Hong Kong is...

I've been in Hong Kong for nearly 10 days now, and that means I've had time to shake the jetlag and start to look around. My first several days were very quiet, involving mostly relaxing in my tiny, lightless AirBnB (not helpful for jetlag, admittedly) and making tentative explorations into the neighborhood for food or to look for an apartment. There's lots more to come, but here are some beginning descriptors for Hong Kong:

1) Humid. This one has to come first, and it should really be every odd number on this list. Of course, I was expecting heat and humidity. This is southeast Asia in the summer. But to give you an idea of how bad it is, my glasses fogged up within 30 seconds of leaving the airport on my first morning. There have been easier days than that since then-- once I was able to sit in the shade for 25 whole minutes on my lunch break and not sweat!-- but things are rough here. An average day is between 85 and 90 degrees F and between 70 and 90 percent humidity. People waxed poetic about the nature here before I came, but I've never spent more time inside in air conditioning in my life. I think it's just not to be.

2) Dense. This one is another no-brainer, but again the experience is an entirely different animal than the anticipation. The city is actually pretty small in terms of area. The main areas can be crossed by public transit in 30-45 minutes. But in terms of density, Hong Kong seems more intense even than New York. In the same way that my first time traveling in the open spaces of Montana affected my thinking, being surrounded by such towering buildings and constant throngs of people requires mental adjustment. I feel like I could spend the entire summer just trying the various restaurants within a block of my apartment. Having everything piled on top of one another makes the whole city feel overdetermined--that's literature nerd for "brimming with various different meanings"--and ripe for all sorts of storytelling and adventure.

3) International. When I arrived, one of the questions at the forefront of my mind was: will it be ruder to assume that people speak English or that they don't? This hasn't been a problem in other parts of the world where I've traveled. In English-speaking countries like Australia or Ireland, the answer is obvious. In other countries, even northern Europe where people tend to speak flawless English, the answer is still generally to err on the side of "not ugly American." In a place with as complex a history as Hong Kong, it didn't seem so cut and dry, but the answer is obviously. In elevators, grocery stores, little out of the way restaurants and cafes, virtually everyone here speaks functional-level English. Some speak it more fluently than others, but I've only encountered two people with whom I couldn't communicate--and they spoke Mandarin, so we managed okay, just the same.

This is undoubtedly a city still heavily informed by its colonial past, and it's not just about language. Local food shows signs of Western influence, from the custard tarts that originated in Portugal to the toast with condensed milk that is popular for breakfast. Announcements on the MTR (public transit) are in Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. Restaurants and people from all over Asia abound, and I'm never the only Western person in a room (although usually the ratio is about 2:100.) This is by far the most ethnically diverse Asian city I've visited.

4) Efficient. I have long believed that you can tell a lot about a culture based on how they wait (or don't) in line. In my experience, Asia is divided culturally in terms of line waiting, with orderly-patient Taiwan and Japan on one side and elbows-out-chaotic India, China, Vietnam on the other. Hong Kong falls squarely in the Taiwan-Japan camp. The MTR is spotless, comes every 1-5 minutes, and includes marked areas for people to queue and chaperones for the morning rush hour to make sure everyone is behaving properly. Even in the heat and humidity, people wait at bus stops in orderly lines for long periods. I've seen no pushing, shoving, yelling, or elbows, literal or metaphorical. The urban planning here is pristine.

There's one exception: the MTR stations are like enormous octopi under the city, reaching their tentacles out for literal miles underground. I can't figure out why that is: a weather consideration? A traffic-management technique? But it is literally possible to walk for 15 minutes from the metro entrance and still not reach the platform. If one is new to the city, say, and not familiar with a particular station, it makes accurately guessing how long it will take to reach a given destination particularly tricky.

5) Intriguing. As I wrote in my last entry, I'm incredibly intrigued by Hong Kong's gray-area-between-the-worlds status. It's a city comfortable with its colonial past that now dramatically mistreats its own migrant workers. It's a place where West and East coexist fluidly, but where an (ahem) particularly klutzy American breaking a coffee cup in a cafe is met with a full 20 seconds of utter silence. It's technically Chinese and defiantly independent, political, passionate. The only city in China that could publicly memorialize the Tiananmen Square protests on June 4-- and did, to the tune of 60,000 attendants. I can't wait to see more.

