Before last Thursday, all my knowledge of Hong Kong came watching James Bond movies. Bond visited Hong Kong on several occasions in his pursuit of truth, justice, women, and the preservation of the British Way of Life. Sean Connery was there as Bond in "You Only Live Twice" (1967) and "The Man with the Golden Gun" (1974). And Pierce Brosnan’s Bond got in a little sightseeing as he rode a motorcycle backwards through the narrow streets of the city in "Tomorrow Never Dies" (1997) and swam around the harbor in "Die Another Day" (2002).

Here's what I remembered of Hong Kong from those movies as my ferry shuttled me across Hong Kong Harbor:

*Lots of people wearing funny hats.

*Lots of canals, like those in Venice, complete with the Chinese version of the gondola.

*Rickshaws weaving between pedestrians in the narrow streets.

*Nearly-live produce hanging from the fronts of seedy kiosks run by swarthy fellows wearing funny hats.

*The churning blades of a helicopter being used as a Mixmaster (tm) in yet another failed attempt to kill Bond (sheesh, just shoot the bloomin' fellow already, what's the problem?).

Here's what I saw when I looked out of the grimy window of my ferry as it bobbed up and down on the wake churned up by massive cargo ships (Hong Kong Harbor is one of the busiest in the world):

*One of the aforementioned cargo ships, bearing down on us with evil intent (never fear, our hardy ferry pilot chugged right along in front of the behemoth, not even breaking into a sweat, and we missed one another with whole inches to spare).

*Chunks of islands sticking up out of the water like misplaced balls of Play-doh (tm).

*A high-speed catamaran ferrying people from one island in the 235-island chain that comprises Hong Kong to another island in the 235-island chain that comprises Hong Kong -- or possibly taking them to mainland Macau, where there is a casino.

*Green mountains shrouded in low-hanging clouds.

*The city.

Despite Bond, I'm not sure what I was expecting (especially since I may have been mistaken about some of my Bond movie references). When I first traveled to Mexico to teach back in 1999, I hadn't visited the country before and had envisioned something such as one might find in a Sally Struthers' Help-the-Humanity-by-Sending-Us-a-Dollar-a-Day paid advertisement: me in a dirt-floored building -- possibly a tent -- teaching poor but bright children arrayed around me in an attentive circle on the ground ('cause there wouldn't be enough money for chairs). I figured there would also be flies. It turned out that the dirt-floored building was a state-of-the-art high school and my students drove Mercedes and Lexuses. At least the chairs, of which we had plenty, were uncomfortable. And I did spot a fly once.

So I was ready when Hong Kong didn't end up looking like it had in those James Bond movies. But I wasn't ready for it to look like it did.

Here's where my descriptive powers fade and I am reduced to enumerating metaphors and similes:

It was as if someone had dumped a box of children's building blocks onto a swath of wadded-up green carpet and then someone else had come along and dumped another box of children's building blocks right on top of the first one.

It was one of those pin-paintings where you press your hand against the pins and make the shape of your hand appear on the opposite side in bas-relief -- only someone had done that with a frame the size of a city.It was a circuit board of epic size.

It was Hong Kong, skyscrapers crowded together, not in packs, but in whole valley-covering herds, logos gleaming in giant, multi-colored prominence atop each and every one. Laundry was hanging across the thousands of balconies that we could see from the harbor, testament to the nearly 20,000 people that live in every square mile of the city (which is low compared to the 100,000 per square mile who live across the harbor in Kowloon).

Mount Victoria and her attending peaks stood backdrop to this extravaganza of heaped architecture, their steep green walls protecting the city from the storms of the South China Sea.

The ferry putted and heaved herself into the pier and I stepped off, anxious to see what the rest of Hong Kong would be like...and whether or not anybody was really wearing any of those funny hats.

Next time: Hong Kong Nights.