Little Hong Kong Differences

I’ve been back from my trip to Hong Kong for a lit­tle over a month now. Here are some lit­tle dif­fer­ences I’ve noticed between there and here.

Parking

Space is at a pre­mium in Hong Kong, so park­ing spots are tiny. Most cars have fold­ing side-mirrors, and prox­im­ity sen­sors that beep faster the closer you are to some­thing when back­ing up. Vans and SUVs have mir­rors on the back win­dows that lets a dri­ver see the back bumper through the rear-view mir­ror. That way, you can squeeze into a space with­out any guess work, although it takes about three or four turns, Austin Powers style.

Some park­ing lots also have these lights above the spots that let peo­ple know if a car is parked in the space — green means it’s avail­able. That way, you can see what spots are free with a quick glance, instead of dri­ving around and hunting.

Taking care of the elderly

In the parks, there are work­out areas for the elderly. They include things like Gazelles, bench step­pers, and wheels you can rotate for flex­i­bil­ity. This is so awe­some. Canada should have some­thing like this. My grandma used come to this park to work out before she had colon cancer.

How cool is it that the sym­bol they use is the sil­hou­ette of some­one doing sin­gle whip. I found this sym­bol in many parks actu­ally, and I think it means that it’s a pub­lic park.

There are also speak­ers that beep at the traf­fic lights to let blind peo­ple know when to cross, and sub­way esca­la­tors that click con­stantly, so they know where to get on.

Western com­mer­cials

Sometimes the com­mer­cials are dubbed over, so there are Caucasian actors in them speak­ing Chinese. Sometimes, they’re redone com­pletely, such as the Oreo cookie com­mer­cial with the two young girls, where the younger one tries to dunk her cookie in her milk, except she has a sip cup. So she ends up pour­ing the milk onto the cookie and laugh­ing. In Hong Kong this is re-done, pretty much shot-for-shot, except with two Chinese boys.

Also, instead of the slo­gan “Red Bull gives you wings”, the car­toons use incon­sis­tent vari­a­tions, such as, “No red bull, how can I fly?” (in Chinese).

Soft water

Plumbing pro­vides soft water, or softer than what I get at home in the city. That means your skin doesn’t dry out, even with even hot showers.

Electrical out­lets

I still don’t under­stand how the elec­tri­cal out­lets work. There seems to be one type of plug but many dif­fer­ent types of adapters, not includ­ing the ones for North American plugs. Two prongs, three prongs, square prongs, round prongs, flat prongs, or com­bi­na­tions thereof. This is a pic­ture of the adapters I needed to get my MacBook Pro and exter­nal hard drive going.

No cen­tral air or hot water

A lot of Hong Kong liv­ing is in apart­ments, so there’s no cen­tral air. That means an air con­di­tion­ing unit in every room, some­times two if the room is big. The units aren’t always con­nected to win­dows, (as you can see in this pic­ture at the top right), which makes me won­der where the hot air goes. Is there a vent behind the A/C unit? Also, since these units are high up, they have fancy remotes with LCD screens that con­trol both on/off and the temperature.

There’s also no cen­tral hot water tank. Each shower and sink has it’s own small gas-powered tank, which instantly ignites the gas to heat the water com­ing in as soon as the hot water is turned on from the faucet. It’s a lit­tle scary to be tak­ing a shower in the tub, and see­ing a plume of blue flames across from you at all times.

No day­light savings

Hong Kong doesn’t have day­light sav­ings, because the dif­fer­ence in light between the sum­mer and the win­ter isn’t great enough. This was espe­cially con­fus­ing, when I went from Hong Kong being 13 hours ahead before I got there, to 12 hours ahead when I landed, because my flight was on the day that we’re sup­posed to adjust our clocks in North America.

Lone eaters

I would see peo­ple eat­ing by them­selves all the time in Hong Kong, whereas in North America it seems to be a lit­tle more taboo, like say­ing you don’t have any friends or some­thing. This guy was watch­ing a TV in the cor­ner to hear the race results at the Royal Hong Kong Jockey Club, since bet­ting on them is so pop­u­lar. Actually, pretty much every­one in here was fol­low­ing the race, prob­a­bly for the same reasons.

Eight-digit tele­phone numbers

With an extra num­ber, the pac­ing becomes dif­fer­ent when telling some­one your num­ber. Most peo­ple seem to break it up in 4 and 4. My dad tried to tell me his num­ber, and broke it up into 3, 3, and 2. I couldn’t under­stand him. It’s like he was speak­ing a dif­fer­ent language.

