Gene Gleason

“The culinary art is certainly above all others in Hong Kong.”

—Harold Ingrams, Hong Kong, 1952

Something happens to the spending habits of all tourists when they reach Hong Kong. Wallets fly open, purse-strings snap and money gushes forth in a golden shower.

It is a matter of record that in Hong Kong more tourists spend more money in a shorter time than in any other port of the Far East or the Pacific west of the American mainland. They shell out $120 a day during an average visit of five days, and almost 70 percent of the $600 five-day total is spent on things the tourist intends to take home. (The figures come, not from Hong Kong, but from an exhaustive study of Pacific and Far Eastern tourism made for the United States Department of Commerce.)

This $120-a-day spending average is applicable to all the colony’s civilian visitors except Overseas Chinese. In 1961, the total of such visitors was 210,000, and it was made up of 72,000 Americans, 67,000 British and 71,000 visitors of other nationalities. The number of tourists has more than doubled in the last four years. The Department of Commerce study estimates that the total may climb to 490,000 in 1968, and that tourists could be expected to spend $270 million in the crown colony during the same year. If all this comes to pass, it will carry the merchants of Hong Kong into the full sunlight of a golden age.

But how about the tourist? What does he get for his money that causes him to run hog-wild in Hong Kong shops? The answers are as varied as the shrewdness or the gullibility of the individual tourist.

Let’s consider the gullible ones; they are so numerous and vulnerable. The plump lady stuffing herself into a form-fitting Cheongsam. The overnight Beau Brummel, swallowed alive by the 24-hour “custom-tailored” suit he bought without taking the time for proper fittings. The customer who accepts the first price quoted by a Chinese merchant. The photography bug who buys a standard West German camera at the most exclusive department store in the heart of the high-rent district, when he could get the same thing for 20 percent less at a number of small, reliable photo-supply shops. The optimist who thinks he can persuade a British clerk to knock down a fixed price. The lamb who lets a sidewalk “shopping guide” lead him to a fleecing. The poor soul who buys a Swiss watch, a Japanese camera, or any other name product without comparing prices of several Hong Kong shops or knowing the minimum sale price of the same article in his own country. The woman who buys a particular line of famous pearls from anyone except the authorized dealer.

Above all, the American who buys a piece of rare jade without a Comprehensive Certificate of Origin, and consequently has it confiscated by Customs when he reenters the United States. For that matter, any American who buys a “presumptive item”—an article which the U.S. government suspects was made in Red China or North Korea—without a Comprehensive Certificate of Origin.

This business of the Comprehensive Certificate of Origin is a recurrent pain in the neck to American shoppers and Hong Kong merchants alike. Nevertheless, as an item of United States foreign policy, it must be deferred to by American tourists in Hong Kong. Many reputable shop-owners will not apply to the colony’s Commerce and Industry Department for the right to issue Comprehensive Certificates of Origin, because it involves so much paperwork, red tape, and delay that the shops would just as soon skip the American market and concentrate on the British and others who can buy without these pesky certificates.

The list of items considered to be presumptive is by no means clear-cut, and the items on it may change from time to time, further clouding the issue. Some of the articles considered presumptive are: brassware, brocade, ceramics, cotton goods, embroidery, figurines, wood furniture, greeting cards, handicrafts, ivory ware, jade, semiprecious jewelry, lacquerware, porcelain ware, woolen rugs, silks and wallpaper.

The nonpresumptive articles, or those that can be freely imported into the U.S., include: binoculars, cameras, cashmere items, enamelware, furs (but not all furs), precious stones, leather goods, mosaics, mother-of-pearl, plastic articles, rattan ware, sporting goods, umbrellas, watches, wool clothing and yachts.

These lists are merely indicative; up-to-date and official information can be obtained in Hong Kong by calling the Foreign Assets Control division of the U.S. Consulate General. If in any doubt about the status of a purchase, pay no attention to the merchant who declares that a Comprehensive Certificate of Origin is unnecessary; if his advice is erroneous, he will not post the buyer’s bail.

