Ramblings from HK

A lot of advertisements here seem to focus on social marketing. I have seen many many ads for saving the planet (“Love Hong Kong. Love green.”), stoping AIDS (“keep the promise”), stay healthy/keep others healthy by coughing in your hand, etc. I wonder if it is more successful here. I should go out into the world and count, but I would guess about half of advertisements had a social rather than consumer message. I also remember a big billboard in Saigon when I was there in 1994 with Grayson announcing that it was wonderful to have just 2 children.

The Heritage Museum had an exhibition of Tibetan art, which I found somewhat ironic (or something) given China’s reputation for oppressing Tibetan culture and religion. Is this an attempt at change or retribution? The description said that before painting a Buddha, the artist had to choose an auspicious day and commit a prayer. Devotion and piety are essential when painting. I can’t help but think of artists and writers who can only work when under the influence. Is their own creatively too raw, too real to face alone? Do we need an opiate (be it religion or substance) to face it? Or maybe everything is an opiate. I mean, maybe every mechanism we use to get ourselves to do things, to make that productivity real, is like a curtain or a funnel through which we process that hugeness that we (and the world) are onto the limitations of a medium.

Anyway

The museum also had exhibitions on the development of Cantopop (which I really wish I could relate to – that would make me supercool), another Chinese painter: Lam Wu Fui (more on brush strokes and compositon… blah blah blah), Hong Kong fashion design (I don’t know enough about fashion to know what it meant), and Cantonese Opera (the coolest part was the computer program which shows you what the make up would look like on you).

In Cheng Chau, I came across a yellow building that surprised me. G commented that the Chinese have a very different sense of color than we do in the west, but this building looked normal and pleasant. Well, of course, it was a bed and breakfast for westerners.

Construction is underway to fill in (or “reclaim” as they like to say) the harbor for more development. Hong Kong is small, and the steep mountains are developed and difficult to reach (except by elevator…). So, I understand the mid-term desire to take up more water space with land development… except… except! If you keep filling in the harbor, eventually there won’t be one, and the harbor is the reason HK is here, and one of its most desirable characteristics. Plans like this existed for the San Francisco Bay once too, but now we have policies that protect the Bay.

It reminds me of the psychological phenomenon where if a person wants someone to be close to them (a parent, child, or lover), they behave in a way that makes that person want to get away. HK is a social, cultural, and economic success. So, the development reaction to that is to destroy one of the qualities that make it so great. You have to be careful with this line of thought. For example, when this happens between lovers, it indicates a problem in the relationship that both parties need to figure out together. Some of my friends object to the new tall buildings going into SF, but the city’s skyline isn’t its greatest asset, and one should expect changes to a city’s skyline over time like the figure of an attractive woman (she won’t always be so thin, but she will always be beautiful if she continues to walk to work every day). Alan Jacobs worked like hell to prevent the Transamerica building from being built and for very good reasons (protection of public space and the planning process, etc.) but ultimately it was built AND I believe it’s unusual form adds significant dimensionality to the city’s skyline. Change is natural.

You can see that I’m struggling. I believe the water space should be protected, but I am not opposed to change and development. Existing cities should be grown and densified, open space preserved (including water), natural resources protected, transportation options available…. But it gets tricky when a city like HK is already incredibly dense, land is very expensive, and there is no where to go. Like with everything, it’s a matter of priorities.

I’m not sure if the land use patterns here are the result of the economy (originally a big difference between the rich and poor), culture, or topography. We have steep hills in SF too, but that didn’t cause us to develop only on the flat lands and leave the hilltops green (although the original plan for SF did include parks at the top of each hill so that the public can get up and look out – many of these parks have since acquired private housing). Here, the hills are much steeper and longer, more significant in scale, but they developed them to a point anyway. Why did they stop where they did? I might hike up there and take a look in a minute. (Today is looking like a lazy day. J is napping. Franck is reading. G is playing with the music on his computer. I am typing up my little thoughts.) Actually, I think I’ll take a nap.