Sunday June 4 2006

Hong Kong rain can be a weather event, as much as any typhoon here, or a hailstorm, tornado or hurricane in the US. Rainstorms during the rainy season can go on for days, causing flooding and sometimes, landslides. I just finished reading Noble House, by James Clavel, the author of Shogun. It’s basically a spy novel set in the Hong Kong of the 1960’s. For the most part it’s about a Hong Kong that has either vanished, or that I am not privy to, as an American expat with no ties to politics or power. But, it was fascinating none-the-less, from the descriptions of Hong Kong’s relationship with Communist China at the time, to the lives of the British power-brokers and businessmen, to the hidden lives of the Hong Kong Chinese, hidden at least to any westerner no matter how steeped they are in eastern tradition, language and custom.

At the end of the book a violent rainstorm causes a landslide. Reading the end of the book yesterday, I started to become nervous. It had been raining here, heavily and steadily, ever since we returned from the US. Besides wondering if I was going to go stir-crazy from the lack of light and sun and the lowering clouds, I also started wondering if half the mountainside was going to slide down into Victoria Harbor! So, I got on the internet and decided to educate myself about Hong Kong rainstorms.

There is a rainstorm warning system here, just like the one for typhoons, but this one is color-coded. I saw the warnings on Friday in the MTR, but didn’t know what they meant. Amber is the first level of warning, Red the next, and Black the last. Red means flooding and landslides are possible, Black means stay home and hunker down until it’s over. Businesses and schools close when the warning is Black. The warning on Friday went to Red, but not to Black. It messed up the traffic on the major road that crosses the mountain pass here (I think there was a tree down), and people seemed to slow down their frenetic walking pace a bit (I think the danger of getting your eye poked out by an umbrella contributed to that!).

The last major landslide here occurred in the 70’s, which is comforting. The scary thing was, that it was just as bad as the one described in the book, toppling several large apartment buildings, and killing several hundred people. Since that time Hong Kong has implemented a “safe slopes” system of land reinforcement. I now understand better what I’m seeing all over the mountainsides here. Slopes are reinforced with retaining walls, concrete, plants, wire, etc. Workers are constantly maintaining and improving these barriers. But, landslides still occur. Its possible to see the remnants from ones that must have occurred within the last couple of years, and Lee says that he saw the results of a small one a couple of weeks ago.

The rainy season here doesn’t last all summer long, thank goodness. The main months are May and June, so by July we should be seeing more sunny (and hot) weather. It all becomes relative after awhile. Although there’s no sun to speak of today, it’s NOT raining, and the cloud cover has risen enough that it’s possible to see the Peak Tram station at the top of the mountain. The light is measurably brighter. Like I said, it’s all relative!