A Comprehensive Certificate of Origin costs five Hong Kong dollars, or 87.5 cents, and will cover many articles bought at the same store, provided that their value does not exceed HK $1,500, or US $262. It is applied for when the purchase is made. The store sends it to the colony government for official clearance, and when this comes through, usually in about a week, the articles are shipped to the U.S. address designated.

The amount of duty-free goods an American tourist could buy abroad was cut from $500 to $100 in 1961, but merchants of the crown colony say it has not seriously affected their business. At Hong Kong prices, Americans apparently feel they can pay duties and still have a bargain. They are still permitted to buy duty-free any number of items intended as gifts valued at less than $10 each, provided they do not mail more than one gift a day to the same person.

Colony shops with the right to issue Comprehensive Certificates of Origin always post a sign in their windows to advertise the fact; it helps to attract American customers. But there are a few tricksters who will attempt to palm off a fraudulent or nonapplicable certificate. The only certificate of value to an American purchaser, it should be stressed, is the Comprehensive Certificate of Origin.

There are two main shopping areas in the colony: the Central District of Hong Kong Island, and the Tsim Sha Tsui section at the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula. Both areas can easily be covered on foot, and the shopper’s budget is guaranteed to wear out much sooner than his shoe leather. King’s Road, the main avenue through North Point in the northeastern part of Hong Kong island, is also a good shopping area for tourists. The Chinese and knowledgeable Caucasian residents, however, shop over a much wider area on both sides of the harbor.

Central District shopping for tourists runs west along Queen’s Road Central, Des Voeux Road Central, Chater Road and Connaught Road Central from Statue Square, opposite the Star Ferry terminal, to the Vehicular Ferry Pier at Jubilee Street. The best British department stores are toward the eastern end of this small zone, such as Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co. on Connaught Road near the General Post Office, and Lane, Crawford’s on Des Voeux Road. Both have Kowloon branches as well, and their prices range from fairly high to forbidding. They are comparable to top-quality department stores in New York or San Francisco, and their marked price is unalterable. No dickering. Even so, they undersell many stores overseas because Hong Kong is with very few exceptions a duty-free port.

The American shopper will need to keep the Comprehensive Certificate of Origin problem in mind constantly as he branches out to other stores, but there’s no harm in looking. The larger Chinese stores in the area include Chinese Arts & Crafts and China Emporium, both on Queen’s Road, and the Shui Hing Co., The Sincere Co. and Wing On, Ltd., all on Des Voeux Road. The Man Yee Building on Des Voeux Road has two floors of shops with radios, typewriters, curios, watches and tape recorders, plus many other articles; they are well worth checking, either to buy or for comparing prices. The Japanese have opened a large department store, Daimaru, at Causeway Bay, just west of the North Point section.

The Gloucester Building at Des Voeux Road and Pedder Street has an extensive shopping arcade with many quality shops. Alexandra House, just across Des Voeux, also has its quota of fine shops, and there are other first-rate stores throughout this area. The streets intersecting with Queen’s Road and Des Voeux Road should not be overlooked either. Only a dozen blocks or so are involved, but the shops are so numerous and their goods so varied that it will take even an industrious shopper a full day to see them and compare prices. Wise tourists looking for values usually spend a day surveying the shops and their merchandise before they are ready to spend a cent. It is a sound procedure, for hundreds of hasty shoppers have prematurely congratulated themselves on a wonderful buy, only to see the same article in another shop the next day for 15 to 25 percent less than they have paid.

What are the good buys in Hong Kong? They particularly include custom-made clothes for men and women, because the workmanship is cheap and the quality high—this applies to coats, suits, dresses and shoes. For women, silk and woolen garments are good buys, especially when they require extensive hand work on beading and embroidery. If planning to wash the garment, make sure that the outer material and the inner lining are pre-shrunk and color-fast.

