Day 91-- Enroute to Kobe, Japan

21 November. Yokohama, Japan.

What a beautiful city! I had expected Yokohama to be like so many of the other port cities we’ve seen: heavy industry, lots of cranes and cargo ships, trucks, containers, dust, dirt. But this is Japan. Yokohama gleams. The port terminal is an architectural work of art, with wooden platforms, grassy lawns, lots of glass and shiny aluminum. And the city is Asia’s Evanston: long parks and parkways along the bay, tree-lined streets, wonderful shops and restaurants, everything sparkling. Best of all, I’ve found fall. I was sure I’d miss it, passing from mid summer in Hong Kong directly into early winter in Shanghai. But fall is in Japan, with cool, crisp temperatures, crystal-clear blue skies, yellow leaves on the ginko trees, everything except apple cider and crowds streaming toward the stadium. I hate to leave, as we’re about to do this evening. Maybe Kobe will be more of the same.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Back to Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Hong Kong

I’ve spent time in Hong Kong several times over the past 40 years, first during the ’67 world tour, then several times while at Hewitt. Each time I’m more convinced that it has to be the most exciting, if not the most beautiful, city in the world. It’s certainly one of the fastest growing. The first time I saw it, Kowloon was a low-rise, old Chinese city just emerging from the rickshaw era. And Hong Kong (Victoria) Island had developed only a small way beyond the slopes of Victoria Peak. I described Hong Kong then as looking like a giant had flung white building blocks against the side of the peak.

Today, those old buildings are completely obscured by huge skyscrapers, all looking very new and filling the shoreline across from Kowloon from as far east as one can see to as far west. Kowloon, too, is a city of tall office buildings and hotels. And Nathan Rd, the once seedy street of knock-off vendors is becoming a little like 5th Avenue with Times Square’s neon. It’s all still a fascinating, exciting city. But I can’t call it “charming” anymore.

The first thing I did after the ship cleared customs was look for a store that sold electronics. I needed a new camera now that my JVC camcorder is completely useless (memo to self: do not buy a JVC anything if sort-term plans include travel outside the US. The camcorder is now a boat anchor, and JVC refuses to provide any warrantee coverage since the “malfunction” occurred outside the US. This for a camera built in Malaysia by a Japanese company.) So, accompanied by Anne, I left the ship and headed for a nearby Fortress store, which the hospitality desk had recommended as a reliable place to purchase electronic gear. There we looked at several cameras, including the latest model of the Canon that had been stolen. I settled on a Sony camera that takes both stills and HD video, so it can do double duty. I was delighted at the $220 price because I thought it was comparable to a $500 camera I had just looked at. I’ve since discovered that the same camera sells for the same price on Amazon. So I guess it’s true that Hong Kong is no longer the place to get great deals on electronics. That probably reflects the weak US dollar as well.

By the time we finished the purchase and had taken the camera back to the ship, it was almost lunch time. Anne had heard some recommendations for good dim sum restaurants, including one in the IFC shopping center just across from where the ship was docked, adjacent to the Star Ferry landing on the island. So we left the ship, went to the Kowloon ferry landing, scurried around for a few minutes looking for a place to break down our large-bill Hong Kong dollars, fed the necessary HK$2 (about 30 cents) into the machines, and took the Star Ferry across to Hong Kong.

The restaurant that Anne had heard about was fully booked by the time we got there around 1:30pm. So we started a search through the endless aisles and floors of the IFC mall until we finally found a restaurant that a mall guide recommended as an alternative to dim sum. I can’t remember the name—Anne certainly will—but the good sign was the 15 to 20 business people waiting outside the restaurant for a table. They knew what they were doing. After a few-minutes’ wait, we were seated at a table with two professionally dressed women. We ordered a couple of Chinese dishes that I had never heard of before—and can’t remember now—and were treated to one of the most delicious lunches I’ve ever enjoyed. We were the only Westerners in the restaurant.

After lunch, we took a taxi to the base of the Victoria Peak tram—Hong Kong’s answer to the Manitou Springs cog railway that runs up Pike’s Peak—and took the 30-minute train ride up Victoria Peak. The last time I was to the top of the peak, the observation deck was a small, open-air platform. And the nearest buildings were the white-brick buildings halfway down from the top. Today at the top is a 5-story shopping mall surrounded by multi-million-dollar homes, including what is reputed to be the most expensive home in the world, recently priced at just under US1 billion. But the view from the top is still magnificent, down at the city of Hong Kong and across at Kowloon which, today, stretches almost all the way to the New Territories at the border with the PRC.

We spent about 30 minutes walking around the outside viewing deck of the mall. Then we headed back down the tram, and got a taxi for a ride across the island to the town of Stanley and its market. I had been to Stanley several times in the past because it had always been a place to buy “brand name” goods at truly fractions of their US prices. I put “brand name” in quotes because there’s no telling how many were truly Nikes, Izods, Polos, Burberrys, and other well-know names, and how many were either clever knock offs or goods that had, as they say, “fallen off the back of a truck”—i.e., been lifted by sticky-handed entrepreneurs. I was looking especially for a rugby shirt to replace the one I had bought in Stanley 10 years ago during my last Hong Kong visit. That shirt is still in my drawer, showing little wear except for some fading.

