Hong Kong, where 'east meets west'

                                                       

              Hong Kong is the #1 RE-export city in the world. Goods are shipped from mainland China to ports all over, such a the Port of Palm Beach, the place where I end up after most adventures: broke at my parents house, and trying to make sense of my life. I sit on the seawall watching the cargo ships loaded with  Tropicana containers. Like an exported fruit shipped thousands of miles from its native soil, I reflect on my journey to Nepal, trying to better understand my own American roots. I hope you enjoy the juice...



                                       
                                                Wal-mart isles begin here: Port of  Hong Kong

    Like a well programmed consumer, I shopped for the cheapest ticket to Kathmandu, which left me with a 20 hour lay over in Hong Kong. I probably would have saved money by purchasing the more expensive ticket, but looking back...venturing into the Asian mid-night was worth every Hong Kong Dollar spent for a four am conversation that once again made me realize: I am running. Yet, its foreign lands that exaggerate just who you are. 

                     The mirror reflects the closest when the furthest away from home. 

                                                                          

       I look up the weather before departing San Francisco: 30 degrees. 14 hours later I land in a humid armpit. The heat and palm trees remind me of my Floridian childhood. I'm sweating in my wool sweater and leather boots, feeling like an idiot for not realizing 30 C is 83 F. 

        After a 45 minute double-decker bus ride from the airport (located on the island of Hong Kong) to the mainland, I'm lost looking for the Sincere House hostel in the Kowloon neighborhood. The Chinese street signs feel like props in a film I agreed to, but I forgot my lines. The only one I remember is my mother's voice, "Don't leave the airport in the middle of the night. Its dangerous!" I wonder through seedy piss and fish smelling alleyways, wondering if I should have listened. Not just this time, but all the times I let her wise words slide beneath a rug of defiance, woven with threads of fierce independence. To begin recalling all the times I wrote her off is beating a rug out. I don't want to see my dirt. Not here. Not now. I've been up for 20 hours am a navigating with an internal compass that can't find its true north. It points into an addiction fueled past leaving me more lost in the moment: somewhere in a Cantonese current; the main ethnicity of Kowloon.

     The foreign sea of bodies, lean like fish, swim across eight lanes of traffic onto sidewalks lined with street vendors selling everything from Doc Martins to baskets piled with strange roots. The stores are packed with young Chinese people shopping in between selffies. Instagram is legal here, unlike the neighboring communist China. Trash cans overflow with styro-foam to go boxes. The air is thick and lingers with exhaust fumes. Some wear face masks. Their sandaled feet are without any dirt. Groups of girls pass with powdered faces like the Cathway Pacific airline stewardesses. They remind me of geisha dolls with their white porcelain skin, red lips and penciled eyebrows. There slender fingers as delicate as their soft spoken voices asking passengers what they'd like for dinner. 

      "I ordered the vegetarian meal. No, I won't take the pasta dish. It has gluten!" The man seated in front of me reminds me who I've been for past eight vegan-ish years: snobby, strict and ungrateful. As the stewardess informs they only have meatloaf, I say thank you, wishing my meditation teacher in Maine could see me now, eating mysterious meat somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.  

    "I'm not cooking this Tyson chicken! It's from slaughter houses where they burn the peaks off and let their feet grow around the cages," I bitch during a retreat where my work/trade is cooking.

"That's all in your mind. Is any of that happening in this moment? In this kitchen there is a package of chicken." 

"But it did happen!"

"I agree. It's a slick world."

"Why not buy organic free-range?"

"Do tonglen or dwell in your negativity. It is up to you, Anna."

      Tonglen is a Buddhist practice where one breathes in the suffering of another and exhales healing prayers. It's a practice of exchanging one's pain for another's. I tried explaining this to my younger brother only to confirm his belief that his sister is crazy and off to a country where she will get even crazier. He asks what I am going to do Nepal as he drives me to the airport. I consider explaining how I want to do 111,111 prostrations with a shaved head; my image of Buddhism that would later be shattered in the land where Buddha was born.   
  
       "I am going to trek the Himalayan mountains with a Nepali girl I met this summer at a Nepalese Temple in Portland, Oregon," I say as he cuts off other drivers at 100 mph in his brand new BMW. By the time we reach the airport, I yell at him for driving like "an asshole"... For hitting the dog the night before.... For everything I held in while staying at his house for the past few days. He hands me a wad of $100s for my trip and says be safe. I walk to the nearest bench and ball for losing my patience and leaving on a bad note. He gave me the money but I won't ask for because I don't feel I deserve it. The money I can't figure out how to make yet with my odd jobs that I convince myself I do because I need as much time as possible for my spiritual practices. Practices that Nepal made me realize I am hiding behind. My brother shows up shamelessly; this I admire and am utterly repulsed by. 
         Siblings, those we love enough to hate on. Hate that hardens one's heart to know the its softness of love beneath.     

