Sherrill and I visited more than 60 countries and most of the United States during our 52 years of marriage. This is number 36 of a series about our lives and travels. If you scroll down, you'll come to earlier posts in this series. To start at the beginning of our marriage and adventures together look at the Archives list in the sidebar and start with May, 2017. Older posts you'll find below that are a previous series about later travels.
Sherrill & Bruce, Hong Kong, 1990
"We're going to Hong Kong," Sherrill told me.
She liked to surprise me with these semi-impromptu trips.
The name called up images of the exotic and dangerous, and not just in old movies. My Uncle Douglas, my father's older brother, had told me about traveling to Hong Kong many years ago, flying from San Francisco on one of the huge Pan American Airways' flying boats, stopping at Honolulu, Midway island, and other strategic points across the Pacific for refueling, splashing belly first in the water with each landing and taking off in great waves of white spray. This was the old Hong Kong, before all the towers had started to rise, dramatically changing both the skyline and the nature of the city. He never wanted to return, he said, because he knew that this wonderful, magical place had been spoiled by development.
"I wandered through tiny alleys," he told me, "beggars following me, men offering me fantastic deals and sometimes their sisters, but it was beautiful, too, the green hills rising from the harbor, the blue water crowded with little wood boats and islands. No skyscrapers."
I was only a kid, so I asked him if—since he was there just after World War Two—spies were creeping around the city, too. He smiled and shrugged.
"Who knows? Maybe."
She liked to surprise me with these semi-impromptu trips.
The name called up images of the exotic and dangerous, and not just in old movies. My Uncle Douglas, my father's older brother, had told me about traveling to Hong Kong many years ago, flying from San Francisco on one of the huge Pan American Airways' flying boats, stopping at Honolulu, Midway island, and other strategic points across the Pacific for refueling, splashing belly first in the water with each landing and taking off in great waves of white spray. This was the old Hong Kong, before all the towers had started to rise, dramatically changing both the skyline and the nature of the city. He never wanted to return, he said, because he knew that this wonderful, magical place had been spoiled by development.
"I wandered through tiny alleys," he told me, "beggars following me, men offering me fantastic deals and sometimes their sisters, but it was beautiful, too, the green hills rising from the harbor, the blue water crowded with little wood boats and islands. No skyscrapers."
I was only a kid, so I asked him if—since he was there just after World War Two—spies were creeping around the city, too. He smiled and shrugged.
"Who knows? Maybe."
Sherrill on a Hong Kong street, 1990 The Hong Kong that Sherrill and I visited in 1990 was a different city from the one that my uncle knew in 1945, but looking back from 2018 and going through the photographs we took then and at recent pictures on the internet, I can see how much it has continued to change. Parts of the city then were still made up of old, low-rise buildings, some in poor repair. Much of the harbor was still home to wooden junks lined up near each other. Hong Kong didn't stop being part of the United Kingdom and transfer to the People's Republic of China—after 156 years as a British colony—until seven years after we were there. Sherrill and I watched on television the official transition when Prince Charles flew to Hong Kong to represent the Queen and the U.K.
Sherrill had collected some self-guided walking tours to help us explore different neighborhoods and areas. As usual, she had done a lot of research before our trip. This was a different kind of world than we'd experienced on most of our travels so far. We loved wandering through the enormous Central Market with hundreds of different stalls and then along narrow streets and alleys, discovering little places for snacks, asking strangers for directions, and poking around in street markets, whether fruits and vegetables, fish, silver and gold, house wares, or old clothes were being sold. We were in one of the most densely populated cities on earth, but didn't mind getting lost and then figuring out what do next.
We bought bus passes so that we could get around the city easily, becoming very familiar with the gaudy, advertisement-covered double-decker buses. The 52 floor Jardine House probably was monarch of Hong Kong's skyscrapers, then. Today, the city's tallest building reaches more than twice as high. We visited several temples, watched street barbers clipping the hair of old men, and stopped at incense shops and a roasted meat shop displaying charcoal-cooked ducks and chickens.
"You should get a suit made," Sherrill told me when we looked in the window of a tailor's tiny shop. A young man who probably was the tailor's son or maybe apprentice peered out at us. I still can remember the hopeful, almost hungry, look in the boy's eyes. "Very cheap and ready before we leave," Sherrill added. "Guaranteed to fit perfectly."
"Then you have to get some clothes, too. How about some dresses?"
Neither of us wanted to take the time to do it, so we left the bustling area of shops and hotels and made a trip to "The Land Between" along the border with China, a very different part of Hong Kong than we'd seen up to then, a land of green hills, terraced fields, duck farms, and rural markets. We might have been going back in time, back to the Hong Kong that my Uncle Douglas had remembered.
"Then you have to get some clothes, too. How about some dresses?"
Neither of us wanted to take the time to do it, so we left the bustling area of shops and hotels and made a trip to "The Land Between" along the border with China, a very different part of Hong Kong than we'd seen up to then, a land of green hills, terraced fields, duck farms, and rural markets. We might have been going back in time, back to the Hong Kong that my Uncle Douglas had remembered.
