So Long, Hong Kong

 

     Tomorrow will be my 100th day in Hong Kong.  I'll be leaving early in the morning, so there have been lots of "lasts" today.  I went to one last Chinese exercise class in Belcher Bay Park this morning.  Mr. Lee, the teacher, is dressed in black toward the right.  Expert David in the yellow t-shirt had a few last corrective suggestions for me--standing up straight, holding the arm here, slapping the pancreas there, always more to learn.  Afterwards there were goodbyes, some handshakes and a few hugs.
     The dew point was around 80º earlier today.  I'm looking forward to returning to the class and seeing everyone in the fall when the air is much more comfortable.
    

     On the way home I stopped one last time at the organic store on Belcher's Street to get a few vegetables for our supper curry.  Several locals have told me that this shop really does source local organic produce.
     That's the exception in Hong Kong.  It's estimated that only 3% of the produce consumed here is produced on the 1900 farms in Hong Kong, all located in the New Territories.  Around 80 of those farms are supposed to be certified organic, whatever that means in Hong Kong.
     The tomatoes, red peppers, beets with greens, broccoli rabe, spinach and cucumbers I've bought here have all been fresh and flavorful.

     I also made my third and last stop at a tea shop on Belcher's Street a block or so from our apartment.  I wanted to pick up a little tea to take home and bought some very fragrant jasmine osmanthus tea, a blend of those particular dried flowers added to green tea leaves.  It's not as if I knew enough to ask for this particular tea, or that I've tasted it or had even heard of it before.  Derek, the son of the owner, recommended it.  It's really fun talking tea with this guy, the tall one at left.  He knows a lot about it, his English is good, and he's very friendly and willing to tell you as much or as little as you want to know, even when you're making a modest purchase.
     Terry and I sampled the tea late this afternoon.  Very good.









     I'm mostly packed and ready to go.  I'm looking forward to springtime, cleaner air and of course to seeing family and friends again.  I've also begun a list of things that I want to do when I come back.
     So long, Hong Kong.

 
    
    

Dressed-Up Breakfast

     A few days ago at the grocery store around the corner I found 4 smallish Philippine mangoes marked down to $HK 5 ($US .65) because they were looking a little wrinkly and soft.  Appearance is really important to Chinese consumers, which means that there are sometimes bargains on produce for less-choosy shoppers like me.  I've been enjoying the mangoes for breakfast the last few days and have one left for tomorrow morning, a delicious going-away treat.
     My usual Hong Kong breakfast is a microwaved porridge of coarse rye and oatmeal flakes with some cinnamon, and a cup of green tea.  The mango and a splash of milk have almost made my breakfast into dessert the last few days.
     We've been buying a local brand of milk, Trappist Dairy, which is available in a little glass bottle besides a standard paper carton.  This milk used to be produced by a Trappist monastery on Lantau Island just west of Hong Kong Island from the 1960's until the 1980's.  Lantau Island is where the new Hong Kong airport opened in 1998, replacing the old Kai Tak airport in crowded Kowloon.  The dairy most likely moved to its present location in the New Territories when airport construction began.  I had been under the impression that this was one of the few local Hong Kong food products a person can buy.  But now I've read that Trappist Dairy products come from cows in Guangdong province in southern China, although the milk is processed and packaged in the Hong Kong New Territories.  Ever increasing land prices make it more and more unlikely that food will be grown in Hong Kong.
     Dairy products are expensive here relative to MN prices.  A 946 ml carton of milk (about a quart--the largest size in the dairy case) is around $HK 20, or $US 2.60, but since I use a only a bit on my breakfast grains and Terry uses it only to doctor his Nescafe, we don't go through much.
     Terry's breakfast was dressed-up by a treat this morning, too.  While in Shanghai a couple days ago he found some fresh coffee beans that brewed a great cup of coffee, much-savored after mostly drinking instant stuff lately.  He said the bag of multi-colored beans reminded him of Bruegger's everything bagel, kind of a "sweep up all the odds and ends and sell it" concept.  Just as good as Dunn Brothers and less expensive, too, a surprising find in Shanghai.

