Blogging
From Abroad

Hong Kong is the epitome of a concrete jungle. According to the world’s most trustworthy scholarly resource, a.k.a. Wikipedia, there are over seven million people jam-packed into the 428 sq miles of this “special administrative region” of the People’s Republic of China. This makes HK one of the most densely populated cities on planet earth. Everything within this cosmopolitan garrison of capitalism is on a massive scale. The architecture of the financial district is a funky blend of feng shui and free market capitalism that must be seen to believe. The view of Hong Island at night from Victoria Peak is like something out of a science fiction novel. If planet earth has a city that can be compared to Coruscant, perhaps Hong Kong is it. The consumer culture here is relentlessly out of control. The shopping malls are more like materialistic mazes that sprawl vertically and horizontally across multiple buildings that put me in a state of vertigo leaving me dazed and confused in a swirl of spring shoe sales and neon advertisements. For those of you who love to shop, Hong Kong is the Mecca of all things “made in China.” For those of you who are absolutely disgusted by commercialism run rampant, avoid Hong Kong like the avian bird flu. Lingnan University, my university, is located in the New Territories of Hong Kong, which are generally considered the suburbs. But this Hong Kong hillbilly can’t tell the difference. Surrounding our tiny campus are sky scraping housing developments with towers taller than any building in the state of West Virginia, each one of them teeming with Hong Kongians. It is from this concrete jungle that my adventures from behind the great Bamboo Curtain begin. Please allow me to be your guide. Come with me if you want to shop til you drop, eat bizzare foods, or contemplate the parodox that is this post-colonial capitalist economy functioning under communist rule.