White Socks

     Today when I was walking down the street a couple blocks from our apartment a middle-aged Anglo fellow caught my eye and asked me if I knew where he could buy some women's socks.  White socks.  He said he was going to a funeral.  I suggested walking down the other side of the street, where I knew I'd seen some small shops with rows of socks laid out on tables right there by the sidewalk.  I also said I'd seen some at the big ParkNShop across the street.  I offered to walk him over to that store and show him.  While we were crossing the street and making our way to the sock aisle I found out that he was from New York, but spends half his time in Hong Kong and half in a Chinese city that's a 90-minute ferry ride from here.  He works in manufacturing.  (Of course. That's why the majority of Americans are in China.)
     I got bold and asked about the white socks.  Is it a tradition to wear white socks to a Chinese funeral? I knew that Chinese people associate the color white with death.  Yes, he said, his father-in-law had died in Taiwan and it was his job to bring back new white socks for everyone to wear to the funeral.
     This makes me wonder if people are looking askance at the white gym socks I wear when I go to exercise class in the park.
    

Getcher Waffles Here

n

     These folded waffles that look like edible bubble wrap are a popular late afternoon snack in Hong Kong.  I've never seen 5 or 6 of them stacked up waiting for buyers, as in this photo I took this afternoon.  Often people stand in line to get one hot off the griddle at an open-to-the-sidewalk food stall like this one on Belcher's St.  I think they cost $HK10 ($1.29) at this stall.  Your waffle gets slipped into a little brown bag (you can see a few sitting up on a shelf to the woman's right) and you nibble it out of a bag.  We pass by this stall a few blocks from our apartment just about every time we leave the neighborhood, but we catch their delectable scent at least a half-block before getting there.  I'm guessing that the secret ingredient is coconut oil.  These waffles would no doubt sell well at the MN State Fair.  They probably have just about enough calories to qualify for Fair fare.  Belcher's Street Waffles...hmmmm...might have to work on the name....

Cow Conundrum in Colonial Kowloon

   Kowloon, early 1950's:  several villagers walk into the magistrate's office.  Why are they there?  It's about the cow, one of the men says.  Which cow?  The one that's eating the grass. Whose cow is it?  It's from another village.  Which village?  One over the mountain.  So someone must bring the cow over the mountain to your village?  No.  Well how does it get to your village?  It doesn't come to our village.  Well you just said that this cow from another village is eating your grass.  Yes, it is. Well, how does the cow get over the mountain to eat the grass in your village if no one brings it?  How does it get back home to sleep at night?  It sleeps in our village.  What does the cow's owner say about that?  Nothing.

     On and on the young British magistrate questions the villagers about this case of the cow, through two old-hand Chinese interpreters in the court.  The magistrate is new at his job, he's unprepared, he's overwhelmed by the absurdity of the case.  It takes just about forever to piece together the real reason the villagers have come to see him.  It's not really about the cow after all.  The man complaining about the cow has married a second wife.  The first wife owns the cow.  She's threatened to go back to her home village with her cow.  Why?  She's lost face because the new wife has just given birth to the man's first son.  The man doesn't want to lose the use of the cow if his first wife leaves with it to go back to her village.  That's why they're visiting the magistrate.

     The roundabout, confusing nature of the fact-giving is typical of other conversations the British magistrate has had with Chinese in the 3 years he's been doing government work in Hong Kong.  The magistrate goes to see his Buddhist friend.  Why is it that I'm having such trouble getting the Chinese to explain something to me systematically, beginning to end, he asks.

     The friend explains the ancient Chinese idea that "anyone who wishes to succeed in life has to be single-minded in purpose."  Aha.  This is what the magistrate has been observing in Chinese people's intent focus on their own individual affairs.  Getting the ideas out of their own head into someone else's head isn't important to the Chinese, not in court or anywhere else.  And they're not interested in what's in the other person's head, either.  That's why Westerners think that Chinese are self-centered.  On the other had, Chinese think Westerners spend too much energy focusing on things outside their own affairs.  

     All of the above is from Myself a Mandarin, the memoirs of Austin Coates, which I'm reading and enjoying.  It was published nearly 45 years ago, but it's interesting to contemplate the relevance of these ideas about Chinese single-mindedness vs. Western diffuse thinking. 

     

Birds Singing and Fresh Air

     This afternoon Terry thought we should walk up Victoria Road around the northwest side of Hong Kong Island toward the Mt. Davis Youth Hostel.  I walked up this way a few weeks ago on a sunny afternoon, but he's never ventured this far west.
     About 20 minutes into the walk this was the view.  You can just barely make out a few ships lingering near the horizon.  Hong Kong is one of the world's busiest container ports and most of the container ships pass through this channel.  In colonial times, because this was a strategic location for monitoring all the vessels entering or leaving the west side of Victoria Harbor, about 100 years ago the British  installed artillery not far from here to fend off rivals.  The Japanese destroyed much of it during WWII.  We didn't hike up far enough to see the remnants, but supposedly you can freely explore them.
     Looking down the hill under some of these trees we spotted what looked like the remainders of walls and tiled floors.  After I got home I read that these are leftovers from squatters' settlements, which sprung up all over Hong Kong in the early 1950's as people fled mainland China.

     We turned off Victoria Road at the Mt. Davis Path sign and followed this trail uphill until it dead-ended at a huge concrete reservoir that towered 30' or so above our heads.  The "trail" is a paved road, not as pleasant as the usual dirt-under-your-feet trails in MN.  But erosion and landslides are a huge risk during heavy rains and typhoons here, so paving is necessary.  This looked like a scouting group that was hiking up to the hostel.  We didn't venture onto the turn-off to go up to the hostel and the hiking trails around it, which would have taken us up much further on Mount Davis.  Today would have been a good day for hiking up there because it was cool, but we hadn't planned to be out long and hadn't brought any drinking water.  We made a mental note to come back and do this soon.
     We heard lots of birds singing today all along these forested areas, and the air smelled like vegetation and salt water.  What a welcome relief from the constant low roar of traffic and the smell of exhaust (and occasional frying food) where we live.

     Snow-covered mountain in Hong Kong?  No, it's a freshly paved hillside on the Mt. Davis Path.  You see these hills covered with a layer of concrete all over Hong Kong Island.  "Slope maintenance"  is a big deal here--you see little metal tags posted every so often with a slope registration number.  There are over 50,000 engineered slopes like this, with paving, channels for water, and fences and gates limiting access, all of which has to be maintained in order to insure stability of Hong Kong's steep hills. Looking closely at this hillside you can see the water channel at the side of the road and the drainage pipe outlets dotting the concrete.

     This was the view looking out from the reservoir.  The mountain in the background is High West.  It's right next to the famous Victoria Peak.  There's a trail going to the top, accessed on the side opposite this view, which would be another fun trek someday.  It's hard to make out in this photo, but there are a couple cemeteries down at the bottom of all of these hills.  One is a private Eurasian cemetery from the late 1800's, for  the rare Hong Kongers who intermarried with Westerners at that time.  They weren't accepted into either the colonial Western cemeteries or the Chinese cemeteries.  However, then, as now, a number of those Eurasians who were familiar with both Western and Chinese culture and language were prominent members of the community.

