Back to the Heart of Darkness

Dear Gentle Reader,

...in the midst of the incomprehensible, which is also detestable. ...it [the detestable] has a fascination, too, ... The fascination of the abomination...

Joseph Conrad (1857-1924)

The Heart of Darkness

Last week I mentioned that many things besides cockroaches and rats come out of the alley near my apartment in Hong Kong.

And I then left you hanging.

I had previously alluded to the fact that this alley, which I duck into to change worlds from glitz to grit, is, in many ways, a passageway into the heart of darkness.

Further, I love this alley; I have a fascination with abominations.

I described the dark, dank, pungent, physical nature of my alley, last week, in two postings.

I also mentioned that one side of my alley was Chungking Mansions, which houses some of the most notorious, cheapest, and nastiest of the cheap hostelries of Hong Kong.

Further, I noted that Chungking Mansions houses many grey and black market factories and that many goods pass hands in Chungking Mansions.

Waiting in the street, outside my alley, are dozens of these:

And, as the morning drones on and the heat fills the street, the street also fills with smiling Indian and Pakistani men, like these, waiting to earn their money as porters or as land stevedores with their hand trolleys...

These men dart through the alley from late morning until dusk ferrying finished goods, or raw materials, or work in progress between fleets of grey-market transport vehicles and the factories of Chungking Mansions.

I say grey market transport vehicles because these are regular civilian minivans, with no special licensing...

But, these minivans are filled to the brim with goods which they transport from factory to factory and then from factory to the ports of Hong Kong.

These minivans are filled to the brim and then lace curtains are drawn across the windows to hide the goods from traffic authorities--to disguise their cargo trucks as regular minivans. ...Minivans that just happen to ride really low...

Throughout the day, these vehicles fill up and drive away, or arrive, are emptied, and wait to be filled again, by men like this...

These men create ad hoc piles on the side of the pavement, by the trucks, where bills of lading are checked or created.

This picture to the left shows what one man brings back in one load on his hand trolley and has, subsequently, placed on a pallette.

Did I mention that this ferrying is done not just through my my dark alley, but also through the stairwells of Chungking Mansions?

These loads are hoisted up and down Chungking Mansions' 17 stories, with it's stairs clad in steel, steel cladding that is routinely replaced due to wear and tear.

These loads are not transported through the aging elevators; those two elevators are too slow, even for Hong Kong, and prone to stoppages.

As the men ferry loads back and forth between their factory and the van they work for, the stack on the sidewalk grows higher and wider and longer...

And it doesn't take much of a glance at the packaging to see the destination of the goods...

The coastal city of Lagos, very close to the bordering state of Benin, is no longer the political capital of Nigeria.

Abuja, purpose-built from scratch in the 1980s, in the geographical centre of Nigeria, was granted that honour in 1991 in a bid to soothe regional tensions inside Nigeria.

The port city of Lagos, however, a city of almost 8 million official residents in Nigeria's 2006 census, is Africa's second biggest city.

Lagos is the financial and industrial and commercial capital of Nigeria. And, Nigeria is estimated to contain over 148 million people, which makes it the most populous country in Africa.

Nigeria's critical mass of people have long helped it have thriving markets resulting in Nigeria being an economic powerhouse in Africa--and Lagos is the port town where the commercial goods enter Nigeria to be distributed here, and elsewhere in Africa.

As an aside, Nigeria is, literally, that black area, that area surrounding the river Niger (which means black in Latin).

Nigeria is a portmanteau word stemming from the Niger Area, the area around the river Niger, which was consolidated and administered/exploited by Imperial England.

Every package your humble scribe has ever seen on the side of the road, outside the alley, has been addressed to Lagos, Nigeria.

Educated rumour, which I have not yet been able to confirm with an academic citation, has it that every mobile phone handset in Africa has passed through Chungking Mansions in Hong Kong.

Given the scale of the porters' activity, I can well believe this claim.

Your humble scribe has, on rare occasions, seen spot quality checks where packages have been split open; I have seen every conceivable consumer good packaged for shipment to Lagos, at these times, spread out on the sidewalk, outside my alley.

It is true that there is much dross in the alley that I enjoy so much.

And yet that dross is a by-product of the furious activity pounding out through walls and floors of Chungking Mansions and other neighbouring buildings.

I am drawn to the chaos, the disorder, and the rankness of my alley because it births activity and value and commerce and worth. It births; it is a site of creation.

Many people enjoy gentility and a genteel life.

But, contracts are not really written on bleached, white, twenty pound paper.

Not in the heat of the moment.

Contracts are scrawled on cartons or tablecloths or the backs of envelopes by captains of industry. And then their lieutenants, their lawyers, are told to pretty the scrawls up.

