Watching From Above

I’ve just arrived in Hong Kong, and I think that the adventure has begun. I slept fitfully throughout the 18 hours that was last night, and during each period of wakefulness I was struck by the utter darkness that surrounded the plane. When I looked out the window, there were some moments when I could make out the surface of clouds below us, and thereby differentiate between the ocean and the sky, but for the most part, there was just darkness. About an hour outside of Hong Kong, however, I started to see shapes of light down below, and I don’t think that I can quite describe the experience that followed.

I mentioned in previous posts that I am very conscious of a feeling of isolation when in other countries, caused by the constant knowledge that I am a foreigner. Until today, my only real experience with being in a foreign country was my stay in Western Europe, which, I realized this morning, really doesn’t measure up on the “You Ain’t From ‘Round Here” scale.

As the plane got closer to the city, I saw small groups of lights from below, and I still have no idea what they could have possibly been. I recognized boats here and there, but there were also giant circles and lines made of lights strung together with nothing within them, like a luminous connect-the-dots picture that no one had bothered to color in. Once we got over the harbor itself, however, I could at least make out, in a general sense, what was below me, but I was still awestruck. Just before the sky started to turn blue-gray in the east, there were hundreds of ships moving out from the ports. They seemed, from above, to be in a rough sort of grid, though with a lot of space between them, like a mismatched armada in an unenthusiastic traffic-jam.

I remember distinctly that all of the lights on the water, recognizable or not, gave me such a strong sense of foreignness, seemed so quintessentially alien to my own experience, that it really hit me how far I was from home. I should also note that this was not at all an unpleasant feeling, but rather just a concrete manifestation of the otherness that I suppose pervades all international travel, and which is also the cause for great excitement.

We landed at sunrise. As we flew over the city itself, I could see so many lights from unimaginable numbers of people, with large blots of darkness oozing through them in the shapes of small harbors and coves. It wasn’t until the sun finally started shedding direct light, however (which actually wasn’t until we had just begun our taxi to the airport), that I realized that there are mountains all around the city, and that the clouds really do cling to the tops of them much like I’ve seen in every Chinese martial arts movie. Flying over Hong Kong, it is impossible to ignore that this is one of the great cities of the world. Skyscrapers stretch across the horizon for as far as the eye can see; shipyards load and unload massive freighters carrying hundreds of boxes, each bigger than three American houses put together. There is a constant coming and going which is evident even from miles above; the very atmosphere shudders with the life force of the place, and above it all loom the majestic sillhouettes of the mountains cloaked in mist.

Granted, after we landed, some of the romance was broken up by the series of tests and checks for H1N1 symptoms to which we were all subjected, combined with (it seemed to me) a rather poorly organized security checkpoint through which we were all slowly herded, but those details are better saved for amusing anecdotes to be told in person. Right now, sitting at the gate, waiting for my final flight which will at last take me to Phuket, I’m still thinking about the view from the sky.