In Beijing, but with a few more memories of Hong Kong

Barbara and I are now in Beijing but here I include a few more memories and thoughts about Hong Kong (at right you see a street corner in "our" neighborhood there--always interesting to stroll and find a place to eat).

Above our youth hostel there was a steep hill; at the top older folks would exercise in the morning, but in the evening, as darkness fell and the city lights came on below, young couples came too (photo below).

In addition to memories of place, I was grateful to get together with two old pals from the Oslo (Norway) International Summer School where we were together ten years ago.  Maria and Alice are now social workers, and the three of us took the tram (see photo below) up to the top of Victoria Peak.  There's a rather amazingly commercial visitor center at the top, looking down over Hong Kong and Victoria Bay, where we enjoyed some coffee, but the best part was simply looking far below to a city with little available land for building and so a downtown which soars rather than spreads.  This also means that housing prices are also soaring, which (as it does in Singapore) help contribute to a declining birth rate (just a little over one child per woman, even though mainland China's "one child policy" didn't apply to Hong Kong).

Maria and Alice treated Barbara and I to a wonderful supper at a university dining room, and she was glad to meet and talk with the two of them.  They were curious about how we met and got together, and enjoyed our two versions of the story.  It added a lot to our time in Hong Kong to have a long conversation with two wonderful folks who've lived in Hong Kong all their lives (as has spending time with a local friend here in Beijing, Ming-Ming, and her husband Tao--more on that later).

I'll conclude my memories of Hong Kong with a visit to the Tian Tan Buddha, the largest sitting Buddha image in the world, by subway, a rather high-altitude tram, and finally a bus, on the island of Lantau near Hong Kong.  Few visitors seemed there for religious reasons, though some did pray (the several hundred steps up the steep stairs to the Buddha left one catching one's breath before prayer was possible, so perhaps I couldn't hear the silent prayers!).

Best wishes to all for 2018.  I find travel important in reminding me how much larger and more beautiful and sometimes troubled the world is, and how hopeful people are that all will end well and their children will find joy, than I keep in mind in my own daily life.  Bruce