Boiling drink­ing water

Everyone has lit­tle water can­teens in the kitchen, to keep water hot, and a jug for room tem­per­a­ture water. That’s because the water that comes out of the tap can’t be trusted, so any water used for drink­ing is boiled before­hand. I’ve been told that if you drink hot water out of the faucet with­out boil­ing, there will be the taste of other foods in there. This makes the water used to rinse your mouth some­what scary.

Pizza Hut and McCafé

Pizza Hut’s in Hong Kong are way classier than what we have here. They also serve a wider vari­ety of foods, like the honey lemon tea, and this snack plat­ter, with choco­late driz­zled peaches and strawberries.

There’s also a McDonald’s ver­sion of a cof­fee house, named McCafé, which com­petes with high-end cof­fee shops. They’re usu­ally located inside McDonalds, and serve more expen­sive fare.

Sharing tables

It’s not uncom­mon to share tables with other peo­ple at a restau­rant. If there isn’t enough space, it means the restau­rant is very good. This was prob­a­bly one of the hard­est things to get used to. No pri­vate con­ver­sa­tions, and since Chinese food can be rather messy, you really have to be careful.

Toothpicks at every table

Since it’s not con­sid­ered impo­lite in Chinese cul­ture to use a tooth­pick while sit­ting at the table after a meal (pro­vided your hand is cov­er­ing your mouth), there are tooth­pick dis­pensers on the tables in restau­rants and in houses.

Also, instead of black pep­per, which is not com­mon for Chinese cook­ing, there are white pep­per shakers.

Gas prices

I was in my uncle’s Jaguar, and we went to a gas sta­tion to fill up one time. I don’t know if the tank was empty, but the gas cost him $100 CAD. I asked him how much he drove to have to fill up, and he told me 300km, which put the price of gas at roughly 2–3 times what it is in Canada. It’s pretty much all stop and go in Hong Kong. It seemed like stretches of high­way aren’t longer than 10km, and the speed limit is 80km/h.

Crosswalks

Crosswalks are divided in two parts of the street, with a walk sig­nal that often only gets you half way to the mid­dle of the street, cause it’s mounted to the median. There’s usu­ally a “don’t walk” sig­nal for the other half. This is because traf­fic is com­monly allowed to flow in one direc­tion but not the other, even though it’s com­ing from the oppo­site side, and not perpendicular.

There’s also a gen­er­ous median in the mid­dle; since Hong Kong is so pop­u­lous, it lets a lot more peo­ple stand in the mid­dle and wait. You’ll notice in the pic­ture that you can’t run straight across the street, because the rail­ings of the median go for a bit of a jog to one side first.

Taxis

Taxis are every­where in Hong Kong. The fares seem to be about the same, which is strange, con­sid­er­ing how much more expen­sive gas is over there. The dri­vers can hit a switch to open the back pas­sen­ger doors auto­mat­i­cally. Very use­ful when your hands are full.

Parks

There seems to be a lot of fund­ing that goes into parks and recre­ational areas. That means there are always tons of work­ers who look after the parks, whether it’s trim­ming shrub­bery, sweep­ing floors, pick­ing up lit­ter, clean­ing the bath­rooms, water­ing plants, and the like.

The trees and flow­ers are also often labeled with lit­tle yel­low plaques that have the Chinese and Latin names.

No stars in the sky

I didn’t notice any stars while I was in Hong Kong. Which I was not sur­prised about, as it’s so urban­ized. Light pol­lu­tion is just one of the many pol­lu­tions that seem to affect such a pop­u­lous city.

Subway sys­tem

The sub­way has stores that line the halls. Not just con­ve­nience stores, but travel agen­cies, bak­eries, tea shops, and Chinese med­i­cine shops. You can see them near the begin­ning of my Hong Kong: Markets video.

The voice that announces the stops is pre-recorded in Cantonese, Mandarin, and English (with a British accent). This is dif­fer­ent from the Toronto sub­way sys­tem, where the train dri­ver announces each stop in English only, with a gar­bled voice. The maps on sub­way cars also have blink­ing LEDs that let you know where you are. It’s a super easy sys­tem to use.

Sometimes, the dis­tance to get from one sub­way car to another is pretty big, even though it’s at the same sta­tion, so there are not only esca­la­tors, but mov­ing walk­ways to get between them faster.

1st floor vs ground floor

In Chinese, the ground floor is dif­fer­ent from the 1st floor, and the 1st floor is really the sec­ond floor. This is really con­fus­ing, because when a sign is trans­lated to English, the first floor is the ground floor. So even though you have one sign with both Chinese and English on it explain­ing what’s on each floor, the Chinese will say “1st floor” and directly across the trans­la­tion will be “2nd floor”.