The scene was surreal: I was sitting on a wooden deck, shaded from the cook-you-until-you're-done sun by a conveniently-placed umbrella, looking out at the high rises of Kowloon across Hong Kong Harbor.
Okay, that wasn't the surreal part.
The surreal part was that the song "American Woman" was pounding out of the restaurant's speaker system.
Or maybe that wasn't so strange, after all. The restaurant was at a pier frequented by U.S. Navy sailors on liberty; I was willing to accept that the musical selection was being influenced by the customer base. But then, later, way over on the Kowloon side of the harbor, located solidly within mainland China, where one might expect to find pop culture more noticeably, well, Chinese, I found myself sitting in a British pub called Bulldogs, listening to "Money for Nothing."
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Hong Kong is, after all, an Asiatic Mecca of international trade, commerce, and cultural mingling.
This was proven later, when a friend and I made our way to the SoHo area of Hong Kong, looking to experience the city's famous outdoor escalator. Much of Hong Kong is built into the side of Mt. Victoria, so the streets are rather (and this is an understatement) steep. To alleviate this problem for pedestrians who would rather get in some shopping than a half-day's-worth of mountain climbing experience, the city built a series of escalators that cart the weary, the lazy, and the curious up the slope.
We were about halfway up to wherever the escalators were going (possibly the pearly gates) when we spotted a little place off to one side called Ivan the Kozak's. I have a possibly unhealthy interest in all things Cossack-y and insisted that we leap recklessly from the escalator and go in for a shot of authentic Russian vodka and some vareniki. (Well, I insisted on the vodka; my companion, who spoke some Russian and had spent some time in one of those Russian cities whose name ends in -nsk, recommended the vareniki, which is essentially a potato- or, if you're feeling daring, meat-filled dumpling).
Inside, we learned all sorts of interesting things: there is a booming community of Russians in Hong Kong, for one. For another, Mt. Everest's name in Nepalese is "Sagasmatha" (the waitress was from Nepal, but did speak Russian, so we -- i.e.: my friend -- were able to communicate with her). And potato dumplings are pretty good.
The music? Russian, of course.
Back outside, we mounted the escalator again and kept going up the side the mountain. Standing there, watching the streets and alleys of the city creep by at escalator pace, I kept expecting bland escalator-mall music to start warbling from overhead speakers.
Instead, the escalator finally spit us out onto a nondescript street (no sign of pearly gates in evidence, though there was one made out of rusty iron). We looked around for the "down" escalator.
There wasn't one. Either the builders of the world's longest outside escalator had run out of money, or they figured that people too lazy to hike up the steep streets could at least get some exercise by hiking the other direction.
On the way back down to sea level, I entertained myself by humming "American Woman."
The author is currently gallivanting around Asia, nowhere near the site of the 2008 Olympic Games in Beijing.
