HONG KONG

Peach (I also call him Bruce Willis or Mister Bob Dubelina) just came from far cold Switzerland to discover with me in around 10 days Hong Kong and a small part of China. Even though the time wasn't so long we saw a lot and had a very good time together!!!
For me Hong Kong was a cultural shock! I came directly from the poor and dirty Kolkatta to this high developed modern city Hong Kong...so I had a cultural shock in the oposite way round...literally "back to the civilisation"!
The people run around with nice suits, in one hand the executive case and in the other hand the mobile phone which seems to attract attention to its owner all the time...
The buildings here are all very new, modern and high. From the near mountain, just called "Peak", you have a fantastic view (if it's nice weather). Here a bit cloudy but impressive anyway...

Massive this big buildings, isn't it? As Swiss -not used to big metropolis- it can astonish you! Here other two showpieces. The "tower" on the left is the famous building of the Bank of China.

The public transport is very well organised and you can get easily from A to B. Well actually you could compare the public transport system with the one at home in Europe. But after all the poor countries I've visited on my trip it stands out especially and I can feel very well what it means to live in the so called "modern" world...

While you absolutely could compare Hong Kong with a western City if you look closer you can see a lot of details which in spite of everything show you it's a Chinese place! Here just one example: The scaffold on this facade is made of bamboo sticks!

Hong Kong was already 400 years ago a major trade place between China and Europe for different goods (manly tea and silk).
Opium was very long just used as a medicament. But the Britsh who ruled India brought the in Bengal harvested Opium to China which was spread over China very fast as a drug. The opium trade of the British flourished and at the beginning of the 19th century it became the basic part of the trade between England and China.
When the Chinese tried to bypass the expensive trade by confiscating a big load of the British opium the English used the incident as a cause to attack the Chinese. Two Britsh gun boats were sent and sank a Chinese fleet of 26 ships. The following First Opium War ended 1841 with the handing over of Hong Kong Island to England. In the following Second Opium War the peninsula Kowloon became British 1860. In the year 1898 England and China signed a leasing contract for 99 years for the new British territories. In the year 1984 was decided to give Hong Kong back to China after the end of the leasing contract (1997). But because Hong Kong has developed "european" and because of this can't get integrated into the communist China very easily the two parties agreed on a 50 year period in which Hong Kong is allowed to continue its economical and political system. So Hong Kong became a "Special Administrative Region" of the People's Republic of China and the two sides came to the agreement "One country, two systems".
But maybye the re-integration of Hong Kong is not going so uncomplicated as it is planned because just three weeks ago Beijing decided that every change of a Hong Kong law has to be accepted from the government in Beijing first! This caused concern and confusion in some circles of Hong Kong. The re-integration is maybye going to induce headache for some people a few times...

Nowadays Hong Kong is still a very important trade place for different goods. Beside big containers which change their owners by ship also a lot of bits and pieces are sold directly in the street. "Hello, do you need a faked watch? Do you want a suit? Very special price! Or are you looking for something special? I can organise it for you!" This sentences you hear around 50 to 100 times a day if you walk through the streets of Hong Kong and if you look like a foreigner (because they have money).
Peach and I decided already in Switzerland to meet in Hong Kong and to let us make a suit here. So we put this words into practice! I mean, where else in this world can you let you tailor a good suit for 180 US-Dollars? Here by the first try...

...one sleeve is still missing -but don't worry- it will come soon. Here they take the exact measurements and fix it with needles...
And yes, I know my hair is quite long but I'll let it cut soon ;-)
The suit has it's first job on the wedding of Andrea and Kaedu at the 7th of August!

Hong Kong by night....

Peach who is working for ABB Switzerland arranged for us a visit in the ABB Service Center in Hong Kong. So we visited the service center and later we had the opportunity to see a big cargo ship with a ABB turbo charger.

Here we are in the engine room of the big vessel. The engine has 9 cylinder and around 40 MWatts (54'000 HP). It's amazing this big thing....it let the heart of a mechanical engineer beat faster!!!

Here Peach in a technical discussion with Timothy the ABB employee who showed us aruond.

On this picture you can see the shaft which is going from the engine back to the ship propeller. This amazes the layman!

In the evening ABB Hong Kong invited us for dinner...no bad, isn't it?

Well, we did alot of things in Hong Kong. But after a few days we went to Chinas countryside -you can read about it in the next report...

Greetings from Hong Kong from Bruce Willis and James Dean

25.04.04, Hong Kong, China