The Island

This is about a girl I met this weekend - a friend of a friend. During a very brief conversation she offered an interesting character study. It was almost ironic that I should have met her in Hong Kong.

She's African-American, but from the minority that is wealthy. Her parents have a summer house and a winter house, neither of which they can use as much as they'd like because they're usually out traveling somewhere or the other. I should have asked about siblings, but like I said, this was a short conversation. Her work brought her to Hong Kong. (She's not in the HK financial services machine, but I will not reveal her profession in the interest of privacy.)

I asked her why she chose Hong Kong, and her (obviously well-rehearsed) response was, "Hong Kong chose me". 'How very romantic... and convenient', I thought to myself. (Now don't misread my sarcasm. It's just the way I talk. This was a very agreeable person.) Her plans for an international career came to pivot on a choice between Mexico City and Hong Kong. "Well I was certainly not going to Mexico City!" That's how she was chosen by Hong Kong's wealth, order and civilized cosmopolitanism (read nightlife). An earlier stint at Shanghai had left her scarred with memories of nothing-to-do, so this was definitely a step up. In Shanghai, she reported, they were even surprised to hear her speak English, and could not believe their eyes when they saw her US passport. Okay, I wasn't buying any of this god-help-the-third-world stuff. So we changed the topic to where she grew up - a big city in the US (again, for anonymity concerns the name of the city need not be revealed.) But she had traveled around the world, and the next trip is taking her to Scandinavia, which she just loves to visit.

She had also spent some time in New York, in Manhattan. She said she couldn't think of reason why people would ever live anywhere but Manhattan. "Why?" she asked. And now she felt the same way about Hong Kong Island, Manhattan's Chinese cousin - a major financial center, with rents amongst the highest in the world, a premier location that scoffs at all those who work to support it, but can never afford to live there. "I don't like leaving the islands I live on", she remarked, "I just don't like to cross the water".

We parted company soon and for the rest of the afternoon I thought of how much she had seen and how little she had noticed. Had she not become the islands she so loved to live on? (And I don't mean that in the Simon and Garf. sense, although it would make for an interesting hypothesis.)