Random Thoughts by Pauline
March 17 2015, Tuesday
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?”