I want you to imagine living a life in a giant air conditioned clean comfortable shopping mall. Imagine this shopping mall was the size of a small country. Can you imagine it? Well I don’t have to because I live in Hong Kong! Okay, it’s a bit of hyperbole but perhaps only a little bit. Getting off the plane and on your way out of the airport the thing to do is buy an Octopus Card. The card is about $6Cad and you can refill your card in subway stations so you can travel about HK on the fast impeccably clean subway system or use it for buses or ferries taxis – or to buy good at one of the million 7-Eleven chains, or restaurants or whatever else. Why does Hong Kong seem like a mall? Well every major subway station is in some manner connected to some sort of shopping usually massive 2-4 floor shopping mall. George A Romero would have a field day here. There’s really little to complain about. At least in China I was awakened by massive artillery fire outside my window at 5 am which once out of my tired stupor turned out to be fireworks. I noted then that in China they fire the fireworks because someone was getting married, or was it someone had died? Either way.

Hong Kong of course is much more than massive indoor shopping malls. It also has massive outdoor strip malls and markets and numerous entrepreneurs from India wishing to sell you a $30 Rolex or Prada or as one fellow said “anything you’re looking for.” He was all out of Uma Thurman – but I’m sure he’d do his best to find an “exact” copy if I showed more interest. This is a concrete jungle and a consumerist destination. And yet it’s all very well organized and “comfortable.” Everything is in English. I go home and watch for lorries as I cross the street, making sure to mind the gap when exiting the trains and walk home to take the lift to my flat and have a cup of tea. The English/Welsh/Scots/Irish and Chinese are a match made in heaven. No one likes tea more than these folks. And yet it all works. The malls offer air conditioning and when humidity approaches 90% and 34C – the thought of sitting down with a trusty Mocha Frap is quite nice as you watch the seemingly endless numbers of people walking by in some sort of expeditious determined pace to get to who knows where doing who knows what. I wonder why they don’t stop to smell the roses but of course in order to do that you would need to go to some sort of mall.

Gucci sign on the left. Just in case you left the mall for some strange reason - they want to remind you to go back inside and get your Gucci.