The Cheongsam, with its side-slit skirt and carefully fitted collar, is worth individual attention here. The Cheongsam is a closely fitted, shape-clinging dress that shows to best advantage on a slim, small-boned Chinese girl. Put the average Western woman in one and she looks beefy, which certainly isn’t the effect she is striving for. If she’s overweight, the sight of her in a Cheongsam is enough to make Chinese children hide behind their mother’s slit-skirt where their howls and giggles won’t be too evident.

Men can get excellent bargains in custom-tailored suits of English woolens, Japanese woolens, Dacron, mixed silk and wool, or cashmere and wool. Pure cashmere looks and feels luxurious in the shop, but it is extremely expensive and doesn’t wear as well as a cashmere-and-wool combination. If the tailor puts in cheap lining, the collar and lapels will look like an elephant’s hide after a few cleanings. If he skimps on the thread, and some do, the suit may pull apart under strenuous circumstances. The worldwide story about the $20 Hong Kong suit that can be perfectly fitted in 24-hours may have been circulated by some show-business comedian trying to impress his friends; it is not, and never was, true.

Assuming that a good Hong Kong tailor is located—and there are scores of them—a man will be able to get the finest kind of custom-made suit for a little less than he would pay for a ready-made suit of the same materials in the United States. That would be around $75 for a pure cashmere sport jacket, $40 for a cashmere-and-wool jacket, $70 for a tuxedo of English worsteds, and $40 to $60 for a suit, with the higher-priced one of English woolen and the cheaper of a lightweight wool. A custom-tailored shirt of Sea Island cotton will cost about $6—considerably less than an American ready-made shirt of the same material.

The chances are that an established Hong Kong tailor will start by asking a higher price for all of these articles. By patient haggling and comparison-shopping, he may be wheedled down by 5 to 20 percent. And don’t be afraid that hard bargaining will drive him out of business; he always allows a comfortable profit margin for himself. Ignore his claims based on the famous people he has made suits for; they may have been given the ultimate in special care at a price far below the going rate for serving to advertise the shop.

One thing a tailor cannot do is to turn out a well-fitted suit without three or four fittings. This will require no less than five days, and two weeks would yield even better results. In busy periods, before the Christmas and Chinese New Year holidays, a tailor might need three weeks. One can buy a better-looking ready-made suit in the United States than almost any Hong Kong tailor can turn out in 24 hours; he’s good, but he’s not a miracle worker.

Women shopping for top-grade American and British ready-made clothing should have a look at Mackintosh’s in Alexandra House, Paquerette (in the Gloucester Arcade), Lane, Crawford’s, and Whiteaway Laidlaw & Co. A wide range of high-style tailored clothing for women is offered by Charlotte Horstmann of Duddell Street and Town and Country of Queen’s Road, both on the Hong Kong side, and at three Kowloon shops in the arcade of the Hotel Peninsula: Dynasty Salon, Betty Clemo, and Star of Siam.

Men’s tailoring shops are most numerous on the Kowloon side, and many of them also make women’s clothing. A sample survey might include Y. William Yu and Frank L. Chan of Kimberley Road, Ying Tai & Co., and Harilela’s of Nathan Road, James S. Lee & Co. of Nathan Road (and Gloucester Road, Hong Kong), and Tailor Young & Co. of Humphreys Avenue. In the blocks from Mody Road to Kimberley Road, all branching east from Nathan Road, tailors seem to occupy about every third storefront. Take nothing for granted at any of them, and be watchful to see that the cloth ordered is supplied.

Hong Kong has outstanding bargains in hand-made shoes, handbags, jewelry, watches, cameras, radios and furniture. It is desirable to know prices and to shop around extensively, comparing values. The Man Yee Building, previously mentioned, the Gloucester Arcade, and the arcades of the Ambassador and Miramar Hotels in Kowloon should give an idea of what’s available, though they may be undersold by some side-street shop.

Kowloon has dozens of small shops, often combined with back-room “factories,” where one can buy Chinese handicrafts or watch them being turned out by superlative craftsmen. These products are duplicates of those that China has produced for centuries, and may require a Comprehensive Certificate of Origin to get them through U.S. Customs.