One of Those Days

     Today was one of those days when there seemed to be an accumulation of irritations that were all related to not being at home.  There are the gray days in Hong Kong, one after another.  I've been here nearly 5 weeks and there has been less than a week's worth of sunny days since I arrived.  Even if the sun came out, there's never a bright blue sky like there is in Minnesota.  It's always hazy to some degree.  It would have been nice to have even a short casual conversation today with, say, one person besides Terry--family, friend, neighbor, the teller at the bank or the guy at the gas station.  This past week I've been a little stir crazy from not getting out and about enough, due to a sore knee, related to bad arches, I think,  and doing a lot more walking and hills and stairs than I was used to.  If I was at home I know where I would go to get a new set of good inserts for my shoes and maybe an excellent massage.
     I get weary of thinking about water and food safety, given that most of what we drink and eat comes from China.  It's good to have to think about this because, really, we're all in this together.  But today was one of those days when I really would have liked to have had the option of going to the co-op.  Today it would have been nice to be able to send a quick text to the girls to get maybe get a sentence or so back, telling about their week.  There are the computer issues:  slow internet much of the time here at our apartment, problems with my email since I arrived, and the rat's nest of power strips and adapters precariously arranged here for electronics and phones in our minimalist living room, where we spend most of our time when we're not out and about.  My computer inadvertently got unplugged from the rat's nest late this afternoon and I  thought I'd lost most of what I'd been working on.  At that point I left to go for a long walk, crummy knee and all.  I realized while out and about that I'm feeling the lack of personal space here--there are ALWAYS people around when I go out, lots of them.  Coming from northern European stock with some silent, hermiting tendencies, I'm feeling a little too hemmed in by humans at times.  I think the reason today became one of those days is because I'm short on sleep, and that's because I was thinking about our elderly former neighbor who's been quite sick, and I was wishing I could have visited her.
      None of these is a huge problem.  I recognize that I have a wonderful opportunity here and that it probably seems ludicrous to voice anything that seems remotely like a complaint.  But there are days when nothing seems better than the familiarities and conveniences of home.
     Tomorrow will be much better.  And...without prompting, just now Terry has suggested that we track down one of those familiarities of home, a Scrabble game.  We're supposed to be able to get one at the Toys 'R' Us in Central.  Woo hoo!

Hong Kong Scenes

These people are walking toward the Mid-Levels Escalator, which is the longest outdoor covered escalator system in the world. (Or at least it used to be.)  It's a series of 20 escalators that moves commuters down the steep hill in the morning and up the hill for the rest of the day.  It opened in 1993 as an effort to curb traffic congestion between the densely populated Mid-Levels residential area and the Central business district.  Some say that the Escalator has not been all that successful in reducing congestion.  It takes 20-25 minutes to ride all the way up or down on the escalators.  There are stairs alongside for the contrarians.

I showed Terry this photo of a quaint pastoral mural on the side of a building I had walked by.  He recognized it right away.  It's on his route walking home from work, close to the SoHo area, where the art is edgy.  I guess if this mural was located in SoHo it would be edgy.

Here's a fish stall down a narrow market alley in Wan Chai.  Consumers want to buy a live fish so they'll know it's really fresh.  Supposedly a local might loiter in the area and watch for a pricey fish to go belly up and then zip over to bargain for a deal on it.

When I first saw this display in a store window along the tram route I thought it was cans of vegetables, which is unusual here.  Chinese people like their veggies fresh, not canned and not frozen.  A few days later I walked by and saw that these are actually cans of seeds.  I think the top two are a couple varieties of lettuce seeds and at the bottom are watermelon seeds.  I supposed they're canned because it's often humid here so seeds wouldn't keep well in paper packages.

A Few Particulars of the Day

The weather:  Cloudy, with occasional rain.  High:  Around 70.  Dewpoint:  high 60's.   The air is clammy, but tonight we have a nice cross breeze here in our apartment.  It's a renovated shotgun style:  long and narrow, with great air flow from open windows on the north facing the harbor and on the south facing the street.  Back before air conditioning this was the way to keep cooler.

Something I liked about being here:  Being able to spontaneously talk to Terry whenever we have something to say to each other.  I've been here a month now and this is still a greatly appreciated simple pleasure, after we've lived apart quite a bit these last few years.

Something I missed about home today:  Safe drinking water out of the faucet.

Frustrating experience:  I bought 2 apples at the grocery store.  The clerk didn't know the unit price and called out to a co-worker.  I told her 3.9.  Twice.  In Cantonese.  She didn't hear me.  Wouldn't even look at me.  Yesterday I bought 2 of the same kind of apples at the same store.  That clerk didn't know the price, either, and asked me how much.  "Saam gau," I said.  And she had understood me.  Yay!

Supper menu:  Garbanzo bean-spinach-potato patties, and stir-fried cabbage and carrots.  Yes, sounds odd, but it actually was OK.  The garbanzo idea was another of my invented entrees, not great but not a disaster.  I really should stick to recipes, but I've gotta get lucky sometime with one of my experiments!

Something interesting I read today:  "Making It in America", an article by Adam Davidson (from NPR's Planet Money) in the Jan.-Feb. Atlantic Monthly.  He writes about the future of manufacturing jobs in the U.S., what work will and will not go to China-Mexico-cheaper production venues, and the bleak future for unskilled workers in the U.S.

Something I wondered about:  What my dad would think if I left out food on a Chinese altar on the sidewalk for him, an honored departed ancestor.   Today I saw a woman putting out a very generous plate of neatly sliced braised beef (chopsticks arranged alongside) and 4 huge, perfect apples in a bowl, all on a small table right next to the building.  As I was walking down the sidewalk toward her I watched her bow several times toward the table as she was holding a piece burning rolled-up brown paper.  I think Dad would be uncomfortable with the attention and with the impracticality of this tradition.  He'd probably prefer that you honor him by working hard at something that mattered.  But he'd also be curious about this cultural phenomenon.

Nannies for the Young and Old

     Last week when I was riding the tram in the late afternoon I sat across from a schoolboy in his uniform--the white shirt, necktie, navy trousers and jacket with school badge.  Right next to him sat his bright-eyed amah, his nanny, who looked Filipino as so many amahs here are.  He was leaning his tired head against her shoulder and closing his eyes, quite the sweet picture.  On her lap she was holding the boy's great big backpack (no wonder he was worn out--I would be, too, if I was 8 or 9 years old like this boy and faced the prospect of doing all the homework inside that hefty thing).  There are lots of amahs--grandparents, too--out on the sidewalks at that time of day bringing home youngsters after school, usually carrying their backpacks and often stopping to buy them juice or a bakery treat.
     Elderly people who can't be independent anymore often have an amah, too.  Elizabeth from Calgary said that her brother who lives here in Kennedy Town has hired a "nanny" (her term) for their 92-year-old mother.  In the mornings I often see amahs out on the sidewalks or in the park taking older people out for their morning constitutional.  Getting out for a walk seems like it's important, even when walking looks like quite a challenge.  There are usually several amahs who bring elderly women to the exercise class in the park.  Some of the amahs are very good about helping their charge to move arms or legs in at least some semblance of the exercise, if the person can't follow the directions on her own.

