For the past year I have lived in the peaceful, small, traditional and slow town of Ubud in central Bali.
Ubud is a place where everyone smiles, where the sidewalks are covered with small offering plates made of woven banana leaves and covered with flowers, incense and holy water and where simple tasks like picking up your laundry can take forever.
I woke to the sound of roosters crowing and walked past a family of geese every morning on my way to market to buy eggs and papaya. It was tranquil, spiritual and laid back.
However, a friend recently asked me to travel to Shanghai to help her exhibit her work at a trade show, and I gladly obliged. On my way, I had to stop in Hong Kong to take care of a few things before taking a train to China.
I stayed in Hong Kong for two days, and the change was shocking.
I always considered myself to be a “city person” - perfectly at home with blaring horns and flashing lights - but I hadn’t realized how much I had acclimated to the yogic oasis that is Ubud.
The pulsing traffic shooting through the concrete maze outside my hotel window threatened to swallow me in a teeming ocean of chaos. Waiting in line at a 7-11 to purchase a bottle of water was like a military exercise.
Navigating the urban jungle of Hong Kong shocked my system. One of the most bizarre things about the place was that one could travel from one side of the city to the other without ever stepping foot outside.
There were sprawling networks of underground walkways and tunnels that one could walk for kilometers. When you emerge from the underground networks, glass, concrete and steel surround you; so when you are actually outside, it does not feel like you are outside.
Hong Kong is a fast-paced city, and the amount of escalators, travelators, subways, trams and shuttles never seems adequate enough for the speed at which everyone moves.
To me, eating seemed to be a rushed affair, and my sleep was affected by the tumultuous rapacity that filled the air.
Luckily my room was comfortable, albeit it was the size of a cupboard. I preferred to remain inside the hotel and watch the news on CCTV while the world careened out of control outside my window.
I love Hong Kong, even though it makes me feel poor and tired in short order.
Its not out of control, quite the opposite, everyone has something to do and somewhere to go.
The countryside, is another world completely, almost nothing is rushed, and there is far less competition over time and space.
It is a disturbing trend that most of the human population is being forced off the land, and into overcrowded cities.
I agree, it is not out of control, there is a seamless order to it all; I just see it from a Western perspective still (somehow). But yes Hong Kong is an example of how we should maybe not build cities, in an ecological sense. Thanks for reading!