Things here that I didn’t expect to see. Or notice. Or experience. Or stuff that’s just different from SoCal/USA.

(And I reserve the right to come back to any of these with a full post, down the line.)

–Rattling street lights.

Ninety percent of street lights come with sound effects – a sort of bonk-bonk-bonking that changes speeds to reflect the status of the light, for pedestrians. If it’s clear to go, the bonking (think of someone banging a stick on an empty milk bottle) is rapid. If it’s halfway to turning red, it drops to half pace, and you better hurry. If it’s red, it bonks only about once a second, and you step into the intersection at your peril. An audio aid for people with vision problems, no doubt.

–Balding women.

I don’t know if this is a genetic thing, or environmental, or maybe the water is hard and the shampoos brutal … but I have seen more balding women here than anywhere I’ve ever been. I know some women lose their hair as they age (but not like men, of course). I didn’t know that a population existed where it seems as if about 25 percent of women over 40 have fairly serious hair loss. And always from the crown and out. At the drug store, mixed in with the usual shampoos for volume or treated hair are those for thinning hair.

–Women construction workers. No one would deny women the right to pour cement or repair streets, but they actually do it in Hong Kong. I’ve been by more than one work zone where the people doing the digging or pouring were female, and the people watching were male. Not something you see often in the States.

–Lack of readers in subways.

People riding the MTR, as it is known, almost never read. Not newspapers, not books. They are not reading at all. Unlike, say, Paris, where you can see lots of papers and books on the Metro, or New York, where tabloid newspapers exist for the convenience of strap-hanging commuters. Here, it’s all cellphone-related — either talking to someone or playing a tiny video game.

–Respect for elders.

This doesn’t happen much at home anymore. Helping someone old across the street (who isn’t a relative), or giving a seat to them. Here, it is common for a younger person to get out of their seat on the MTR so that a senior citizen can sit down.

–An absence of homeless people.

At least here on Hong Kong Island. I saw one last night, an older woman banging a coin-filled cup on the ground, and the idea that seeing a homeless/beggar person made me take note … of me taking note. We have 1.26 million people on the island, and you just don’t see homeless people, beggars. Almost never, and that’s why this one woman sitting cross-legged on the cement got my attention. If this were any American city, you would encounter them all the time and hardly notice them, after a time. If it were Europe, they would be panhandling you.

–Bamboo scaffolding at construction sites.

OK, I’ve heard it. Bamboo is surprisingly strong. But, still, it’s something I haven’t wrapped my mind around yet, the idea of hollow bamboo being used as the primary component of scaffolding here in Hong Kong. And I’m talking scaffolding that’s 30, 40, 50 stories up.

–Clustering of like-style shops.

In the United States, it’s the extreme opposite. If you run a butcher shop, you don’t want to be on the same block with two other butcher shops. You don’t want to be in the same neighborhood as another butcher. Here, styles of shops are clustered. In Tin Hau, there is a block maybe 50 yards long that has four stores selling tropical fish and aquarium supplies. Meanwhile, I can’t recall seeing another topical fish store in this city. Another couple of blocks will have three music stores. I believe it follows a medieval European pattern. Hence some of the street names, like Chandler Street, Baker Street, etc. And maybe it makes logistical sense for a wholesaler, in a massively crowded city, to make one stop and service four shops? Anyway, I wonder if the clustered managers compare prices and set them. Otherwise, what is to keep a consumer from making the 10-second walk to see if the guy two doors down is cheaper?

–Slow elevators.

HK has scads of them. Tiny, of course. That you expect, once you travel to another continent. But these are tiny AND slow. Almost to the point that you need to build in a few more minutes into your plans if you have to go up or down 20 stories or so, because the elevators will move sooooo slowly.

–Indonesian lesbian couples in Victoria Park.

I thought it was just some random thing, all the female-female couples we saw in the island’s biggest park. Little manly Indonesian (mostly) women dressed like not-actually-scary urban-America gangsterettes. Baggy pants, Doc Martens, bandanas, etc. Anyway, the author of this Indonesia expat Web site seems quite agitated by the concept (perhaps because it’s a Muslim country that is scandalized by homosexuality), and has more information on it.

–The absence of graffiti.

I’m beginning to forget what a city of walls scarred by gang markings and graffiti looks like. There is practically zero graffiti, at least on Hong Kong Island. How do they manage this? How is it possible, when all it takes is a couple of tagging crews to mar whole neighborhoods? If this were the harsh world of Singapore, sure, they probably would be beaten with rods. But HK isn’t that draconian. Some sort of social pressure? Anyway, I love this. I love this. Zero graffiti.

–The lack of car horns honking. New York is a honking-horn blare-fest. Even in Los Angeles and environs, Americans aren’t shy about using their horns. Here, you can be right next to a major street and go an hour without hearing a horn honked in anger. And if you do hear one, somebody has triple-parked and walked off and blocked an entire street. Someone has done something really, really objectionable, truly worthy of a honking horn.

–A muted (almost invisible) police presence.

There are some cops here, but you can go a day without seeing one, and if you do, he/she is probably walking with three or four other cops, chatting pleasantly. Presumably because, at least here on HK Island, they have so little crime-fighting to do. And they are not threatening/scary in the least. Unlike a lot of cops in American big cities, who go out of their way to appear menacing.

–The lack of crime.

Mentioned this before. I guess you can find some over on Kowloon side. If you work at it. But even those are gangs that mostly are out to get each other, not you.
–The bathtub enviroment. At least six months of the year, anyway.

I’ve mentioned this, too, ad nauseum, but I’ve thought of another way to describe it. Imagine getting into a quite-warm bath. At first it’s pleasant. “Ahhh. This is nice.” That’s what it’s like walking outside here for most of the year. Your initial thought is, ah, warm and cozy. Then, about five minutes later, you remember that nobody likes swimming laps in a hot pool or jogging in a sauna or walking around as if you’ve got on a coat and two sweaters and it’s the Fourth of July.

–The two English words that appear to have gone straight into Cantonese.

“Bye” and “sorry.” At first I thought I was just overhearing unusual expressions. I would see people splitting up and each would say “bye-bye” quite cheerfully. Someone would bump me in the subway and say, “Sorry.” And I’d think, “Hmm, you never know who will be the English-speaker.” And it finally has dawned on me, almost seven weeks in, that “bye” and “sorry” appear to be the words of choice to bid farewell and apologize. For everyone. Even among Cantonese speakers. OK, and “OK” seems to be another universal English expression, but some linguists claim “OK” is the most widely understood expression on the planet, and it’s not just Hong Kong.

I will have more of these, as they occur to me.