moving on up...

...not to the East Side, but "suburban" Pokfulam.

Until Monday, I lived in the Sai Wan, or Western District of Hong Kong Island, neighborhood with my grandfather. Sai Wan is a typical urban district in Hong Kong, with lots of tall apartment blocks. Street life is busy - and noisy - with lots of small shops and eateries catering to the local Chinese population. A few tourists take the tram or double-decker bus to visit the neighborhood, but English is not widely spoken. This aerial picture, while not specifically of Sai Wan, does capture the density of a typical urban neighborhood in Hong Kong.



When I told people of my move from Sai Wan to Pokfulam, the typical reaction was "Waah! You're going to be in the middle of nowhere! And it's going to be so quiet!" My new residence is only three kilometers from my last one, yet there is no street life to speak of: no restaurants, and only a 7-Eleven for shopping. Only a couple buses and no tram cars pass nearby. Yet does it really look like I'm living in the middle of nowhere?



As for being "so quiet"? Um, did I mention my new residence is a student dormitory? For some strange reason, there isn't much demand for dorm rooms in the summer. As a result, these rooms are available to rent - and at quite a discount. Maybe I'm showing my age here, but I had forgotten how loud 20 year-old college guys can be! Especially at 3 o'clock in the morning, when us older folk tend to be, um, sleeping...

the character issue

It seems strange that on a blog titled "Indicative Characters" there is almost nothing on this site on Chinese characters. There does seem to be a fascination with Chinese characters back in America, as witnessed by Americans with Chinese tatoos. So this blog entry will deal with the question of Chinese characters.

Despite Western perceptions to the contrary, there is a logic to Chinese characters. [This logic would not convert well if English used characters, btw.] The most basic Chinese characters are pictographs and ideographs (also called, ahem, indicative characters) which are meant to depict an actual object or idea: a flame to represent "fire"(火), a box with a line through the middle to represent "center"(中). Most other Chinese characters combine two or more basic characters to create a new character. Many combinations are based on pronunciation. For instance, "horse" and "mother" are both pronounced ma; so the character for mother (媽) combines the already-invented characters for "woman" (女) and "horse"(馬). A person seeing this character would think "the ma that has to do with woman... that must be mother!"

Although there is a logic to Chinese characters, this does not mean these characters are logical. Chinese, like any writing system 'perfected' two millenia ago, will have problems in modern-day usage. Try to type Chinese on a keyboard - it isn't pretty! Since words tend to change pronunciation over time, the majority of pronunication-based combinations are no longer accurate. (Compare these two characters.) Some individual characters had new meanings evolve, yet retain their old meanings in certain phrases. For instance, the original symbol for "sun" (日) now means "day" -- but the (日) in (日本) still means "[land of the] rising sun" (thus, Japan). And it's not only Westerners that have realized these flaws. Every language which once imported Chinese characters for its own use -- Korean, Japanese, Vietnamese, Jurchen (early Manchurian) -- has since developed more logical ways to write its language.

For those of you who would like to learn more, there is a new sidebar/button on the website. Every few minutes this button will give a different character with a condensed explanation of that character's logic. Clicking on the button will take you to one of the best English-Chinese dictionary websites, which has an in-depth explanation on the history of Chinese characters.

what's cooler than being cool?

It's only the beginning of June, and the temperature in HK topped 93 degrees today. So naturally, a popular topic of conversation around here is air-conditioning.

A widely-held belief is that Hong Kong people just love their air-con. There was a study released this week claiming HK office temperatures are the coldest in the world. (Letterman studio guests might disagree.) Environmentalists recommend a summertime setting of 78 degrees, but found some offices here were as cool as 64 degrees. (The average was found to be 72 degrees.) Many non-environmentalists also complain about how high people crank their a/c. A majority of my classmates keep scarves or pashminas in their bags in case they have to visit certain chilly public places. Public buses are a notorious example. They are extremely cold year-round since, according to an old regulation, a bus offering a/c can charge higher fares than a bus not offering a/c.



But would I agree that Hong Kongers are mad about keeping chill? Not really. First, Hong Kong is more humid than many other cities. A 78 degree office is more than reasonable in many cities, but in a city as humid as this? Second, ordinary homes and businesses definitely don't keep their thermostat as low as centrally-cooled offices. They can't afford to do otherwise! I know my uncle keeps the public part of his store at 75 degrees, and the backrooms a bit warmer. My relatives, who all grew up before a/c became widespread here, are used to warm weather. They take a perverse pride in not using their a/c. Third, and most importantly, I myself do not have a/c in my room here. I'd like to think that, as my stay here in HK has grown longer, my tolerance to heat and humidity has grown stronger. But then how could I explain why, in hot weather, I seem to ride buses much more often?