Tag Archives: HK

Why I Wouldn’t Live in Hong Kong

By David Xia | Published: August 14, 2009
"For creature comforts, Hong Kong is unsurpassed, but Hong Kong is culturally barren. Living there is something like living inside a cash register."

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Posted in China, Travel | Leave a comment

Anime-Comic-Game Hong Kong (ACGHK) 2009

By David Xia | Published: August 10, 2009
I have never before found myself immersed in something so utterly foreign and bizarre. The manga fans I know in the States are mere wannabes compared to the 600,000 plus enthusiasts who flocked to this year’s ACGHK sporting imitation M41 carbines, full sets of samurai armor with matching katanas, and hair of every conceivable unnatural color under the sun.

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Posted in China | 1 Comment

Tai Mo Shan, Done

By David Xia | Published: August 1, 2009
A sign reading "No Trespassing," a ten foot high fence wrapping all the way around, barbed wire everywhere? Sounds like an unambiguous invitation to me.

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Posted in China, Nature/Outdoors, Travel | Leave a comment

“It’s like all the Mexicans in NYC just stopped working one day.”

By David Xia | Published: July 20, 2009
Imagine every Sunday all the Mexicans in NYC with low-skilled jobs stop working, go to Wall Street or Times Square, and just throw one big street party.

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Posted in Books, China, Travel | Leave a comment

Hong Kong Ivy Ball 2009

By David Xia | Published: July 7, 2009

Ivy Ball is a social extravaganza for Ivy League alumni who live in Hong Kong.  Every summer, hundreds of men in tuxedos and women in evening gowns enter the Grand Hyatt ballroom for professional networking and auditory/gustatory entertainment. Centerpieces of freshly-cut flowers and seven-armed candelabra holding two-foot-long candles tower over guests. A chandelier of glass spheres sparkles above a hardwood dance floor. This year’s theme was “Take a Chance.”

Ivy Ball 2009 flyer


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Posted in China, Columbia University | 3 Comments

Citadels of the Almighty Dollar

By David Xia | Published: June 28, 2009

HK's Central district is the analogue of NYC's Wall Street. It is here that multi-billion dollar banking giants like Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation (HSBC) and Standard Chartered Bank stake out their territories. Garden Road and Cotton Tree Drive are mere slivers of pavement wedged between the towering high-rises of Bank of China and Citibank. Between these two buildings lies the oldest Anglican church in the Far East. Even though St. John's Cathedral has been here since 1849, it's dwarfed by the neighboring financial skyscrapers and looks strangely out of place. Its stone frame, rose window, lancet arches, and trifoils contrast jarringly with the surrounding urban jungle made of glass and steel.

HK St. John's Cathedral

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Posted in China | 3 Comments

What Is a Trowel?

By David Xia | Published: June 26, 2009
From: David Xia To: CEO HK interns Subject: DID YOU SAY HIKING?!?! Dear fellow CEOs, A question first: are any of the guys bothering with getting a tux for the Ivy Ball?

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Posted in China, Comedy, Travel | 1 Comment

Massive, Harmonious Madness

By David Xia | Published: June 23, 2009
A day spent experiencing HK's Mass Transit Railway (MTR) is enough to put any urban-dwelling American to shame.

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Posted in China, Travel | 1 Comment

Megamalls and Clumsy Change

By David Xia | Published: June 22, 2009

When I left NYC there was no evidence that the Sun exists. When I landed in HK, there was still none. The first ten days of my stay were filled with cumulonimbus clouds and grape-sized rain droplets. Stepping outside is like entering a sauna or breathing with a hot wet rag smothering your face. The CEOs here are taking three to four showers a day to gain short-lived relief from all the humidity-induced stickiness. Some brief musings about HK:

  1. HK (and China for that matter) is not ethnically diverse compared to NYC. The city’s 95% Chinese.
  2. There are so many mega-malls that look exactly alike. Armies of cleaning staff ensure they are all freakishly clean.

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CEO HK Interns

By David Xia | Published: June 20, 2009
Columbia University's Center for Career Education (CCE) will, no doubt, post on its website photos of Columbia Experience Overseas HK interns who look like they're having way more fun than anyone has a human right to by being treated to free Cantonese food and an open bar at an upscale bar/lounge. (You know Philia Lounge will be a nice place even before you go because of its website. There's no way a bar that's not doing well is going to deck out its website with Adobe Flash and eerie techno music.) But here are some additional flattering pictures of the CEO contingent.

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Posted in China, Travel | 1 Comment

Kowloon Tong

By David Xia | Published: June 17, 2009
Columbia's Center for Career Education has provided us interns with free housing during our internships in HK. NTT International House is an eleven-story dormitory of Baptist University, which is nestled in the Kowloon Tong (九龍唐) district.

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Posted in China, Travel | 1 Comment