.jpg)
Helping
hands
In recent years, I find myself always at train stations not because I have somewhere across the border to go. I make weekends my car-free days. I like to take the train commuting from my home in Kowloon Tong to my mom’s place in Hung Hom. When I go to Tsimshatsui for my Sunday indulgence of facial treatment and body massage, it is again the train from Kowloon Tong to Hung Hom and then Tsimshatsui East. If I have meetings at HKWTO venue which is on Sai Yeung Choy Street, I take the train again. There is a bit of walking involved but if I am wearing the right sneakers, I actually walk briskly telling myself “you’ve done your exercise for the day!”
Very often in the concourse or at the platform, I come across bewildered tourists. Be they mainlanders or westerners, I would offer to point them the direction. Most of the time, my helping hand is warmly accepted. There were, however, a few times, I was shied away from! Well, it seems like mothers across the world have successfully indoctrinated their children into believing that they should not talk to strangers – the one creed we hold onto even when we are grown-ups. Or our human society has become so evil that there should be no angels left.
Last Sunday morning at Kowloon Tong Station, I brought smiles to the faces of a distressed couple! They were in their early fifties. They stood there trying hard to decipher the leaflets for tourists when the man decided to approach me. He told me that they came from Changsha, Hunan and that it was their first visit to Hong Kong. They wanted to go somewhere for bargain goods. I told them pleasantly that they should get off at MongKok East but then the stalls were not yet open. They should first go for breakfast at our cha chaan teng, local tea restaurant.
I could never forget how broad the smile was on the man’s face. His words to the woman still echo in my ears. “Who said that HongKongers are hostile to us mainlanders?”