One evening we splurged, going to a restaurant that Sherrill had discovered in her research. We knew that it was going to be pricy when we saw both a Rolls Royce and a Bentley parked in front. (At least, we'd made a reservation, unusual for us when traveling, and were wearing the best outfits that we'd brought with us.) The place was elegant, but in a very understated way and the service, of course, was beyond perfect, if that's possible. The meal, as we'd expected, was delicious, yet also understated. Then, as we were eating, a hidden half-sized door in the wainscoting opened up near our table and a small woman, bent over, emerged, carrying what looked like a whisk broom and dust pan, closed the secret door, and got to work tidying up around some tables a little further away.
We tried to laugh in an understated way.
We tried to laugh in an understated way.
Macau, a city famous—or notorious—in old books and film noir movies for sin and corruption: "We have to go there," I remember telling Sherrill before the trip.
"Okay, but it won't be like the movies, you know."
A jetfoil carried us to Macau amid sprays of white water. When we started looking around the old Portuguese colony, we were surprised at how rundown and sleazy a lot of it seemed to be—just like in the old movies. Some of the buildings, in fact, appeared abandoned and in danger of collapsing. We looked into a couple of the casinos and gambling dens, but the air in them was so thick with tobacco smoke that we quickly backed out. And no sign of either Robert Mitchum or Jane Russell.
"Okay, but it won't be like the movies, you know."
A jetfoil carried us to Macau amid sprays of white water. When we started looking around the old Portuguese colony, we were surprised at how rundown and sleazy a lot of it seemed to be—just like in the old movies. Some of the buildings, in fact, appeared abandoned and in danger of collapsing. We looked into a couple of the casinos and gambling dens, but the air in them was so thick with tobacco smoke that we quickly backed out. And no sign of either Robert Mitchum or Jane Russell.
Sherrill. Temple of Makok, Macau I've read that Macau also has evolved in the years since we were there and has become modern and glamorous, but then it was far from being either one. We didn't go to either the dog races or the "Parisian" strip show review. Maybe that's where we would've spied the film noir characters. However, we did explore the exotic Lou Lim Iok Gardens and admired the ornate stone facade that was all that remained of the 17th century Portuguese church of St. Paul.
The part of Macau that we liked best, though, was down in the heart of the old city where we asked one of the fortune tellers about our futures (he looked worried when he gazed at our palms, but for an extra tip promised that all would be good) and where we discovered a smelly concentration of tiny factories and workshops and watched people carving wood chests, putting together iron bedsteads, beating out aluminum bowls, stamping out toy soldiers, making noodles, painting wooden shoes, and pounding and blending medicines. Sherrill bought a folded paper package of herbal medicine, but I don't remember what it was supposed to cure. It looked pretty disgusting, though. I don't know if she ever used any of it.
The part of Macau that we liked best, though, was down in the heart of the old city where we asked one of the fortune tellers about our futures (he looked worried when he gazed at our palms, but for an extra tip promised that all would be good) and where we discovered a smelly concentration of tiny factories and workshops and watched people carving wood chests, putting together iron bedsteads, beating out aluminum bowls, stamping out toy soldiers, making noodles, painting wooden shoes, and pounding and blending medicines. Sherrill bought a folded paper package of herbal medicine, but I don't remember what it was supposed to cure. It looked pretty disgusting, though. I don't know if she ever used any of it.
Bruce, Pak Tai Temple, Cheung Chau Island Sherrill made sure that we took several side trips to some of the small islands dotting Hong Kong's blue waters, visiting temples and just walking to see what we might discover. It hardly mattered where we went or what we saw, we both enjoyed the ferries that transported us back and forth. I kept a sketch book in my pocket for quick portraits of people, especially old folks and children. Some of them, I told myself, looked quite sinister. From time to time on the islands, we encountered ancient banyan trees even larger than the ones we'd seen when we visited Sherrill's mother in Hawaii. It's easy to understand why these trees often are called sacred. A magical aura does seem to float among their many branches and reaching tendrils.
We were aware that in the time we had we could see very little of the dense, complex reality that was Hong Kong, but hoped, unlike my uncle, to go back one day—however, as it turned out, we never made it.
Back home in Berkeley, someone asked Sherrill if she wasn't afraid when we were lost among the crowds of Hong Kong.
"Are you kidding?" she replied. "I work in downtown Oakland. A man was shot to death on the library's front steps. A few weeks later, there was a gang killing in the McDonald's two blocks away. Hong Kong felt completely safe."
To be continued....
We were aware that in the time we had we could see very little of the dense, complex reality that was Hong Kong, but hoped, unlike my uncle, to go back one day—however, as it turned out, we never made it.
Back home in Berkeley, someone asked Sherrill if she wasn't afraid when we were lost among the crowds of Hong Kong.
"Are you kidding?" she replied. "I work in downtown Oakland. A man was shot to death on the library's front steps. A few weeks later, there was a gang killing in the McDonald's two blocks away. Hong Kong felt completely safe."
To be continued....
Sketches on ferry from Hong Kong to Cheung Chau
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