Goodbye Lunch at Shiva's Restaurant

     Today I was very pleased to be invited to have lunch with some people from the morning exercise class in Belcher Bay Park.  Elizabeth is leaving tomorrow to go back home to Calgary, and I think her departure was a good excuse to get together.  We met at Shiva's restaurant, which is just down Catchick Street from our apartment.   In the photo starting at left are Jeanne, Shiva, Mr. Lee, Grace, Eva, Elizabeth, Rose, (I think her name is Wah), and Janey.
     I'll tell a bit about each of these people.  Jeanne on the left I don't really know because she doesn't speak English.  But I credit her with being a huge help to my learning how to count up to 40 in Cantonese.  While we're doing repetitions and holds in class many people count out loud (me, too), and Jeanne with her drill sergeant's voice is the one I hear above everyone else!  Shiva came from Nepal to Hong Kong about 20 years ago by way of Argentina and Chile, if I remember correctly.  The eclectic menu in his tiny bar and restaurant includes lots of tapas (Spanish appetizers), a couple of French dishes, lots of Nepalese curries and even fish and chips.  He's quite a genial fellow, and he had a delicious lunch ready for us today when we arrived:  a flavorful chicken broth soup, grilled chicken with an herbed yogurt condiment, grilled fish (swordfish from Vietnam, he said), shrimp stirfried with sweet red and green peppers and onions, a lamb curry, a huge plate of steamed broccoli rabe garnished with sesame seeds, rice and wedges of pita.  While the Cantonese conversation was flying unintelligibly over my head I could check out and enjoy every one of these dishes.
     Mr. Lee is the leader of the exercise class that meets Monday-Saturday in the park that's a few minutes' walk from our apartment.  He's got a teacher's demeanor and he's respected by all.  "Hai!" he'll sort of bark at the beginning of class and other times to get people's attention--that's "yes."  He'll pull  all 5'4"of his frame up very straight when he's ready to start, and then he'll explain (in Cantonese, of course) a few of the key points about whatever exercise we're doing next, pointing and demonstrating.  He'll walk around and frown and correct people's techniques, including mine, which I appreciate, and sometimes if he's in a light mood he'll rib certain people a little.  I especially enjoy watching  him patiently work with the older people who are a little confused.  Someday I'll ask someone how old Mr. Lee is.  I'm guessing he's at least in his late 70's.
     Grace is the person who first invited me to join the class one morning 3 weeks ago when I was walking through the park and I stopped to watch this group.  She's the one who invited me to lunch, too.  Several people asked me today where I was living, and that gave me a chance to mention that we're looking for a different, less expensive apartment in the neighborhood. Our current one has a month-to-month lease and some housekeeping service is provided, which makes it relatively pricey.  Grace heard me say this and called a friend of hers who has an apartment for rent a few blocks from us.  The friend came over to the neighborhood after lunch and took me up to the 59th floor of a building right on the harbor to show me the apartment.  It had nice views from that ear-popping height, but she was asking the same price as our current apartment. It was nice of Grace to try to help out both her friend and me.  By the way, Grace mentioned today that she's 60 years old. She looks and acts 10-15 years younger!
     Eva I just met for the first time today.  She had the best English of anyone at the table.  She came  along because she's Elizabeth's sister-in-law.  Elizabeth worked as a tailor for many years in Calgary.  She's 68 and retired now.  I'd originally understood that she'd come back to live in Hong Kong, but she's just been visiting her 92-year-old mother here for a couple months.  Rose I met for the first time today.  Her English is quite good and she gave me some cues about apartments.  She said that she's Catholic (as is Elizabeth) and told me about the role the Catholic schools historically have had in educating (and feeding) poor children in Hong Kong.  When walking around various parts of Hong Kong Island these last few weeks I've noticed a lot of church-affiliated schools.  Skipping to the last person at the right side of the photo, this is Janey, one of the first people I met at the exercise group.  She speaks little English, but she's been very warm toward me.  And she tries to warm me up, too, literally.  She'll often take my hands in hers, comment on how cold they are (in Cantonese) and rub them to get them warm.
     Back to the second to the last woman on the right, this woman speaks no English, but she always has an eager smile when I watch her in class.  I think Rose told me her name is Wah, so I googled W-a-h earlier tonight to see if I was spelling it right.  The link that follows is the first piece that I opened up, quite an amazing and heartwarming story about a woman named Wah from Hong Kong who mails an American photographer a piece of equipment she thinks belongs to him.  As an American here connecting with all of these kind and generous Hong Kong people at lunch today, I really enjoyed this anecdote.  If you have time, check it out:   http://theonlinephotographer.typepad.com/the_online_photographer/2008/09/the-amazing-gif.html

Express Rail Link to China

     We thought for awhile that this construction site was part of the new express rail system that will link Hong Kong to mainland China.  But it's not.  This is reclaimed land on the harbor close to the ferry piers on Hong Kong Island.  You can tell it's reclaimed because it's flat.  Soon there will be yet more office buildings going up here.  Fill, build.  Fill, build.  That's the Hong Kong harbor story.  Some say that eventually you won't need the ferry to cross the harbor to go to Kowloon.  It will all get filled in and you'll be able to walk over there. 

     So you need to go ahead and get yourself over to Kowloon if you want to ride on that new express train to China.  And then you'll need to wait 3 years or so for the first train to arrive.  That's because the Hong Kong section of this new Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link is still being built.  It's taking awhile because most of the 16 miles of track in Hong Kong will be underground.  Supposedly the trip from Kowloon to Shenzhen on this new train will take 12 minutes.  Right now using the current subway and train system it probably takes between 1 and 1 1/2 hours, depending on the time of day that you travel.

     Hopefully there are plans in the works for an express immigration system, too.  As it is now, you have to stand in line with your passport and have an agent check it over when you leave Hong Kong and stand in another line to enter China.  Then you have to do it all over again to leave China and to re-enter Hong Kong on your return trip.  So what if it takes only 12 minutes for the train trip, if you have to stand in line for 30 minutes or more to get through immigration each way.

     What's the holdup for developing an express immigration system for everyone making this crossing, or even eliminating it, since Hong Kong is part of China now?  My guess is that much of the sentiment against it is here in Hong Kong.  In my last post I mentioned the protest here yesterday against allowing mainland Chinese to drive over the border into Hong Kong.  A few years ago protesters demonstrated against the building of this new express rail link with the mainland.  

     There's plenty of uncertainty and fear here about what a closer relationship to China is going to mean in the years to come.  Largely due to being colonized by the British, Hong Kong really is different from China.  It appears that many Hong Kongers want to keep it that way.  

To Kowloon Park

     A sunny Sunday afternoon, no looming deadlines for Terry...it was a good day for an outing.  We chose a quirky destination, the Hong Kong exhibition of the Biennale of Urbanism/Architecture in Kowloon Park.  The description sounded intriguing:  city architecture and its transformation reflecting the interaction of people, time and place.  Each of the 53 participants had been given a metal bunk bed to creatively disassemble and incorporate somehow into their exhibit--the bunk symbolic because of housing density in Hong Kong and also because colonial Kowloon buildings were once military barracks.  The bunk bed part is what drew me in.  I get energized by looking at the imaginative products of creative assignments like this.  Pretty Kowloon Park (pictured at right) is a draw, too, especially on a nice day.

     The exhibit was disappointing, however, mostly because it was so esoteric.  The article we'd read about it specifically mentioned that it was meant for the public to view, that you didn't need any special architectural background to appreciate and learn from it.  Maybe we were experiencing the difference between Chinese public exhibits and American ones.  The great big swaths of texts, uninviting tiny typeface, lack of organizing cues...these two Americans lacked the patience and diligence to wade through the architect-speak on a Sunday afternoon outing.  It just didn't invite us to care about anything the exhibitors had to say. And the whole idea of the creative use of the bunk beds pretty much eluded most of the exhibitors, from what we saw.  Most of them were used just as bunk beds, some of them made up with the exhibitor's dvd playing on a screen up by the pillow in the lower bunk.  You couldn't quite figure out if you were supposed to maybe sit down on the bed where the covers had been flipped back and watch it?  Otherwise you had to stoop uncomfortably to look at it.  Huh.  I'm still scratching my head. 

