Melting Pot

In Statue Square yesterday afternoon there were hundreds of women, sat on the kerb or on newspaper. They gathered in groups, eating sandwiches, playing cards, singing or chatting. One group was perched in front of Jude Law, who pouted at them from behind a Dunhill window. It seemed strange, these women reclaiming the streets, turning them into their living rooms, the private made public. It took a while for me to learn that this was a protest on behalf of Filipino female labourers. Later, in Victoria Park at dusk, there were more groups of women. They wore headscarves and I guessed they might be Malaysian, or Indonesian. Each group took their own corner, on the grass or a bench, by the river or under an underpass. Like the women in Statue Square, they chatted or picnicked, with not a man in sight. Besides what this may denote about differences between Eastern and Western female culture, it was also an indication of a city as cosmopolitan as any I’ve known. On the streets are all the nations of South East Asia, as well as Australians, Indians, Africans, Americans and Europeans. Hong Kong is a melting pot, a trading place for all the world. However, when I went half an hour up the road to Sheng Shui this morning, with not another Westener in sight, there was only one place it felt like and that was China.