Are They Ruining It?

      One of the worthwhile books about Hong Kong I've read in the last few months is Jan Morris' Epilogue to an Empire.  Morris, who's a British historian and travel writer, wrote the book a few years after Britain and China signed the 1984 agreement that would hand over control of Hong Kong to China as a Special Administrative Region in 1997.  It's interesting to look back now 25 years later after Morris wrote the book.  She was not optimistic that China would basically leave Hong Kong alone, which was the stated plan in 1984.
     Morris writes about many parts of the Hong Kong story that aren't a credit to the British, starting with British businessmen's eagerness to claim Hong Kong Island in the 1840's in order to make it easier for them to ship more opium from India to the growing number of addicts in China.  The relentless search for business opportunity continues to draw people to Hong Kong.  A laissez-faire fostering of capitalism still dominates government decision-making, as well as the general atmosphere in Hong Kong--not always a good thing.  At the same time, the British have created orderly and stable systems here over the years that have seemed to work.  Hong Kong has prospered, has developed an educated, ambitous and generally content middle class, and has funded a decent social welfare system.  The same cannot be said for the People's Republic of China, looking back over the past century and a half.  In the end, the British did quite a lot more good than harm in Hong Kong, says Morris, and it would be a shame for China to dismantle Hong Kong's successes.
     So far, 15 years after the handover, Morris' worst fears have not come to pass.  However, some would say that there are unsettling subtle changes afoot.  One of Terry's colleagues recently made a not-subtle comment about China's involvement in Hong Kong affairs:  "They're ruining it."  Something that particularly bothers this colleague is China's increasing involvement in the education system here and the growing emphasis on learning Mandarin in the schools while the emphasis on English decreases.  Until recently English proficiency has always been important for success in the school system here--that's what's needed by the work force in this international business community.  Mandarin, with its tonal and pictographic features, is not and likely will not be the lingua franca of business anytime soon.
    
  

Ding Ding

     The tram is one of the things I'll miss about living here in Hong Kong.  It runs on the street right outside our apartment building from around 5:30 a.m. until 1 a.m.  The hum of the wheels on the tracks has gotten to be a familiar background sound.  There's also the occasional "ding ding" of the bell when the driver is warning someone in the track to move. 

     It costs only $HK 2.3 to ride, which is $US .30, no matter how long the trip.  It's only $HK 1, or $US .13, for senior citizens to ride, and many of them do.  I had been under the impression that the government had to subsidize the tram line because the fare is so low, but I recently read that the company that runs it has been turning a nice profit because the exterior of each of the 162 cars and also each tram stop is advertising space.  See above.

     The tram line runs for around 9 miles along the northern side of Hong Kong Island on Victoria Harbor.  We live at the far western end of the line.  Since the island is so mountainous most everything that humans have built here is clustered down fairly close to the harbor, so you can take the tram to get most anywhere and not have too long a walk to get to your destination.

     Here's the interior, with wood trim, cozy seating, and windows you can slide up and down.  Most of the time passengers seem to like the windows open for fresh air, even when it's cool in the wintertime.  That's fine with me, because people are packed in fairly tightly sometimes.  I like taking the winding staircase on the right to the upper deck, where it's easier to see outside and where the bucket seats are a little more comfortable.  Actually I bring something to read much of the time when I ride now, because I've traveled the route enough times that the scenery isn't so novel anymore, and it can be kind of a slow trip sometimes.

     In a few more days I'll be back to driving a car to get most everywhere.  I don't think I've missed it, but maybe once I'm behind the wheel again I'll wonder what I thought was so great about the tram.  

     

Banking Could Be Better

     Today while at the bank I was once again frustrated by having to talk to the teller through a wall of glass.  The tellers have microphones, but they don't seem to use them much, and when they do they often fail to speak from an appropriate distance into the mike.  I have to ask them to repeat information, which adds to the slow line problem--always lines for doing banking errands.  I really don't understand the need for the glass, since Hong Kong generally has a very low crime rate and guns are illegal for ordinary citizens.  

