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The Inscrutable Hong Kong Chinese Elaine Rati Kochar Elaine Rati Kochar successfully blends her traditional values and social responsibilities as a housewife with a streak for knowledge, creativity, social service and exploration. Elaine is a painter and a Bharatnatyam dancer. She is a keen trveler and she enjoys travelling and sightseeing most in India.

Spectacular!
No, not Hong Kong, but the Himalayas from the plane! They seemed to be floating on a bed of whipped cream, Prussian and white crisply outlined against a cobalt sky. I was lucky. It is very seldom that the weather is clear enough in the month of August for an half an hour view of my favourite mountains. They are so awesomely huge that from the air they still manage to look like mountains seen in the distance from a bus. The aircraft seemed to be sailing along at eye level. All the airsickness, the eight hour journey, the sour yogurt and leg cramp and four days in Hong Kong is worth that sight.

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Hong Kong from the air is pretty too. not the city but the outlying islands, one of them looking like the back of the mandatory dragon, slumbering in the sunset. If you are impressed with sky scrapers and how close together humankind can build them then you will be awed with HK. (That's what I'm calling Hong Kong for the duration of this article, the place is not worth having to type its name more than twice.)

Its a saying in HK, take a Chinese from there and put him anywhere in the world for a year or two. Send him back. He will swear that the HK Chinese are the worst Chinese there are. Not a smile, not a smirk, not an eyeball to eyeball! I swear they have rigour mortis of the facial muscles! Is it the British that put their backs up? Why take it out on us? I mean, I'm spending MONEY to come to this place and handing over 10 dollars, albeit reluctantly, to the inscrutable porter for thumping my suitcases into bits and all I get is the LOOK OF DOOM! I try to bargain over a little fruit at a stall in the market, (just to feel at home and all) and I get a sneer and a shoo off! With, I'm positive, a snide remark in Cantonese, on how low down the Indians are.

Feeling terribly low at having to part with my cash into their carry-alls, I took their very British underground to a Chinese temple, Wong tai Sin. They can get a lot of gilt and gods into one place. The tiles on the roof were fascinating. Round and hollow and filled with earth they are all in brilliant colours and made of, need I say it, china. People from a certain area of mainland China make special roof ornaments. Here they were people on horseback, roosters and fish. The Buddha's are serene and huge. People genuflect and kneel and shake those prayer sticks out of a can in twos and then get their fortunes told. The place is a warren of fortune tellers and palmists. There is a pretty little garden of wishes with a pond full of big goldfish and a waterfall. No one walked there though the temple was full of devotees in the early morning.

HK isn't a city where the locals can afford to indulge in wishing and dreaming. It is a rushing, seriously growing into a communist city. The Chi Lin Nunnery is wooden and newly made in the style of the Tang Dynasty Architecture. There were armed guards all over and very few people. Those at the door were terribly unhelpful.

There aren't too many tourists in HK. Now that China has opened its doors it is wise to spend a day here, travel up the peak in the almost vertical ride on the tram and aah at the view. And if you are into shopping, do it till you're dropping. Do your sight seeing, temple visiting, Buddha viewing, walking and communicating with the Chinese (is there such a thing?) in China. The HK Museum of art has one decided plus point besides the fantastic art, the view when its pouring as it so often is. And from the comfort of sofas along a glass wall offering you the best view of the harbour. The British think of everything!

I took the time and that was hours, believe me, to cross over into Shenzen, China. That's as far as they let you go with a Chinese visa for six days. This is a special economic zone, and special here means haute couture. Prada spelt Parda, YSL, Dior, the name is named and its there in glorious replica. The shoes! The Louis Vuitton bags! The clothes! The Omegas and Rolex watches! All for up to 150 HK$! A shoppers heaven! And sad to say, besides a mixed up Chinese meal, ( no one speaks English and neither does the menu), thats all there is to Shenzen. Unless you want to go and see replicas of the Eiffel tower and the Pyramids. And the visa cost us a 100HK$.

The food is lipsmackingly good, the dragon fruit and cherries expensive but delicious. If you can get past the snotty waitress telling you the vegetables had finished, sorry, at the buffet after calling you to an empty table at ten thirty at night, and taking the last sad looking pastry, then HK is worth its congee. Did I tell you that the Chinese in Shenzen were friendly and bargained happily, infact down to half, and SMILED?

I would certainly like to go to Mainland China one day. But I'm glad I went to HK, so I don't have to go again. I am not a shopping person.

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