Hankow Road, just west of the Hotel Peninsula, has the greatest number of wood-carving shops. They all stock sets of wooden horses in several sizes; also Buddhas, Gods and Goddesses in profusion, wild animals, fish and birds. The asking price is outrageous, but can be whittled down as much as 50 percent by patient haggling. A well-made carved horse about four inches high can be bought for 75 cents. It would cost six times as much in New York.

No other article more convincingly demonstrates the skill of the Chinese craftsman than carved ivory. There are ivory factories along Nathan Road and its side streets that produce beautifully carved chess sets, intricately fashioned concentric balls of ivory, and miniature temples, flower boats and pagodas.

Fine cabinetmakers turn out highly polished teak and rosewood chests trimmed with brass and lined with silk. Each one is a masterpiece of workmanship, but there’s one catch—if the wood has not been carefully kiln-dried, the chest may split when it is shipped home. This is a point on which a customer will want to quiz the dealer, then decide whether his answers are satisfactory. Carved and lacquered screens can be an artistic delight, but don’t forget to include the shipping costs when figuring their price. Carved and full-rigged Chinese junks are sold in a wide range of sizes.

The shopper can forget about the give-no-quarter type of bargaining when he enters one of the stores operated by Hong Kong welfare organizations for the benefit of physically handicapped refugees. These are strictly nonprofit operations, with all but basic overhead costs being turned over to the needy people who make the handicrafts. The quality of their products is high and their prices are reasonable. Two of these shops are the Welfare Handicrafts on Salisbury Road, opposite the Kowloon Post Office, and The Rice Bowl, on Minden Row. To find The Rice Bowl, turn east off Nathan Road at Mody Road; Minden Row is the first street south off Mody. Both stores have Comprehensive Certificates of Origin.

The Tsim Sha Shui section of Kowloon is developing so rapidly that it will probably have a dozen shopping arcades by the end of 1963. The Central District of Hong Kong Island is also planning new arcades.

Tourists may wind up a day’s shopping by attending one of the 72 movie theaters in the colony. Of these, 16 show English-language films and 13 are first-run houses. Foreign films reach Hong Kong as soon as they appear in the world market. In Kowloon, Nathan Road is the main movie avenue; in Hong Kong, they are spotted along the principal streets from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan. All seats are reserved, and selected from a seating-chart at the box office; daily show-times are carried in the local press. Chinese films have a big following, but many colony Chinese prefer American movies with plenty of action and spectacle. English films strike them as stodgy and slow, European art films bore them, and sexy importations from Italy and France offend their sensibilities. English-language films usually carry Chinese subtitles which look like embroidery to Western viewers.

If it’s night clubs the tourist is looking for, there’s nothing to get wildly excited about. Floor shows run to jugglers, acrobats and pony chorus lines, with an occasional comedian as a star attraction. Vaudeville isn’t dead; it simply shuffled off to Hong Kong. Prices are steeper than the entertainment warrants. Most of the musicians are Filipinos; individually able, but their band arrangements follow the blast-off traditions of American stage bands in the 1930s.

For a predinner cocktail with a magnificent view, two of the best locations are the lounge on top of the Imperial Hotel, Nathan Road, and the 11th floor Marigold Lounge of the Park Hotel at Cameron and Chatham Roads, both in Kowloon. Just as the finest daytime view is from the upper slopes of Victoria Peak on Hong Kong Island, the most satisfying after-dark panorama is from Kowloon. From either of these lounges you can see the banks of lighted apartment houses along the Hong Kong hillside, tied together by festoons of streetlamps as the roads zig-zag up the slopes, shining blue at the lower levels, then turning to vapor-piercing amber as they climb above the fog line. The Imperial has the closest view of the multi-colored neon signs glowing along the Hong Kong side of the harbor in English and Chinese characters. The Park Hotel overlooks the whole sweep of Kowloon Bay and the wavy, mountainous horizon of the island, with the brilliantly lighted boats of a dozen ferry lines criss-crossing the harbor in every direction. A line of lights passes directly under the window—a Kowloon-Canton train returning from a trip to the Red China border. If one could compress all of his memories of Hong Kong into a single glance, this would be it.

Kowloon holds two-thirds of the colony’s fifty hotels, and many of these are quite new. Hong Kong Island will add two major hotels in 1963, the 1,000-room American and the 600-room Queen’s, but Kowloon will retain its leadership in room capacity for many years. Altogether, about a dozen hotels will be added by the end of 1964 if business holds up.

The tremendous surge in hotel growth means that after years of lagging behind, Hong Kong has finally roused itself to meet the needs of tourists, in room capacity, at least. The expansion has been so frantic that a number of the newer hotels have shaved every possible corner in construction, skimping on the number of elevators and unduly shrinking the size of rooms to squeeze every cent out of their cubic-foot capacity. Hotel help is scarce, and as each new hotel opens, it raids the staffs of existing hotels; this raises wages slightly, but saves the raider the time and expense of training his own people. It also lowers the quality of service and leaves the older hotels to scramble for replacements.

With these limitations in mind, it is remarkable that hotel service is as good as it is, and much of the credit must go to the staff people themselves. They are hard-working, cheerful and obliging to a degree seldom seen in large cities. Because of inadequate training and the inevitable language difficulties, they are sometimes caught off-base, but when they know what a guest wants, they will do everything possible to get it. Americans and British whose democratic principles do not always prevent them from getting pretty high-handed about the way they are served will just have to be a little less fussy.

The Peninsula Hotel and its jointly managed addition, the Peninsula Court, occupy the same place in the colony that the Plaza does in New York—smart, eminently respectable and expensive. The Park, the Imperial and the Ambassador are among the best of the large, new hotels in Kowloon. The Gloucester has the greatest status of the Central District hotels, and the Repulse Bay, on the south shore of Hong Kong Island, rates as the island’s most luxurious resort hotel. There are about a dozen other first-rate hotels and approximately 30 additional ones that range from satisfactory to catch-as-catch-can. All those recommended by the Hong Kong Tourist Association are acceptable, but their quality varies with their rates, though not always in proportion.

Two outlying hotels worth noting are the Carlton and the Shatin Heights, both in the New Territories but not far from Kowloon. The Luk Kwok in Wanchai, once the locale for Richard Mason’s The World of Suzie Wong, prospered so handsomely from the publicity that it is now a quiet, middle-class hotel.

Confirmed hotel reservations, arranged well in advance of your arrival, are advisable for all tourists who are not thoroughly familiar with Hong Kong. Certainly it would be unwise to arrive without them and be forced to rely on sheer luck or the noisy touts who besiege incoming passengers at Kai Tak. The touts are kept behind a fence nowadays, but if the unsuspecting visitor lets them steer him to a hotel, their kick-back will be added to the bill. Experienced visitors sometimes check into a modestly priced hotel for the night and spend the next day bargaining for the lowest rates at one of the better places which, when business is slow, regularly knock 30 percent off the stated charges. For newcomers, this is seldom done.

Some European and American visitors cannot be persuaded to try Chinese food. Either they think it will make them ill, which it certainly will not, or they believe they’ll look silly fumbling with chopsticks. It must be conceded that inexperienced users of chopsticks usually look rather foolish, but practically every Chinese restaurant will provide a knife and fork if asked for them.

No difficulty should arise from a determination to stick to one’s usual diet. Every first-class hotel serves an international cuisine. Prices are tailored to the room rents; high at the Peninsula, cheap at the Y.M.C.A. next door to it. In general, the meals are as good as those at American hotels and they cost considerably less. Steaks are tougher than Choice U.S. beef, and occasionally one resembles a small portion of a welcome mat. Apart from the hotels, there are about a dozen good European restaurants.

In Mandarin Chinese, there is a saying that “food is the heaven of the ordinary people,” and the Chinese in Hong Kong, like their countrymen all over the world, do their remarkable best to impart a foretaste of heaven to their cooking. Their food reaches the table in edible form, and does not have to be slashed and hacked before the guest is ready to eat it. Chopsticks are all that is needed to lift the food to the mouth. (Foreigners take weeks to get over the shock of seeing a three-year-old Chinese child manipulating chopsticks; it seems so infernally clever.)

Chinese restaurants of the colony serve four different kinds of cuisine: Cantonese (from southern China); Shanghainese (from east-central China); Pekinese (from northern China) and Szechuan (central China).

Cantonese is the type most familiar to Americans, since most of the Chinese restaurants in the U.S. are owned by Southern Chinese. Chop suey and chow mein are not Chinese at all, except that they were invented by Chinese cooks in the United States to please their American customers. None the less, Cantonese restaurants serve them in Hong Kong, as well as egg rolls, egg foo yung, and sweet-and-sour pork, if only to keep the visiting foreigners happy.

Authentic Cantonese dishes are strong on seafoods. Steamed fish seasoned with ginger, mushrooms, spring onion, salted black soya beans, garlic, salad oil, sherry, soy sauce, and sugar is a particular favorite. Shark’s fin soup which includes not only the fins but crab meat, sliced chicken, chicken broth, cornstarch, and peanut oil is a floating potpourri.

Other Cantonese delicacies are gut lee hai kim, shelled fat crabs dipped in butter, fried in deep oil and served with a tart wine-and-vinegar sauce; goo low yuk, the Cantonese name for sweet-and-sour pork; and ho yau ngau yuk, slices of beef tenderloin quick-fried with an oyster sauce and garnished with greens. Cantonese cooks are sparing in their use of salt and grease.

A lunchtime specialty of Cantonese restaurants is dim sun (tiny bits of food), which includes twenty different kinds of sweet and salty dishes; among them, steamed biscuits with various meat fillings, rice cakes, sweet buns and chicken rolls.

A few of the better Cantonese restaurants are: Tai Tung, 234 Des Voeux Road; Golden City, 122-126 Queen’s Road Central; Miramar and Ambassador (both in hotels), Nathan Road; and the Sky, 8 Queen’s Road Central. They’re accustomed to tourists, and will help with the ordering, if need be. Tai Tung is typical of the large Cantonese restaurants, catering to family parties and group dinners. Kam Ling, at 484 Queen’s Road West in the West Point section of the island, is another Cantonese giant.

Dinner at one of the multi-story Chinese restaurants may cause a shock to the nerves from a series of violent and unexpected explosions. The blasts, which sound like closely bunched machine-gun fire, seem to be coming from right outside the window. No cause for alarm—it’s just a string of firecrackers celebrating a wedding or some other joyous family event. A solid string of firecrackers is suspended from a crane at the top of the building, then lighted at the bottom; as the bursting crackers eat their way up the string, a man with a guide rope slowly lowers the string to keep the explosions at street level, thus preventing the paper from blowing all over the surrounding streets. A portable, circular wire screen is also placed around the explosion zone to confine the mess, and a policeman stands by to see that the fireworks are being handled according to law. All large restaurants have a swing-out firecracker crane, and when they book a family party for a special celebration, a police permit is obtained for the noise-making. The rattle of explosions often lasts ten minutes or more, costing the host from $100 to $300, depending on the length and elaborateness of the string.

Shanghainese cooking, which became more popular in Hong Kong after the arrival of Shanghai refugees in the late 1940s, is sweeter and more salty than Cantonese food, and uses a lot more oil. Its characteristic dishes include: la dze jee ding, fresh chicken diced and fried with peppers and flavored with soy sauce; chao ha yen, small shelled shrimp garnished with green herbs or bean sprouts; and sze tze tao, pork sautÉed with Chinese white cabbage and often served in a casserole.

