Metaphysical Hong-Kong

From Just the tonic :

To the casual observer, Hong Kong seems to be populated with hypochondriacs. For all its modern surface, its citizens still harbour traditional anxieties about indigestion, flatulence and excessive sputum.

At every corner are pharmacies crammed with quixotic concoctions. There are lotions with inexhaustible properties. Apply for two or three days to the infected area, declares one box, for the relief of colds, flu, diarrhoea, inflammation, seasickness, gout, hangover and "discomfort caused by forest smog and epidemics". There are crocodile bile pills for the relief of asthma and gastrointestinal pills (Trumpet Brand) for the relief of wind. One of my favourites is San Le Jiang, an anti-fatigue tablet that, between preventing cancer and senility, also keeps the user "regular and quick-witted".

Sex is a continual anxiety. Great Lover Spray and Random Sexual Lotion vie for space with Strong Penis Pills, with ingredients including extracts of snake, seal and deer's willy. Not to be taken, the instructions warned, if you are feverish or pregnant.

But these are only the chemists, a bowdlerised version of the traditional medicine shops with their crates of deer's marrow and bins of bird's nests. Behind their counters, tiers of unmarked drawers hold the secrets of Chinese medicine, from dried hornets to chrysanthemum flowers. Ancient clerks shuffle back and forth behind the counters weighing out mysterious substances. With diets of ginseng, they seem to have joined the immortals.

Hong Kong may be the epitome of the modern metropolis, an Asian Manhattan, but beneath its Westernised exterior beats a traditional Chinese heart. It is a town where people burn banknotes drawn on the Bank of Hell to appease the "hungry ghosts" of the dead, where octagonal mirrors are placed on outside walls to ward off bad luck and where elderly jaywalkers enliven the rush hour by standing so close to the passing cars that they crush the evil spirits at their heels.

At the colony's most spectacular skyscraper, the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank, plans had to be hastily revised when consultant geomancers, practitioners of the ancient principles of feng shui, revealed that the angle of the escalators would bring misfortune. Most visitors marvel at the efficiency of the underground mass transit system but few realise that it is speeded on its way by Taoist priests whose invocations successfully appease the jealous earth spirits.