Ten Things I Love And Hate About Hong Kong: Part 3

#3 - Hate - The pollution

In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, at the Council of Elrond, Boromir quickly shows his incredulity at the suggested plan to thwart the dark lord, Sauron. “One does not simply walk into Mordor,” he says, launching into a brief but convincing list of reasons why just wandering into Mordor is nothing short of complete and utter madness. My favourite line is this: “The very air that you breathe is a poisonous fume.” He could’ve been talking about Hong Kong.

It’s a puzzling oxymoron that HK seems to be at once one of the cleanest and also one of the dirtiest cities I’ve ever been in. The MTR, for example, is wondrously clean. You are not allowed to eat or drink on trains or in paid areas of stations, as announcements often remind you, and if you do you risk a hefty fine. You also hardly ever see litter on the streets, presumably for much the same reason, and if you do it’s usually in the form of a neat pile of tied black binbags awaiting collection and removal. The roads are continually kept clear of rubbish, and rubbish disposal seems to be regular and meticulously maintained. This is a welcome change to London, where on some nights out in Angel, I had to dodge greasy sheets of paper, fried chicken bones, tissues, beer cans, and remnants of kebab as I made my way over to the bus stop. Or Whitechapel, where a friend joked that if it were to have its own flag it would probably be a puddle with some rubbish floating in it.

So the streets are pretty clean. But the air? It’s horrendous. HK has to have one of the worst air quality indexes in the world. The worst thing is when you are walking down the road, already sweating from the 30 degree heat, and then an old, loud bus tears past, farting out clouds of nasty, black smoke from its rear end, and pelts you with fumes which are somehow HOTTER THAN THE SUN IS. I don’t remember the buses in London ever being quite so offensive in the fume department.

The other day, when I got back to my flat, I cleaned my face with one of those wet wipe thingies and it turned black. Grim.

This is probably the single most compelling reason which might stop me from staying or settling here in the long-term.