The New and the Old

I'm back in Paris, after a trip that raised more than a few questions in my mind.

In Hong Kong, you get from downtown to the airport on a fast, high-tech train. You can check your bags in for your flight at the train station downtown so you don't have to drag them through the airport -- although since most airlines have only one check-in counter downtown, this can make for a long wait.

Hong Kong's airport is a gleaming, glass-and-metal marvel. But the new Air France terminal at Charles de Gaulle is even more striking:



We'll skip over for now the fact that this building collapsed four years ago, killing four people, in an accident that investigators said may have been due to the very daringness of its design. It's a truly extraordinary building, proof that when the French set their minds to it they can still do world-leading work.

Then you leave this landmark and get on a rather shabby, conventional mass transit train, which deposits you deep beneath the city center in an unspeakably ugly, stifling sub-basement that was done in '70s concrete monolith style and seemingly hasn't been maintained since. To get out to the street or connect to a subway line, you need to drag your suitcase up a couple flights of stairs -- escalators are in short supply here. It's hardly a grand entrance to one of the world's grand cities.

And yet the French had their airport train decades before Hong Kong (or most U.S. cities) even thought about building one. So should they be commended for their foresight? Or criticized because they haven't kept it up with the times?

The fact is that maintenance or upgrading existing facilities is much less glamorous than new construction, something the Chinese will eventually find out. In the meantime, I thought I was moving to a Europe that had fabulous mass transit, but now I'm a bit embarrassed at what it has become compared to what you see in Asia.

On the other hand, you can drink the water in Paris -- even in the land of Evian and Perrier, it is quite normal to order tap water in a restaurant -- while one is advised not to do so in Hong Kong.

And that makes life much easier on days when you don't have to go to the airport.