Not long ago, the city's time was said to be over. Not anymore. Like an indestructible kung fu champ, it's kicking back—big time. Karl Taro Greenfeld gets right into the action

We're downstairs at King of the King, a Cantonese seafood restaurant in Hong Kong's Central district. Behind lacquered–wood partitions, mah–jongg players shuffle tiles, making that noisy rattle—like a thousand impatient women tapping their fingernails. But the eight of us seated around a white cloth–covered table are playing poker, not mah–jongg. While the cards are dealt, the talk is of deals and business and opportunities and new properties. A hotelier, Jason (who brought me here), is wondering about selling out to a Russian businessman, and Ben, the scion of a wealthy family, is discussing investing in some property in Beijing, and Chris, a trader for a hedge fund, says that the thing to do is borrow in Hong Kong dollars at two and three–quarters percent and deposit in Australia at five and three–quarters and use the spread to buy a new Ferrari. Then the guys are talking about Full House, one of the Korean soap operas sweeping greater China and starring the actress Song Hye Kyo, who is so fine—a little chubby, comments someone, but she's still so leng lui, dude. But the conversation, between hands, keeps going back to deals and opportunities and property: the development in Kowloon West, Korean equities, new hotels, better cars. As I wait for my cards, I look around and notice that everyone at the table is wearing a better wristwatch than I am. When I ask Chris, who is next to me, what time he has to go to work in the morning, he shrugs. "Whenever."

In Hong Kong today, it seems that no one is bothering to earn a living because everyone is too busy making a killing.

In between noodles with pork, bowls of fried rice, and crab and corn soup, I find that I am losing track of the half–Cantonese, half–English conversation and become slightly impatient, so I go all in with two pair, kings over sevens, and this guy Scotty across from me in a hoodie sweatshirt, a Nike visor, and his cell phone dangling from a lanyard around his neck calls me and has kings and jacks. I'm about to buy in for another sixty dollars when I look around the table and wonder who the easy money is and realize that it's me.

I fold my cards and explain to Jason that I have to meet someone, which is true, and I take my leave—past the clattering mah–jongg tables, the fish tanks stocked with garoupa whose bulging eyes make them look as if they are taking pity on my losing ways—and head up the stairs and out the door and onto Queen's Road, where the air is hot and damp and smells of wet concrete and Victoria Harbour.

There are the usual crowds of well–dressed Hong Kongers out for the evening: businessmen in summer–weight suits and wire frame glasses; pretty girls with hennaed hair, artisanal T–shirts, and treated denim jeans; gweilo—Western women in shiny tops, jeans, and strappy heels. The sidewalk is hard going: The pavement is being torn up. Steel pedestrian bridges laid down over scars in the concrete reveal tangled layers of fresh plumbing and fiber–optic cable. The city, apparently, is rewiring.