Hong Kong: Manhattan on Steroids

Many superlatives can be applied to Hong Kong. Home of the most skyscrapers in the world. Home to the most expensive commercial lease in the world. Home to more Rolls Royces than any other city on earth.

The superlative that gobsmacked us in our three days in the pearl of the Orient was the shopping. Sure, we know Hong Kong is a legendary shopping destination. Decades ago, when Doris was a 20-something living and working in Southern California, weekend shopping packages flew like bus runs between LAX and Hong Kong. 

But what we saw in our three days in Hong Kong was shopping of a different magnitude. Shopping with a capital-S. Manhattan on steroids.

We walked block after city block are lined with jewelry stores whose windows are filled with diamonds. The Apple store is so immense its trademark arches over a six-lane boulevard. Haute couture brand names blaze from what seem like every street corner. In Hermes’ hometown of Paris, there are three branded stores; in Hong Kong, there are seven. 

But it was the malls that dropped our jaws. Citywide, Hong Kong boasts a mall the size of a football stadium every 10 blocks, but that’s an average over a city half again the size of NYC. In the city center, there’s essentially a mall nearly every block, and they soar to the heavens. The first-ever and still-tallest “vertical mall” in the USA is Water Tower Place in Chicago. It boasts 8 stories of shopping. The ONE mall in Hong Kong? 29 stories.

Malls huddle so closely together they are linked by footbridges that commuters use to criss-cross the city without ever setting foot on a sidewalk. Some apartment buildings don’t even have street entrances; residents enter them through a mall. 

Just as startling was how thoroughly these gargantuan retail meccas are engineered to encourage spending, not malingering. In the Harbour City mall with its 700 stores from B is for Burberry to V is for Louis Vuitton, there was nary a bench to rest the weary feet and wallet. No “destination shopping,” for these malls. Buying is the destination.

Beyond the city core, the shopping is less blingy but no less intense. Streets are named for their products: Duck Egg Street for its duck eggs, Flower Market Road for its flowers, Sneaker Street for its 100 retail shops devoted to sports shoes and clothes. Our favorites of these were Goldfish Street, lined with dozens of shops selling ornamental fish and their accessories, and the Yuen Po Street Bird Garden.

Alluring as it all was, 55 days of travel lie beyond Hong Kong for us so we left the city with nothing but photos, memories and the impression that, while consumers may be king in the United States, they are god in Hong Kong. 

WHO KNEW?!?

The music box originated in Switzerland around 1796, invented by a watchmaker who applied the techniques of watchmaking to music making. For the next century, enthralled watchmakers developed ever more intricate movements and elaborate cases. The resultant golden age of the music box lasted only until cheaper phonographs and gramophones made music reproduction accessible at a lower cost. Swiss watchmakers went back to their watches. Today their workmanship represents an exquisite example of luxury consumerism in another age. (This random postscript courtesy of a music box exhibition in the Nan Lian Garden at Diamond Hill, where we also feasted on a vegetarian fixed menu at Chin Li Nunnery.)

NEXT STOP: Ha Noi, Vietnam