   I depart for Kathmandu with a heavy and surprised heart..  for once I am not travelling on a tight wad budget. I'm travelling with gifted dollars that make me question my worth with each purchase, and eventually remind me of unconditional love during the coming months. 

      Somehow I finally find the Sincere House, the cheapest hostel in Hong Kong according to a Google search.  On the 12th floor of a weathered cement building, Keith, the Chinese guy who checks me in, tells me how loves the The Heat after he sees my Miami passport. "American coaches. So good. Keep players on court, off streets." I share how Dwayne Wade's foundation gave me money to teach children film after school. "You like true American. Good person." 

         I close my eyes wondering what it means to be American....we are good people, whose corporations AKA a government that does bad things... By fault, we are guilty, so we try to  be extra perfect....if only gluten-free could equal guilt free...Sleepless, I step outside my tiny stark white hospital like room. 

        Keith is leaning over the balcony strung with laundry like all the floors below the open courtyard. Jet lagged? He asks and the conversation carries itself into the dawn. 
-Where do you live in USA?
- I just came from California where my brother lives.
-My sister is there. I've been waiting for visa for 13 years, only less than ten to go.
-Wow. 
-I can't wait to get to America one day and buy a mustang from the 70s. Yeah, an old one.  Make up for all the years I lose.
-Lose?
-Yeah,not getting to America sooner.
- So... you are waiting to start your life? 
- I'm missing out on the good life. 
     Keith goes on about all the things he wants in America: to go camping, drive across the country, have a big house and a pool, buy a semi truck like his sister's husband in LA and have a Mexican drive it. Keith works 7 days a week; on Sundays he does half days. This buys you a shoe box apartment in Hong Kong. He wants spacious living and ease, the life I reject yet live, and now judge him for wanting. Like him, I realize I too am waiting for life to start. In Nepal I'll become a real Buddhist. A real writer. A real dancer. 

        Our conversation reminds me of ones I've had in Haiti and British Guyana. Trying to tell people who have it harder than me, that having it easier is actually harder in other ways. Impossible. I can barely wrap my mind around it, let alone theirs.  

                                           No puking street food in the hostel elevator.

     I wonder the dark streets until I find a street vendor frying things. I dip into strange sauces feeling grateful and guilty for spending the first of my brother's money. Skinny locals stop and eat one stick of fried mystery before moving on. I've eaten five and now feel like the fat American. 

      Hong Kong is alive, although most shops are closed until dawn frames the city's race to build higher skyscrapers than Malaysia. On certain blocks it feels like Miami Beach as Asian looking Amy Whinehouses in high heels stubble out of night clubs,their dark eye make up looking as smudged up as their dates. Other blocks are all suits and ties. The skeleton homeless lined up outside an ancient temple confirms: Hong Kong has the highest income gap in all of Asia.  

          Of the 7.2 billion people crammed into Hong Kong, there are 55 are billionaires. Before departing for Kathmandu I hang out with their kids in the airport as I sip my $8.00 cappuccino in the cafe across from Chanel; loafers are $20,000 Hong Kong Dollars. I stand next their flawless skin, shinny straightened hair and Comme des Garcons t-shirts that will be knocked by Forever 21. In the cosmetics shop I watch a teenager purchase $40 Dior lip gloss in every shade. I search for dissatisfaction with the material world on their beautiful faces. I want to see how money doesn't lead to happiness. Because that's what Buddhism promises. And to feel better about my holey goodwill sweater and bitten fingernails. I look like shit because this body will one day die. It won't go with me, only how I lived.  I feel a tinge of doubt in my justifications for not taking care of myself as I stare into the cosmetics magnified mirror at dark circles under my eyes. Doubts masking the lies I tell myself. Doubts that unveil themselves in a retreat I will attend with other lost westerns looking east.  

       The same romantic feeling I had of exotic Haitian voodoo dance healing me creeps up the moment step outside the Kathmandu airport: What was I thinking? Ancient Buddhist dance! This city is going to swallow me just like Port-au-Prince, and spit me into the harsh reality that people are suffering way worse than me. Ironically, like Haiti in 2012, I travel to Nepal one year after its earthquake.    This time I packed light. Too light.