Hong Kong (A parallel universe to New York City)
First Impressions of the City
Dense, hot, crowded, loud, colorful, cultural, urban wonderland; some of the thoughts I had in the first few hours of exploring Hong Kong. This vertical city is no joke, and although most signs are translated to English, it is a real challenge to find what you’re looking for amidst the density. Besides the hundreds of shop and street signs to visually sort through, the sidewalks are always filled with pedestrians and the crosswalks are seriously dangerous if you’re not paying attention to oncoming traffic.
It is also extremely difficult to get a sense of the area layout because there are so many dimensions. The underground train system helped me figure out what was located where after a few rides, and in a class lecture later on it was discovered that the public transportation company called MTR (Mass Transit Railway Corporation) actually designed its symbol to represent the city’s layout. The first day there I, along with three other classmates, spent the morning walking around Hong Kong Island. While I have never been to New York City, one of the people I was with grew up there, and we both agreed that there are very strong elements of Hong Kong that are reminiscent of NYC, almost like an alternate reality as if NYC was in Asia rather than North America.
Reunions with Friends
The first few days were relatively free for exploration. I took this opportunity to meet with two friends of mine that live here in Hong Kong, who I met last summer while traveling through Copenhagen, Denmark. They each took me walking around the craziest and busiest parts of the city, which was surprisingly still very crowded in the evening. Even as it gets late, the heat does not subside because it is so humid. We often found ourselves cutting through massive, air conditioned shopping malls to get a break from the weather. That is one thing I did not expect of Hong Kong; the plethora of shopping malls, all mostly containing the same stores. And yet, it is embedded in their culture now that malls are easily accessible everywhere in the city, and are often built on top of MTR stations, making shopping while in transit very convenient. After a delicious vegetarian Chinese dinner (VERY hard to find here) with one of my friends, we visited Victoria Harbor to see the buildings all lit up, which was an incredible sight.
First Classes and Intro to Sustainability Issues in Hong Kong
Our study abroad course began on the weekend with some fun trips to get a feel for the area. The first day we took a ferry to Lamma Island, an old fishing village, where we hiked for a few hours and then had lunch. The culture there was very colorful and probably one of the closest things to traditional we will find during our program. It was a brutal introduction to the heat and humidity, but we were all treated to frozen pineapple at the peak of the hike, which made it a lot better. The next day we took a bus up to Victoria Peak, probably the biggest tourist attraction in Hong Kong. As we joked about there being a Pizza Hut at the top, we realized it was much more than that: there is an entire mall and observation deck built on the mountain. The view was unbelievable, and we all had fun taking selfies. Overall, the first few days made me pretty excited to explore more of Hong Kong, with its vast sea of skyscrapers and pockets of culture hidden all over.
