King Kong

"One country, two systems" is the mantra which defines Hong Kong's current relationship with mainland China. However, as an observer it remains far easier to see the "two systems" instead of the "one country." Crossing from the mainland to Hong Kong you pass through customs and stamp your passport just as you would in passing from one country to another. Trying to fly from one to the other you have to book an "international" flight. More personally, I noticed that over the last week or so I spent in Hong Kong that I constantly was refering to, and comparing things to, "China" as if it existed as an entirely seperate entity. The feeling, socially, intellectually, culturally, and in almost every other way, is in such great contrast to the mainland. Things about which we are banned from speaking and writing about here... are openly seen discussed, debated on the streets, in newspapers and outside metro stations. Speaking to those I met living in Hong Kong, there isn't the defensive reaction sparked from the tender insecurity in the mainlander's mentality if you should refer to the mainland as a seperate entity, and in it's place is what could almost be described as a sense of pride in the differences. A couple of newspapers articles from during my stay mocking the May holiday Golden Week influx of mainland tourists, their group shopping and individual squatting were evidence enough of this pervasive identity dynamic, although anyone who has so much as seen Hong Kong T.V. or films knows the stereotypes (often deserved) of the backwards mainlander.
Yet while all of this remains true and despite all the differences I think it's important to remember that today, Hong Kong is indisputably a part of the People's Republic of China. It's not important to remember for any political reasons, or for the reasons of national pride and collective identity that the government and those driving the approved social thought pushed in the approach to, and now ten years since, Hong Kong's return. Rather, it is for the reason that Hong Kong now in many ways represents the future of China, the possibility of what the rest of the nation can become. It is a place of comparative tolerance and acceptance both driven by and driving the internationalism with which it drips, embodied by the myriad of subcontinent copywatch hawkers, the African luggage salesmen, the Euros on holiday and of course the Hong Kongers who are an international mash in and of themselves. It's a place where no smoking means no smoking and one-way really means one-way; a place where I no longer feel on display and a place where, above all, they have cheesecake. I'll be back.