Dainty, courtly dances occur in the clean and the tidy margins of life.

Gutters teem with wriggling, striving life.

And neither commerce nor creativity is genteel.

England's Elizabethan Era (1558-1603) is, from a literary perspective, associated with William Shakespeare, Christopher Marlowe, and Sir Francis Bacon.

England's Elizabethan Era is also associated with dog fights to the death, bear baiting with sabres, and the Star Chamber, that judicial/political weapon of tyranny which allowed its civilian victims no redress or appeal.

There is a duality omnipresent in the world.

Sometimes beauty begets beauty. But ugliness can also birth great things.

The appalling can be as beautiful, or at least as intriguing, as the beautiful.

Hieronymus Bosch's creations stem from observations on moral decay while precious metals and stones also come from the dark heart of the Earth.

Your humble scribe readily admits his "fascination with the abomination".

I, socio-economic rubbernecker, (up and down the socio-economic ladder) hope you have enjoyed today's riverboat journey to my alley in my town, Hong Kong. This quick visit to the heart of darkness.

Oh. And Mistah Kurtz? He AIN'T dead.

Tschuess,

Chris

Gotham City and my Hong Kong alley, part two

Dear Gentle Reader,

Back to the alley.

The Heroine couldn't believe that, on Monday, I didn't start by telling you how, when you enter the alley, you get doused with a fine mist from the exhaust vent of a greasy spoon Chinese kitchen.

I thought that that information was on a need to know basis.

She thought that if I was offering to take people to the places that I think are interesting, then people need to know the hazards of my company...

So... complementary hair care treatment, deep fry facial cleansers, and aromatic clothing misters are installed in the opening of the alley.

And, if you missed that complementary bit, they are free.

That refreshing scent of high calorie cooking oil might be why rats are, apparently, found here too.

Which is why, presumably, the government has this anti-rat poster up.

To make the rats feel less welcome.

If institutional xenophobia does not deter the rats, then the city uses more extreme measures...

Hong Kong takes rats seriously. (Remember that Bubonic Plague outbreak?)

Of course, once you are well into the alley, it is hard to see much of anything, even rats or roaches.

The alleys are kept dim due to the height of the surrounding buildings.

If today is full disclosure day, my dank alley is not only cooled by the shade, it is also kept cool by mist.

It is misted by the hundreds of overhanging old air conditioners dropping their spray onto the men who toil and trudge in the heat.

I just always make a little prayer on behalf of all the screwing that has hopefully gone on here. 

(With regard to the installation of the air conditioners, obviously.)

Porters run, or walk quickly, down the bulk of the alley, quickly carting boxed bundles from the unlicensed, gray-market factories illicitly built and run from within Chungking Mansion's groaning walls. 

Did I mention that Chungking Mansions abuts half of the alley?

Chungking Mansion's floors hold more than just notoriously cheap hostels and dormitories. It also holds numerous grey and black market factories. And, supposedly, the majority of the Nepalese community in Hong Kong.

Chungking Mansion's floors struggle to support heavy equipment stamping out things for commerce. 

These shivering floors were built to withstand the patter of feet and the blood-filled echoes of loves lost, loves found, and love made. These floors were not built to withstand the relentless pounding of metal on metal or plastic or paper. But they do.

Chungking Mansions was also not built to cope with the waste generated by all the factories and the hostels, and stores, and the restaurants, and the takeaways for the guests and the workers. So, there is a fair bit of detritus, which is quite helpful for the cockroaches and for the rats.

When the sun is directly overhead of the alley, briefly, it illuminates the alley, causing the vermin to scuttle for cover. 

This also makes it easier to see and photograph the porters carrying loads to and from the factories and businesses located inside Chungking Mansions.

These porters are not fast because they are worried about the sky falling, or an air-con unit falling, or even the rats and gigantic cockroaches of Hong Kong...

These porters move quickly because they are paid by the piece or by the pound. Whichever is less.

What are those cartons for?

Where do these cartons go?

Stay tuned, Monday...

Tschuess,

Chris

Ugly American was not intended; an explanation

Dear Gentle Reader,

Mea culpa.

I wrote some long notes to yesterday's post. 

But, just as I know that very few roll their mouse over the images to see what messages or titles I have left, almost nobody goes back to look at comments. 

So, I will repackage them because it is important.

Yesterday's post could be seen as an easy attack on three self-centered Americans who happened to be girls. Classic ugly Americans in action. That was not my intention.

The post was meant to be a sardonic look at the actions of three young people, three young girls, who happened to be American.

The posting does me no credit as I had to have an Oscar Wilde line at the end; I couldn't just walk away. 

But, I feel worse if people think I harbour anti-American sentiments.

