Like much in Hong Kong, Sybil's apartment mingles a certain glamour -- old Chinese furniture and Asian textiles -- with a cold-water-only galley kitchen shared with ants and a plump gecko. Besides mastering its intricacies, I had to shop and do laundry and other errands in Happy Valley, which is where Hong Kong began to insinuate itself into my affections.
Happy Valley is, as Sybil puts it, ex-pat- friendly, and has been since the 1840's, when the British carved out a racetrack in the swampy north-central part of Hong Kong Island.
