The joys of a local library

Feeling like you have settled into a place is different for different people. Probably everyone has their rituals for feeling settled, whether this is getting all your boxes unpacked, cooking a first meal, learning the names of your local streets, or perhaps finding out the best pizza place in the vicinity.

Today, M. and I went and found where our local library now is, the compact and slightly-hidden-away Tsim Sha Tsui library. In fine Hong Kong fashion, to get to this you have to go up in a lift - only one floor, mind you - but enough to remind you that Hong Kong is a vertical city. I'd like to think there are stairs somewhere, but if so, they are not easy to find. Naturally, the first thing we needed to do was to get our library cards. One of the beauties of a Hong Kong Identity Card is that it gets used as a multipurpose form of identification for all sorts of things. In a car-oriented culture like Australia, a driving licence gets used most regularly for this sort of thing, but in Hong Kong, where few people want or need to drive, the HKID is a very useful and universal form of identification.

Even better, as we found out today at the library, it can be used as our library card, due to the power of the microchip. So instead of my bag getting cluttered up with too many library cards, my HKID card can do the lot. The library staff very patiently, and with very competent English, explained which form to fill in and the correct way to insert your card in the card-reader (wait until the light stops flashing), and so we were on our way.

Best of all, this is a library that will just be for pleasure, because we are desperately in need of reading that isn't just academic. One of the great finds of today was the book above, that describes all the local neighbourhoods, in just enough detail to make them interesting, unpacking some of the history and culture that has resulted in what we see today. I did not know, for example, that until the 1960s, the Tsim Sha Tsui area was quite dominated by the (then) British military, so  that much of what has shaped this place is the requirements of the military personnel at the time. This explains, in part, why there are so many restaurants, bars, nightclubs, tailors and so on, in this area. It is the sort of detail that I would not have even thought about - TST just seemed to be that way - but naturally all places have a history and a reason behind their current existence. I suppose as the bars and restaurants sprang up, so people from other neighbourhoods were drawn here for the nightlife, and so as the military presence was withdrawn, this more 'tourist' aspect took on a life of its own. I had the funny thought as I started to read the book, 'Wow, this book is as good as Wikipedia', and then felt a bit ashamed at how Wikipedia has started to colonize my life! It is very easy to forget how much information that used to have to be searched out painstakingly is now at the tips of our fingers, quite literally.

The English language fiction section of the library is quite small, as you would expect, in a country where the first language of 97% of the people is 廣東話. On the upside, our new library membership gives us access to all forty-two (I think) branches of the Hong Kong library system, so there are bound to be quite a few books to read across all of those. And no matter how small the fiction section, it was certainly a lot more books than we had available to read at home. I was secretly pleased to see the library so well-used. All the communal tables were pretty much full, with people using them to read books, newspapers and magazines. Most of them looked like they were retired, and reminded me of one of the many things I am going to do more of when I retire. Shouldn't heaven be more like a library?

It was an interesting reminder of the local culture to see the balance of books in the social sciences section (academic curiosity). Most of the sections were pretty small, except for the sections on finances, money-management and information technology, which were pretty extensive. It is hard to miss when you come to Hong Kong that the power of money is big here. People respect money, and everyone wants to earn money. This is true of many places, I know, but in HK it is tied up as well with a lot of other religious and cultural aspects of the place that I am still only just getting a sense of. It is why the most common greeting at New Year is 恭喜發財 (which means sort-of 'Congratulations on becoming rich'). In a way that I have only seen elsewhere in the US, the myth that 'if you work hard you will prosper' seems alive and well. Given all the things I have been reading about social class and the education system in the last few months, while it may be true that all things being equal, you will do better if you work harder, for many people the harsh truth is that even working very hard brings few rewards, and for many the deck is really stacked against them.

Fresh from the glow of public education that is the library, we swung back past Crema Coffee, for a delicious espresso, with the added bonus of being able to flick through our new books. For the espresso aficionados, the latte art on M's coffee today was a swan! A lovely morning...