     Fortunately some other parts of the outing were interesting.  To get to Kowloon you have to cross Victoria Harbor, either via the subway or the Star Ferry.  We've never taken the ferry before. Since it's supposed to be one of those essential Hong Kong things to do and since it was a nice day, we opted for a ride on the ferry, pictured at right. (That's the Central skyline on Hong Kong Island in the background...on a relatively nice day.  The air is almost always hazy to a greater or lesser degree.)  There's a whole fleet of Star Ferries making the crossing between Hong Kong Island where we live and the Kowloon Peninsula, all with names like Solar Star, Silver Star, Northern Star and Twinkling Star.  There's not much waiting around, since a ferry leaves between the Central pier on the Island and Tsim Sha Tsui every 6-10 minutes or so.  Star Ferries have been making this crossing since at least 1888.  Until the tunnel under the harbor was finished in 1978, this was the only way to get across the harbor.  It's fast, about 5 minutes to get across, and cheap, too, only $HK3 ($.39) to make the crossing.  The government provides substantial subsidies for the ferry and all the other kinds of public transport in Hong Kong in order to discourage use of cars.  Population density, smog and narrow winding streets all make cars impractical (though there are still a great plenty of them around, many seemingly driven as status symbols by the wealthy, from what I've observed).

     While we were walking through Central to get to the ferry pier we were amazed by the hoards of young women gathered in small groups on the sidewalk, relaxing with their friends.  We'd read about this phenomenon:  these are foreign domestic workers, enjoying their weekly one day off.  Many Hong Kong households employ an amah, who's a housekeeper, cook and nanny.  The majority of them come from the Philippines, but some also come from Indonesia, Thailand, Nepal and Sri Lanka.  The various ethnic groups all have their preferred gathering places around Hong Kong.  Central is where the Filipino workers are supposed to come to hang out on Sundays.

     Most of them sit on blankets or pieces of cardboard.  They spend the day sharing food and drink, talking and laughing, playing cards, using their cell phones and laptops, and napping.  The 5 women standing up in this photo were rhythmically playing their gongs/drums; I'm not sure if they were getting ready to rally (we saw a group with a big red banner just a little further on) or getting ready to make some music.  We heard a group of 3 or 4 singing shortly after we passed by this group.

     When we walked through the passageway under Connaught Rd, there were hundreds of women sitting on our left and our right, a solid mass of amahs relaxing in their small circles of friends.  Some groups had pieced together short walls of cardboard or umbrellas on one or both sides of their group, I suppose to make it easier to hear each other or for privacy or just to stake out their space.  It seemed a little cold and unpleasant to me to sit in this not-so-attractive cement tunnel under a road, but I suppose it's a favored space when it's rainy or hot.  I wondered if these tunnel-sitters have understood seating arrangements, group by group.

     I like the idea of these little communities of foreign workers enjoying their time off with their friends,  exchanging news and information and support, all of this easing homesickness and loneliness.  They're also making a statement to Hong Kong citizens about their numbers and potential power when they're organized, a good thing because employer abuse is supposed to be a problem for a fair number of amahs.

     We had planned to take a tram home from Central.  But after waiting and waiting for at least 20 minutes at the stop with an ever-growing crowd of other waiters, we knew something was wrong.  The trams always come by every few minutes.  We thought that maybe there had been an electrical or mechanical problem down the line or an accident.  So we just started walking home.  About 15 minutes later the trams eventually started showing up again and we got our ride after all.

     Terry looked around online tonight for information about the tram delay and found the explanation.  About 300 demonstrators had marched along the tram route this afternoon, protesting an upcoming change that will allow mainland Chinese to cross the border and come drive on Hong Kong's roads.  The protestors say they have concerns about increased pollution as well as concerns about safety.  (I remember reading last year, for example, that supposedly one reason there are an unusually large number of car accidents in China is because a large percentage of Chinese drivers don't have adequate vision for driving and have never had eye exams, much less eyeglasses prescriptions.)  The protestors also accused the government of not listening to their concerns about forced integration with the mainland.

     The protestors got our attention, impatient and poor waiters that we are.

Finding a Thermos at a Hong Kong Ben Franklin

     This afternoon I decided it was time to go find another lunch thermos.  We have one from home that Terry's been using to carry a "planover" entree from our fridge to slip into his backpack to take to work. Now I need one for those days when I'll be at school over lunchtime.  

     I've discovered a lot of little shops in the neighborhood that are similar to what used to be called variety stores on the main streets of small-town Minnesota a few decades ago.  Anyone remember the Ben Franklin stores?  (There still is one in Grand Marais, though it's evolved into something uniquely touristy.)  Here in Kennedy Town you take two steps down off the sidewalk into a tiny shop with 2 narrow aisles that are absolutely stuffed with all kinds of useful household items--everything you need for laundry, cleaning, cooking and eating, plus linens, stationery things, batteries, toiletries, you name it, all with a Chinese twist.  It's a bit of an adventure going into one of these shops looking for something specific, wondering just where it might be in all the clutter.  Doing errands at wide-aisled, well-planned Target is going to seem so ho-hum in a few months.  (Could very likely be a welcome ho-hum, though...enduring an adventure to get a new toothbrush, for example, will soon enough not seem so charming.) 

     I decided to go look for my lunch thermos where I bought a small stainless steel teapot last week at a shop on Des Voeux Road, the one furthest away from our apartment so I could get in a good walk today.  I found one that was satisfactory, made of stainless steel with a wide mouth, big enough to hold a serving of soup.  It was about half the cost of the real Thermos we brought from home but probably not half as good.  I'm sort of expecting that the seal will leak, and it doesn't look as if it's going to keep anything hot for very long, although in another month a hot lunch isn't going to sound so appealing in Hong Kong anyway.

     Making this purchase reminded me of a discussion I had last year with two friends in Shenzhen, one from India and the other from Pakistan.  Both had lived with their husbands for a few years in the U.S. during grad school and then while working.  They both said that American goods, food, housing, and some services are generally a much better value--considering the quality for the price paid-- than in any of the other places they'd lived, which included the U.K., Singapore and China, besides their home countries. 

Meow and Squeak

     I feel so at home at "my" new school here.  I got to play the same old cat and mouse game that I sometimes get to play in Minneapolis classrooms.  Several times, in fact, these last few days while I was subbing in a technology class.  Each middle and high school student at this school gets a very new MacBook Pro to use.  While the usual cat is away, some of the mice are inclined to play on their laptop instead of using it to do their assignments.  And the sub cat likes these mice to know that she's on to them.  She can't see what's on their screen most of the time, but just from watching them she pretty well knows what's going on.   She's not going to pounce.  She's not even going to say anything.  No.  Catching the mouse's eye and giving a certain lingering look works best.  Keep 'em guessing about how much she knows and what she's going to do.  Which is ultimately not much, besides mentioning it in summary notes to the usual cat.

     These students all have a project deadline coming up, and if they play around in class they'll just have to put in more time at home.  But it's my job to try to keep them on task in the classroom.  That sometimes means playing the cat.  It's even better to ask a wayward mouse some questions and show some interest in what he's/she's interested in.  I do that, too.  Some of each.

     The most fun class today was a group of middle schoolers who viewed and critiqued the short video tutorials that each student in class created to show how to use one feature on their Mac.  Some were quite good, and a few were downright entertaining.  They generally had excellent critical comments.  These kids really know what they like and don't like when they're looking at a computer screen.

     Students' English proficiency at this international school is very good.  I didn't hear any side conversations in home tongues as was the case at the 2 American international schools where I subbed last year in Shenzhen.  At those 2 schools there were many students from South Korea and also many Chinese students (with non-Chinese passports--students residing in the People's Republic of China were not allowed to attend a foreign school in China).  So you heard lots of Korean and Chinese conversations, especially in the halls and the lunchroom.  Teachers and staff were constantly reminding students to speak in English, otherwise segregation and exclusion became issues.  This school is much more international, and English is their common language.  So far I've met students from Germany, France, Holland, Sweden, Spain, Israel, India, Columbia, the Philippines, South Africa, Australia, Ireland, the U.K., Canada and the U.S.   

