The Mid-Levels Escalator

As I said in a previous post, my favorite thing in Hong Kong might have been this chain of covered outdoor escalators and walkways that stretches between Central and the Mid-Levels, providing easy transport on foot up and down the side of the mountain. The escalators run down in the morning until about 10:30 and then switch direction and go up until shutting down at midnight, with lots of on and off points along the way. The escalator hooks up with the Central walkways, allowing me to make a leisurely 30-minute walk from the street where my hotel was down to the ferry piers at the waterfront, while hardly setting my foot on ground-level sidewalks or having to dodge traffic or wait to cross a street. I went down it almost every morning and back up almost every night.

All kinds of bars, restaurants, nightclubs and such have grown up alongside the escalator, of course. The way the city just continues blithely up the side of the mountain, as crowded and crazy as ever, has endlessly fascinating results in terms of the public space. There are all these weird little steps and stoops and odd spaces squeezed in on the slope - moving through the area is a bit like being inside an M.C. Escher print. It's hard to capture in photos, so just take my word for it.

Looking down a street crossed by the escalator. A good example of how even ordinary buildings in Hong Kong are often a lot more colorful than American ones.

Someone's apartment so close to the escalator you could almost reach over and steal their laundry or the incense from the shrine above it. Everyone hangs their laundry out the window - racks for that purpose are standard equipment on apartment buildings.

Below, the Jamia Mosque just on the other side of a wall by the escalator, founded in 1850 (the present building was only built in 1915).

 
A three-level alleyway behind some apartment buildings:

One of the many Englishy or Aussie establishments in the area. Don't ask me what the whale means.

A lot of cleaning goes on in Hong Kong - there are always people in uniforms with brushes and mops and hoses and such working around  you. And yet it's still a pretty dirty place.