So, I will risk further assaults on my character and revisit yesterday.

In yesterday's post I meant to highlight the profligate silliness, obtuseness, and self-centered nature of youth (compared, of course, to the foil of my helpfulness, reasonableness, and cleverness.)

First, ugly Americans do exist.

As do hooligan Brits, lager lout Dutch, culturally self-centered and self-righteous French, towel-wielding beach-reserving Germans, et cetera. And snide Canadians, too.

There are, statistically and in my experience, almost as many ugly Canadians as ugly Americans.

But, thankfully for Canadians, there are ten times more Americans than Canadians, which skews the number of ugly Americans as opposed to ugly Canadians that other countries' citizenry get to meet.

Then, we can further skew the ratio because more than ten times the number of Americans, compared to Canadians, have the disposable income to send their kids, or themselves, abroad.

That results in more than the 10:1 ratio of ugly Americans:ugly Canadians abroad that you would expect.

And the ugly idiots always stand out, if only for their idiocy and ugliness. 

Everyone remembers the idiots; their impacts crowd out the memories of the lovely people. 

Now add international resentment to the USA's wealth and power... 

Still, today, a vast amount of the world's GDP (GDP is Gross Domestic Product--the total value of all final goods and services produced with the national borders of a political economy within a particular year) is generated inside the USA. 

Yes, the EU generates a similar GDP, but that is the entire EU... not just one country... (The EU is the European Union whose countries now include all of Western Europe less Switzerland, all of Northern Europe less Norway, all of Southern Europe, and most of Eastern Europe...)

I just crunched the numbers. 

If we use 2007 IMF (International Monetary Fund) numbers then the US produces 25% of world GDP and the EU produces almost 31% of world GDP.

If we use 2007 World Bank numbers then the US produces 25% of world GDP and the EU produces 22% of world GDP.

If we use 2007 CIA world factbook numbers then the US produces 18% of world GDP and the EU produces 24% of world GDP.

Whichever numbers you use, the US is wealthy. 

This wealth provides the US federal government the ability to fund military and economic activities to create and project power.

The USA is still the only global superpower as it has been from the end of the cold war to today. 

It still is the world's policeman, and it struts accordingly, some days. 

It has also taken on the role of the world's judge through the doctrine of extra-territorial jurisdiction which is the US doctrine that US laws apply anywhere and everywhere... ...a bit of a slap in the face to the sovereignty of every other country on the planet.

So, people like to latch onto the idiots and tar the rest with their cultural misdeeds. It allows people to feel better, nationalistically, when innately comparing their country to the might, power, and wealth of the USA.

It's too easy to make fun of the ignorant few. 

Hence my big mea culpa, today; I do not want to be considered anti-American.

I am just intolerant of fools, no matter what their nationality.

I had not intended to raise the spectre of ugly Americans in yesterday's post, I was just poking fun at three vapid, self-centered young girls. 

And, heck, they were likely exhausted, jet-lagged, culture-shocked, and unprepared to hear people tell them hotel rack rates in dollars in English and they might have been confusing the HKD prices with USD prices. 

The ten dollar (USD) per night hell holes in Chungking Mansions might have been interpreted by them as 78 USD per night, instead of the 78 HKD per night that would have been meant when the reception staff would have leered and said "78 dollars, Missie" to their breasts.

What bothered me about the three girls was the way they were trying to control me with orders and their gravity-defying breasts. And the slyness of the looks they gave each other when they thought I had given up some state secrets of housing to them...

Tschuess,

Chris

Where to stay? Where to stay? Budget accommodation in Hong Kong

Dear Gentle Reader,

Sorry for being late, today.

It's tax time, which means I have spent the day trading currencies in preparation for paying taxes.

Death puts me in the mind to spend, but taxes put me in the mind to save.

And saving money sometimes leads one to the topic of cheap.

At least it leads me to cheap.

And, on that note, anyone who has backpacked into Hong Kong in the last 40 years knows about Chungking Mansions on Nathan Road in Kowloon.

Why?

Because backpacking implies cheap.

Or at least cautious with cash.

And Chungking Mansions, if not where cheap was born, is where cheap resides today.

Located at the edge of the tourist district in Tsim Sha Tsui, the hostels in Chungking Mansions boast of the lowest nightly rates anywhere in urban, accessible Hong Kong.

And they are right.

If you are unwilling to hike up a mountain to a remote hostel, or take two hours to go to the middle of nowheresville for your sojourn in hip, happening Hong Kong, then Chungking Mansions does contain the cheapest hostels around.

Of course, in a city that has ranked as one of the highest rental markets in the world, something has to give if you offer, or expect, super low rates.

