mf.rox

Busy Kowloon

Originally uploaded by MFinChina.

Some things I wrote down on my trip when I was in HK:

Back to Hong Kong for the first time in two years! I noticed the city has an even more manic pace than Shanghai, which surprises me. There;s also a more aggressive vibe here. It’s not bad, or scary, or threatening. It’s just something in the air. Maybe it’s related to the pervasiveness of the criminal underground. There’s this weird frisson — men have this attitude — a “Watch out or I’ll pull out my chopper” kind of thing. (A chopper is a homemade machete that gets used in a lot of gangfights here.)

I also noticed that women are much less fashionable here than in the Mainland. I’ve seen a lot of women with lank, heavy, unattractive hair. Somehow I find myself thinking this dowdy look, and the sort of downtrodden, joyless attitude that go with it has something to do with Christianity — like it’s the influence of going to a religious girls’ school from a young age.

(Photo is a typical street seen in the Yau Ma Tei section of Kowloon, Hong Kong.)

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