Newsgroups: rec.travel
Subject: To Hong Kong (A Travel Series) #06
From: earlj@mdcbbs.com
Date: 7 Apr 92 09:31:25 GMT
Organization: M&E (Division of EDS), Cypress CA
Nntp-Posting-User: earlj

             <<< NOTES::NOTES$DISK:[NOTES$LIBRARY]SOAPBOX.NOTE;1 >>>
                            -< Soapbox Conference >-
================================================================================
Note 22.50                     For Travel Only...                      50 of 369
BBS::EARLJ "Earl Yin Jew MDC M&E-SWEng"              68 lines   2-AUG-1989 17:00
                         -< A Gastronomic Transition >-
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    I didn't tell you about the Emperor's Palace, Tokyo Tower, the trains
    and buses, the nightclubs, television shows, shopping  districts and
    other such tourist attractions.  Maybe they're best left unsaid.  You
    can learn all about these when you get there, or from reading glossy
    publications. In a way, this series isn't a "travel log".  What would
    you call it, earlj's ramblings ?

    What interests me is the people's subsistence:  their culture, their
    roles, their food, how they live, what they think, their motivations,
    and life's adaptations.  These are insights that one must see for
    themselves, and learn to observe.  The Japanese are a unique and
    distinctive people, but their modern society is more closely aligned
    with ours.  Thus, we have a natural backdrop for reference.  Where I
    had no footing is the rest of Asia.  Much of what I discovered is too
    far removed for me to convey with "vision".  Recklessly, I explored my
    paradigm of The Twilight Zone.

    Realize you're reading this while safely sheltered on American soil.
    Don't assume our "world" is also their "world", it isn't.  Acknowledge
    that there are "concepts of existence" totally unknowable to us. Where
    we have education, others may have only tradition and superstition. 
    And know that you would be a different person in such a place.  I was.

    ----------------------------------------------------------------------

    [Evening of June 26th, 1989]
    The island swallowed me as I flopped off the 747.  Finally, this was 
    Hong Kong airport after stops at Seoul and Taipei.  With the stagnant
    air hot and thick with humidity, it felt oppressively alive.  As the
    airport processed me through Immigration, luggage, and Customs, I
    pictured a stomach churning its victims.  Everywhere bustling, it was
    crowded with chinese and the steady sing-song of Cantonese drummed on
    like a heartbeat.

    Insidiously as if possessed, fragments of random thoughts seeped into
    my conciousness.  Never having used such words or such sounds, how
    could I understand them ?  In a schizophrenic stupor, I fearfully shut
    off my senses and found my inner peace intact.  I was not mad, it was
    just the ambient conversations in the local tongue.  My childhood with
    Guangzhou (Canton, China) born parents impressed an instinctive ear for
    Cantonese.  But I can't speak Cantonese !!

    As I lugged along outside, I found a waiting line for TaxiCabs (alas,
    my pyloric salvation from churning walls).  Handing the driver a
    bilingual businesscard of my hotel destination, I grunted comprehension
    of his "yes-or-no" Cantonese questions and smiled.  My "small-colon"
    Taxi ride took me through the tight bowels of Kowloon (a mainland
    district of Hong Kong).   When I arrived, the monsoon rain fell in
    buckets.

    Nodding to "Mr. Appendix", he opened the big hotel door to the front
    desk lobby.  The "large colon" storage and dessication ended with me
    signing Traveler's Checks at the Cashier's Counter.  I was certainly
    sucked dry; Hong Kong is quite expensive today.  In anxious
    anticipation of an "anal escape" from Hong Kong, I glided towards my
    room in a packed elevator.  We all smelled badly (of course).  Running
    for cover, fighting for air, I fumbled with the key.

    As I passed through the "final challenge", I felt the push-and-squeeze
    of my digestive transition to another tao.  Secure and undistracted,  I
    felt the glimmers of belonging and melding in the land of my roots.
    This alien world has its language and history etched in my heritage. 
    On this continent of my forebears, would I be welcome ?  Could I handle
    what I find ?  Would it make me proud ?

    I slept that night blissfully innocent of what laid before me.

    earlj