Hong Kong! The legendary Chinese city of life and lights, where millionaires rub shoulders with fresh-off-the-boat immigrants, skyscrapers overshadow shanties and class division are as dramatic as the neon that illuminates it all.
Located on the southernmost banks of the Chinese mainland and pressed against the South China Sea, there truly is nowhere else in the world like Hong Kong, for Hong Kong is the World.
It is the best of Beijing and Bangkok, London and Las Vegas, New York and New Delhi; one of the most densely populated dependencies (a landmass of only 1,000 square kilometers for seven million residents), with one of the world's largest revolving multinational communities. Indeed, a stroll around Tsim Sha Tsui (pronounced jimsawjoy), the city's tourist and trade center on the southern Kowloon peninsula, reveals the entire human race in one square block radius: white people in pastel shorts walking side by side with majestically robed Africans, turbaned sheiks haggling with short-tempered Cantonese vendors, and street-corner Hindu hustlers harassing, well, everyone.
The nucleus of TST's international community is found on south Nathan Road, which buzzes 24 hours a day not unlike a third-world beehive. The thoroughfare is lit up with electronics, hazy with Indian incense and resonant with 200bpm Arabic music. It is a warren of the world, a global party, and everyone is invited. As a tailor from Pakistan profoundly puts it, it's the politicians who draw the borders, otherwise we are all friends here.
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