Drink a Glass of Tradition

September 1st - Hong Kong - Blistering hot

Trudging over to Central and up the Midlevel escalators (thank god for these!), hastily sweating my morning congee and breakfast tea away, I met up with KFC (his birthright initials, I swear), who was standing outside an authentic Chinese herbal tea shop with a sweaty lunchtime crowd, drinking a special 'cooling' brew.

The contrast was amusingly stark -- well-heeled workers from the excruciatingly chic IFC offices nearby, standing around drinking bitter age old potions at a shop so ancient-looking that I won't be surprised if Wong Fei Hong walked right out of it. Just try imagining the after-work clientele at Harry's, then take the beer bottles away and replace them with murky concoctions in chipped glasses on a stainless steel countertop and surgical-green mosaic walls. There you go, a real, breathing Hong Kong.

I tried to hide my Starbucks Caramel Creme Frappuccino from view as KFC (alright, for the very last time, before he protests) offered to buy me a glass of that mysterious tea, feeling slightly ashamed for drinking something so foreign, so pretentious and not too beneficial to the body. I turned down his offer anyway, and looked around curiously.

Around me, deep in the bowels of Asia's financial center, voluntarily removed from the air-conditioned comfort of their state-of-the-art offices, are men and women decked in smartly pressed shirts and dresses, probably from Lane Crawford or the likes, now soaked and stuck to their backs like clingwrap, their carefully tousled hair wilting in the midday heat, all for barely half-a-pint of traditional goodness.

In a heartbeat, I remembered why I love Hong Kong. Here, people live with their heritage, and I really dig that.