Firsts

I recently returned from a work trip to Hong Kong and am still suffering from a bit of jet lag. While I’ve been to Asia several times, this was my first trip to Hong Kong, which I found exciting and overwhelming at the same time.

Every business in Asia seems to have their front doors locked requiring one to be buzzed in. In Shanghai they have them, in Taipei they have them and the Nike offices in Hong Kong have them too. The receptionists working for Nike are accustomed to Americans visiting from the corporate office and upon arriving on the 26th floor of an enormous office complex I was buzzed in immediately by the receptionist. Dorothy, I think her name was, waved me in and the second I crossed the threshold she exclaimed, “We have new bad man here.” It caught me off guard and I wondered if I should be running for cover. But, she said it with such pride - the way a snooty parent might when introducing a child freshly admitted to an exclusive pre-school. I was lost. Dorothy could see this and kept repeating herself, each time a little louder. By the third time she was standing with her arms outstretched gently flapping while shouting, “bad man, bad man, you see bad man.” I could smell the fish she’d had for lunch adding to my confusion.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know ‘bad man,” I responded. I was to meet with Connie and asked if she was available.

“Connie, here. You see ‘bad man, you see bad man.”

I smiled and sat down and much, much later found out that Hong Kong is hosting the filming of the latest “Batman” production and evidently has most of the locals worked into a frenzy.

Because of the time difference one tends to feel sleepy all day and wide awake all night. The inclination is to finally fall asleep just after midnight only to wake up at 4:00 am as if it were the middle of the day. It was on one of these early morning awakenings I began considering other “firsts” associated with this trip. Here are a few.

The factories I visit like to take us to either lunch or dinner and tend to jockey for meals with the other factories. Dinner is the priority, with lunch the consolation. There are always too many factories and not enough meals to satisfy, or for me, the other way around. It was during a lunch of dim sum in Hong Kong with one of our polo factories that I experienced another first. I’ve had pretty much all the standard Chinese fare ranging from wonderful vegetable dishes and spring rolls to a plate of live baby clams covered in a light red sauce. Their shells chattered as the tiny mollusks twitched and shook and I couldn’t bring myself to try them. So I guess, technically, I didn’t experience this dish first hand. This took place in a city outside of Shanghai where we were paraded through a fish market on the ground floor and asked to choose what we’d like to eat. Most of the fish were still alive and the place smelled much like a pet store. While the locals scurried around pointing at the various tanks and plastic buckets I searched for something a bit more vegetarian. “Do you maybe have a salad,” I asked?

“Salad? We have, you choose,” answered our host pointing to something white with holes in it. It was rectangular and I think it might have been a stomach at some point in it’s past.

At my lunch in Hong Kong however, I wasn’t offered anything still breathing and the food wasn’t swimming in green, murky tanks in the basement - at least not that I saw. Mid-way through the meal a traditional Chinese soup arrived. It was a clear broth with a bit of pork, some egg, and a vegetable or two. Not far from our own chicken noodle soup, but with pork. I took a few bites and thought to myself, “Not bad. I could even enjoy this.” My thoughts continued, “We really lucked out with this lunch. Good spring rolls, dim sum with scallops, fried noodles.” I breathed a sigh of relief and looked down for another bite of soup.

It wasn’t the coarse black hair floating just beneath the surface alone that sickened me. Nor was it the thought that I’d already eaten half the bowl leaving me wondering, “were there others? Was this a singular incident or did this hair resting gently next to a hunk of pork have company? The thing that really bothered me though, was the gaggle of Chinese factory workers surrounding our table, looking on with anticipation, asking, “How soup? It delicious? You like?”

. . .more to come