Clearing the air
1) I never thought I would be thankful to be back in the air of Hong Kong, but I was two weeks ago. I made only my second trim to Beijing, and again it was after the end of the Olympics. I got to hang with some dear friends, try some great microbrews made in Beijing and see, finally, the Great Wall up close. Too bad I landed on Wednesday afternoon, and only got to the wall on Thursday, when it was already kind of hazy, with visibility limited to about 1 to 1.5 miles. The day before, it was clear, I was told.
But by the time I flew out on Saturday, it was way, way worse; the air actually tasted like there was dry cement floating through the air. On days like this, my hosts said, they just stay inside all day because there is nothing else you can do. And when I landed in HK, with its only slightly polluted air (at least compared to Beijing), I can't believe how happy I was.
2) That said, Beijing has a lot going for it. We biked for 30 minutes on Friday night to the microbrewery, which is in the middle of a hutong. We then biked home drunk, with no problems. The city has big, wide sidewalks, and you can easily walk from bar to restaurant to home. The city just feels more ..... neighborhoody than Hong Kong, if that makes sense. You can walk from place to place to place, no problem. You can commute with your bicycle. And the food? It's great, with lots of different styles of Chinese cuisine, including Yunnan, the spicy cuisine from the area near the Laos/Myanmar/Vietnam border. Heck, we even found a shop run by an American and his Chinese wife; he is a former snowboarder/chef who now runs a beer shop in Beijing with three Rogue beers on tap. (The shop also sells organic herbs and spices and salt; fixed-gear bicycles for young hipsters; and glass pipes for smoking whatever you want.) If the air was clean all the time, Beijing would win as way better than Hong Kong, hands-down.
But there's the rub: it isn't nice a lot of the time, mostly because of all the power plants that burn dirty coal in China. It's hard to like a city when you can actually feel the particulates you breathe in.
3) Favorite site: Visiting Wonderland, the abandoned amusement park. It's mostly like the linked article, but now all the corn has grown up around the castle and the wire skeleton for the building. Oh, and there are squatter sleeping in some of the buildings too. And the local residents won't let you get in to visit it, but if your driver will drive a quarter mile down the wrong way of an off-ramp, you can get there now problem. Which means driving normally, this being China.
4) I forgot how fun it can be to be on a bike, cruising around a city.
5) That said, I am now inclined to stay in Hong Kong for a while. Looking at the US and its economic state is just depressing now. And now that I have permanent residency coming up, HK is looking more and more viable for the long-term. Speaking of which, I now have lived in my apartment for a longer time than I ever have anywhere, and I wouldn't mind staying here a while longer. The expected noise of the construction behind my building has never really started, so why not?
6) Plus, now there is a decent Vietnamese pho restaurant in my neighborhood, and a French bakery is to open soon. If only there was a good beer bar.....
But by the time I flew out on Saturday, it was way, way worse; the air actually tasted like there was dry cement floating through the air. On days like this, my hosts said, they just stay inside all day because there is nothing else you can do. And when I landed in HK, with its only slightly polluted air (at least compared to Beijing), I can't believe how happy I was.
2) That said, Beijing has a lot going for it. We biked for 30 minutes on Friday night to the microbrewery, which is in the middle of a hutong. We then biked home drunk, with no problems. The city has big, wide sidewalks, and you can easily walk from bar to restaurant to home. The city just feels more ..... neighborhoody than Hong Kong, if that makes sense. You can walk from place to place to place, no problem. You can commute with your bicycle. And the food? It's great, with lots of different styles of Chinese cuisine, including Yunnan, the spicy cuisine from the area near the Laos/Myanmar/Vietnam border. Heck, we even found a shop run by an American and his Chinese wife; he is a former snowboarder/chef who now runs a beer shop in Beijing with three Rogue beers on tap. (The shop also sells organic herbs and spices and salt; fixed-gear bicycles for young hipsters; and glass pipes for smoking whatever you want.) If the air was clean all the time, Beijing would win as way better than Hong Kong, hands-down.
But there's the rub: it isn't nice a lot of the time, mostly because of all the power plants that burn dirty coal in China. It's hard to like a city when you can actually feel the particulates you breathe in.
3) Favorite site: Visiting Wonderland, the abandoned amusement park. It's mostly like the linked article, but now all the corn has grown up around the castle and the wire skeleton for the building. Oh, and there are squatter sleeping in some of the buildings too. And the local residents won't let you get in to visit it, but if your driver will drive a quarter mile down the wrong way of an off-ramp, you can get there now problem. Which means driving normally, this being China.
4) I forgot how fun it can be to be on a bike, cruising around a city.
5) That said, I am now inclined to stay in Hong Kong for a while. Looking at the US and its economic state is just depressing now. And now that I have permanent residency coming up, HK is looking more and more viable for the long-term. Speaking of which, I now have lived in my apartment for a longer time than I ever have anywhere, and I wouldn't mind staying here a while longer. The expected noise of the construction behind my building has never really started, so why not?
6) Plus, now there is a decent Vietnamese pho restaurant in my neighborhood, and a French bakery is to open soon. If only there was a good beer bar.....
posted by throm at 12:10 AM
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