Rule #1 in writing, according to the cliché, is to never use clichés. But, for my first international entry in my efforts to write my way around the world, I am going to be cliché and break rule #1. But this I will blame on John Denver.

Alone in a crowded restaurant off Man Fuk Road in the district of Kowloon, Hong Kong, I couldn’t do much to suppress the smirk that had gently risen on my face over what was a scene that seemed almost too contrived to be real.

The phrase that is often pasted on the multitudes of Hong Kong marketing materials, so overused it almost becomes meaningless, is Hong Kong, “Where East Meets West.” This idiom played out last night so perfectly that any group of Hong Kong marketers would be clinking glasses over dim sum for so successfully summing up in four words my first night in this “foreign” land.

Three hours earlier, I had landed at the airport in Hong Kong, the first planned international stop on this Midwestern American boy’s attempt to circumnavigate the globe. I headed to my hostel, my home for the next few days and dropped off my life—contained in a single backpack (having sold off, given away, and abandoned nearly 95% of the rest of my possessions, somewhere between Iowa City and San Francisco, a rather cathartic process I highly recommend). I headed out to explore the streets, but needed to eat, since the 13 hour plane flight had surprisingly done little to nourish me with delicious food of either Western or Eastern origins.

Hong Kong seems to present itself as an eater’s heaven, with restaurants lining every road including Russian vodka bars, Italian pasta shops, noodles houses, KFC’s, and traditional Chinese eateries serving the cuisines of nearly all of the Chinese provinces. Since my grasp of the Chinese language and its associated signage is…well…non-existent, I headed to the cleanest looking restaurant with an English sign (The Cheer-o Cafe), figuring if their name was in English, well, maybe the menu would be too. (I have yet to determine what percentage of the population here actually speaks English, since by the sound of it, though English is an official language, it is not THE official language (which is Cantonese, a dialect found mainly in Southern China (including Hong Kong) and Southern California.)

Anyway, back to John Denver. Walking in I was directed to a seat in the back of the small dining room adored with Chinese lanterns, Heinz Ketchup bottles, Chinese tea pots, pictures of Elvis, chop stick holders, photos of Humphrey Bogart, and small square café style tables. (Try to build that picture in your mind.)

It was 10:00 pm in Hong Kong (though it was 9:00 am in my head), busy waiters in orange and white-stripped long sleeved shirts (possibly an homage to the A&W server of yesteryear, or not) shuffled briskly between the tightly packed tables, serving up plates of udon noodles (Japanese noodles. “烏冬” in Chinese), congee (the Chinese equivalent of oatmeal, “粥” in Chinese), and chicken fried steak (American cafeteria style, or is it Chinese, or is it..?).

A group of young children all around the ages of 6 or 7 recklessly ran around the front area of the restaurant, laughing, giggling, and crashing into each other—reminding me that children, regardless of their country of origins, are, at heart, the same. Two young boys used their fingers to paint Chinese characters in the condensation that had formed on the glass of the front windows next to the air conditioning–the vent blasting exceptionally cold air against the window that held back the wet, soggy, humid, 95 degree (Fahrenheit) air that densely fills the streets of Hong Kong. My only hope is that the character stood for “fart” or something equally juvenile and entertaining.

I ordered dinner and as the clocked rolled past the hour, the night’s entertainer stepped onto (or should I say stepped over) the tiny ill-conceived stage wedged in front of the window of the Cheer-o Cafe. The lanky Chinese guy with a wide grin wore a bright aqua-green polo shirt and he slipped himself onto a short stool on stage—his black hair brushed hurriedly to the side of his pale white face. An electronic keyboard, a microphone, and an acoustic guitar sat on stage. He picked up the latter, struck a chord, and the music began with a seemingly familiar guitar rift. Just as I connected the melody to the words, he began signing in heavily accented English,

“All my bags are packed, I’m ready to go…I’m standing here outside your door.”

7,000 miles, 3 years of planning, 13 vaccinations, 11 beds in 4 weeks, all to get literally to the other side of the world and my first night here I am greeted not by the words of Budda or one of the 6 million strangers who call Hong Kong home, but by the pining words of John Denver…

So kiss me and smile for me, tell me that you’ll wait for me.
Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane, don’t know when Ill be back again…”

I smirked. Somehow John Denver had come (I assume on a plane, a, ah, jet plane) around the world to welcome me to China. That was one of two surprises of the day. (More on the other in Part 2)

The rest of the meal was peppered with a sampling of covers of some of the greatest and some of the most notoriously bad American pop songs of all time, played out on a little plastic Casio keyboard, in a sometimes Karaoke-esk voice, with a heavy Chinese intonation.

If you had traveled those 7,000 miles, given up a comfortable life at home, and sold your entire life on eBay, all on a whim to see the world… when faced with this situation, you might find these lyrics as a cute little way to personify some of your feelings–the strange blend of excitement, nervousness, delight, and anxiety. The lyrics of Billy Joel, Andrew Loyd Webber, The Beatles, and Roy Orbison could so easily serve to indirectly and lyrically represent the many questions you may have…Was this trip a good idea? Where will I go? What will I find? Will I miss home? Will I survive? Can I make friends with all of these strange people? Yes, the lyrics might help to personify those things, but that would be too easy and, well, cliché. And we all know rule #1.

So instead, suffice it to say: I finished off my first meal in Hong Kong, set down my chop sticks, dropped some newly acquired Hong Kong money on the table, wiped my mouth, and headed to the door to go explore China, my new home for the next year or so.
As I stood up, the singer, whose name I never caught, started in on some Bob Dylan,

“The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, the answer is blowin’ in the wind….”

I slipped past the rambunctious group of children and as the door closed behind me, I noticed one of the kids was wearing a shirt with yellow English writing on a gold background that simply read, “World Without Strangers.”

I looked at him, smiled, and slid out the door into the humid Hong Kong night.

Hmm, I wonder if John Denver wrote that one…

Follow up: To help you picture this scene, and proving that you can find ANYTHING on the internet, our friends at YouTube.com are sporting a video of a different, yet equally compelling, set of Hong Kong rock musicians doing covers at the Cheer-o Cafe. Watch Tri’s Hi’s version of “Oh Sinnerman” at the Cheer-o Cafe.

Follow up #2: After exploring Hong Kong a bit more, the slogan “World Without Strangers” it turns out, is the slogan for Giordano, a Hong Kong clothing brand not a bad American pop song (yet). See a photo of the t-shirt.

East Meets West Part I