     Today I was acutely aware of this customer NOT first situation.  Here are the tellers secured unnecessarily behind glass, yet the the real security risk seemed to be mine.  The teller windows are so close together that it would have been fairly easy for the customer standing at the next window to view my account numbers that I'd handwritten and handed to the teller, as well as hear my through-the-glass-wall, raised-voice conversation, as he's lolling at his window waiting for his teller to return from an interminable backroom errand. 

     Certainly there are services in the U.S. that could be better.  But overall I think that Americans' expectation for prompt, respectful and skilled service has driven business competition and improvements that make our country's customer experience generally quite a bit better than average, relative to the rest of the world.  

     Hopefully I won't be eating my words after I return to MN next week and re-start life on the home front.  I guess I'm getting ready to leave, as evidenced by my dwelling on something that I don't like.  Overall, I have very few negative things to say about the last few months of living here.

Man Mo Temple

     Man Mo Temple is probably the oldest temple in Hong Kong, and it's less than a half-hour's walk from our apartment.  We live in the Sai Wan ("western bay") district and the temple is located in Sheung Wan ("upper bay") just to the east.  Man Mo is very close to Possession Street, which supposedly marks the place where the British first claimed Hong Kong Island as theirs in 1841.  The Man Mo temple complex was built over a 15-year period, beginning in 1847.  Why would a Chinese temple be built in the area where the British had  planted their flag only a few years earlier?  I finally came across an explanation today.
     When the British began sailing here and colonizing Hong Kong Island after it was ceded to the British empire in 1842, they settled in the Chung Wan ("central bay") area, now called simply Central.  They particularly liked living on Victoria Peak uphill from Central because it was cooler during the steamy Hong Kong summers.  Because they wanted to settle in these favorable areas themselves, they forced out any Chinese who were living there.  These displaced Chinese settled in the Sheung Wan area.  To this day, many parts of Sheung Wan retain a very Chinese flavor.  Besides Man Mo Temple, there are numerous shops nearby that sell Chinese herbs and medicines, dried fish, tea, incense and paper offerings for Chinese celebrations, and lots of traditional Chinese restaurants and dai pai dongs, small informal food stalls with that often feature rickety tables and stools under an awning.

     Man Mo Temple is located on Hollywood Road.  In an earlier post I'd written that this street got its name from holly bushes that used to grow here, which I'd read in a guidebook.  I have since read that Sir John Davis, who governed Hong Kong in the 1840's, named this street after his family home in England.  Terry knows this street well.  He walks the whole length of it from Queen's Road West until it turns into Wyndham Street, where his office is located.  I've walked by Man Mo Temple on Hollywood Road a number of times.  Today, though, I decided to go in.
    

     Man Mo is dedicated to two deities:   Man, a civil deity who's worshipped as the god of literature, and Mo, the god of war, who's the patron god of restaurants and the police (those are some very curious connections).  The temple also honors the god of justice, the god of the city and the goddess of mercy.  I saw very little signage in English outside the temple.  Not knowing what was located where inside the complex, I picked the door right in front of the entrance and walked into this middle building.
     I had actually gone into the temple with a specific mission today.  I'd had a request to light two joss sticks for a friend for good luck, if I should go into Man Mo.  There were several altars in this middle building with various deity figures, and people had left many offerings of fruit and flowers, besides lots of joss sticks stuck in urns of sand.  There were a number of huge burning coils of incense hanging from the ceiling.  Burning incense is one of my less favorite smells, so I decided I needed be efficient with my mission.  I needed some help.

     There were several people in the temple, all of them with burning joss sticks, some of them bowing several times in front of the altars before they placed the sticks in the urns of sand.  I approached the woman in the orange shirt and asked if she spoke English.  Some, she said.  I told her a little about myself, told her about my friend's request and asked if she could suggest which of the several altars would be the best one.  She pointed to the one right in front of us.
     The woman in white agreed.  She added that she was coming to Man Mo as a tourist, too, that she'd been born in Hong Kong but has been living in the U.K. for the last 35 years.  She told me that her mother had said that the altar in front of us was for a "caring" deity and that this was where she was placing the joss sticks in her hand.  So I may have found the altar for Kwun Yurn, the goddess of mercy that I'd read about.
     Two of the burning joss sticks below are mine.  You can also see the incense coils on the ceiling.
     Mission accomplished.

