Cripes I'm tired. But it was nice to check the mail since getting home and see my Clarion photos. I'm missing the hallways of Owen again. It would be really nice to be among writers again! Of the different types of groups I like hanging out with, sff writers have always felt like the most interesting and well-balanced group of people to me. I'd probably choose to be among writers first, above gamers and artists!

Anyway. Four nights and about five days in Hong Kong. I think I've become very jaded about the place; it's always a challenge to find something new and engaging in a place you've been MANY times before. It wasn't even very inspiring for any sf stories this trip; the atmosphere was old and too familiar. One of Karen Joy Fowler's pieces of "homework" given at Clarion was to list 5 interesting places to set a story, and I'd put down "Hong Kong." Well, I'd replace that item in a blink right now. Hong Kong just seems so untouched by world events and time, unaffected by ANY international threats or tensions. It gets the world news, but the stuff might as well be happening on another planet. Even the 1997 hand-over of the city from Britain to China, in hindsight, was almost a non-event that doesn't seem to have affected the street-person's life much. Possibly the biggest change is that now, more Hong Kongers can speak Mandarin (as opposed to Cantonese) and they speak it more readily than they ever did English.

So it was definitely easier to communicate to the locals on this trip. My Cantonese is still atrocious but I think my basics are OK now, and when that failed, I could still communicate with the younger locals with "Pu Tong Wah" (literally "The Normal/Common Word" meaning Imperial Chinese) and not irritate them with English, as was often the case years before. (Let's put it this way...for a while, there were lots of people in Hong Kong biased against Chinese-descendents who couldn't speak Cantonese but spoke English. I was one of these shameful irritants to them—but this was because Cantonese was the only Chinese dialect the Hong Kongers knew before the hand-over!)

Anyway, language aside, things were also not as intimidating in the landscape as it was in the past. But I must still admit, I don't do well in metropoli (plural of metropolis—that has to be correct, right?)—the volume and size of man-made constructs all around, the density of living quarters and the people in them, the veritable thick, deep, tall, dark jungles of towering concrete—the sight of these completely obliterating all traces of what the land was before people—these just make me really wonder what the point of having so many people on the planet is. Maybe I was a strange kid, but I've wondered this since I was twelve!

Does the number of 6 billion people ever make you take a step back? Do you ever wonder at their lives and stories and relationships and does the idea of the volume of that information sober you? Why do we all live? Are we all really happy? Do you ever wonder how this earth supports all of us, and how much longer it can continue to support the exponentially-increasing human population, and what kind of quality of life people can have in the future? Did you know that it is the people living in the advanced countries who are producing fewer and fewer children, and the people living in the poor countries producing more and more children, when the opposite might be more humane and sustainable?

Well, not that I see people in Hong Kong really having fewer children. The urban landscape in Hong Kong is really staggering in scale, volume and density, and these people live in spaces that I know I would go insane in. The average size of an apartment housing say, a family of 4 to 5 people, could fit inside HALF a studio apartment in a moderately-sized US midwestern city. The kitchen is bathroom-sized, and the refridgerator more often than not is forced to be a permanent fixture in the living room. Bedrooms are the size of a walk-in closet, with just enough space for one to walk along just one side of the bed, and barely enough space to open the doors of one closet. If you have smart furniture, your closet has sliding doors.

Second thing that I noticed, and that ALL tourists to Hong Kong notice, is that clothing and just almost all other things, are really cheap. A lot of things are made to be disposable, which is the other thing I couldn't really appreciate. It makes for a robust economy, I suppose, but it can also make for a country that produces a lot of trash and pollution. It felt like everything was made for instant and immediate gratification of any fleeting material fancy, and it was OK and encouraged. I don't know. For myself on this trip I bought a light jacket that I know I'll want to use for years and wear to threads and one pair of shoes (bought for necessity)—and that was it. I think most people who know Hong Kong, either living there or having been there may find my tiny haul of clothing shocking. :) The few other things I picked up for myself I consider "work"-shopping—3 beautiful contemporary Chinese art books, 4 blank silkscreen fans (for painting on), a set of paintbrushes, and a really miniature mahjong set for whimsy. The new stuff fit into my small luggage without problems.

OK, I'm tired, and this slight headache I've nursed for most of the day has not been getting better. After the noisy and late night I had last night, maybe I need some rest.

Currently listening to:
Nothing.

Currently reading:
Nothing.

Currently working on:
I'm on vacation till tomorrow morning!