Long Haul Up!

When the girls were little, one of the fun things to do on a Sunday afternoon in Hong Kong was ride the world's longest escalator from the very bottom to the very top, and then run down the steps to where we started (at which point I would feign exhaustion, so we didn't have to do it all again!) It was a great way for them to work off energy (and, for me, a few calories), and it gave Dad a few moments of peace and quiet over his newspaper!

The Mid-Levels escalator is in the Guinness Book of World Records as the "longest covered escalator in the world" and serves to shuttle thousands of Hong Kong commuters up and down from the Mid-Levels (a large residential area) to Queens Road in Central (Hong Kong's main business center.) During the morning rush hour (6-10am), the escalator runs down into Central, and for the rest of the day it runs up. As a New Yorker, I think it's one of the most brilliant forms of "public transportation" I've ever seen!

Because the escalator is not only practical, but also an amazing feat of engineering accomplishment, it's become one of Hong Kong's favorite tourist attractions, and outdoor cafes and trendy restaurants have sprung up at various points along the way as it makes its 443-foot vertical climb. When we're not running up and down the moving stairs with the kids, one of our favorite pastimes on a Sunday afternoon is to sit at our favorite pizza joint, Peak Pizza, right along the escalator, and watch people ride up the moving stairs and walk (or run) down the steep cement inclines. The girls especially love watching women in their high stiletto heels negotiating the treacherous downhill slopes, grasping the side rails, determined not to hurtle forward on their noses!

This miraculous people-mover accommodates more than 55,000 riders in a single day - the full ride is supposed to take about 20 minutes, but most people shorten the ride by walking along the three moving sidewalks and hiking up the 20 sets of moving stairs that make up the entire route. I'm sure the girls and I broke some kind of record during our frantic races to the top and back down again, but we never actually timed it!

One of my favorite sights on a weekday afternoon is seeing crowds of school kids traipsing down the hill after classes, happily chattering about their day, carrying afternoon snacks of ice cream or local pastry bought from vendors way up in the hills above. Like many other city kids, they don't rely on the big yellow bus to get them to school; instead they hike up and down the Mid-Level hills in their uniforms and sneaks, carrying backpacks and grabbing a snack along the way. This is their daily commute, five days a week, rain or shine, aided by the wondrous engineering of the moving stairs.

Of course, watching weary shoppers like this lady, schlepping her bag of groceries and flowers up the hill from Central during the evening commute, brings me right back to my days in NYC when I longed for a "people-mover" to whisk me across town at the end of a long day. Clearly, she doesn't appear amused by the American snapping shots of her as she makes her way home, but I'm certain she's silently grateful that she has these moving stairs to assist her long haul up!