April 13, 2003

I love Hong Kong.

Wandering fantastic Central, bobbing the harbour on the junk Duk Ling, riding the unique outdoor escalators to Mid-levels — I am giddy as a Filipino nanny on her day off.

For months I had planned a stop-over of 10 days in Hong Kong, arriving March 18th.

I had early warning of some peculiar contagion in Hong Kong — ET emailed me shortly before I departed New Zealand.

At the hostel in Hong Kong we considered SARS (or Atypical Pneumonia as it is called there) a bit of a joke. None of us wore masks. We hardly mentioned the outbreak as the so-called war in Iraq had started. We contrasted the bloodless U.S. TV coverage with the reality coverage from Hong Kong and China. War is Hell.

General Oscar Meyer is not a charismatic enough spokesman for the tube but I thought Rumsfeld and Bush were convincing actors. Perhaps they have come to believe the things they say. The Iraqi’s Minister of Information was best of all.

Some expats in Hong Kong were slightly worried about SARS. A Canadian teacher left abruptly.

Over the 10 days I was there I had a feeling infection was getting closer. A bank worker fell ill. Many in an apartment block were hospitalized. One, then ten schools closed.

I was working in a room at the University of Hong Kong when a SWAT team of 8 custodians arrived. I barely had time to lift laptop off table before the team was scrubbing and disinfecting with Chinese intensity.

I am glad they let me into the airport in Vancouver. It had been a long year. I was really looking forward to coming home; friends, family, a familiar culture. My homecoming was set — dinner out and a sociable week-end in Vancouver.

Ron Shewchuk & Kate Zimmerman bravely hosted me.

Kate is a journalist. She calls me Typhoid Ricky. Truth is the first casualty of humour.

Kate took me to Vancouver Magazine‘s flash Annual Restaurant Awards. High-end food and booze! Free! Kate was correspondent for … Gourmet Magazine, I believe; I for the Hokitoka Wild Foods Festival, New Zealand.

Next day my parents picked me up in Vancouver and evacuated me to their home in the Kootenays. My family has had a spacious cedar house in Crawford Bay for 30 years. I get there as often as I can.

Crawford Bay had a good zoo — the dump — where you could watch bears 24-7.

But no more.

A succession of savvy and fiscally prudent B.C. Provincial governments saved enough money to install gigantic steel boxes in place of rural dumps. Bears no longer hang around for free lunch.

Sure the Crawford dump is only open 2 days / week and there is a hefty charge for depositing trash. But if you don’t like it you can abandon your old bike carcass up on the mountain like the locals do.

That savvy and fiscally prudent bit — just kidding — B.C. politics is half comedy, half tragedy. B.C. just sold off the new inter-island ferries for about $.0001 on the dollar, I understand. High government office in this Province is the kiss of death — every Premiere finishes his career in jail or ruinous scandal.

The current B.C. Premiere, Gordon Campbell, was recently arrested in Hawaii for drunk driving. Students at the U of Saskatchewan are using his mug on an anti-drunk driving poster.

Crawford Bay is quiet and remote — but only a scenic ferry ride across the lake to very cool Nelson, B.C. (You know Nelson from the movie Roxanne, with Steve Martin.)

Nelson is an alternate lifestyle nexus where you can stock up on bulk tofu & enjoy an astonishing selection of non-dairy milks. Have you tried oat drink? (non-GMO, heart safe, finest whole organic oat groats.)

The co-op sells only fair trade coffee.

Aging hippies in Nelson hang out at the excellent Oso Negro coffee shop. Not much has changed for them in Nelson since they first arrived as draft dodgers. The potency of the ganja, of course.

Most backpackers I met in New Zealand had not visited Canada — but all had reverence for British Columbia; dope of such quality that even second hand smoke can strip you of an Olympic medal.
My father said we even had a dope grower on our own mountain in teeny Crawford Bay, a fellow defending his private property with a gun. But Dad thought the doper was now dead. (Perhaps eliminated by a competitor like Escobar.)

I had not heard of the Kootenay Cartel but determined to hike up the hill to see for myself.

Nothing.

Well, nothing but a tiered clearing, big permanent trailer, shotgun chair overlooking the road up the mountain. Perhaps they grow rice.

No worries, though. Nelson and Kootenays are as charming as ever. And no SARS so far.

Gladly the SARS scare is in decline. This is not the big plague, but rather a practice run for something worse.

Shame that closet racists can mutter against anyone Asian. Shame that Hong Kong will be avoided.

But Hong Kong will bounce back. Five years ago I feared the central planners in Beijing wanted Shanghai to usurp Hong Kong as the financial and transportation hub of Asia.

celebrating the handover 1997

Yet Hong Kong — truly the land of the vertical — is building the 4th and 5th highest buildings in the world on opposite sides of the harbour. Disneyland is going in. And the most futuristic covered harbour front ever conceived.

But I am glad to be home. Home to the best country in the world.
Severely cute,

Rick McSARS