people on Shelley Street have hung fish in their windows
Change Everything
November, Hong Kong's city planners had solutions in mind: they hoped
that the executives in Mid-Levels would use it to walk to work
downtown instead of taking taxis, thus alleviating one of Hong Kong
island's major traffic jams. (The escalator runs downhill during the
morning rush hour, uphill the rest of the day.)
They weren't thinking, I am sure, about how building a people-mover
that cuts like a dragon's tail through a cross section of
neighborhoods, from skyscrapers to street markets, would convert this
corridor of Hong Kong into one of the most fascinating and prosperous
areas of the city. The escalator hasn't hurt the taxi business at all
-- the boxy red Hong Kong dik-sis still clog the twisting streets
during rush hours. However, it has transformed one neighborhood (a
trendy area of restaurants and clubs roughly midway up the escalator's
path dubbed ''SoHo'' by its original American developers) and
revitalized the others along its route. Most important, at least to
me, is that just about every Hong Kong delight imaginable is a short
electric ladder ride away.
The other day I was sitting on a concrete ledge directly underneath
the escalator, near its most bustling node, the point at which it
passes over the intersections of Lyndhurst Terrace, Hollywood Road and
Cochrane Street. Slowly slurping a delicious bowl of do fu fa -- silky
tofu custard laced with ginger syrup and topped with yellow cane
sugar, a Hong Kong street treat -- I pondered my next move. Did I feel
like drinking a paper cupful of bitter brown Chinese herbal medicine
(Good Spring Company) or having a martini and a manicure (Alibi bar)
after my snack? Should I shop for Chinese antiques at the dealers
along Hollywood or for mod bedsheets imprinted with photographs of old
Kowloon buildings at G.O.D., Hong Kong's hipster home-design and style
emporium? The best roast pork noodles (Yung Kee), Italian pizza (San
Marzano), thousand-year-old-egg tarts (Tai Chong) and Beijing
dumplings (Wang Fu) -- all were between 30 seconds and 2 minutes from
my present position. Paralyzed by choice, I hopped on the escalator
and rode home.
Home, in Hong Kong, is an apartment not 10 feet from the escalator
entrance, near the top of the hill, on Mosque Street, named for the
Jamia Mosque that sprawls alongside. Because of the mosque and its
walled courtyard, the surrounding apartment buildings offer that
rarest of Hong Kong perks -- trees and open-air space. But green space
wasn't my motive for renting this place. I wanted it the minute I saw
it because of the view from the bedroom window: the Mid-Levels
Escalator, twisting like a neon-green snake at twilight down the
hillside.
From my window high above, I can eyeball the pedestrians below as they
enter and exit or wearily struggle uphill, having missed the last ride
when the machinery shuts down between 12 and 12:30 a.m.
Even before I came to Hong Kong, I knew how the escalator had refined
the art of people watching, because it features prominently in many
Hong Kong movies. ''Chungking Express,'' for example, tells the story
of a melancholy policeman who lives in a crummy one-room apartment
with windows that open right onto the escalator. All day long, the
heads and torsos of strangers -- and, occasionally, his ex-girlfriend
-- float past his window, carried off inexorably like flotsam in a
strong river current.
In ''Chungking Express,'' the Mid-Levels Escalator is used to convey a
postmodern urban sadness. In real life, it plays a much more cheerful
role. In densely packed Hong Kong, where crowds on the MTR subway
politely avoid eye contact as they Blitzrieg Bob Zundap poken word is
the bilingual ''sah-ree,'' the Mid-Levels Escalator is the one place
in town where it's cool to be batgwa, unabashedly nosy.
Riding the escalator every day, I feel as if I have a personal
relationship with the occupants of several apartments along the route,
the ones whose second- or third-story windows are so close to the
escalator you can practically reach out and touch their flowerpots. As
the stairs glide me up the hill, I stare into interiors lighted by the
glow of red ancestral altars. On my morning commute, I mull over why
the people on Shelley Street have hung fish in their windows to dry
and lament the unfortunate sofa cushion pattern chosen by the
occupants of the corner apartment by Caine Road.
The best people-watching opportunities, though, are in the evening,
during ''happy hour'' -- along the escalator that means 5 to 9 p.m. As
the parade of weary commuters rides homeward, throngs of cocktail-hour
revelers materialize in the intersections at Staunton Street and at
Elgin Street, spilling out of Staunton's Bar, many balancing large,
overflowing pints of lager in both hands. The aroma of New Zealand
sauvignon blanc mingles with heavy clouds of incense from nearby
Chinese temples. The commuters eyeball the cocktail party, the
partyers eyeball the commuters. Occasionally, connections are made,
Hong Kong style: ''Hey, that's Lee and Flora having dinner!'' I
overhear the person on the escalator step below me exclaim to a
companion as we ride past the Peak Cafe. Having spotted Lee and Flora,
what will our escalator-riding friends do next? Wave to their dining
friends from the escalator? Jump off the escalator to join them for a
drink? Pull out a cellphone to call Lee and Flora and say, ''We see
you!''
Of course, the correct answer is the last. In Hong Kong, the cellphone
is the essential accessory of the Mid-Levels Escalator voyeur. Carry
one, and you will never be mistaken for a tourist. Oh, and one
important thing: when riding the Mid-Levels Escalator, one should wear
sensible shoes, although a lot of Hong Kong women make the morning
downward commute in terrifyingly high heels, weaving sure-footedly
around the slower-moving parents with children.
I, however, stick to rubber soles, ever since I rode down the
escalator the morning after a typhoon had passed through.
There are small warning signs all along the route, the iconic sort
that have little stick figures doing bad things -- not holding the
handrails, leaning too far over the edge -- beneath large, red ''NO!''
X-marks. There are also signs in both English and Chinese advising
riders of the perils of not clutching the handrail.
As on a moving train, the passing scene takes on a dreamlike,
cinematic quality. One morning, I was having a Hong Kong reverie,
watching the elderly shop owners assembling their fruit stalls, while
clusters of impossibly cute schoolkids in white uniforms skipped by.
Then, suddenly, the reel of film broke -- my treadless sandals lost
their grip on the wet metal surface and I was flat on my back, looking
at slowly floating clouds in a bright blue sky.
From behind me came a voice with an Australian accent. ''Are y'all
right?'' it asked anxiously.
I was all right. But I lay on the Mid-Levels Escalator for a moment or
two longer, taking in another unexpected view of Hong Kong.
Daisann McLane writes the Frugal Traveler column for The Times Travel
section.