The Great Wall of China34. Nineteen Weeks Later

Having no sense of smell has its ups and downs. The obvious positive is that I can't smell all the bad things anymore. Hong Kong is an aromatic city with cuisines from all over the world. You can sniff your way through Thailand and Vietnam near the Kowloon City Market, and North Africa and South Asia at Chungking Mansions. India is everywhere. Food stalls all over the city teach you about the different scents given off by different dead animals hanging from hooks. Chinese street food smells nothing like fancy Chinese restaurants, which smell nothing like corporate chains.

But surrounding all of the food are a million cars, buses and trucks in a crowded city where smog checks are more of a suggestion than absolute requirement. China stills burns coal like it's going out of style and the smog from Guangdong's industrial factories routinely makes its way south. Hongkongers are slowly giving up cigarettes, but the majority of Mainland Chinese still smoke. When they come here to shop, they bring their Mainland habits with them, chief among them seem to be smoking and spitting.

The city of Hong Kong has been under construction for as long as I have been here. I'm sure it will continue long after I'm gone. Most people complain about construction when it causes traffic delays. No one wants to drive half a mile out of their way because of road blocks. But walking near construction is far worse. They do a pretty good job of keeping any falling debris from hitting the sidewalk with those green mesh tarps they put over buildings, but walking through dust and dirt is often unavoidable. If you are eating a slice from Paisano's and you see scaffolding and hard hats, turn around.

For too many foreigners, and a lot of locals, Hong Kong is a great place to get drunk. There are bars, pubs, dives and lounges all over the city. Lan Kwai Fong is probably the most popular neighborhood for expats. They are either attracted to the tightly packed blocks of bars, thousands of other expats or the fact that you can drink openly in public. That means nothing to most Europeans, but getting legally shitfaced in the middle of the street is a novelty to the crowds of Australians, Canadians, Indians and Americans that litter Hong Kong every weekend. Walking between the escalators and Wyndham Street is difficult on a Saturday night and rather pungent on Sunday morning. Most of the bars probably have toilets, but drunk people rarely think clearly.

Tsuen Wan was a former fishing village across the channel from Tsing Yi that is now a housing estate/shopping mall. When people moved in by the busload, attracted to the low prices, they apparently did not realize that a great deal of Hong Kong's sewage drains from Tsuen Wan into the harbor. Whether that is legal or not is up for debate, but Tsuen Wan Park and the waterfront smell like shit.

Castle Peak Power Station is the larger of two coal burning facilities that generate electricity in Hong Kong. It is on the western tip of the New Territories, away from most of the city, but still provides a large percentage of Hong Kong's smog. You can drive past the power plant on one of the roads that hug the coast, but it smells like burning metal, sulfur and, of course, coal.

I do not miss the raging stench that often comes with life in Hong Kong, but I miss brownies fresh out of the oven, an old book I have not opened in a while, mint, rain, Flower Market Road, the ocean at Clear Water Bay, wood fires at Big Wave Bay, Maison Eric Kayser when they put out fresh bread, produce and herbs at the Tuen Mun farmers market and Graham Street wet market. I can still see, hear and feel it all, but something is missing when you can't taste the edibles or smell any of it.


The Great Wall of China part 1