    

Kowloon Walking Tour

     One day last week I ventured from our apartment on Hong Kong Island across Victoria Harbor to do a little exploring in Kowloon.  When I got off the subway I followed Boundary Street west of Nathan Road for a few blocks.  I wished that I'd remembered to bring along the address that our friend Colin gave us for the apartment building in this area where he lived as a 12 year old many years ago.  After I got home I looked it up on a map and realized that I'd come within a couple blocks of the address.  I'll have to go back and find it someday.

     Boundary Street used to mark the northern edge of the Kowloon Peninsula that was ceded to  Great Britain in 1860, 18 years after Hong Kong Island became part of the British Empire in 1842.  Nowadays Boundary Street is wide and bustling with traffic.  East of Nathan Road I walked by a few lush park areas and some beautiful sports fields like the one at right.  Fields like this are hard to come by in Hong Kong, given that real estate is extremely valuable and that hills and mountains have to basically be torn down and ground up to to create a flat playing area like this.  

     At the eastern side of the Mong Kok Stadium on Boundary Street I turned into a bird market.  Here there were all kinds of ornamental birds, cages, feeders, food, swings, mirrors, and anything else you could ever want for your bird.  This was a socializing area, too.  Some elderly men had brought their caged birds and were sitting here and there talking shop.  These two fellows at left were having a loud but seemingly good-natured conversation when I walked by.

     Occasionally I'll see older men in our neighborhood taking their bird out for a walk in its cage.  Curiously, the men I've seen carrying a pet bird in a cage often have a tiny, spare, birdlike physique themselves.  And why is it that bird-keeping is a man thing?  I don't think I've ever seen an elderly woman carrying around a bird in a cage.  Maybe the women encourage the men to go to the meet-greet-tweet gatherings to get them out from underfoot.

     I admit to feeling ever so slightly uneasy walking through the bird market because of a leftover Hong Kong-bird flu connection I can't shake, even though I know this place was not that kind of Hong Kong bird market.  When I came upon Flower Market Road I was relieved--I haven't heard of flower flu.  I loved walking by all the fresh potted flowers and cut blooms.  

     I've never seen such a variety of beautiful orchids as I've seen in Hong Kong.  This store seemed to specialize in them.  If you can read the small sign by the row of pots you may be shocked by the $48 pricetag.  This is in Hong Kong dollars.  The exchange rate is about $HK7.75 to $US1. So the that particular potted orchid is just a little over $6 in U.S. money.

     As I was walking down Shanghai Street I looked down a cross street and saw a rather decrepit building that stood out from its surroundings.  My map said it was a wholesale fruit market a couple blocks over on Reclamation Street.  This didn't sound particularly dangerous, so I walked over for a quick look.  Now this is a building with some character, actually a bit of fresh air after I'd been looking at mostly homogenous, rather new utilitarian buildings for the previous hour or so.   I was curious about why this patched-up old building has survived the wrecking ball in a neighborhood where nothing else looks this old and short.

     "Outlet" grabs attention and brings in business, I suppose.  Sorry, I didn't go inside to check this out.  Actually, there was a very modern-looking shoe store underneath the sign.  Maybe the acupuncturist was at the back or on the second level.

     The last place I walked through before I got on the subway to go home was the Temple Street Night market.  Every afternoon the vendors set up their stalls in the street and hang up and display all their goods.  Knock-offs abound.  Usually there aren't any prices marked and you get to bargain, the vendor using a calculator passed back and forth if she/he doesn't speak much English and you don't speak Cantonese.  

