On deliveries

The thing you don’t notice when you live in a city with a normal ratio of people to space is constant flow of deliveries which all go on in the background. In Hong Kong, the tight squeeze means that all this secret background work is pushed very much to the foreground: the streets are so tightly compact that there are no alternative side roads to off load large stock piles; shops and restaurants often occupy such small spaces that there are no side doors or back doors to use for sneaky deliveries. No, in HK It all happens right there, very much in the way of things.

The biggest feat seems to be delivering water. Since it’s not advisable to drink the tap water in HK, bottled water is big business here. Households buy sturdy 5.5 litre water bottles, while offices and public buildings offer 10 or 15 litre water cooler/ heater systems so that staff and visitors have easy access to hot and cold water around the clock. These massive bottles need to be constantly delivered and collected and refilled. They bottles arrive in large lorries which men promptly jump out of and into the back of to lift out and carry to their destination. Since offices throughout HK regularly tower up to the 30^th or 40^th floor, these bottles have to be carried then trolleyed up to these heights. Meanwhile, down below, streets block as the water lorries sit waiting for their men to return, unable to park due to the which results in honks and horns from all the aforementioned until the delivery men run back with the empties and they can move on.

One way to get a piece of the Honky pie is to put together your own private delivery service - ideally one which cuts out the delays caused by stationary and stalling cars, taxis dropping off and picking up, buses pulling out and coaches pulling up. And every day I see folk cycling around the city streets doing just that. When I found out I was moving to Hong Kong, I was living in Copenhagen where cycling was my main mode of transport. Half joking, half hoping I asked Jane, a Cantonese friend from Danish class if there was any point in taking my bike out to HK. “Yes. If you want to die,” she replied very straight faced. So I sold my bike and came here without wheels, but despite Jane’s warning, I do regularly see people on bikes.

Granted, nobody in the city really chooses to commute by bike, but for deliveries it’s a popular choice. In the Hong Kong travel guide which my Mum gave to me before I moved, there’s a photograph of a man cycling a very old school bike with a front basket filled so full with chicken feet that you could hardly see his head. Everyday bike baskets brimming with whole chickens, trays of frogs or fresh fish and bags full of herbs and greens weave their way through the taxis and buses and trams to deliver whatever they’re carrying. Some of the more extreme cyclists carry gas canisters which typically weigh between 12 and 15 kilos. I’ve seen cyclists balancing up to three of those on one bike: two strapped onto each side and one sitting in the basket, or if the basket’s past it, the cyclist holds one of the canisters by hand and steers with the other, much like a bike riding circus clown (just with serious amounts of pressurised gas instead of water squirting plastic flowers).

Those who understandably prefer to have both feet firmly on the ground whilst delivering, favour the metal framed cart method. Walking around the city you see these foldable carts chained to metal rails, patiently waiting for their owners to come on duty and start collecting and delivering all manner of things from recycling, food, and water to household rubbish, DHL style deliveries and stacks of freshly printed newspapers and magazines. The carts are pulled and pushed through the pavements and streets, but since both are almost always already packed with large scale delivery operations, the cartloads are often taken by train, bus, tram or boat to ensure timely arrival by avoiding as much of the HK street chaos as possible.

Deliveries come on foot a lot too. As far as I know, Hong Kong is the only place in the world offering free McDonald’s delivery, so you often see well dressed McDonald’s recruits running around the city with their insulated, saturated fat full back packs, ready to make some desperately hungover gweilo’s day. They even bring out coffees as the minimum spend is only $50 (£4). Many of those offices and workplaces that need daily water delivery also go the full stretch and order breakfast and lunch to be delivered. If you work near a substantial sized office or commercial area, you will be surrounded by restaurants, but at dead on twelve every lunch time, 50% of the population abandons their normal position and goes to a restaurant to feed on noodle and rice bits. The 50% who can’t squeeze themselves around a table, either queue for another sitting (you have never seen real queues until you see people waiting in line in HK), or order food to be delivered. As you have probably gathered, this is a busy time around the city; taking a taxi or public transport or a bike or even a cart will only slow down the delivery speed, so delivery people simply carry the food. Up to four plastic bags packed with steaming boxed up rice and meat mixtures and cartoons of ice cold soy milk are wrapped around the wrists of these delivery people who run from restaurant to office block, still wearing their aprons and sweating under the heat of the midday sun and the suffocating humidity.

