I try asking a bus driver if his bus goes over to the Hong Kong side. He enlists the help of a cute young Chinese fellow who speaks some English. Basically, the advice is, walk that way for a while and then ask someone else. About this time I realize that it's hopeless. I'm going to have to either find a cheap, nearby hotel for the night or just hang out for a few hours until the MTR opens up again.

Fortunately, Hong Kong trains start running at 6 am, even on Sundays. So I have only... about 4 hours to wait. I wait. There's a dead rat on the ground. I wait. Even at this hour I am sweating and not smelling good. I wait. It's only ten minutes since the last time I looked at my watch.

I go to 7-11, get a bad-tasting concoction of what turns out to be a Lemon-Watermelon drink. Dang their strange tastebuds! I go to a bench in the semi-dark and watch the Hong Kong late-nighters straggle from their outings. Several people pass, and one guy looks my way, testing, but I don't give an opening; I refuse to ask for help. Uncomfortable with taking on the role of "person in need," I think on how easily life's roles can change. So many times I've passed people begging for money, so many times I've just kept walking. But I don't regret it. I think on the old man at Causeway Bay who every day prostrates himself and wais his head up and down, forehead to the ground, one extended hand holding a tin cup. I don't understand that kind of desperation.

Sitting on that wooden bench, I look up at the still-visible clouds and think on how, sure, I set this up through my own carelessness; sure, I'm here because I choose to be here... But everything's okay: I'll wait here for 3-1/2 more hours, then go back to my hotel. An hour or two later I walk around the neighborhood to take in the sights. It's quite a lively late-night place, with what appear to be casinos and girlie joints, neither of which tempt me. There are tons of taxi cabs, but I am out of money and have no way to get more. (Well, no way that I would find acceptable in these circumstances.)

So it's about 4 a.m. and I figure, hey, I've got plenty of time to kill, and it's daytime in the 'States; why not call a few friends in America? I call a few, leave a message, talk to a roommate and a Mama, and then walk back to my waiting bench. Near there I see a youngish Chinese woman with a belly and a baby come walking by. She takes a spot near the entrance to the MTR. Is she here waiting for the train too--about an hour and a half before it opens? She fidgets with the child, and for a second I think she's going to change its diaper. When I get a glance at her face I wonder if she might be mentally retarded--sort of a Downs Syndrome-like appearance.

As time seeps past, I think on my larger dilemma: I can't get my money from America; I'm running out of options; I can't stand the thought of going back to the United States. Not yet. I'm not finished, not ready. And then, while I'm not looking, the thought descends upon me: I won't go back to America--no matter what! I'll do my best to get a job here, and if nothing turns up in a couple of weeks, I'll just go home--back to Thailand. Call up Mr. Seri, see if there's still an opening teaching English at his school; immerse myself in Thai language study, learn it fully, become fluent, even learn the writing... yeah, that's the ticket....

The night accumulates until it is so late that it starts to become early--the occasional wandering late-night partyer is gradually replaced by the occasional very early morning walker--funny how in this scene the young ones become obsolete, are replaced by the old ones--fat old men walking to stave off death, walking because they couldn't sleep anyhow, walking at 5:00 a.m. because it's the thing to do.

And then I see that he's snuck up on me--morning time I mean. He's soaked his bluish fingers across a portion of the sky that once was darker--never as dark as a countryside night, but for Hong Kong, as dark as it ever gets. And without a gong or bell or click of switch, we have transcended the past and are warming up to a new and untested day. The early people-traffic builds; the street noises are somehow different--ah, there are birds. They are teasing me, "Told ya so, told ya so......No matter, no matter....toldyaso."

And yes, they're right--no matter what--no Matter What--whether I want to play or not, everyone else will go right on with this vast enterprise they've created. Not war, not Tiannanmen Square, not the flight of the elite, not the endless influx and outflux of individual births and deaths, not even 1997 can call a halt to this ageless, daily transition from past to future, and it's not just Hong Kong, but everywhere around the planet!

I have time, so I make my way across the pedestrian bridge to the Star Internet Centre, leave my namecard on the door handle, and then am startled by the prank tossed at me by this audacious hemisphere: a speeding city bus whose Chinese destination reads, in crisp white English letters against a red background, "Hang On."

— David Saia

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