 A moment of silence in memory of those who lost their lives at Tiananmen in Causeway Bay

A walk through Linares

For a while now, I've been promising a description of my new home, Linares, a small city of 65,000 in northern Andalucia. In fact, I've had that very sentence written in a "draft" version of this blog for a few weeks, but if I'm following the 'open and honest blogging' policy I've begun this year, I have to explain that the "coffee conundrum" from the last true update here turned into a full-blown depression. I've had a few great recent adventures which kept me mostly sane (a wonderful weekend in Sevilla; an adventure in a nearby UNESCO Renaissance town), but for about a month I was seriously considering ending my European adventure, flying home, and seeing what the universe might offer elsewhere. I've had delays in blogging before, but none came from such a dark place. I'm happy to report that I seem to be getting past it, however, and I'm feeling ready to share Linares with you.

(Unfortunately, part of that Sevilla adventure involved the loss of my beloved camera, which means that for now this will have to be a tour solely in words. Photos to follow, however. I hope.)

When I first arrived in Linares, I was disappointed, I'll admit it. In an ironic twist, I spent last year having strangers tell me that Palencia was ugly when I thought it lovely; this time, I'd had people tell me Linares was pretty, and I found it initially the kind of boxy, utilitarian eyesore that represents the Franco- and post-Franco era building booms throughout this country. I had looked forward to the tangle of streets in the downtown area that google maps showed me (I've always loved getting lost in winding alleys) but found them actually TOO confusing-- for whatever reason, it's the standard here to only mark streets at the beginning and end, meaning that even the locals don't know the name of the streets (and confused apartment hunters from foreign lands are out of luck.) At first arrival, I was told that there was little in the way of live music--a perennial favorite activity for me--and was brought several days in a row by different people to the same "only cool bar in town" (Elviris, which does have a funky charm in its cheap drinks, old-school Americana decorations, and classic rock soundtrack.) For the first several weeks, I didn't see any posters advertising events, my tried-and-true method for finding out what's going on in a small town. Things were looking decidedly dark.

My outlook started to improve with a trip to Jaen, which I wrote about in the Spain Scoop post linked here last week. The city, which is the county seat of our province, has a reputation as ugly and isolated-- however, I found it lively, agreeable, and actually quite pretty. After that trip, I began to accept the possibility that things might not be exactly what they seemed. It's been a struggle, but in the past few weeks I've climbed out of that disappointment, and this is the good in what I found:

It's true that most of Linares is not an old place-- it launched from a tiny village to a successful mining town in the 1800s (and was thus one of the richest places in southern Spain for a time.) The settlement itself dates back to Roman times, in the form of Castulo, an ancient town whose ruins lie a few kilometers outside Linares. Still, there is a small "casco antiguo" or old town--a kilometer-square patch of grey-brick roads lined with orange trees and 200-year-old houses in various degrees of romantically crumbling disrepair--which still holds onto some charm. My own apartment lies on the edge of this area, next to an empty 19th century palace. A small statue of a rooster (which gives this 'Plaza del Gallo' its name) looks out onto the larger Plaza Nueva, a raised brick triangle lined with trees and set with benches, surrounded by ornate plasterwork buildings. I pass the plaza several times a day and catch glimpses of many an older couple chatting on the benches, furious mini-soccer game studiously avoiding the statue in the center, or teenage couple looking for somewhere to canoodle in peace.

In the opposite direction, a long, narrow street lined with old-style brick houses runs along the crest of a hill. It's customary to leave entryway doors slightly ajar, and the observant visitor can occasionally catch glimpses of beautifully-kept courtyards within. After a few hundred yards, the street runs through the postage-stamp size Plaza Siete Esquinas, with its arcing brickwork and elegant wrought iron fountain. Most mornings I take a right down a small hill here, toward the elementary school where I teach.

During the day, I can sometimes here the chiming bells of Iglesia Santa Maria between lessons on telling time or the castles of the United Kingdom. The church is one of the oldest in the city, and its tall, brown, octagonal steeple hints at its history as a mosque once upon a time. I always take a moment to appreciate the church's austere beauty before stopping at the small, family-run grocery across from the school to buy fresh pears, pomegranates, and whatever butchery product the owner can up-sell to me that particular day.

