The “non-China” China [part 1]

In the beginning of this month, me and Carlos got our stuff and went have some ‘adventure time’ at Hong Kong and Macau. Nothing better than travel, to celebrate 2 years of a very well succeed relationship, isn’t it? And it was the best choice, one of the greatest trips we ever made since we came to Japan.

We left Osaka in July 31st and came back at August 15th. During this time, we had 3 days in Hong Kong and 1 day in Macau. It was our first time in China, or, better saying, in something that resembles China (hehehe!). Hong Kong and Macau, after a period of, consecutively, 100 and 442 years as European colonies, are Chinese administrative regions nowadays. Macau was “rented” by Portugal in the mid-16th century, as a trade port, until 1999. Hong Kong became England colony in 1898, after the Opium War, until 1997. Today both of them are special administrative regions of China, having some kind of independency of the main land.

Hong Kong

Hong Kong is such a nice place. A city very organized, clean, with an enviable transportation system and with always bustling markets. I had the impression that in Hong Kong the British marks are much stronger than the Portuguese marks in Macau.

Something that shocked us (in a good way, of course) in Hong Kong, was the receptivity of people. We were approached, 3 or 4 times, by people that saw us checking the map and were trying to offer them help to us. I’m not trying to be the ‘overly complainer’ here, but it’s not the kind of thing we live in Japan. That was something that we though different and positive.

At the first Day, we walked arout the Center of Hong Kong island, visited the Bank of China Tower, the Cathedral of S. John, all the historical part, got an British style tram, ate the best noodle we ever had, visited markets, went to the Man Mo temple, walked through the Hollywood Road, got a beer and went to the highest point of the city, to have a great night view of Victoria’s Bay.

The second Day was a pleasing surprise. We weren’t very well organized; we just knew that the objective was to visit Tian Tan Buddha. But we discovered that the Buddha wasn’t very accessible and that there was a possibility to do a very nice route at Lantau Island (remembering that Hong Kong region is divided in continent and islands). In the end, we were able to visit the Ngong Village, at the top of a mountain, where is the Tian Tan Buddha and the Monastery of Thousand Buddha’s. We visited the fisher village of Tai O, all built on stilts, full of dry fish, amazing food and nice stuff. We also did a scary boat ride and went back in time to get the ferry and have a beautiful night view, this time from Victoria’s Bay.

After go to Macau, for a day, the last day in Hong Kong was a mix of shopping, a lot of shopping, great Chinese food and more wandering. We walked so much during this trip that we came back with worked out legs and aching bodies. In the last day, after visit many markets, we couldn’t take any more anything related to walk or shop and just went earlier to the airport to wait for our flight and have our last local meal.

The most interesting thing about Hong Kong was to perceive how much efforts they do to differentiate themselves from China. It seemed to me that all Chinese stereotypes are rejected by the population in Hong Kong and there is a strong necessity of show everyone that ‘Hong Kong is not China’. The same thing we heard for a lot of friends, before and after our trip. And we perceived this difference when we went to Macau, witch nowadays is much more China than Portugal.

I’ll tell you guys about the visit to our (Brazilians) ‘sister-colony’, Macau.