hong kong

i'm back from hong kong and it never ceases to amaze me how scary old people are.

during my stay in hong kong i helped some elderly relatives look at old people's home for them. they live at the very edge of hong kong, in an area called sha tau kok. it is at the border of china, and special permits must be obtained to even enter there. the town is guarded with a gate and 15 foot high barbed wire fence. the army officers never smile as they check your papers. sha tau kok is rural and surrounded by mountains. the buildings are concrete and crumbling, all stained by leaking air con units. my parents pointed out to me a pink block of flats, with brown rusting drain pipes and cracked tiles. the ramp into the building was worn and falling apart. they told me it was only 2 years old.

sha tau kok has 2 old people's homes. they are nearly identical in design. they have wide open plan floors; with cubicles instead of rooms. the barrier separating each sleeping area is no more that 3 feet high. when you sit on your bed, you can see everyone else in the home. mounted on the walls are huge electrical fans, whirring and swing left; then right; then left; then right... middle aged nurses strut around in dirty white uniforms, speaking in parental tones to old people, then smiling to us when they don't understand.

they people in here are old. when chinese people are young, they look young. when chinese people are middle aged, they look young. when chinese people are old, they look ancient. the face creases up and sags. liver spots appear like acne on a teenager. i saw someone that was so thin, his hip bone was nearly poking out of his skin. another was looked like as shrunken prune, a miniature dried version of his former self. others stared as we walked in, and a few shuffled towards us. they were so soft and fragile, as if i could crack their skulls just by pressing my finger on their foreheads and feel their mushy brains.

the eventuality of my fate is made flesh: my mortal self is looking me in the eye. the woman who couldn't stop nodding her head asked me we i was from. i saw a picture of a young man in a mortar board and gown next to her bed. 2 friends rose from their chairs, and one helped the other walk to his bed; physically supporting him though he could hardly move himself. another shriveled grandma spoke to me like an excited school girl at christmas: her voice betraying her age. i estimated about 40 people must have lived there with an average age of 70. that is 2800 years in total. they have lived my life more than 100 times over.

i left that place thinking about humanity in unlikely forms and that people must die all the time.


new york trilogy - auster

as promised, some views on this book. the first story was interesting, then gets a bit weird at the end. the second story is an exercise in cleverness. the third links everything together. i liked the overlapping and how one event inspires events in another story. it shows the creative process; the speculation and fantasy.

remember john rabe

i also finished the rape of nanking by iris chang. the book is as horrific as the title suggests and the events in nanking even more so. it shows not all nazis are the same too.

now

i've just started don quixote by cervantes. i can't believe this book has already made me laugh out loud.