Ten Things I Love And Hate About Hong Kong: Part 4

#4 - Hate - Walking down the street

Ok, so I’ve already mentioned cockroach-dodging, nondescript dripping and evil bus fumes on this list, all of which usually occur whilst one walks down the street – so why the separate entry, you may ask? WELL. The truth is, the simple daily action of walking down the street here in Hong Kong has the power to send me into a frothing, apoplectic rage.

First of all I should probably make it clear that I don’t consider myself to be an angry person. I’m the type of person who likes to indulge myself every now and then with kitten videos on YouTube. I’m also very polite and law-abiding and generally quite chilled and laidback. Unless you are Asian sleaze, or a fundamentalist religious hypocrite who is trying to give me a lecture on behaviour and the questionable state of my soul, I am usually unlikely to descend into a sudden fit of The Rage. However, certain things do push my rage button. And walking down the street in Hong Kong is most definitely one of them.

Before I begin, a couple of quick background-setting facts. Hong Kong is one of the most densely populated cities in the world. Approximately 7 million people live here. It is also one of the world’s leading international financial centres – a heaving, bustling megacity, like London or New York. I have lived in London before, so I understand the downsides of spending a lot of your time pushing your way through crowds of sweaty, angry people who always seem to be rushing to get somewhere – onto trains, off trains, to meetings, to home. This constant rush can be bewildering and exhausting and patience-testing, but it’s part of city life.

So, I expected Hong Kong to be much the same, especially since I chose to live on Hong Kong Island, which is where the majority of the big businesses and expats are located.

But no. It’s not the same AT ALL.

In London, in general, it seems to be that the locals and the people who live and work there are often the ones who walk with purpose down the road, expertly weaving their way through crowds and hop skipping up and down the left sides of the escalators at the Tube stations. They don’t have time to stand around dawdling – they have places they need to be. I was one of them, and as a group, we were the ones who would get exasperated at the stupid tourists who would get in our way, mocking us with their intense slowness and holidaying and inane chatter, and who would stop every 2 seconds to take a picture of some Monument or Building or other such Famous Thing, which was all very nice an’ all but when you just wanted to go home after a long day you really couldn’t give a shit, you just wanted them to move the hell out of your way.

It seems to be the complete opposite here. Foreigners like me just want to get to the MTR station so we can get to work on time and minimise the time spent in the hot, stuffy, fumey outdoors. And we’re the ones who will cross at a green traffic light because we can see that there are no cars coming in either direction, and who feel bewildered at everybody we leave behind at the side of the road. But the general walking trend among locals seems to be the slow, meandering shuffle down the middle of the pavement, with the occasional, completely baffling stop to look at a building, or talk to a friend, or just, I don’t know, take a few seconds to enjoy the wonderful fumes?! (Whatever the reason, it’s definitely not to take a picture.)

Often, the dawdlers are indeed elderly people, which you might think makes me some kind of unsympathetic, unfeeling, ageist monster. I’m not. I get it. China, in general, and therefore Hong Kong too, is facing a massive ageing population crisis. So there are a lot of elderly people around. Now I’m not suggesting that, for my convenience and sanity, they should just stay at home and wait to die; that would be barbaric. But my question is this: if they must walk in public, on the street, why can’t they just PICK A SIDE? It’s like, for crying out loud, you’re not bloody Switzerland! Just pick a side, shuffle a little bit to the left or the right, and then continue your shuffle, so then at least people like me can get past you, instead of nearly crashing into the back of you when you decide to randomly stop in the middle of the pavement for NO APPARENT REASON.

Another thing. Umbrellas. People seem to put up their umbrellas at the slightest provocation. “Oh no! Three miniscule droplets of rain which can hardly be called rain because really it’s no more than a bit of drizzle! Put up your umbrellas! Oh look, it’s stopped. No wait, look, now there’s some sun. Put them back up again!”

It drives me nuts. Mostly because, when it really is pissing it down, and umbrellas are pretty essential, I’ve noticed a distinct lack of umbrella etiquette. In England, if you are walking down a street, holding an umbrella, towards some people who are also holding umbrellas, then there is usually some kind of tilting or lifting or ducking or other kind of mutual manoeuvring involved to avoid umbrella collision or spike-induced head injuries. Not always, but most of the time. Unfortunately, I haven’t really experienced that here. It’s more common that I have to remain extremely vigilant to try and avoid eye or head-level umbrella spikes because those umbrellas ain’t moving for me.

And umbrellas to guard against the sun? Really? What’s wrong with sunglasses? Or a hat? Even a desperately unfashionable but practical umbrella hat would be preferable to having to dodge a catwalk of tiny, stiletto-heeled girls with ginormous golfing umbrellas about three times their size which span almost the entire width of the pavement. ARGH.

So there you have it. I have to walk down the street every day, to and from stations to get to and from work, and even though that walk only lasts about 5 or 10 minutes, it still has the ability to (a) raise my blood pressure, and (b) make me late.