The Death of Hong Kong

This is another off-topic post; it has nothing to do with dialysis, kidney transplant, or any other health issues.

Before I was diagnosed with ESRD, I used to travel to Asia often. For several years, I was the volunteer CFO for my friend’s company. It was a US company but their main manufacturing site was in Chengdu, China. I would take a week of vacation from my “real” job once a quarter, and travel to Chengdu to do some finance stuff. Since I wanted to avoid both US and China based airlines, I would typically fly with Cathay Pacific, and their main hub was Hong Kong International Airport (HKIA).

All together, I probably transited through HKIA close to 30 times, and actually cleared immigration to enter Hong Kong about a half-dozen times. I really enjoyed the food and culture of Hong Kong. Particularly awesome was the dim sum, since it was invented in Hong Kong. I remember having dim sum at the airport and it was very good. While I was stuck on dialysis, I really looked forward to visiting again. However, with China’s recent takeover, that is looking less and less likely. I used to post in another blog that was very critical of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Most likely no one in China has seen my blog, but with the newly passed National Security Law (NSL), there is a non-zero chance I could be detained in Hong Kong and held indefinitely in a Chinese jail. With China’s aggressive cleansing of anything democratic in Hong Kong, it will soon be just like another shitty city in China, and not worth visiting.

In memory of my past visits, here are some photos that I took on my many trips to Hong Kong:

Most of my stops in Hong Kong was transiting to other destinations while flying on Cathy Pacific. With the recent CCP campaign against foreigners in China, and Hong Kong basically turned into a police state, I am staying away from both. There are lots of other countries to visit like Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, and Singapore. In fact, I think my next Asia trip will be South Korea + Japan or Taiwan.