Hong Kong

I love Hong Kong, I have loved Hong Kong since my first trip 8 years ago.  I love the bustle of the crowds, the tall and skinny buses, the travelator (I love that name travel + escalator = travelator!), the restaurants, and the people.  I think it's one of the coolest cities on earth.  BUT, like NY, I always have trouble when I go there thinking of things to do.  Maybe I've just lived with DH too long... I used to just go and be content to wander around and soak up the atmosphere, but now I feel like I'm somehow wasting the day if I don't DO something.  But I think HK and NY are places that just lend themselves to hanging out (if you don't live there, if you live there you're too busy working to hang out).
The coolness of HK is even more apparent having lived for so long on the mainland.  In HK the subways are clean, efficient and quiet.  (I did not once see a fight in HK, while I see one at least once a week on the mainland) The city also seemed to be trying to make itself more eco-friendly in ways US cities are not.  There are recycling containers everywhere, public transportation seems to be the way most people get around (although no bicycles, too many hills, not enough street space), and you can use your subway card to swipe your way through just about anything (Disneyland, taxis, the skytram, ferries, 7-11, etc) reducing the need for ticketing in those places.
I also saw so many different types of people there, living, touring, working, running/owning businesses.  It was especially apparent after Wuhan where the sight of another foreigner was rare, much less so many different types of people.  Yes, the majority of the people are Asian, but not necessarily Han-Chinese.  Which made the food so good.  2nd tier mainland Chinese cities are NOT cosmopolitan.  Wuhan is better than Chengdu because at least you can get Sichuan and Cantonese food here, as well as Hubei food (in Chengdu, people felt that it wasn't worth it to eat anything other than Sichuan food).  But generally speaking, it's still going to serve the main parts of whatever region you're in, because there aren't enough people here willing to brave eating something that's not familiar to them (I'm not saying that this is unique to China, if you go into the heartland in America good luck trying to find something that's not Italian, Mexican, or American).  I know we looked like those tourists who come to China and only eat Hamburgers, but gosh darnit I haven't had a good hamburger in months!  We ate Asian food, but the only Chinese food we ate was Dim Sum (YUM!!!!!!!!).  People can think what they like about us, but I don't regret eating pizza twice, in fact I wish we had eaten it more, and I definitely should have had another hamburger.