HONG KONG IS COVERED WITH IT

My apartment mate did her taxes yesterday, so for much of the day I was in my own room reading. Instead of in front of my computer. All of the modern computers, hers, the loaner from her office, and mine, are in the television room. And she needed a complete absence of distraction. Which let me learn a Cantonese idiom which makes complete sense.

Stone-faeces forest


石屎森林


Or, in polite idiomatic English: concrete jungle. Pronounced 'sek si sam lam'. Which describes Kowloon, especially around Yau Tsim Mong (油尖旺區), as well as the huge housing estates all over, and the satellite cities built in the last thirty years. Which are all bloody ugly, but there was a humongous need for them. Some of the densest population numbers anywhere.

So, all things considered, the picturesque qualities of Hong Kong have largely disappeared, and that's a damned good thing. The orientalist fantasy world of Love Is A Many Splendoured Thing and The World Of Suzie Wong no longer exists. Western tourists are undoubtedly disappointed.
It all looks so unromantically modern now.

My piles bleed for them.




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