In which I compare one of the world's great cities with a Tasty Crustacean

Hong Kong is like lobster.

I don't know who the hell had the idea to build a sprawling metropolis on a steamy tropical jungle archipelago, but it really works. At least lobster kind of resembles other things one might eat, if desperate. Gorgeous though this setting is, it really doesn't scream "missed opportunity for land use!" at me.

It's kind of awesome, though, because the city seems to not mind that it's losing the battle. I mentioned the rotting luxury tenements in the last post, but I have to go back to it, because it's really kind of shocking. I mean, these places look like Cabrini Green (what remains of it), except they have luxury vehicles in their garages and are right next to as-yet-undecayed reminders of what I can only assume was their past glory. Some of them have intact brass and marble entryways, with doormen and everything, yet above eye level practically seem like abandoned squats.

This is where I again go onto one of my rants about modernism. People. People, people, people. When you know your shit is going to mold, mildew, rust, bubble, and peel, either build something that is ENTIRELY glass and steel if you must, or GO RETRO. All colonial-ish, revival-ish, turn-of-the-century-ish arcitecture looks GOOD when it rots (see: Havana). Post-Mies Soviet bloc emulations? Not so damn much.

I'm not really complaining, however, because it's kind of fascinating to have one's sense of cultural signifiers completely messed with. It's not like India, where middle class families apparently live in cardboard boxes, but there's something about seeing clothes strung between fire escapes that just doesn't scream Yuppieville. And yet, Yuppieville it is, complete with adjacent hipster SoHo (what is it with that designation??).

Aside from the premature and frequently unsightly decrepitude of the buildings, however, the environment makes most things more rather than less sightly. For instance, the concrete-coated embankments and hillsides we Angelenos are so familiar with abound here, but they're all completely covered in lush, verdant mosses and lichens that, while probably bad for the concrete, make it all seem even more like Hong Kong is just some buildings plunked down in rolling tropical hills.

From a distance, actually, the buildings commune oddly well with their surroundings. I feel like they have a slightly different profile than what we're used to, one that's somehow more in line with the craggy peaks surrounding them.

I don't mean to make it seem like Hong Kong is some Shangri-La; it isn't. It's clearly overcrowded, with a serious labor underclass, and all the smells and grime and, not to put to fine a point on it, gigantic fucking cockroaches one would find elsewhere. However, it's a city that is, depending where you are, as beautiful as San Francisco, as fascinating from an urban development perspective as LA, and as engaging and bustling as NYC. Or so it seems from my first twelve hours.

I think the city appeals to me on another level, which is that, while it is very much a post-colonial metropolis, it doesn't really feel like one, or at least no more than, say Philadelphia does. African cities frequently seem to be judged and to judge themselves as successes based on the extent to which they successfully emulate a certain bland western modernity. Hong Kong is something else entirely. In fact, in many ways, it feels less like a third world post-colonial city than Los Angeles does.

Also, there are crazy amounts of well-marked and beautiful pedestrian paths, and many many beautiful kinds of butterflies I've never seen before. And the scaffolding is made from bamboo. Which I? Think is insanely cool.

I'm just worried that neither of the cameras I have with me will properly capture it all.