There are lots of places in the world I’d like to go, but there are significantly fewer where I’d like to live. I wish I could say I’ve lived more places. The experience of living abroad is one that every single American should experience at some point in his or her lifetime. And while I’ve had the opportunity to go a couple of great places and rent an apartment, shop at the local store, get to know some locals, one place I have not even visited is Hong Kong. But it is so high on my list of places I’d like to go that I always keep an eye out for articles on Hong Kong.
And so imagine my surprise as I was reading last night the 2006 Best American Essays (I get several books in this series every year and highly recommend them) and I came across this essay called City Out of Breath by Ken Chen. Beautifully-written, the essay is both a travel story and a voyage of discovery for Chen and his father, who find in Hong Kong a vibrant city of “energy and flashy contradictions”, an electric admixture of Asian and Western” where “walking becomes an act of silent storytelling, figuring people out.” I was surprised to see the essay in this particular collection because the Best American series already has a whole volume dedicated to travel, but I’m also glad I found it, because as I was sitting alone in my bad last night reading Chen’s essay, I was reminded once again how much Hong Kong appeals to me, how much I can’t wait to go there someday…or perhaps even to live there.