My mom and I started the day by taking the bus to a park that had been recommended to us, the Kowloon Walled City Park. The park was beautiful, featuring elegant Qing dynasty style architecture, but I found particularly interesting the interpretive display on the history of the Walled City.
In short, it started as a Chinese garrison, but it was eventually abandoned after the British got control of Hong Kong. For some reason that I’m not entirely clear on, these ~12 acres (0.026 km2) became an ungoverned and lawless zone full of opium factories, drug dealers, organized crime, and other illegal enterprises. Much of the city was destroyed during WWII as the Japanese used the materials to expand the nearby airport. Building was unregulated, and the place became a maze of high-rises haphazardly thrown together. In the 1970s two rules for construction were adopted, a height limit of 14 stories (because of the airport) and a requirement of providing electricity. By 1987 when China and Hong Kong came to an agreement to demolish the city, the population was estimated to be about 50,000 making it one of the most densely populated areas on earth.
Mom took the bus back to the hotel to meet her brother for lunch, so I was on my own for the afternoon. With the help of directions from a local, I walked about half an hour to the Wong Tai Sin Temple. All three of the main religions of China are practiced here: Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism. Luckily I got a few pictures of the outside of the building before I was informed that photography was not allowed (from the signs, I had guessed the restriction was only inside the temple). Therefore I paid a little extra to see the temple garden where photography was allowed. The main feature was a pond with hundreds of turtles (red-eared sliders, of course), but otherwise I was not particularly impressed.
From here I took the metro to the Nan Lian Garden. This garden was in the Tang dynasty style which these days is more often associated with Japan (unpainted wood, understated elegance with less ornamentation and more “natural” features). Suffering from the heat and humidity, I sat down on a curb in the shade to read the brochure before starting out, but I was promptly reprimanded by a guard for sitting in a non-designated area. I meandered down the trail and was rewarded with a cooling breeze. It was a beautiful garden with a pagoda, waterfalls, a koi pond, and of course carefully manicured landscaping which was being tended by an army of gardeners. When I retraced my steps to get a better angle for a picture, I was reprimanded for not walking in the designated direction. This was a public park that charged no admission, yet they had the budget not only for the gardeners but for security guards every 20 feet to enforce the rules. The highlight of the garden was a nunnery (Buddhist?), but unfortunately photography was not allowed there.
The abundance of labor in China and the communist need to keep everyone employed explained this sort of thing in China, but I was surprised to see it so prevalent in Hong Kong as well. You never had to look around a store or restaurant for assistance, and for pretty much any job where one person would do, there were two or more. The funny thing about Hong Kong is that they do not look to China as their source of cheap labor—instead they prefer to import domestic help from Southeast Asia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. There is a standard contract for imported domestic help which specifies a salary of ~$400/3200 SEK per month for 12 hour days, 6 days per week, with 2 weeks off and a plane ticket home each year. After 2 years, a small raise is guaranteed. Many young women leave their husbands and children for a chance to earn the big bucks in Hong Kong, and it is suspected that as many as 25% of them fall victim to physical or sexual abuse.
Dinner this evening was at Le Menu, the fancy buffet restaurant in Hong Kong to which Uncle L had taken us last week. This was mom’s farewell dinner to the family, so both her brother and his wife (and maid) and her sister and her husband were there. We arrived early so that I could take some pictures of Aunt R and her husband. The dinner buffet was very good, and the desert bar excellent.
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