     This school also accepts students with special needs, which was not the case last year.  Today I had a visually impaired student and 2 boys that I'm guessing were on the autism spectrum.  The principal had told me last week that this school prides itself on being inclusive, more like a U.S. public school in  this respect, which distinguishes it from the usual ultra-competitive private schools in Hong Kong.  Another thing that makes me feel at home at this school.

  

     

Drive on the Left, Walk on the...?

     To walk on the left or to walk on the right, that is the question.... Cars drive on the left side of the road here in Hong Kong, a legacy of the Brits.  When I first arrived I assumed that pedestrians would walk on the left, as well.  But no.  After logging many hours walking on many streets I have concluded that there is not a pattern to taking one side or the other.  Lots of people,  narrow sidewalks--seems as if it would be good to have a sort of rule for choosing a side.

     This is somewhat surprising to me.  There seem to be so many other internalized rules for orderly behavior on Hong Kong sidewalks.  People don't litter in the neighborhoods I've walked through (nice change from Shenzhen).  Dog walkers seem to carry a newspaper to set down at the appropriate time behind Fido to take care of business.  I've seen only one phlegm-hawking spitter in the 3 1/2 weeks I've been here (an even nicer change from China), and that was a fairly well-groomed gawky teenage boy who looked as if he knew better and was trying out a rebellious persona just for fun.  It probably helps that there are posted signs with the fines, especially in parks, reminding people not to litter or spit and to clean up after their dogs. 

     One other internalized rule is that most people seem to wait for the green "walk" signal when crossing the street, even when you can see that there's no traffic coming.  There's good reason for this.  This city has lots of twisting, turning streets which makes it hard to see and hear vehicles that might be fast approaching the intersection where you're crossing against the light.  Also, Hong Kong has lots of visitors.  Newly arrived people can forget that motorists here drive on the left and they'll look the wrong way for approaching traffic.  Sometimes, though, people get impatient and cross on a red light (I have), and when one or two do it, some others seem to follow.  

     The Hong Kong police department is trying to train people to follow this crossing rule more consistently.  Today I saw 4 traffic officers in brown uniforms, each standing on a corner at the intersection closest to our apartment building.  Each had some brochures in hand.  When the light turned green and I crossed the street, the officer on that corner smiled at me and said "good morning" and offered me a brochure.  (Oh, those polite Hong Kong police again.)  I asked him if the officers on the corners were reminding people to wait for the green light before crossing the street.  Yes, indeed, that's why they were there.  He also told me that there's a maximum $HK2000 fine ($260) for violating this rule.  I think I will be more careful to comply.

     If you can train Hong Kongers to follow all these rules, it certainly seems as if you could train people to consistently walk on one side of the sidewalk or the other.  Oh, the luxury of living in a place where that's what you notice could use improving ....

School Day Today

     It took 28 minutes from the time I got the phone call until I walked into the school building this morning, probably the fastest I've ever reported for a sub job.  Or I guess I should say "sup job".  Substitute teachers are often called supply teachers here, kind of an interesting label.  Instead of kids who don't want to bother to learn my name calling out, "Hey sub!" it could sound more like a greeting:
"Hey sup! / hey (what)'s up?"
     Almost 2 weeks ago I dropped off my resume at an international school that's a 10-minute walk from our apartment.  Last week I had a very positive conversation with the principal at the school, who's originally from Boston and who's taught with his wife at schools in Venezuela and Morocco.  Since then I've been eagerly waiting for my first assignment, encouraged after being told that the school's sub list is short.
     Today's call came just before 8.  Classes normally start at 8:20, so that's why I had to scurry.  Fortunately there's an assembly on Wednesday mornings first thing, so classes hadn't started yet even though I'd arrived after the school day had begun.  I had Spanish and French classes today, all quite small.  The school day ends at 12:20 on Wednesdays, so that helped to explain the wiggly, giggly 8th-graders I had during the last class before dismissal.  I was a little surprised--I don't remember any of the classes I had in Shenzhen last year being quite so...un-serious.  But that actually makes the class a whole lot more interesting for me, trying to figure out who the leaders are and how to get them going in the direction they need to be going.

     Here's the view of the harbor from the classroom window today.  Kowloon is barely visible through the foggy haze in the upper right.  Tomorrow and Friday I get to go back to the school for partial day assignments in other classrooms, where I'll have new views, new subjects, new students, new issues.

Those Nice Police

     I recognize that I make too many generalizations about groups of people, but I'm going to go ahead and make yet another.  Both Terry and I have observed that the police officers we see here on Hong Kong Island generally look exceptionally civil.  Sort of like the Asian incarnation of a picture of a smiling police officer from the Dick, Jane and Sally elementary school reading books that I grew up with, where you learned that police officers would bend down to talk to you and help you find your lost dog.  The opposite of the tough bully types we saw too often last year in Shenzhen, and, frankly, in Minneapolis.  Chinese police are underpaid and often have to report to corrupt government officials.  U.S. police working in land o' guns understandably develop a tough veneer. You can see why they come off the way they do.

     Hong Kong is one of the safest cities in the world.  It has a low street crime rate and a clear rule of law.  Gun ownership is extremely restricted, harkening to the British presence here.  Organized crime has its hands on drug trafficking, money laundering and other illegal activities, but has little effect on street crime.  So no wonder that it's easier for many of these Hong Kong police officers to look downright friendly when they're on the beat.  They're a regular presence on the sidewalks, often walking in pairs.
     Yesterday afternoon was the first time I'd seen an officer out with a dog, which ordinarily would up the tension a bit.  But this guy looked so friendly I decided to ask him if I could take his picture.  I was sort of surprised that he agreed.  He even posed, looking at his specially-trained sidekick.

     One more thing to like about Hong Kong.

Good Things to Eat

     At right are some of the things that I like to eat here in Hong Kong, none of which I eat in MN.  In the center is something I recently invented, my Hong Kong-style blue plate special:  fresh cucumber slices spread with a bit of sesame sauce (Chinese version of tahini--it's like peanut butter made from roasted sesame seeds) topped with a bit of slightly spicy pickled vegetables (this particular version is mostly green beans).  This was my late afternoon snack with a cup of tea, probably horrifyingly unappetizing for a Hong Konger and a good many blog-readers, but I think this is a tasty concoction.  To the left of the blue plate is some green tea.  The package in our cupboard right now is not a particularly good batch, but I have come to really enjoy a cup of green tea even if it's mediocre, especially when I need a little late afternoon lift.  Like many Chinese I reuse the leaves for several cups of tea over a day or two.
     Moving clockwise next is an Asian pear, which crunches like an apple.  They're much less expensive and much more flavorful than Asian pears I've tried in MN.  The chestnut-sized mandarin oranges arrived last week in a nearby grocery store, so I bought some.  They're like miniature, sweeter clementines, quite a treat.  The huge yellow fruit is a pomelo.  They're similar to grapefruit but less juicy and less acidic.  You just about need a machete to peel them and each section is loaded with seeds, but they're worth the effort to get at the fruit.  It's getting to be the end of the season for all of these fruits.
     The green leafy stuff is broccoli rabe, or rapini, which actually looks like a weed to me.  Several varieties are delivered fresh every day to stores and markets.  Hong Kongers buy a lot of it, and so do we.  I doubt any of them used it as I did tonight, though.  I was making a curry with onions, broccoli, carrots. a little sweet red pepper and some chicken, and I threw in this bunch of broccoli rabe, too.  It was not the best choice, although I've certainly come up with worse creations.  As I'm writing this I realize that I forgot to add garlic.  Aha!  That maybe would have rescued the curry, broccoli rabe and all.
  

