Hong Kong is NOT China

I hate to break it to those of you who claim you have been to China but have only ever visited Hong Kong. Hong Kong is in fact, not China. The official term is "one country, two systems" and how different those two systems are.

Let's start with the fact that you have to go through customs and immigration. And your passport gets stamped, multiple times. In fact, Chinese nationals must get a visa to go to Hong Kong. There are departure forms and entry forms and immigration officials who hate their day jobs. Basically all that's missing the airplane and airplane food. But crossing the border, it is made very clear "we are not like the other side" (and this is true of both sides). There is even a duty free shop! You also need to exchange your money. The RMB is not the currency of Hong Kong. No, they use Hong Dollars. This actually benefits those of us who earn our wage in RMB as the RMB is currently stronger than the HK dollar, so everything seems even cheaper.

Once you do cross the border things are a little "wonky." They drive on the wrong side... I mean left side of the road. They stop at stop lights and people actually seem to whisper under their breadth "he/she must be from China" if you cross the road when you are not supposed to. And the best part is many of them whisper this in English! That's right, it seems as though everyone in Hong Kong still speaks English in addition to Cantonese, NOT Mandarin... so there goes my limited vocabulary... they even seem to laugh at me when I say xie xie "thank you" in Mandarin... at least I'm trying! This, of course, means that I am no longer left to wonder what is what when going shopping.

Oh the shopping. Seems to be the number 1, favorite thing people do in Hong Kong. And by people, I mean people who live in China  (like me). Their reason? It's cheaper, and you know what you are getting. They line up to enter stores like Louis Vuitton, Gucci and Prada (not me) and then ride the train back to Lo Hu or Lok Ma Chau (the border crossings with Shenzhen) with bags full of stuff (ok I admit, a little like me). We all seem to get caught up in the idea that our money goes further here! And that they have stores I... we like.

Then of course come the escalators. They are everywhere! And the building all seem to be connected by secret escalators that only the local "Honkies" know about. So if you are a poor lonely tourist (and if you live in China, consider yourself in this category) you can walk twice as long to get the same place, simply because you didn't know about the escalator.

So in the end it is clear to see that Hong Kong is actually it's own lovely little bubble of expats and Chinese pretending to deal with the difficulties of "living in China" when it seems to those of us who actually do live in China, that they have no idea how good they have it. Which is probably why we keep going back...