For those like me, standing back on the pavement to let the carts past, watching the delivery chain unravel is a constant reminder that so many people here sweat and shout and strive to get deliveries delivered on time. Delivery people of Hong Kong, we salute you. You get things moving, and you add, in a big way, to the constant buzz that is the electric current of this city.

On Pampering

From personal experience, there are a few basic things that I need to ensure before deciding to move to a new place, notably: can it offer safe and sufficient services for the removal of the hair on my head and the hair on my legs? After a few short strolls around Hong Kong, I was confident I’d moved to a city that could cope with my beauty requirements; there were treatment centres and salons everywhere! Giant fluorescent feet hung in the streets, declaring discount foot rubs and pressure point massages; my toes tingled at the tiny prices written on the posters of the numerous nail painting parlours; even the most rundown buildings had flashing signs encouraging you to make your way to the 11^th floor for a full body oil massage. Yes, this looked like a city that knew how to keep its people looking prim and purty.

My first venture to a hair salon went reasonably well considering that most HK hairdressers are trained to deal with straight, smooth, sleeky hair, while mine is wavy, frizzy and bouncy. For the two hours I was there, my stylist and I communicated using only hand signals, and every 15 minutes her assistant inexplicably pulled me away to the sink for another rinse, massage and general scalp rubbing session. Hong Kong made for a challenging place to find a cheap leg wax too because, as I soon realised, the average HK woman- and man for that matter - has less hair on their legs than I have on my hands, so waxing is not in dire demand. In my first weeks, I found a small Chinese salon which accepted my half leg wax request, but as my rather rough handed beautician was mid way through, she started shouting and pointing: “Like a man! Like a man!” This was all rather unnerving until I realised she was pointing at my forearms, which clearly had more hair on them than any lady she had ever encountered before. She screeched the same phrase at me repeatedly until I finally gave in and allowed her to remove the offensive hair from my limbs.

Fortunately, these initially off putting experiences have not held me back from exploring more of the beauty treatments on offer in pamper happy Honkers. The first time I stepped inside what was to become my go-to massage place, the word seedy was certainly among those that sprung to mind: the very dimply lit space, the heavy red velvet curtains and the even heavier scent of citrusy sweet oil hanging in the air, all made for an interesting first impression. But I was soon made to feel warm, if not welcome, by the masseuse who stood on my back and proceeded to walk up and down it, laughing in response each crack from my crying bones. Shortly after that she insisted on trying to untie my neck knots, at which point I tensed up and had an internal panic attack about the fact that I’d knowingly allowed one of my most fragile body parts to be frisked by a small Thai lady. Why didn’t ask to see her ‘I’m qualified to do this’ badge before lying down? As I started wondering how likely it was she could break my neck, everything in my body resisted her rhythmic movements, whereupon she applied more pressure, and I resisted more. This went on for the remaining 45 minutes until one of us, exhaustedly, gave in.

A similar Catch 22 clause applies to wearing summery footwear in HK. It’s hot, so I want to wear feet freeing shoes to let my feet breathe, but the more I do so, the more my feet are open to the elements and the worse they look. Thank the Lord for the Shanghai Pedicure! This treatment is designed to remove dead skin from underfoot, and when I say ‘remove’, I suppose the accurate terms are ‘shave’ and ‘scrape’.  The idea is that you sit there for however long you have deemed necessary and watch a razor wielding man or woman remould your blocks of hard dry skin into human looking feet once again. The first time I did this, I innocently asked the man for a 30 minute session. On reflection, that was very wishful thinking. He genuinely worked away on my feet for 50 minutes nonstop only looking up to mop his brow and even apologise for the delay, pointing and the lapful of foot scrapings he had removed as his defence for running over time. I looked back, completely cringed out, but still willing him on, encouragingly.         

After the Shanghai Pedicure, eyebrow threading is my latest HK beauty experiment. For those who don’t know, threading is a swift and nifty, but not entirely painless, hair removal technique for the face and neck area. It uses a simple thread and scissors technique- often with a little help from the beautician’s teeth. And it works! Obviously, there is a red, raw rash for a few hours, but then things settle down and look pretty good. So far, the only awkward stage has the post- eyebrow -threading -conversation when the beautician scrupulously examines the rest of my face and asks if she can thread my forehead or my cheeks or my upper lip. Each time, I look back at her, as cluelessly as I can, as if to say: ‘Obviously I don’t have any excess hair in any of those places. You must be confusing me with someone else’. But she knows, and I know, that there is still work to be done. Next time, maybe...