Who's on Our Block

     There's a curious assortment of businesses on this side of the street on our block, typical of many areas in our neighborhood.  Most of the storefronts are about 12' wide, and most have a glass door at the entrance.  It's usually the low-overhead ones that are open to the sidewalk, and the recycling business near the end of this block would definitely be in that category.  At least 2 or 3 recyclers are always busy inside the dim and dirty work area or out near the sidewalk where the light is better.  They're hauling or organizing bales of paper and cardboard, or taking apart small appliances or motors or what have you.  Today an older woman was squatting outside near the curb, near boxes of scavenged metal from lamps and stove burners and shelving, cans of paint, metal rods and assorted other  stuff.  She was hammering the inside of something like a rice cooker to flatten it and then using a screwdriver to disassemble the exposed parts.  When we lived in Shenzhen we were pretty sure that everyone's garbage was gleaned for usable, recyclable, burnable or compostable stuff, and I think the same thing happens here in Hong Kong.  Maybe right here on our block.

  

    At the end of the block right next door to the industrious recyclers is the Leighton Piano Studio,  the only business big enough to take up two store fronts.  There are several acoustic and electric guitars and an older saxophone displayed in one corner of the front window.  Most of the window space, though, is taken up with a few advertising posters and lots children's art work that's been taped up for display.  At right is a sample. Kids go there for art classes, in addition to music instruction.  

     Midway down the block there's a studio where there are paintings displayed on easels and the walls, and where I sometimes see someone working at one of the easels.  Today, on a Sunday afternoon, there were two teenage girls sitting next to each other working on paintings and a professor-type in owlish glasses standing in back of them, hands clasped behind his back, surveying their work.

     There's one more arty place on the block, this one for young children.  Their window display has a huge array of tiny Fimo (colorful polymer clay) creations, many quite imaginative.  I smiled at a couple of cats with cunning looks next to a barrel of fish and two vicious toothy red and turquoise sharks, standing up with open maws, each in a tiny boat.

     Mid-block is a cabinet door business with pairs of various glass and wooden doors displayed efficiently in the small space.   Further down the block is a somewhat upscale home accessories shop.  It's a nicely renovated space with good lighting and attractive displays, something that you'd perhaps see in a mall in the U.S., although some of the items displayed, such as a silver-toned bamboo-motifed room screen, might hold more appeal for Asian buyers.

     Near the end of the block are 3 stores for animal-lovers.  There's a pet goods store, which is another attractive renovated space similar in feel to the previous one.  It sells toys and special food dispensers and lots of other things that doting pet owners might drool over (such as a battery-operated fuzzy squirrel that moves and squeaks).  Next to that is a fish and plant store with aquariums full of live things to take home for your own aquarium.  If you need something to put your fish in,  there's an aquarium-building business that I walk by just about every day, open to the sidewalk, just like the recyclers and the fish store.  There seems to be an extended family hanging out at this store much of the time, but the main craftsman is a small older fellow with a shock of salt and pepper hair, often dressed in corduroy pants and knit vest, who's industriously measuring or cutting or sanding pieces of glass on a massive work-scarred old wooden table close to the entrance.  It's fun to watch him work.  He's meticulous and focused, but if he looks up and I smile at him, he smiles back.  Today I was amused to see him out on the sidewalk next to an ancient bike propped up next to the store, using a small paintbrush to dust off the handlebars and the goofy foam flower ornament attached to them.

     There are 2 other narrow entrances to small apartment buildings on this block, besides ours.  And there are 4 empty storefronts, all looking dirty and neglected.  I'll be interested to see what sorts of new businesses that  might take up residence in those spaces in the coming months.  It's the year of the dragon, after all, an auspicious time to start a new enterprise.

In Search of Old Wan Chai

     Terry and I took off mid-afternoon on the tram to go to the Wan Chai district to do a historical walking tour. We had a general idea where to get off, but overshot and had to backtrack through a rather confusing winding maze of streets.  From the tram window I had noticed this curious sight under a highway overpass, and then we ended up walking right past it as we backtracked.  I thought we were looking at some entrepreneurs who had set up portable altars so passersby who had a minute while waiting for a red light could quick nip in and make an offering to their favorite Chinese deity.  When I got home I read online about this particular dank patch under the Canal Road Flyover being sort of famous for  elderly women perched on stools providing a folk sorcery service called "villain hitting".  There's apparently a rather prescribed ceremony, involving incense and invoking the favor of a deity, the client writing down the name of his/her enemy on a paper in a human shape, and the villain hitter then beating the paper with a shoe or other object while chanting an exorcism.  How nice to see that business was not exactly booming today.
     Like other districts of Hong Kong Island close to the harbor, the Wan Chai area is experiencing the tension between preserving historic buildings and profitable redevelopment of valuable real estate.  We never did find the first site on the walking tour, the Wan Chai Livelihood Museum housed in a historic 4-story blue house, which is supposed to show what life was like in the tenement buildings, small factories and handicrafts businesses that used to characterize the area.  During the Vietnam War Wan Chai was a popular R & R area for soldiers.  Nowadays it's yet another up-and-coming neighborhood, with arty boutiques and upscale restaurants and entertainment moving in.  We did find a lively, refreshingly not-upscale wet market down narrow little Stone Nullah Lane where we expected to find the museum.  We passed up the flopping-fresh fish and instead peeked inside a little Thai grocery, where we were pleased to find some red and green curry paste to replenish our dwindling stock.
      Fortified with visions of all the tasty dishes we'll be able to make with our curry paste, we managed to locate the next site on our walking tour, the Old Wan Chai Post Office, a 100-year-old colonial leftover that's the oldest surviving post office in Hong Kong that was used until 1992.  We also found the Hung Shing Temple, built in the mid-19th century, with distinctive pottery figures on the roof that portray Chinese opera characters.  Maybe the civil servant deity honored by the temple really liked opera.

     Pictured at left is 55 Nam Koo Terrace on Ship Street, which the guide calls the most haunted house in Hong Kong.  We climbed a long series of steps up a hill to reach this unique Chinese-Western mansion, built by a silk tycoon in 1918.  The owner evacuated when the Japanese occupied Hong Kong during WWII.  During the war the Japanese supposedly used it as a brothel, as they did many other Wan Chai properties. The owner returned to the house after the war ended, but died a short time later and no one has lived in it since.  A redevelopment company bought the house in the late 1980's.  Supposedly the house was going to be razed and the property incorporated into a high-rise hotel, but now it seems that it could possibly be renovated.  On the other side of the steps going up this hill,  the properties facing this mansion have all been razed and corrugated steel walls have been put up.  Crumbling steps and walls and ancient banyan trees are visible behind the walls, giving this whole area a rather haunted feel.  No doubt investors are sitting on these properties, waiting for a a stratospheric offer.
     On our way to find the tram stop to go back home we passed by a pleasant-looking little Vietnamese restaurant that had a busy-so-it-must-be-good look.  It was 6:15, it would take close to an hour to get home,  and the tea set advertised on the placard out front was good until 6:30, so we went in and split a tasty bowl of pho and a couple of spring rolls.  And tea, of course, not Chinese green, but black with lemon slices, it being British tea time and all.  Melded cultures, very Hong Kong.  All for $HK60--less than $8, not bad for up-and-coming Wan Chai.

