Skyscraper Ballet

My husband, Richard, has been offered a job teaching Tai Chi on a 60 day around-the-world cruise. The 14 hour San Francisco to Hong Kong flight takes us over the Bering Strait, across the Siberian wilderness, and on toward the South China Sea. Growing up, I poured over maps of these remote, exotic places while wishing to escape to anywhere. A man, holding a sign with our names, welcomes us like VIPs and whisks us along to the ship, Holland America's Amsterdam. We're docked directly across the harbor from the famous Hong Kong skyline. Richard naps.  I walk along the waterfront Avenue of the Stars, the Hong Kong version of Los Angeles' Grauman's Chinese Theater. Tourists stop and try to fit their hands into the concrete imprints of Jackie Chan, Jet Li, and other local movie stars.

It's 8pm, and it's show time. The skyscrapers across the way don their costumes for the nightly laser light show. Individual designs of neon colored lights adorn their facades. The patterns begin to move. Some run up and down, some zig-zag back and forth while others flash on and off; colors bleed one into another. Each building dances with its squiggling partner reflected in the moving current of the water below. They glitter, glisten, sparkle, and shimmer. This architectural ballet sweeps all along the harbor.  Each building, involved in its own improvisation, adds to the overall drama. Just when you think the choreography can't get any more complex, laser lights shoot from the peaks of the buildings in varying rhythms.  Green lasers beam unbroken to the far side of the Universe. Fuchsia lights burst forth in staccato spurts. In Hong Kong the buildings dance.