Where to make some sport
Contrary to what many people think about this city, little Hong Kong has a wide choice of paths through green areas where the locals enjoy hiking. Nearly 70% of the total area of Hong Kong, in fact, is land which can’t be built on and most of that is green.

People’s favourite paths are usually the ones that start or end up near Sai Kung island, the so-called garden of Hong Kong (a nickname the local inhabitants aren’t too happy with). The island is famous for its excellent fresh fish restaurants: a good excuse for a walk.

There are some public gyms in the city, mostly equipped for the favourite sports of Hong Kong people (esp. badminton and ping-pong). Although the world cup in Hong Kong, ten years ago now, has been completely forgotten, local TV and the press give full coverage of European football. And this trend has led to the springing up of public football fields where kids can play football.
However, their numbers being small, the waiting lists long and the booking procedure Byzantine, finding somewhere to do this sport regularly is extremely tiring.
This is why Hong Kong is full of private gyms of all types for fitness lovers (the most famous being the “California Fitness” chain).

Betting on horses Nearly every Wednesday and Saturday, much of Hong Kong goes to the city’s two race courses, one at Satin in the new territories and the other at Happy Valley on the central island, to bet on the horses.
Before 1997, when the British crown returned control of Hong Kong to China, people thought the races would die out once the British population dwindled. But the Britons have been replaced by Hong Kong people keen to place their bets. The city’s rich often use the race courses, and their private boxes there, as a place to socialize with their peers.

Food and restaurants Although the food culture of many Chinese immigrants in Hong Kong was basically Cantonese, Hong Kong cuisine has clearly developed in another direction. With their tiny homes and impossibly long working hours, few locals eat at home, preferring to dine out.
This is why Hong Kong is full of small and very inexpensive restaurants offering generous helpings of rice, vegetables and meat (almost exclusively chicken, duck or pig). Most of these small places cater for locals, so it’s hard to order something if you don’t speak Cantonese. If you’re brave you can trying ordering by pointing at what you want – good luck!

Dishes that both tourists and locals love include Dim Sum and the so-called “Hot Pot”. Dim Sum are small portions of Cantonese style food that the Hong Kong tourism agency often hypes up as “local specialities”. In spite of this, it’s often a very decent lunch, even though prices are rarely low.
The Hot Pot is fashionable in many Oriental cities. A pot, usually full of soya oil, is placed on a burner in the middle of the table. You then cook the types of meat and vegetables you want in it: recommended for barbecue loves.

Hong Kong is obviously a cosmopolitan place, so alongside the local restaurants there are several international chains (from fast-foods like McDonalds, KFC and Subway Sandwich to pizzerias like Pizza Hut and steakhouses like Dan Ryan’s or Ruby Tuesday). These restaurants also have to compete with local imitators of international cuisine, such as Hong Kong’s numerous pizzerias (Spaghetti House, PizzaBox, ChickenPizza, etc.).

If you like ethnic food, Hong Kong is a veritable paradise. I would recommend two places in particular:
Lovers of Japanese food should try the Itamae Sushi chain (the locals call these restaurants “Ban Chin”) in Kowloon and Causeway Bay. You can’t book and they’re always full, so be prepared for a long queue. However, it’s the best sushi in Hong Kong and not even expensive.
If you like Indian food, you must try the small restaurants run by Indian families in ChungKing Mansions (near the Tsim Tsa Shui quay). Although the place looks a bit grim, this is considered Hong Kong’s Indian “ghetto” and is the only place where you can get really top quality Indian food.

Hong Kong on the move – cool things to do Hong Kong is constantly on the move and in continual expansion. The government and big corporations have often tried to channel the city’s creativity into certain places (eg. the Cyberport) but most of these attempts end in colossal fiascos. The city remains in a state of chaotic, continual change and resists all attempts to define it. One example is the SoHo quarter (South of Holliwood road) which up to ten or so years ago was a squalid place and is now where most expats pay a lot to go and live.

It’s usually the little things that signal new trends in Hong Kong. Fashion is undoubtedly influenced by Japan and technological gadgets by Taiwan but Hong Kong mixes it all up in new ways. A stroll round the clothing markets can be fun, if only for the amusement of seeing the improbable new colour combinations they come up with (which inevitably become real fashion within a month), and also in the “Computer Arcades” offering new electronic gadgets at cut prices.

The first place to go is the famous markets in Hong Kong: Ladies Street (near Mong Kok MTR station) and Temple Street (Jordan MTR). You can get almost anything in these little markets, from toys to lingerie, T-shirts and imported jazz CDs. Let yourself go but remember prices have to be negotiated.

If you’re after high-tech stuff, the Computer Arcades in Kowloon or Victoria island are a good bet. It must be said, though, that prices aren’t as competitive as they used to be, except for the “Golden Arcade” in Sham Shui Po (the only good thing in that area to be frank). Anyone looking for computer components will find this the ideal place for saving money. (NB.: there are two entrances to the Golden Center accessing two separate floors that don’t connect, so be sure to check them both out!)

People looking for more Chinese local art and souvenirs should try the area around the Mid Level Escalators.

Hong Kong in the cinema Hong Kong is famous for its action films. The tradition grew out of the scarcity of funds afflicting Hong Kong studios in the early days. To overcome this handicap, they stuffed their films with acrobatic stunts and lots of gore to shock viewers. Such techniques were slowly refined to the level of an art and were subsequently adopted by Hollywood blockbusters like Matrix.

