A BEAUTIFUL LIFE IN A SWEET-SMELLING HARBOR (Part 1)

There were only a couple of weeks left for me to finish my sightseeing. I made a list and set out to check off the sites one by one.

On Sundays and holidays the streets of Hong Kong filled with thousands of Filipinas. These women crowded overpasses, stairwells, curbs and all available park spaces. Sitting on blankets, they shared picnics and photographs, strummed guitars, chatted on cell phones and played card games.

These are the maids and nannies of Hong Kong. Each worker earns an average of $230 a month, typically sending a portion of this income to family back home.

One of William's assistants, a local named Jason, showed us his apartment. The main room was big enough for a loveseat, television and table with three chairs. There were two small bedrooms: One fit a single bed, the other a double. The kitchen could accompany one person at the two-burner stove. There was also a half-fridge and a small washing machine.

Jason explained the layout of his apartment was exactly the same as the one across the hall, where a couple and their young daughter lived with their Filipina nanny. The parents slept in one bedroom, the girl in the other and the maid on the small couch. Because both parents worked, they needed the childcare, but for everyone's sanity the employee had to get out one day a week and joined her friends on the streets.

Is this what Christmas Day looked like in Hong Kong? Where did these women go for cover when it rained on a Sunday? Would they ever go to school and advance out of this? Would they marry and have families of their own? These thoughts rolled around my head as I sidestepped row upon row of women, young and old, enjoying a reprieve the best way they could.

I heard the story of a little girl who, for her school's costume day, brought her maid on a leash. As the family cat. I pondered this scenario as I traveled on a bus, chugging over hilly terrain. I was on my way to the spot where the English discovered South China.

Aberdeen conjures images of sweaters, sheep and bagpipes, but this was not Scotland. The bay of Aberdeen is where the British first laid eyes on Hong Kong. Oh yummy, let's take it. The whole kit and caboodle...lovely.

And so they did, and did, and did.

Less than thirty years ago, Aberdeen's harbor was populated with over a million trawlers and sampans. As of 2004, there were about 250.

To the British, the harbor had become an eyesore, with its ragamuffin sea craft bearing extremely poor inhabitants. Entire fishing families lived on these boats. Some of them had never laid foot on terra firma. In a clean sweep, the boat people were taken to government housing in Kowloon and on Hong Kong Island. That lasted until those tenements grew distasteful and the residents were moved to state housing in the New Territories.