Following the alley around the Iglesia Santa Maria Plaza, one finds the Plaza del Ayuntamiento (city hall) spread out down wide, sweeping stairs. To one side, that bastion of Spanish urbanity Corte Ingles (the kind of department store that no longer exists in the US) takes up almost an entire block, and past this a long boulevard pauses at a plaza with fountains and statues of miners before dissolving into industrial blocks and, later, stands of olive trees. Across the street, the old city hall, another 19th century brownstone confection under constant renovation, sits waiting to be inhabited again. And in between, the brick plaza is lined with palm trees and discreetly arcing fountains. This weekend it was the site of a craft market, where I bought multiple pairs of 2-euro earrings and a beautiful, handmade stool made out of the stump of an old olive tree. In good weather, coffee and tapas bars put out tin tables to take advantage of the sunshine.

A smaller street out of the plaza leads to the heart of town, an area called "Ocho Puertas" (eight doors) that is the only approximation of "main street" in a town with no real center. It's a bustling shopping area with Madrid-style old buildings topped with icing flourishes and lined with balconies, and people come from all over the countryside to shop here. The diversity of stores calls to mind Palencia's Calle Mayor-- tasteful  cafes, bakeries, an art supply shop, a household appliance store, the requisite Zara (an extraordinarily popular European low-cost clothing store), and a seemingly unending supply of shoe-and-boot outlets. The streets here are lined with stylish streetlights, and for good reason-- at sunset, Linarenses turn out in droves for the "paseo" I grew to know and love in Palencia. It seems that it doesn't matter where you go in Spain, the people love their nightly strolls. Here one also finds the promised tangle of streets, replete with more shoe stores, a lovely coffee shop, and a produce market.

Another popular strolling spot lies just beyond Ocho Puertas: the Paseo de Linarejos is a wide boulevard lined with intricately tiled benches and the tallest, stateliest palms in the city. It starts from the beautiful (and, depending on your perspective, sadly or happily little-used) yellow-and-white art deco bullring and finishes at a confection of a church about a mile away. The paseo is popular with dog walkers, old couples, mothers with strollers, teenage skateboarders, and the occasional wayward underage drinker. Its sides are crowded with sweet shops, bars, and an old-style churro cafe. On Tuesdays and Saturdays a gypsy market sells all manner of clothing and fresh vegetables.

As for live music-- it's harder to find than I expected, but I've been happy with what I've found. Andre Segovia, who I recently heard described as 'one of the most important artists in the history of guitar', was from Linares, and the museum devoted to his life sits on Plaza Nueva, a two minute walk from my apartment. The museum hosts piano and classical guitar concerts fairly frequently, and they are almost always free and definitely always beautiful. Linares is also home to a variety of peñas, social clubs based around a topic, from sports to bullfighting to flamenco, and the flamenco peñas periodically host small free concerts with local artists and tapas at hand. The taranta, a particularly powerful and mournful genre of flamenco, has its origins in Linares and other mining towns in Jaen and the neighboring region of Almeria, and I'm growing to appreciate the pure emotion and vocal power singers of taranta display. On the other side stylistically, I've even attend a rock show, at a great theme bar on Paseo de Linarejos (Pub Fiction, with Pulp Fiction decorations, obviously.)

Lastly, but certanly not least, the great and mighty tapa deserves more than a mere mention in a passage on flamenco. Jaen (and the region directly south, Granada) is famous as Tapa Country: not only are the tapas here often generous, but by law they must come free with every drink. (Notice I say tapas and not pintxos-- see last summer's posts on Basque Country for discussion on that subject.) A night out in Linares is not complete without a stop for tapas, which can take the form of a big plate of jamon serrano, a homemade empanada, a small portion of meatballs in savory sauce, or a half kebab. On Thursday, Friday, or Saturday nights the bars overflow with Linarenses eating, drinking, and making merry until well past midnight, making slow circuits around the city to eat a bite here and a morsel there. Catholicism is one thing here, but tapas are a religion, too, and one I certainly can get behind as I settle into my new Andalucian life.