Bustling tale of two cities
OUTSIDE my nearest Tube station there’s a coffee kiosk and a news stand but, if anyone’s interested in applying, a vacancy for a blessing hut. WORLD’S BUSIEST CITIES (BBC2) sent Anita Rani to an underpass by one of Hong Kong’s crowded metro stations, where the blessing ladies were doing a roaring trade.
As part of an ancient Chinese tradition, lines are recited over a drawing which you batter with your shoe before burning it. This, at a cost of five quid a pop, protects you from the influence of “villains” or perhaps just people who might elbow you on your daily commute.
It seemed like a satisfying little ritual, although I’d probably want to batter something, or someone, with my shoe after I’d finished my Tube journey, rather than before it. Anita’s segment with the blessing lady, like virtually all the segments in last night’s programme, made a point about Hong Kong.
With seven-and-a-half million people in a space barely bigger than the Isle of Man, the inhabitants have had to become very inventive. There are witches in underpasses, barbers in alleyways, hi-tech bedroom pods you can insert into your tiny flat to fit more bodies in. For every wonder the presenting team stumbled on though there was a minor horror too.
Ade Adepitan met a dishwasher who, like vast numbers of the city’s low-paid workers, slept in what was basically a large locker. On the streets on Sunday, Dan Snow found crowds of women, mostly from the Philippines, in a temporary tent city.
Employed as domestic servants, they had nowhere to go on their single day off, so they just congregated on the street. In the archives of Hong Kong’s famous, and now worldwide brand bank, we were shown the first ledgers of the first settlers, drawn there by the promise of vast fortunes.
They are still clearly being made on the island, too, but not by the people on the streets and in the alleyways.
Voiced with the lilting Celtic tones of Douglas Henshall, MOUNTAIN: LIFE AT THE EXTREME (BBC2) is one of those programmes you take in rather than watch. A series of views, a string of poetic description, a bit of soaring music, even the odd, quiet interview, it’s more nature film than natural history documentary.
Along the way too and certainly in last night’s instalment from the Rockies, there is plenty to wonder at. This mountain range is so large it contains many peaks without names. It’s also home to the greatest temperature swings on Earth, capable of dropping up to 56 degrees in a single day.
For a couple of days a year, the peaks ring with a hard, clacking sound, as if brisk cricket matches were going on in every valley. It’s actually the noise of horned rams, battling to get the females in their short window of fertility.
Elsewhere, we watched the slow, grisly cycle of life inside a pond, one salamander eating all his relatives until there was no one else left and the pond dried up, at which point he grew a pair of lugs and walked away on land.
This was nature and it all made sense unlike Jeff Schapiro, the human we stumbled on. He lives in the Rockies, surrounded by beauty, all year round. So every other day, spring and summer, he jumps off a mountain, risking his life in a wingsuit as he falls 3,000 feet to the valley floor. I’m not sure how Darwin would have explained that.