This is part of diary entries I kept while traveling abroad in Hong Kong and Macau in 2001, and later expanded upon with more explanation and detail.
So this is Hong Kong.
At this point, actually, all we can see is a large island consisting of tarmac, planes, and low buildings. Our 747 touched down safely, to everyone's peace of mind. I never really had any doubt it would – that is, not until later, when Ted explained how the flight likely could have gone.
Our team leader, Ted is also a private pilot and explained modern commercial aircraft is equipped to fly itself for long stretches on auto pilot, making course corrections to adjust to the Earth's curvature. This is something we all knew, of course. "But," he added, "some of them are now getting to where they can even land without a pilot behind the stick." I still wish he’d been joking.
Jack and Benny – yes, old-timers, it sounds humorous from this age, too – met us in the terminal, urging us to put aside our luggage for a few moments and crowd together for what proved to the first in a month-long series of group photos. I tried to relax as I stood in front of the flashes popping, but my eyes kept glancing to my four bags. They were all I possessed in this land far from home, and like a mother watching her small children, I was going to make damn sure they didn't walk off with someone else in this voluminous building.
Later, we found out Jack and Benny had both put in a long day at the bank where they worked before coming to pick us up. Nevertheless, they were energetic and welcoming. Beyond that, they made us feel like long-gone family members who'd dropped in for a visit. They quickly learned each of our names in turn, and ushered us out to the rail platform, taking our suitcases from us and insisting on carting out five people's luggage single-handedly – or, perhaps in this case, double-handedly.
After getting the luggage all aboard the subway train with much jostling and rearranging – Benny's "Here, take that and stack it up there!" reminded me of Grandpa's pseudo-stern "Quit your lollygagging and get!" when I was younger and too stubborn to move – the two men finally found seats across from us in the empty car. We all sighed; they from the exertion and us from nearly a day's travel across half the planet's time zones.
"Gum?" one of them offered, holding out a cellophane pack of innocuous little green tablets. We all mumbled grateful thanks for anything that would get the chicken-coated-our-tongue-with-feathers feeling off our tongues. Popping the tablets into our mouths, we all bit down at roughly the same time.
Yowsa! It's like someone aimed the air-conditioning full-blast onto my gums. If the United States ever runs out of dental Novacaine, this would make a great substitute. "That's potent," I coughed. Others agreed. Later in our trip, Tammy would buy and chew the gum wherever she could find it, even going so far as to purchase a couple of bags to take back home – which, unfortunately, made their way into her mouth before she even boarded the plane bound for Chicago.
We arrived in Hong Kong at night, more than 30 hours after we departed Knoxville. Or at least that's what the calendar told us; because of a 13-hour time difference, we left one morning and landed the following evening. Our jet lag wasn't too bad, because after dinner and a walk around the block, we turned in at our hotel and caught at least 25 winks.
Ah, dinner, the grand cultural event for which we'd been practicing with chopsticks for the month preceding (my lessons did stick, though – to this day I never eat Chinese or sushi with anything other than chopsticks). We climbed to the third floor of Benny's cricket club, where a cacophony of chattering, chewing Chinese diners greeted us, seated around round tables in large groups of eight or more people apiece. A few looked up as we walked in, but not rudely. They seemed only to be curious about our appearance out of nowhere – not to mention the matching outfits the five of us wore. (Our "uniforms" would become a source of contention more than once during the trip because of our individual laundry schedules. Ted wanted our pants and shirts to match by color each day, and some days, that was damn difficult.)
There is something admittedly uncomfortable about being the minority in not only a room, but an entire country, especially if you're a middle-class white person who grew up in the Midwest U.S., where "foreign travel" usually describes a trip out of state. Despite its cosmopolitan nature and appeal as an international center of shopping and trade, Hong Kong is most definitely Chinese, with more than 90 percent of its residents of Asian descent. Had we been ensconced in a resort hotel or tour bus, instead of being hosted by almost-all Chinese residents, I believe we still would have noticed that we were the different ones.
Benny asked a few cursory questions about our food preferences, then proceeded to order. Even after a month of eating similarly, I can't identify everything we had for dinner, but there was steamed fish, sweet and sour pork (one of the few native dishes that has actually made it into American Chinese restaurants), green cooked vegetables, and spicy Chinese noodles. He also ordered jasmine tea, which soon became a favorite of mine – it's smoothly flavored and with a little raw sugar, just sweet enough to tempt the palate. When I first returned to the U.S., I couldn’t find any jasmine tea or raw sugar to save my life, but since 2001, both have shown up on grocery shelves much more often in a wider geographical area.
Benny also orders a good bottle of red wine, from which all but Sheila sample at least a glass. Leaning back in his chair after a few sips, looking like a harried man finally able to get off his feet and kick back for the evening, he notes the way we're evening up our chopsticks – this consists of getting them held in our fingers just right, then tapping the tips against the table top to make sure they're even and one's not sticking out further than the other. "You know how to eat with chopsticks?" he gestures toward a couple of us.
We nod. "We've been practicing," Ted answers, explaining how each time the team got together prior to the trip we'd either go out for Chinese or his wife, Myrna, would prepare a feast of meats, veggies, and rice at their house. We soon prove as good as Ted's word; by going slowly, we can grasp even slippery bites between the rods of plastic and get them at least halfway to our mouths before gravity wins out and they plop back onto the plate or tablecloth. Meanwhile, Jack and Benny seem to be shoveling their noodles neatly into their mouths, and we marvel silently, each thinking the same thing: We'll never be able to do that!
As we walk around the block of the Happy Valley Jockey Club racetrack after dinner, we get our first taste of smothering Hong Kong humidity, even though it's after 9 at night. I idly ask Benny what the local coinage looks like, and its individual value, so I'll know what I'm spending over the next month. He promptly stops on a curb and digs around in his pocket for change. What he presents me is roughly $22 in Hong Kong coins, or about $3 U.S. I look it over and hand some to the others, and we each take our turn inspecting the thick gold $10 piece, the flower-edged $2 coin, the tiny, lightweight 50-cent coins. When we're finished, I hand them back to Benny, who shoves my hand away. "You keep those," he points. When I try again, he flatly refuses. "Take them." Then he turns his attention to a conversation with Ted, making it clear he is shut of the matter.
I thank him, then shrug and move to pocket the coins. "He gave them to me," I tell Tammy, who's walking beside me.
"He just gave them to you?" I nod. "Well, that's neat."
And it surely is. After all, back home, how many times are strangers going to give you money just because you ask for it?
August 13, 2018