The Two Faces of Hong Kong

As you follow the winding road around Repulse Bay you come across a segmented apartment building. Apartment buildings are not, per se, curious. However, this one is just that; curious. Mainly due to the gaping hole in the dead centre of the complex. I ask my guide and she states that this building was built in front of the Dragon’s eye, and of course it would be bad fortune to not allow the dragon to see out.

One wonders what the dragon thinks about the rest of the complex... Thankfully, dragons seem to be not so fussy.

One of the many curious things about Hong Kong is an underlying nature which is so often.... binary. Even the  name seems to echo itself with a subsequent and seductive duality. There often seems to be two facets to all things Hong Kong.

Communism versus capitalism. Concealment vs. the rule of law. The island vs. the mainland. Britain vs. China. Culture vs. Modernity. Technology and tradition. Socialism and ancient Chinese geomancy (the highly entertaining and startlingly helpful 'Feng Shui'). Even the political sound bite meant to keep both communist and post-Brit happy matches the dual nature, “one country, two systems.”

I was sitting at dinner one evening with a friend’s aunt, and the aunt’s daughter. Both mother and daughter spoke impeccable English, having been trained in two of the best preparatory schools in ‘the colony’ (the mother’s most affectionate term for her beloved homeland). The curious double-headed dragon emerged again, as, when the two women spoke, the mother enunciated in polished British tones, and her daughter’s English suggested she might have stepped straight from an American college - more American intonations than most inhabitants of a Boston Market on a weekend!

As a funny aside, the mother was vehemently against ‘one country, two systems’. “How can the Queen go to war over a rock in Argentina, and forsake the jewel in the Empire?”, she bemoaned.

I shrugged my shoulders. Maybe the Falklands didn’t involve maintenance of a dragon....
 

© KM Francis 2008

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