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.
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