Meanwhile, Hong Kong’s film industry gained prestige (the recent Oscar “best film” Departed is a remake of an HK film, Infernal Affairs, which was equally acclaimed) and diversified to cover political films and romantic comedies like the Happy Birthday.

With the birth of a film industry in China, many thought that Hong Kong’s cinema was doomed but so far Chinese action films, such as The Promise or Hero (with huge budgets), haven’t had much success in Hong Kong, which is used to different standards.

The melting pot
Hong Kong isn’t very good at preserving itself. Seven million people in a tightly confined space haven’t got much respect for old buildings, which tend to get demolished to make way for shopping malls or blocks of flats. Although it’s still possible to see a few buildings from the colonial period (the LegCo at Admiralty or the former governor’s residence), Hong Kong isn’t likely to preserve its past in the form of architecture.

The city’s multiculturalism can be seen in the way its inhabitants act and think. Many Chinese parents will only speak English when their children are around, hoping they will grow up bilingual. In the middle of Hong Kong in particular, people of all races work side by side in companies from all over the world. The universities teach exclusively in English to attract foreign students as well.

Internet and web sites

www.openrice.com
There’s a site (Chinese and English versions) that faithfully documents all the city’s restaurants, with reviews by locals. As often happens, the Chinese version is the more up to date.

www.xanga.com
Nearly all kids in Hong Kong have a blog where they post photos of themselves and their daily musings. And nearly all these blogs are on xanga.

www.geocities.com/hkhemlock
This is undoubtedly the English language blog most visited by Hong Kong people. It tells of the wanderings of an anonymous HongKongese of British origin.
A social and political blog, as well as being highly irreverent and sarcastic, this was so successful that the author wrote an excellent book on the history of Hong Kong since ‘97.
Worth a visit just for its archive of links to all the other English language blogs regarding Hong Kong.

Special events
Hong Kong still keeps both British holidays (eg. Christmas and Easter) and Chinese ones (lunar new year and the birth of Buddha). Festivities in Hong Kong, however, are different from those elsewhere.
The city decorates itself for both the western and Chinese new years, with skyscrapers producing theme lighting and the local population indulging in wild shopping sprees, and on 25th December the shops also stay open and everyone works as normal, except for schools who have one day off.

Another Hong Kong curiosity, apart from the traditional countdown on 31st December to welcome in the new year, is the local custom of doing a similar countdown (preferably in a shopping centre) on 24th December to welcome in Christmas.

Ten things to do in HK:

1. Visit the Peak, the top of a hill on the central island, to look at all the skyscrapers down in the city. Which is beautiful and romantic, though the view is often obscured by pollution.
2. Stroll along CausewayBay in the rush hour. CausewayBay is probably the busiest street in Hong Kong and in the rush hour you can’t choose where to go, it’s the crowd that takes you where it wants.
3. Visit the statue of the big Buddha. More than the enormous statue itself, the fun part is getting there by bus: the journey is distinctly 3rd world and liable to cause seasickness with all the bumps and bends in the road (Lonely Planet suggests walking there but forget this unless you’re particularly fit).
4. Look at the Hong Kong skyline again from the Tsim Tsa Shui (Avenue of Stars) quayside. Personally, I prefer this view to the Peak; it reminds one a bit of Manhattan seen from Brooklyn, but the skyscrapers in HK are far more impressive. Look at the names set in the road surface and see if you recognize any of them (actors and directors that made the Hong Kong film industry famous). Don’t bother with the light show they organize in the evenings; it’s a waste of time.
5. Get lost in Temple Street and haggle over souvenirs you don’t really want to buy.
6. Get lost in Ladies’ Street and haggle over souvenirs you don’t really want to buy.
7. Observe Victoria Island on Sunday morning, when an army of Filipino maids camp out o the main streets to spend their day off playing cards.
8. Catch an underground train (MTR) connecting Hong Kong and Kowloon through a tunnel under the channel. In fact, this experience isn’t any different from any other journey on the underground; the reason for doing it is that you notice that mobile phones continue to work (otherwise people would probably panic).
9. Visit the Mid Level Escalators, a very long series of moving staircases used by the locals to go into town in the morning and go back home in the evening. The Soho district was developed because it surrounds this infrastructure.
10. Eat Dim Sum!

Other curiosities:
Not everyone knows that films made in Hong Kong for release in China as well often have to have two different endings – one for Hong Kong and the rest of the world and one for China (and sometimes for Malaysia too). For example, “The Election”, telling the tale of a Hong Kong family of criminals in the process of electing a new boss: the HK ending has the election finishing in a blood bath to assert the new boss’s supremacy, while the Chinese ending has the police arrest all the crooks.

Under the “1 country, 2 systems” regime, Hong Kong is free to maintain its lifestyle till 2047. This is why Hong Kong has a free press and judiciary and a professional police force. The Internet isn’t censored and freedom of speech is sacrosanct.

Many buildings in pre-1997 Hong Kong had the word “Royal” prefixing their names. Once the Chinese took over, the Hong Kong administration immediately cancelled out all these “royals” from building names. Many of the streets in the centre of town though continue to bear the names of the various British governors that controlled the city.

The language spoken in Hong Kong is Cantonese. Most of the population have a smattering of English and Mandarin, making survival easier for those who don’t know the difficult local language (especially in the central island and Kowloon).

* Name and surname: Ernesto Carrella

* Age: 21

* Nationality: Italian

* Company: