It's that time of year again –when the body instincitively searches for the cool and the shade.
Here in sunny old Hong Kong, the temperature rarely tops 36° C/96° F –the high humidity rapidly creates thunderstorms and the rain drains the heat from the air. Nevertheless, there are patches of the city, the concrete canyons and street-level sun-traps, that fair cook any poor soul trapped within. In this regard Hong Kong is no different to Bangkok, Manila, Ho Chi Minh and a whole host of other conurbations. Combined with the air-con exhaust blown from passing traffic, there appears to be no limit to the maximum temperature in these heat wells.
There are, of course, oases of cool, if not downright cold places to be found. Hong Kong Cinemas are positively arctic and a sweater should always be brought – one time I even wrapped meself up in newspaper to stop the poor teeth & knackers a-knockin'!
Shoppers in the region are well-aware of these magnificent palaces of pleasure and domains of the dollar and it may be the most likely reason why shopping is Hong Kong's most popular waking past-time.
The heat may, of course, also account for its overall most popular past-time, that of sleeping. If you wish to understand this ever-pervasive inactivity, it is owed partly to the time of day many Hong Kongers are chiefly active and also owed partly to the crowded home life of many Hong Kongers. Commentators have long-argued that late-night eating/mahjong activities are the main reasons the morning buses and MTR trains are full of sleeping souls. Coupled with the cramped conditions of shared apartments whereby sleeping is sometimes a shared experience, and you've got conditions where many choose to kip less at home and make it up elsewhere –on the way to work, lunchtimes under the newspaper, in just about any convenient location.
One enterprising entrepreneur has even seen the profitability of this necessary niche at Shanghai airport by making a sleeping box for flyers to have a kip in between check-in and their flight.
It is no accident that there are no seats at bus stops and train stations and few in parks and public spaces. There's even a loverly little book on the subject that may contain enough photographic evidence to convince you.
But it could also be the case that Hong Kong's effective smothering in heat between July-September means that those without the chance to cool off may naturally experience soporific inclinations. It feels bloody hot and it's best not to go out with your head uncovered, so why not stay in and take advantage of the shady protection.
Well, that's my explanation, being a northern-european whose instinctual inclinations are to 'get on with it' during daylight hours. And that, perhaps, is my problem in all this unending heat: after all, 'when in Rome', and all that...
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