A DAY OFF

Sun (Auckland), Volume I, Issue 269, 3 February 1928, Page 7

A DAY OFF

IN HONGKONG THE DOORWAY OF CHINA China is convulsed, and to read of China is to read of tragedy. So long have terror and confusion walked the land that one may hardly think of China save with a shudder. And yet, between its convulsions, that great and mysterious country has for travellers an attraction certainly not surpassed by that of any other country in the world, writes “R.C” in “The Times” Imperial trade supplement. The visitor to China looks at the suave and smiling, the immobile and expressionless, the fierce and challenging countenances of the people, at the amazing ships, the vast temples, the fantastic images, pictures, houses, and decorations, and asks: “What is behind all this?”. Centuries did not, and probably will not, answer the same question. China, in her' amicable moods, inspires more questions than can be asked in a lifetime; and in her days of terror more than can be answered in 100 years. Hong-Kong is not China; but one may conjecture that she once was part of her. Now the sea washes all round her, and from the mainland Kowloon looks across a narrow strait at the island. Whatever reverberations' shake China shake also, though less violently, Hong-Kong; so that it is not possible to be there and to remain unruffled when some new terror is let loose across the water; and more than once that narrow, intervening strip of blue has had, like the English Channel in years gone by, the virtue of many more leagues of width than actually it could boast. But there has been peace in China, anci so all one’s recollections of days spent in Hong-Kong are not tinged with dread. And the archipelago of tiny islands, of which it is the principal, may present a spectacle to be seen through eyes dimmed to its beauty by no physical or spiritual apprehension. Ships com© hither from all over the world. British ships of war serving on the China Stations, liners, freighters, and tankers under many flags, with Chinese junks rude of line and ragged of sail. So that this island—in fact a small but vastly important unit in the British Empire, set at one of the teeming doorways of China—has all the appearance of being herself the chief port of some prosperous mercantile Power. Fifteen hundred miles across the sea is Yokohama, seeming, in this region of vast distances, almost a neighbouring city; and eight hundred miles nearer is Shanghai—crowded, fiat, and, in summer, sweltering. North is Canton, at the head of the gulfmysterious, enchanting, and repellent by turns. But Hongkong is the most beautiful of them all. She rises from the sea, a great cone of green and red, o’ertopping a score of lesser islands that cluster about her. The crowded water is amazingly blue. The sky is the deepest azure, and the sun, lacking the fierce penetration of the sun at Singapore, glows with an ardent fervour. But the climate of the Far East is a thing wholly unaccountable; and the weather about the Chinese coast is capable of changes as violent and sudden as those that characterise Chinese politics. The traveller, therefore, may arrive at Hong-Kong in circumstances that belie every word that ever was said in her praise. He may, though it bo noon, first see the island under a blanket or murky cloud that casts black shadows on the water where the native boats are tossed like corks in a bath of ink; while the ship in which he is battles to make port against a furious wind blows the white tops from the waves and mingles them with drenching, tepid rain. Yet when the storm is over and the sunshine brings back peace and comfort, Hong-Kong is revealed again in the natural beauty that needed only light to disclose it. Night at Kowloon Above the crescent-shaped waterfront, where there is tfciy-long movement and the commotion of business, ranks of white buildings throng the hillside, and, above them, houses, singly and in small clusters, are set here and there in a background of green. Inaccessible they seem from a distance; but the entire face of the hifr is laced with climbing, winding paths. There runs also to the summit a funicular failway; and it is a pastime of passengers who have not long used it to note the remarkable difference between the temperature ajt one end of the railway and that at the other. It is a pastime of habitual passengers to observe this little exercise tolerantly. The reactions of the human mind to the significance of mercury in a hot climate undergo drastic changes with time. From the Peak, where if anywhere on a summer afternoon in Hong-Kong there will be a breeze, there is to be seen a view of such beauty as can hardly be equalled in Asia. At night Hong-Kong undergoes a transformation that is more than that brought about by the setting of the sun and the coming of darkness. Masses of lights blaze on the waterfront, and lamps of greater and less degree flash and sparkle all over the face of the hill and trace, in reflection on the dark and moving water, ever-dancing, ever-changing networks of gold and silver. Standing on the quay at Kowloon and looking across the narrow strait, where the ferry travels like a.*ghost ship in the gloom, one might think that the petulant child of a giant had flung his Ch.rist-mas-tree into the sea and there left it afloat with its myriad candles twinkling. The offices, and shops, the coolies, the chairs, and the noise of marketing will all be there in the morning; but that first, gripping impression, received in a moment of inspiration in the darkness, when indeed seemed to be gazing from the poet’s magic casement, will remain after many suns have glared at noon on the sweltering roads of HongKong.