Kowloon

We road around to #7, which is the Star Ferry Terminal and road the Ferry across to Kowloon, which is New Jersey to HK’s NY.

That is to say, cheaper housing, but still lots of shops and character.  Plus considerably more offers to help set us up with everything from Rolex Watches to custom-made mens suits.

Lots of hawkers and open markets.  Apparently, that’s part of what you go there for.  We stayed on the bus and rode the route.

We learned that lots of “domestic help” get Sundays off.  Since they often live with the families that employ them (as best we can figure), they tend to congregate in public places (parks, squares, etc) on Sunday and to some extent self-segregate based on nationality, etc.  We saw lots of picnics going on today.  Interestingly enough, many of them (most were women) put plastic sheeting or umbrellas or cardboard and things up to shield them from the view of passersby (although not so much from open, double-decker tour busses.

Interesting sights on this side of the harbor included:

The Peninsula Hotel, where English High Tea is supposed to be a must-see event.  That’s on our agenda for tomorrow afternoon.  Built in 1924, it was the place the elite stayed (and still stay, apparently).

Kowloon was the last stop on the Trans-Siberian Railway.

The British claimed HK in 1843.  Never mind that it was already “owned” by the Chinese people who lived there.  After some squabbling, it was eventually leased from China, along with Kowloon and several hundred little islands, for 99 years beginning in 1898.  It reverted to the Chinese in 1997.

Kowloon and Hong Kong were invaded by Japan on December 7, 1941.  Most people in the US probably didn’t catch that because there were other things in the headlines on December 8.  The British held out for 2 weeks until they surrendered on Christmas day – with the surrender occurring in the Peninsula Hotel.  At the beginning of WWII, there were 1.6 million people living in Hong Kong.  That was reduced to less than 600,000 by the end of the war.

Kowloon covers 47 square kilometers and is home to 2.1 million people, making it one of the most densely populated urban areas in the world.

90% of the travel in Hong Kong is on public transportation.

There are 8,000+ skyscrapers in Hong Kong, which is roughly 50% more than in NYC.  The amount of construction going on here is remarkable. 

One of the tall buildings, I think the International Finance Center, but am not sure – has an elevator that goes from the 2^nd floor to the 100^th in about 60 seconds.  No, we won’t be riding that, either.

You don’t see many police officers, but there are cameras everywhere.  It’s also very clean here.  While there seem to be lots of smokers, you don’t see cigarette butts on the ground.

The Chinese Alphabet has over 47,000 unique characters.  A working knowledge of the language is between 3 and 4K characters.

By this time, we’d figured out there wasn’t much that we needed on the Kowloon side and opted to take the Star Ferry back and catch the Big Red Bus around and grab something to eat.