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Journalism of Courage
Going to Hong Kong? Better carry a mask, get your medical insurance done8230; These were the warnings as I prepped for a quick trip but I chose to ignore them, putting my faith instead in the World Health Organisation. It had declared Hong Kong free of SARS.
Another, more serious warning was the one about the food: if you don8217;t eat seafood, you8217;ll have to starve, a colleague cautioned.
Which is how, as four of us set out for the island country, thoughts of salad overrode those of SARS.
But we were soon reminded of the disease by the change in attitudes it had brought about in Hong Kong. Our tour guide Nevin Lim greeted me at the airport in the traditional Chinese way8212;by bowing8212;instead of the usual handshake. Later I learnt that at the peak of the SARS outbreak, the Hong Kong government had advised citizens to reduce physical contact with each other.
Hong Kong was now back to being its lively self, said Lim, who, besides being a guide for the Hong Kong Tourism Board, also performed on HK Radio, flew a Cessna, and conducted canal boat rides in the UK.
Right now, he was about to take us through a heritage and architectural tour. Our first stop was Peak Tower, a crescent-shaped building atop a hill with a Ripley8217;s Believe It Or Not! Odditorium and a hi-tech virtual-reality ride. While these did hold my attention, what was more enthralling, in a similar kind of modern steel-8217;n8217;-glass way, was the breathtaking view of the city8217;s highrises from atop the hill.
Another place of which I have vivid memories is the Ocean Park, which happened at the fag end of a day filled with meetings and more meetings. Ocean Park, with its famous pandas An An and Jia Jia, a dozen sharks and numerous fish was fun. But its 20-minute show featuring dolphins and 8216;good samaritan8217; sea lions was too amazing. You wouldn8217;t believe it if I told you that the sea lions actually saved a 8216;drowning8217; man, by bringing him ashore, pumping his heart and providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The visual excitement was soon replaced by a culinary treat at the Jumbo Floating Restaurant, which is anchored in the middle of the Aberdeen harbour. A 250-ft long boat restaurant, Jumbo could well be the court of a Chinese king with its ornate gold and red d8218;cor, where we were treated to some fantastic vegetarian fare. This at a place where seafood reigns! I particularly enjoyed the cabbage leaves served with finely chopped vegetables and mushrooms. The mixture was to be placed in the leaf, rolled, and eaten with a chilli sauce.
My next culinary adventure too was reassuringly vegetarian and if it were not for J W Marriott8217;s Man Ho restaurant, I would never have believed in Chinese meals being totally veggie. Our nine-course vegetarian-Chinese meal began with soup and ended with an assortment of fresh fruit. In between, there was asparagus tossed with garlic sauce, tofu, and paper-thin bean curd rolls stuffed with vegetables.
No traditional meal can be complete without the dim sum, said the chefs. 8216;Touching your heart8217;, as it literally means, the dim sum is a dumpling stuffed with a range of fillings like steamed shrimp, steamed pork, eggs or even vegetables nowadays. Served in bamboo baskets, dim sum is usually eaten during teatime or for lunch.
By now, we were filled to the brim and couldn8217;t wait to hit our beds. But there was one last stop8212;Soho. No relation to the Soho in London, its many lanes and bylanes were flooded with people from all over the world even at 10.30 pm. Though many pubs were full, there were a few quiet places where you could sit back and enjoy a drink with soft music playing in the background. Which is what we did.
Then, before we knew it, our plane home was just hours away. We hurriedly checked out Repulse Bay. An odd name for a clean, inviting beach, with mountains in the background. A view that has the ten richest people in Hong Kong living there. But even more impressive than their villas were the government apartments in the area8212;built there so that even the poor could enjoy life in the better areas of the island.
At Repulse Bay also stands Murray House, marking the presence of the British who left Hong Kong in 1997. Not wanting to turn this colonial treasure into a museum, the people of Hong Kong have instead opened its doors to people by housing many restaurants in it. With many of these facing the sea, business is brisk, even from locals. Walk around here and you would never guess that people live in fear of catching a deadly disease. Most of them don8217;t anymore. And just to prove that, Lim shook hands with me before I caught the plane home.