The Golden Bauhinia

     This afternoon I set out to find a site that many mainland Chinese tourists consider an essential visit if they come to Hong Kong Island.  At right is the Forever Blooming Bauhinia, a 20' statue of the flower that's the emblem of Hong Kong.  You can just barely see this emblem on the Hong Kong flag flying on the left; the flag of the People's Republic of China is on the right.  This statue is located on Victoria Harbor in front of the Hong Kong Exhibition Center.  It was a gift from the People's Republic of China to Hong Kong, presented on July 1, 1997, when Great Britain handed over Hong Kong to China.  Note the Great Wall motif at the bottom of the red granite pedestal, holding up this gold-plated, forever-blooming orchid...no subtle symbols here.    This statue site is actually a bit out of the way, and my guess is that more than a few Hong Kongers like it that way.

Tea Ware Museum

     This is the Flagstaff House Museum of Tea Ware in Hong Kong Park, which I visited this afternoon.  It's the oldest existing Western building in Hong Kong.  Built in 1846, it was the office and home of the Commander of British Forces in Hong Hong until 1978.  In 1984 it was converted into the museum.
     The twin towers of the Lippo Centre in the background make quite an architectural contrast.    They're nicknamed The Koala Trees because the unusual protruding windows look like koalas climbing a tree.  The Australian architect wanted the design to avoid the usual harshness of business district skyscrapers.
     The ground floor of the museum had historical information and displays about brewing tea in China.  Although tea has been  consumed in China for more than 2000 years, the museum started in with the Tang dynasty around 1500 years ago.  The tea at that time was pulverized into a powder and brewed for a very short time with salt.  Many scholars and nobles were tea-brewing experts.  The process of making tea was thought to tranquilize the mind.

     During the Song dynasty a little more than 1000 years ago "whipped tea" was the type most commonly prepared.  Boiling water was poured over powdered tea and the mixture was whipped with a bamboo whisk to make it froth.  Tea connoisseurs would have contests to see who could whip up the most froth that would stand up the longest.
     The teapot on the left is from the late Tang or early Song dynasty.  The shape is supposed to be that of a persimmon.
     During the Yuan dynasty cream was added to tea before serving--the precursor to milk tea?  This practice was probably introduced by the Mongols.  At that time people liked to eat nuts with their tea--walnuts, almonds, chestnuts and pine nuts.  That was the beginning of drinking tea with a meal.
     Tea-making became simpler during the Ming dynasty.  Tea was now different and needed to be brewed longer to extract the flavor.  Powder was no longer used, and instead tea leaves were steeped in the hot water.  Tea brewers began adding flowers to the tea for additional flavors:  jasmine, rose and osmanthus.  I'd never heard of osmanthus before reading about it today, but now I can look for this variety of tea.  It's supposed to have an apricot flavor.

  

     The second story of the museum was devoted to tea sets made in the last 15 years or so by ceramic artists.  The museum has sponsored ceramic tea ware-making contests to promote Chinese tea culture, and some of the winning entries were on display.  Many of the artists seemed to be trying pretty hard to create something unusual.  Their creations would not, in my opinion, make tea brewing and drinking the pleasant and tranquil experience that traditionally has been important to the Chinese.
     At right is one of the less unusual modern tea sets from the display.  Inspired by animation from a favorite childhood movie?

Exercise Plus

     Monday morning Mr. Lee, the esteemed health and longevity movement expert, brought a treat to share before we started our morning exercises.  When I arrived there were 2 trays set out on a table, containing a light lavender/mauve-colored gelatin with bits of white suspended in it.  Several people invited me to pick up a toothpick and try one of the small squares of this mystery food.  I did, and thought it was quite good.  I was prepared for an unfamiliar flavor, maybe something fishy or beany.  But it had a mild fruity taste, slightly sweet, and the white bits tasted similar to macadamia nuts.  Ellen told me that Mr. Lee's wife had made it from lotus, a special treat for Chinese New Year.  I looked around on the internet after I got home and then wondered if the white "nuts" were lotus seeds.  Ellen was effusive about Mr. Lee's wife's talents:  in addition to being a good cook, she's a t'ai chi master.  I'd like to meet her someday.

     This morning the woman who first invited me to join this exercise group, Grace, had brought a jump rope to class.  Here she is demonstrating her skill before class started.  She handed the rope to me and asked me to try it.  I managed to jump for a half-minute or so without embarrassing myself (I was channeling all those expert rope-jumpers at the Grace Lock-In).  This brought big smiles to the faces of some of the elderly women and a few gave a thumbs-up and clapped.  A couple other middle-aged women took turns jumping, and that brought more smiles and claps.  I think Grace was doing jump rope show-and-tell today to educate about its exercise benefits.  "It's good for the heart," she said.  I commented that it's good for the bones, too.  I've read that high-impact jumping like this is just about the best exercise there is for helping prevent osteoporosis.
     After class I talked with Elizabeth and Shiva for a few minutes.  Elizabeth is the one who lived in Calgary for many years and has the best English of anyone I've met in the class.  Shiva is the restaurant owner.  I asked them if they drank Hong Kong water out of their tap at home, or if they bought bottled water.  They don't trust either, they said.  They use water filters in their homes and said you can buy them in many places here.  Hong Kong gets most of its drinking water from a river in Guangdong province in southern China.  This area of the Pearl River Delta is heavily industrialized, and water/air pollution are huge problems.  Much of the food sold in Hong Kong is grown in this area of China, as well.
     Both of them asked me if I've been to the store nearby on Belcher St. that sells organic produce.  Terry and I have seen this store, but wondered if the term "organic" is being used rather loosely for its goods.  Shiva assured me that he's familiar with the local organization which verifies that the farm here in Hong Kong supplying the produce to this store is using organic farming practices.  Although I'm still somewhat skeptical (as I am about some goods labeled "organic" in the U.S., too), I stopped by this store today and bought a few small sweet potatoes and some broad green beans.  I paid HK$26 for them ($3.35), which I thought was reasonable.  They made a very tasty curry for our supper.
    Today is the second time that Elizabeth has reflected aloud to me about the tendency of humans to destroy themselves.  She was very critical of China's poor environmental practices.  "How can they do this to their children?" she said.  Our insistence on cheap manufactured goods is a big part of the problem.

    

Aerial View of Where We Live

     This is an aerial photo of Hong Kong Island.  The red dot shows generally where we live in the Kennedy Town neighborhood.  The last photo in yesterday's post showed the view as I was walking up the hill and looking out at the 2 islands that you can see toward the bottom in this shot.  The Tsim Sha Tsui  area of Kowloon Peninsula juts out into Victoria Harbor near  the upper left corner.  In the center of the green area here on Hong Kong Island is Victoria Peak, the highest point on the island.  You can take a tram to the top (we did this last March) where there are great views on a clear-ish day.  The area around The Peak has been one of the most exclusive places to live on the island since the British arrived and put their summer houses there because it's cooler and less humid in the summer.
     This photo gives you a sense of the extraordinary amount of green space in the region of Hong Kong (which is comprised of Hong Kong Island, Kowloon, the New Territories and the outlying islands).  I read recently that you're never more than 30 minutes away from being able to escape the congestion and noise here by taking a hike in one of the many country parks or other natural areas.  40% of the region's landmass is protected in the country park system.
 
