to our nearby apartment.
I hadn't taken along a map this morning so was relieved that in my hour of wandering I'd made a fairly neat circuit instead of getting turned around and lost in some rabbit warren of side streets. Getting a little lost will be a good adventure for another day's walk.
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