Space, and how we occupy it.

I travelled recently and it has once again confirmed what I thought last time I left our borders:  we are penultimate consumers.  You can read the statistics about how our obsession for acquiring and consuming stuff outstrips all other countries but you appreciate it more when you realize that in Hong Kong, a solidly middle-class family of four lives in about 450 square feet of space. 

In such a space there's usually a stove that spits like a flamethrower (but no oven), a single box that neither washes nor dries your clothes very well, and no opportunity to ever pick your nose in privacy, ever.  With a set up like that, Hong Kong must be a breeding ground for the voyeur, and a Ph.D. program for executing sneaky sex, among so many other things for which we appreciate privacy.  So, then, you spend your time out of doors.  And it is busy, crowded. 

But far from being a social pressure-cooker, from what I experienced in the city there's an orderliness to it, a sort of agreed-upon-process  among the citizenry that feels sane and civil.  I learned that the crime rate was virtually non-existent.  Our Chinese friend told us that it was in large part because "there's so much police".  It was then it struck me that in the five days I spent on the main island I never saw a single police car or cop, and I cannot recall hearing sirens of any kind - ambulance, fire, police.  Hong Kong is a place of much wealth, whether coming over from the mainland to spend their yuan or generated by business right there.  And wealth can demand certain social niceties that lower-income folk alone cannot usually afford to command.  Even as that wealth is 7 million strong in a space smaller than Rhode Island.

"play nice" signage on the Hong Kong mass transit rail

Or perhaps the mainland used its Communist-brainwashing-techno-blaster to turn everyone into little obedient automatrons.  While there is a predominant Chinese element in the culture, the expats seem to take up just as much cultural space as the Chinese. (It odd to call the British "expats" when they basically founded the place.)

In contrast to Hong Kong's tight quarters, I spent three hours in a 6,500 square foot home today.  A family of five live there.  Oh, its beautiful, I won't front.  But 6,500 square feet begs for stuff to inhabit it, lest it look like an empty warehouse.  Then you have to take care of that stuff: dust it, repair it, put it away, hell, just remember that it exists.  The owner, a lovely person, confessed that every room, every closet, every cabinet, every drawer, is packed full of stuff.  This person says they lay awake at night stressing about how the "warehouse" is full of inventory and nothing ever gets shipped out.  Stressful, as I gather, to lord over so many things.  A psychic pressure, all these things, some of which you've forgotten entirely, which need you to account for them, to employ them, to justify their existence. 


We could spend all our existence justifying the existence of all of our shit, I say.

Opportunity to pick your nose or boink in privacy aside, Hong Kong comes in 88th in the Global Happy Planet Index....want to guess where the US comes in (forgetitIwontdepressyou150).  This measures social well being and environmental impact on the planet.  I don't conclude from this they're "better" than us.  The things I envied - the spotless streets; the beaches and mountains; the near-non-existent crime; the dizzying number of awesome mass transit options; the shiny grafitti-free storefronts and side alleys; the abscence of homeless and beggars to remind you that the world is an unfair and cruel place; and the tidy chaos of the open air markets...it  presented a copasetic Stepford Wives mix of two worlds: bustling metropolis and country club genteel.  It is initially a marvel, but after the novelty wears the mystery of how such a mix is acheived and sustains lingers. 


A mystery, like how a 6,500 square foot home is so much living space but is yet packed to the gills with stuff.  Lovely on the eyes, envious at first glance, but puzzling as how it is pulled off.  And the suspicion that, somewhere, to have things look this good, there's a massive tradeoff that's lurking in its closets, cabinets and drawers.