Stepping into another culture

I was invited to a women's Bible study--through a friend of a friend in the U.S. It was on Hong Kong Island in an area called the midlevels--higher elevation behind the central downtown. Having been living in Kowloon across the harbor and is very Chinese, it was something of a cultural switch. The apartment where we met was definitely upscale--I was among the international business class--with at least two staff who cooked and served us. And among the women there were several who were Korean-American whose husbands had finance-related positions in Hong Kong. It sounded like many in the group lived in a different world than the one I inhabit in HK--they live on the other side of the mountain in Hong Kong which is full of expats and they have learned no Chinese even though they have been in Hong Kong for ten years or more. Several others were Chinese-Americans who work in Hong Kong in ministries. There is definitely another world in Hong Kong that is across the harbor and over the hill.

So should I go take a bus and go see it? A good book that captures something of what this world might be like is: The Piano Teacher by Janice Y.K. Lee. This is a story that takes place in the 1950s in Hong Kong with flashbacks to WWII when Japan occupied HK.