This past Saturday, October 11, I climbed the Peak- Hong Kong's highest point with a beautiful view of the Kowloon skyline and Victoria Harbor. Normally people take the tram, which makes an eight minute, close to vertical ascent up the summit. I however, unwittingly led my group of fellow English teachers and exchange students from mainland China, into the trap of walking up the Peak. Reassured by the thought that this would be a leisurely way to spend the late afternoon, the little jaunt I had envisioned instead brought sweat and biting thigh pain.
To begin our adventure we took the Mid- Level escalator- which ascends the lower part of the Peak called the Mid-levels- to its end approximately halfway up the mountain. We then took a right on Connait Road and took a walking tour of one of the poshest residential locations in Hong Kong- with names like "Minerva House" and "Panorama Garden" and prices approaching HK 13 million (US 3 million)- they appear to offer a respite from the stress of Hong Kong daily life. We then began what would be a seemingly endless upward hike on the charming Hatton Road, a hiking trail that enters Kowloon Country Park. Only when we had hiked for approximately half an hour was my mistake in associating "the Peak" and "leisurely" in the same description fully revealed. The dream of a nice respite from city life dissipated with the sign pointing up the mountain reading 2800 meters and the sign pointing back the way we had come reading 200 meters. The following hour was filled with disbelief, laughter and phone calls to native Hong Kongers exclaiming "You're actually walking up the Peak?!"
While the climb was more demanding than we anticipated, it was the first time I have felt and heard utter silence in Hong Kong. It also gave me the chance to talk with some of the Chinese students accompanying us (perhaps to their chagrin!). I had a long conversation with Sally, an extremely well read and ambitious student who as an example of her intelligence directed me towards reading the German philosopher Goethe. Sally is dating the Chinese equivalent of the high-school quarterback- the captain of the volleyball team at a Chinese university. Revealing some of the issues at work in her generation, Sally also spoke of the class-consciousness in her parents' proscriptions on dating. She said that being from a relatively well off family in Shanghai, her parents would like her to marry a Shanghai boy from a similarly wealthy family. In the eyes of her parents, Sally’s boyfriend is doubly cursed: he is one, not rich, and two, not from Shanghai.
Sally also spoke of the burden children of the "one-child" generation are feeling, explaining that she and her one day husband will be responsible for caring for two mothers and two fathers, whereas in the US several adult children usually share in this responsibility. The pressure for these only children is thus intense to marry rich or have a successful career that will enable them to support their parents. Caring for one's parents in China also entails more than we as Americans imagine. It means checking in on them a few times a day, cooking food for them for perhaps every meal, obeying their instructions without argument, and sometimes living with them to ensure their constant well-being. Little wonder than that Sally worries how she and her husband-to-be will do it all.
One thought that occurred to me while listening to Sally describe the complex familial obligations and relationships shaping her current decisions was startling in its simplicity and intensity: Sally's generation is the last generation of Chinese children who will have aunts and uncles. Her children, whose parents are both only children, will not have even this extended family network. China is re-imagining the family as we envision it with grandparents, sisters, brothers, aunts and uncles. Sally, being a bright individual, may allow her children to escape this constriction of the family: the Chinese government will allow parents who are both university professors to have two children. They do this in the belief that children resulting from such marriages will be genetically superior to other children, a belief that eerily echoes early twentieth century ideas of genetic selection and superiority.
