Mainlining Tourism

When you sign up for a tour of Hong Kong with a group of mainlanders, there are some preconceptions: you know, yellow caps and black trousers, lit fags and little flags. But when I went, it wasn’t like that. It was more frighteningly bemusing than I could have imagined, and not because of any mainlander - but because of that funny little bubble of reality right here in Hong Kong.

Our tour started 10 minutes late, at 8:30am from the Park Lane Hotel. It was, of course, pouring. Damp, bleary-eyed and giddy with anticipation for the day ahead, I hopped on the bus to find a small group of travelers on board. There were just two families; only one actually from the mainland – Fujian, I think – and one from Taiwan. Aside from the subtle polo-shirt-in-waist look sported by the father of the latter family, neither group was particularly distinct from your average local, nor did they have any inclination to chat with others on the bus, which, by the time we left, carried ten people including myself and my photographer, posing as Guangzhou tourists.

By 8:45, I had decided that this was going to go down as a disappointment in my book. None of my fellow tourists spoke to each other; there was no loud, brash exclamation, no spontaneous smoking (I was later to discover that not one of them smoked), no preference for squatting over cushy seating, no tour stickers, no hats, no loudspeakers – not even a single flag. Nothing. By the time we got to the lookout point on Stubbs Road near the Peak, the most interesting on the ride had proved to be our tour guide. She was a specimen I would have delighted in having as a follower instead of leader, as she nattered away with seemingly genuine enthusiasm about the price of an apartment first in Happy Valley, then Tai Hang Road, followed inevitably by – gasp –one on the Peak. As she attempted, in vain, to arouse oohs, aahs, and a general feeling of intense financial inferiority within the group, it occurred to me that this woman was probably a budding real estate agent who would have quoted an exorbitant price for a new cockroach bungalow built “Riviera-style” in a Man Kam To swamp without twitching a nerve.

At the lookout point, we wandered around for about ten minutes. With one of the greatest urban vistas in the world at our feet, the running commentary fell mute, and we were left to stare in solitude and silence. For the guide, it seemed that grander buildings like Hong Kong stadium or the Happy Valley racetrack were subjects of whimsical irrelevance to the wide-eyed visitor, and were appropriately ignored, presumably because neither area is currently divisible into mini-plots for public purchase.

We made our way through what was now drizzle towards Repulse Bay, bopping to an increasingly dramatic warble coming from the front of the bus. Upon arrival, the group was given a brief description of the Tin Hau Temple on the far side of the bay, with interspersed words of wisdom on how, for example, one must rub a certain statue for posterity, but with the right hand only. We were left to our own devices to actually find the temple, and most of us wandered along the beach instead.

Twenty minutes later, we were off to the Golden Bauhinia at the Convention Centre; the gleaming, forever blooming paragon of group tourism in Hong Kong. My photographer and I were the only ones who got off the bus when we arrived, as the clouds above let loose a torrential downpour. The Bauhinia is surrounded by photography touts, insisting to cautious mainland tourists that their style, angle and ability far exceeds theirs. “See, look, when I take a photo of you, I will be able to get the tip of the roof of the Convention Centre into the frame of the picture. If you look at his picture [points to photographer five feet away], he doesn’t get it. It’s nowhere near as good.” Ka-ching, $10 in the bag for that dude. Even when the rain lightened, all the other members of our tour group were still on the bus, indifferent to the giant glaring flower outside.