  

Walking Toward Mount Davis

     If you set off to the east from where we live on Hong Kong Island and follow the harbor you'll come to the Central district,  where the buzz of business is everywhere.  Last Monday afternoon I set off in the opposite direction, walking toward Mount Davis and the westernmost part of Hong Kong Island, a much more serene place than Central.
     Before serenity, though, there first was some noisy pageantry a block away from our apartment.  As I neared the first street crossing I heard a fast ratta-tat-tat drumbeat and some clanging cymbals. A few steps further on I saw a slightly chaotic procession of mostly young men and boys in red and gold silk costumes, led by an energetic fellow prancing and weaving about in a huge elaborate dragon costume.  In the photo the dragon is toward the front of the procession, partly obscured by the guy pulling the drum.  At the time I thought this was some kind of Chinese New Year procession.

     A few days later Terry mentioned this very same procession.  He had come home shortly after I left to go on my walk and saw the spectacle a few minutes after I'd already moved on.  He said that he'd seen a couple processions like this before.  His understanding is that this was some sort of neighborhood association that came to serenade a new business that's just opened up.
     Moving on from the parade, it took about a half-hour to walk out of the retail areas around us and past apartment buildings, a couple schools, a day care center for elderly people, a couple warehouses, and the Ka Wai Man Road Garden.  I walked up lots of steps to get  into this pleasant park with abundant shade, lots of singing birds and a whiff of some floral fragrance.  Several groups of elderly men were at tables under an arcade playing mahjong and others were reading.  I checked out the Fitness Corner for Elderly in this park, which featured two bright green mushroom shapes the size of steering wheels with posted directions for placing your hands on them and rotating them to get a shoulder workout.  One more feature for the elderly:  there was a long zig zagging wheelchair ramp to get up the hill into the park.

     Soon buildings gave way to trees on both sides of the road.  After a few more minutes of climbing up Victoria Road there was a fantastic view of the water from the west side of Hong Kong Island.  This is  only a half-hour's walk from our apartment.
     Hong Kong is comprised of over 250 islands plus the peninsula that connects it to mainland China (Kowloon and the New Territories are on the peninsula).  Lantau is the largest island in terms of area, and it's where the airport is located.  Hong Kong Island where we live is the second largest island.  Here in the photo you can see 3 more islands, all quite small.  You can take ferries or hire boats for outings to some of the larger outlying islands.
    

    

Sunday Morning Sights

     The sun was out, the air was mild, and there was a fresh breeze.  It was time for another map-free Sunday morning ramble.  I headed up winding Queen's Rd  West and stopped to take a picture of this not-your-typical MN sight.  This cargo was headed for one of several small meat markets right there next to the sidewalk, each one of them almost always having a line of customers waiting for the expert butchers to cut off their order from the unrefrigerated pork hanging or lying in neat rows for close inspection.  These guys work fast and expertly with their substantial knives on broad wooden slabs, carrying on friendly banter the whole time.  None of them seems to be missing finger tips.
     I bought a small piece of pork at a neighborhood grocery store last week for an eggplant and red pepper dish I made.  It was in a refrigerator case and came on a plastic meat tray covered in plastic wrap, just like at home.  And just like what I often found in China last year, there was a complimentary hog bristle included on the meat.  I'm sure that it would amaze all those customers standing in line on the sidewalk for their meat this morning that I would bother to mention this.  For them this maybe would be a common thing, a visible reminder that the animal was recently alive with an intact bristly hide; freshness is a very big deal here.  For me it's a reminder that this isn't MN.
  

     Terry's walk to work turns off Queen's Rd West and heads up Hollywood Rd, so I thought I'd go see what he sees every day.  About the name:  most of us Americans associate Hollywood with that famed area of Los Angeles, but here it refers to the holly bushes that used to grow here.  This street is a mixture of old and new.  There are lots of antique stores and also lots of art galleries, owing to its location on the edge of the Soho district (which refers to an area south of Hollywood Rd after you've walked uphill for a few minutes), all of which makes for fun window browsing.  This particular gallery was full of these lean and whimsical red Asian man figures.
     Not far up from Queen's Rd I came across Hollywood Rd Park, which looked vaguely familiar.  A few steps inside the entrance I spotted a small red, green and white pagoda surrounded by a murky pond with goldfish and terrapins.  Yes, I was here last March when I was doing some exploring in this area and I'd taken a picture of this pagoda.  I stopped to watch a group of several men and another group of high school kids working on martial arts routines, all fascinating to me.  Something/someone else was familiar.  Earlier I'd watched an elderly woman with a walker very slowly navigate up two angled, narrow steps at a street corner and then walk down another two.  I  imagined my own mom navigating with her walker here and cringed.  I walked a few steps past this woman and then turned around and watched her, ready to offer help if she needed it.  But no, she was sure-footed, probably more than I.  She'd made her way to the park to take her morning stroll.
     In Hollywood Rd Park is a display of a few very old black and white photos, showing neighborhood sights as they looked long ago.  There was one from 1930 showing Possession Point, the actual location of which is inside the park.  This is where a British naval contingent landed and claimed possession of Hong Kong Island in 1841, soon after Captain Edward Belcher had surveyed the area. (Thus the origin for Belcher Street and Belcher Bay Park near our apartment, a considerably more interesting reference than what I'd earlier imagined.)  In 1841 Possession Point was at water's edge and Queen's Rd West would have hugged the harbor, which explains the street's winding nature.  Nowadays they're both a few blocks from the water, after considerable land has been reclaimed and developed.
     Across the street from Hollywood Rd Park were two small narrow shops, open to the street, their goods stacked and ready for customers to come in and make a selection.  Coffins they were, beautifully crafted, in several varieties of highly polished wood.  After I got home I read that there is a renovated ancestral hall nearby, which was a storage place for bodies awaiting burial.  Next door to the coffin shops was St. Matthew's Church.  I glanced inside the open doors and saw a cross and simple altar at the front, but the space between the doors and the altar was completely open and empty, except for a rectangular table to one side not far from the entrance where several people were sitting, each with what looked like an open Bible.  There was a large information board on the sidewalk just outside the entrance, with details about the kindergarten program the church runs, including the goals of the religious instruction for its students:  "know how to live with others in harmony and with a willingness to be a helper...be a responsible person, understanding the difference between right and wrong, having a positive value of life."  On recent walks I've noticed several other preschools/kindergartens housed in churches.
     By the way, I didn't memorize the above quotes and bring them home.  I usually carry a pen and an index card with me when I'm out and about, so that I can write notes to myself about what I'm seeing.  Sometimes I think if I'd had to exercise my memory like literate Chinese who've learned to read and write many thousands of characters, I wouldn't have to carry around pen and paper to remember things.
     A little further on, a sign a few floors above the street caught my attention:  Wrong Design.  Colin Fong had emailed me a few days ago about the Chinglish signs that I've written about, mentioning that these signs strike us as unusual or even humorous because they're literal translations of the more euphemistic Chinese.  I'd like to know what a more accurate translation of this business name would be.  Maybe it has something to do with creativity, originality, or thinking outside the box.

     I turned on Wyndham St. to walk down the hill toward the harbor and then started back home on Queen's Rd Central, which was a busy broad street on the edge of the skyscraper district where I'd been walking a few days ago.  I didn't know exactly where I was, but knew I was generally walking in the right direction.  Soon enough, I discovered that this street turned into Queen's Rd West.  Before I got there, though, I walked through a couple very hospitable plazas like this one.   Here's a special Chinese New Year display,  more elaborate than most I've seen.  This is the year of the dragon, which is the most powerful of the 12 signs in the Chinese zodiac.  It's supposed to be a very auspicious year to start a new business, Terry says.  Note the curve of small potted mandarin orange trees behind the rope.  All the New Year's displays I've seen include at least one orange tree, because this fruit symbolizes abundance and good fortune.