For clarification, for those of you who stayed at The Peninsula or the Ritz-Carlton or at the Mandarin Oriental, the rental rates at Chungking Mansion's hostels, despite the building's name, are really low.

These are low nightly rates, not just in comparison to other rates in Hong Kong, but low in absolute dollars as well.

Poor student backpackers and threadbare travellers stay here. Possibly affluent Scots, too...

So, what gives to get those great rates?

...Space, privacy, amenities, hygiene, and sanitation.

That would cover it.

The other day your humble scribe walked by three sweet young things, backpacking around Asia together, fresh out of a sorority somewhere (two had their greek call signs emblazoned on their shirts).

The three near-lolitas (is it me, or are the young getting younger every year?) were on the street, complaining about how gross the space in that last hostel was, how every hotel was trying to rip them off, and how "These places are all une dégustation" as the worldy French scholar in the group drawled.

The lover in me had to stop.

The word lover, that is.

What froze my feet to the 25°C pavement was the "dégustation" allusion.

While the girls' prospective accomodations might have involved a careful, appreciative tasting experience, that would have been for the endemic cockroaches, I suspected, and not for these fresh-scrubbed yet sweaty and gritty girls.

"I think you mean degoulasse..." I stopped and suggested to the girls, as the routine surge of humanity pushed and pressed around me on the sidewalk.

"...a French colloquialism for disgusting... a case of yuck, not a tasting experience which is what that dégustation implies, unless you have very unusual, and I dare say an unsafe method, of checking out your potential resting places for the night..."

The girls stared (glared?) at me.

I smiled helpfully, thinking maybe I shouldn't have stopped. Though the mangling of language, when a deliberate patois is not intended, is something that fills me with dismay.

The girls asked if I lived here.

I confirmed that I did.

Then they asked me where a really clean, big, spacious, super cheap place, ideally with a view would be found.

No, that's not right.

Actually, it was more like a simpering order with a side of vamp.

I suddenly wished that I had not stopped.

Still, I had (stopped).

I had an obligation to help, now that I had stopped, and I like helping people.

And these lolitas, fresh off the plane, clearly needed help.

(Two needed significant support, also, or they would be unhappy in fifteen years...)

I explained that for the last few years Hong Kong had been the most expensive place on the planet, on a price per square foot basis, for every rental class.

They didn't care about that.

They just wanted to know where a really clean, big, spacious, super cheap place, ideally with an ocean view would be located for them.

Slightly bemused, I noted that the financial nature of Hong Kong was relevant.

They would have to pony up to stay somewhere nice or suck it up and take what they could afford; I suggested a couple of OKish hostels I had heard of to be helpful.

One girl explained condescendingly to the idiot (your humble scribe) that she was pre-law and that even in Minneapolis you could get OK motels at OK prices, not like the crap they had just seen, and they had been to one of the overpriced hotels, too.

I started explaining again that you couldn't be in the most expensive city in the world, by measuring the cost of real estate, and get their wish list filled at the room rates they were suggesting was reasonable.

The Minneapolis Queen Bee brain trust rolled her eyes.

Her two henchwomen sighed as if I was the biggest waste of space.

I reconsidered my answer.

Your humble scribe knows when discussion is not useful.

I thought for a moment more, and asked if they had walked by the old Peninsula Hotel and pointed it out top them.

(The Peninsula is the byword for luxury in Hong Kong, if you have not visited. Their afternoon tea with clotted cream... well, visit and discover.)

They had, and finally we were getting somewhere, I was informed.

They wanted something like that, only cheap.

I understood completely.

I noted that many liked the Pen (implying a non-existent shorthand for the legendary Peninsula Hotel).

The girls nodded, grudgingly.

I further noted that some thought the "Pen's" rates were high and that its fleet of Rolls Royces for its guests' pleasure was unnecessary for some and added unnecessarily to the price.

Six breasts and three brain pans jiggled vertically, indicating assent and nodding to prompt me to continue--I was getting somewhere with them.

I suggested the lesser known Stanley Pen.

Three heads bobbed as one and slyly looked at each other as if noting their success at tricking the information out of the stupid man.

The Stanley Pen was super clean, I continued, right off the beach, and wouldn't cost much on a nightly basis.

One was already leafing through the Lonely Planet's index.

Of course, I noted, like the Hotel California, it's hard to leave, and people killed to get in...

They looked blankly at me.

Ask the nearest policeman for directions, I suggested, as I left.

Here's a picture of the Stanley Pen, or the Stanley Maximum Security Prison as it is better known.

Gentle Reader. I tried to be helpful.

I tried to help them find their way in my town.

I really did.

...The Stanley Pen is by the beach...

I am sure it is clean, and, relatively, spacious, too...

Even if my suggestion was specious...

Tschuess,

Chris