Beggar’s chicken is highly regarded by colony residents, both Chinese and English, and can be ordered at Tien Hong Lau on Woosung Street, Kowloon; or other Shanghai places such as Winter Garden, Nathan Road; or Four Five Six, 340 King’s Road, North Point. Bamboo shoots, boiled crab and fried eel, in season, are also Shanghai treats.

Szechuan food is hot and spicy, with such representative dishes as: suan la tang, sour peppery soup; dried beef with peppers; and Szechuan duck, deep-fried to cook both the skin and the flesh brown, spiced with pungent black pepper and served with the meat so tender that it may be picked off the bones with chopsticks. The Ivy, at 11 D’Aguilar Street, in the Central District, is a familiar Szechuan establishment. There are others in the Diamond Hill section of New Kowloon, north of Kai Tak Airport, but one would probably need the guidance of a long-time colony resident to find them.

The Pekinese cuisine is best known for Peking duck, served as a suitable entrÉe for a meal that begins with assorted cold meats and proceeds through chicken and walnuts to the celebrated bird. The duck is basted with salad oil and roasted until brown, then the skin is dipped in soya paste with scallions and wrapped in thin pancakes to be eaten as a kind of sandwich; the meat is dipped and eaten in a similar manner and the bones of the duck are made into a soup with cabbage and mushrooms. Toffee apples and caramelized bananas (sugared and deep-fried, then immersed in cold water) top off the feast.

Two of the popular Pekinese restaurants are the Peking, 1 Great George Street, Causeway Bay; and the Princess Garden, Kimberley Road, Kowloon.

Hard to classify but too good to miss is the Mongolian steamboat, a cooking utensil used for Northern and Cantonese dishes. Hot coals are placed in the bottom of the vessel from which the heat rises through a chimney at the center. Water or soup stock boils in a little open-top tank that encircles the chimney. In the Cantonese style, tiny baskets of sea food, meat and vegetables are hung into the boiling water until they are done, then the contents are fished out with chopsticks. In the Northern Chinese variation, a soup stock is put in the reservoir with very thin slices of meat and sea food being dipped in until they are cooked, which takes only a few seconds. Both styles use various sauces and condiments to flavor the food after it is cooked and drawn out with chopsticks. The steamboat sits in the center of the table, puffing energetically, and every diner has a fine time dipping and fishing for his food.

The Peking Restaurant at Causeway Bay and the Wong Heung Min, at 191-193 Gloucester Road along the Wanchai waterfront, are two steamboat anchorages of note.

The various styles of Chinese cooking do not differ so radically that the same restaurant cannot prepare food in two or more regional ways. Many restaurants do so and quite capably. Americans sometimes choke at the thought of bird’s nest soup, which is made from the saliva that swallows use to build their nests. The saliva is separated from the straw and feathers by boiling and evaporation, and the dried saliva extract is added to a stock of chicken broth, combined with sliced ham and minced chicken. The end-product, served in most Chinese restaurants, is a prince among fine soups.

If one wants to prowl around a bit, he can locate a restaurant or two that serves snake meat or civet cat. The Chinese have a theory that they can make anything taste good with the right amount of cooking and a judicious use of sauces, spices and condiments. What is more, they usually prove to be correct. But a taste for snake meat is like the appreciation of Cantonese opera; it takes years of conditioning.

For those who enjoy sukiyaki and other Japanese dishes, they are available at the Tokyo Restaurant, on the 17th floor of the Imperial Hotel, and in the dining room of the Daimaru department store at Causeway Bay. The Bombay Restaurant at 19 Prat Avenue, Kowloon, has a good selection of Indian dishes. For Russian specialties, especially fine cakes and pastries, Rikki’s restaurant at Cameron and Carnarvon Roads, Kowloon, is a plain but acceptable spot.

Assuming that one has had at least a one-week stay in Hong Kong, and has applied himself to eating, shopping and sightseeing to the limit of his energies, there is every reason to believe that he will go home happy, stimulated, exhausted, and broke.

It is the common lot of Hong Kong’s 210,000 annual visitors.