The Throwdown

At the end of our first day in Hong Kong, my girlfriend Adrienne asked me, "So which would you rather live in, Hong Kong or Shanghai?" Saddly, I didn't even have to think about it - "Hong Kong".

The amazing thing about Hong Kong, which despite being 2/5 the size of Shanghai, is that it feels bussier, while remaning cleaner and more civil. There isn't garbage on the streets; there just isn't. It doesn't smell; garbage bins don't overflow with stench next to the road. There might be tall towers every where, but sunlight (real sunlight!) reaches the ground between them instead of being filtered by smog. It looks like a movie set - I occasionally expected to walk around the corner and discover that the building in front of me had actually been a facade; that the street wasn't 'really' a street and that I'd really just wandered onto film shoot.

But that's not the only reason I'd prefer Hong Kong, its party because the location oozes natural beauty. The mountains, the ocean, the foliage all work together to form a location that, had there not been a major world metropolis there, would have made a perfect location to shoot Pirates of the Caribbean. Yet the city being there doesn't completely destroy or mask its natural beauty; a short ferry ride or bus trip lets you out on tropical beaches or river valleys. Unlike most cities where nature is a destination, in Hong Kong it's simply a district of the city.

The urban districts of Hong Kong do have their splendor too. Unlike Shanghai's collection of space-craft-on-building sky scrappers, the skyline of Hong Kong, superior to every city aside from New York, is lined with admirable architecture, new and hip, creative yet functional. At night the buildings dot the night sky, standing on the water's edge, guarding the passage up Victoria Peak. If ever there was a city to be proud of its buildings, it would be Hong Kong.

In the end, however, it might just be the people. They act with respect not just for the space they inhabit, but also the people who inhabit it with them. I had been looking forward to riding the subway in Hong Kong for quite some time, not because it's so fast, clean and efficient, which it is, but because I was looking forward to exciting the trains without needing to shove my way through a stack of people. You see, in Hong Kong people patiently wait beside the doors for people to exit before boarding the subway; its a tradition unheard of on the mainland. Stepping into Hong Kong after 9 months in Shanghai is like coming back from a camping trip and simply enjoying the simple comforts that make life easy.

It seems both fitting and unfair to compare the two cities. Hong Kong, whose rich and international history was preserved by the British for the past 100 years, has much more international feel than Shanghai, a city closed off to foreigners for nearly half of that time period. Hong Kong feels like the world class city Shanghai wants to be, with people from all over the world coming to enjoy themselves and admire the city. Someday, after Shanghai has a little time to catch up economically, developmentally and emotionally we can have a closer comparison of the two cities, but for now... its Hong Kong in a romp.