I found my shirt—two of them, in fact, though for twice what I had paid in ’99—and Anne bought a few silk scarves—beautiful and inexpensive—as gifts. We then grabbed a taxi and traveled around the island (the cross-island tunnel was blocked with traffic) to the Star Ferry terminal.

That night, Anne and I joined 12 other faculty members at a banquet Maria Chapel arranged at a local restaurant. Maria used to spend many days in Hong Kong when she was a fashion designer and buyer in the 80s. One of her favorite memories of those times were the banquets her hosts would sponsor for visiting buyers, and Maria wanted to share the experience with friends. The dinner was tasty: soup, Peking duck, a noodle dish, rice, wine. And the show—slicing the duck, making the noodles by hand—was interesting. I don’t know that the food was quite worth the price, but the group was fun, and the view across the harbor was excellent.

The next day, I first helped Anne find a hotel room for her last night in Hong Kong. The MV Explorer was sailing at 2300 (11pm), and Anne was flying back to Chicago and on to Baltimore the following morning. We first checked the Kowloon Sheraton, where Bob and Maria were planning to spend the night before heading on their own to Shanghai. But the cost was prohibitive. Instead, we checked with a local tourist help desk, who put Anne in touch with the Hong Kong hotel bureau. They found a hotel for her—the Kowloon Empress, or something like that—that turned out to be brand new and very inexpensive for the city.

After finding a room for Anne, the two of us took the ferry to Hong Kong then moved over to the hydrofoil to Lantau Island. Andi Mitnik, my fellow communication professor, had gone to Lantau the first day in Hong Kong and recommended the trip as a great way to spend Anne’s final day of vacation. The recommendation was spot on. Lantau is a beautiful, mountainous island just a 30-minute boat ride from the teeming masses of Hong Kong and Kowloon. I had never visited before, so the trip to the island and the bus ride from the small port to the island’s most notable landmark, the Giant Buddha, was a brand new experience for both of us.

The day was alternately cloudy, sunny, misty, and rainy, and as we rode the bus higher into the mountains of Lantau, we started going in and out of the low-hanging clouds. By the time we reached the village at the base of the mountaintop where the Buddha sits, the air was heavy with mist. And the statue—truly giant in scale, sitting at the top of a 252-step stairway—alternately moved in and out of the mist as the low-hanging clouds drifted by. It was an other-worldly sight.

We climbed the 252 steps then walked slowly around the massive Buddha, sitting placidly on his bed of lotus leaves and surrounded by statues of devoted attendants. We then walked down the stairs and over to the nearby monastery, where a lone monk was lighting candles and tidying up around a spectacular shrine of gold statues, hanging lamps, and magnificent red-and-gold chandeliers. I took many pictures; only they can show the beauty of the place, and even they don’t come close.

We left the monastery, passing many followers lighting incense to honor their ancestors, and walked through the tourist village to the bus stop. The only route to the bus stop is, of course, past the souvenir shops of the village. All religions rely for a good part of their financing on the sale of tchatchies. Buddhists are no different than Catholics in that regard.

Anne and I took the 40-minute bus ride back to the Lantau port, arriving just in time to hop onto the hydrofoil back to Hong Kong Island. It had been a great way to spend her last day as a voyageur, and it was an opportunity to see a part of Hong Kong that I didn’t know exists. Lantau is where the new Hong Kong airport is located, sitting on landfill on the north bank of the island. That’s all that most people passing through Hong Kong see of Lantau, missing the beautiful beaches and lush, green mountains of the island’s interior. Next time, I want to go back and see some of the small villages on the far west end that, according got the guide books, are the last remnants of a quiet rural life now almost disappeared—similar to the junks and sanpans of Aberdeen.

Anne and I had dinner together at a restaurant in the mall adjoining the Kowloon dock where the MV Explorer was parked. We took one more walk around the deck of the ship to admire the incredible Hong Kong skyline at night. Then Anne left the ship at 9pm, and we sailed at 11pm. I stayed up until 12:30 to watch the lights go by and disappear as we left the harbor. Hard to imagine that the city could grow even more before I see it again. But the growth doesn’t seem to stop. I’m looking forward to going back.

The 3-day trip to Shanghai was rough, and the weather turned increasingly cold and windy the closer we came to the mouth of the Yangtze River. I spent most of the time grading the formal reports of my business comm. students and enjoying the quiet of the ship. Of the almost 700 students, faculty, staff, and lifelong learners, only 100 sailed from Hong Kong to Shanghai. The rest were “overlanders” (as Chinese immigration referred to them), folks who traveled by land between the two cities, most of them stopping to see sights like the terracotta warriors, the Forbidden City, the countryside of rural China, and, of course, the Great Wall. Despite the near-record cold and snow that hit China during our visit, many of the students even camped atop the wall—literally on the snow and ice—near the same villages where I had hiked in ’99: Simitai and Jingshanling. When they rejoined us in Shanghai, they all agreed that it had been an incredibly exhilarating but incredibly cold, once-in-lifetime experience. I liked hiking in the warmth of summer.

As usual, we arrived in Shanghai exactly on time at 0800, the morning of 15 November.

More to come.