     I walked through several other street markets like this earlier in the afternoon.  The most noteworthy item I saw for sale was at a stall that sold Western board games and that's all.  There on display was Scrabble.  The game box looked exactly like the one that a British colleague of Terry's imported for us from the U.K. because we couldn't find Scrabble anywhere here.  It didn't look fake, but I suppose it was.  

Where We Live

     Terry had very little time to look for an apartment in Hong Kong last fall.  He'd found two places online that looked like good possibilities. He made a trip over here from Shenzhen, looked at one, and decided it was good enough.  It's turned out to be more than good enough:  we like our apartment, we like our neighborhood, and we like this particular location on Hong Kong Island.
     If you were to take a taxi to come visit us you'd most likely approach from this direction.  Our building is on the right side of the street, the second one from the corner.  It looks bright and clean next to the moldy-looking one on the corner.  Our apartment is toward the top of the building.  We much prefer living in a walk-up to living in one of the towering apartment buildings around us.  One of the best features of our apartment is the shotgun layout.  We have a view of the harbor out this side of the building and a view of the street on the other side.  When we open the windows on both sides we can get good cross-ventilation.  On the left side of the street is Belcher Bay Park.

     There's a very pleasant sitting area on top of our building.  Yesterday was beautiful, so I went up there with a book for awhile in the late afternoon when the buildings all around us provided ample shade.  This is the view looking north/northeast toward Kowloon and New Territories, both part of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.  20 miles further north is the city of Shenzhen in mainland China.
     The green area on the right is Belcher Bay Park.  You can just barely see the yellow cranes on the wharf that's just beyond the park.  Kowloon is on the other side of bustling Victoria Harbor.

     Still looking out from the rooftop, this is the street that runs outside the front of our apartment building, quieter than usual because it's Sunday afternoon.  The tram runs on either side of the double white line.  Here you can see a black one headed east toward Sheung Wan, Central, Wan Chai and Causeway Bay, all along the northern side of Hong Kong Island.
     On the left is--you guessed it--Belcher Bay Park again.




  

     This is the east side of Belcher Bay Park, the side that's farthest from our apartment building.  When I walked through the park on Sunday morning around 8, there were scads of people out taking a stroll or doing tai chi.
     The exercise class that I go to meets every day except Sunday near the small pavilion in the center back of the photo.

     After I left the park on Sunday morning, I crossed the street going toward the harbor, walked along the wharf where I took the photos one evening last week for a blog entry, and then walked out to the end of the jetty.  Here's the view from the jetty looking back at our neighborhood.  The trees of Belcher Bay Park are visible in the middle of the photo between the water and the thicket of apartment buildings.  Mount Davis is in the background on the right side.
     I went walking with Terry out here on Sunday night just after sunset, when there was a wonderful breeze and lots of lit-up skyline both on our Hong Kong Island side and on the Kowloon side.  It felt as if we were a long way from Minneapolis.

Rainy Week

     Two weeks ago the weather turned steamy.  This past week was incredibly rainy, lots of thunder and lightning and downpours.  Southern China had a drought last spring, so the rain has been appreciated by many, I'm sure.
     Getting around here in Hong Kong in heavy rain is kind of a pain, though.  The traffic slows down and gridlock grows, which cues a chorus of sustained honking from the blockees at the determined bus drivers who clog the intersections.  Phalanxes of umbrellas march down the sidewalks alongside dense groves of yet more umbrellas patiently queued at the bus stops.  Hong Kongers are practiced at walking with their rain shields in rows and in vertical layers, creating a mostly smooth flow.  Mostly...there are a few foreigners who don't quite have the technique yet and who stop to take photos besides.  This foreigner needs to pay closer attention to how the locals deal with wet feet.  I've returned home a few too many times this week with jeans soaked up to the knees and soggy shoes.
     Thunderstorms all over southern China have played havoc with plane traffic here this week, as well.  Air travel in China is plagued with delays even when the weather isn't a factor because the Chinese military restricts commercial flights to using a very narrow sky corridor.  Delays are euphemistically attributed to "flow control" by pilots and airline officials.  Narrow corridors also limit options for flying around bad weather.  So planes and passengers sit on the ground and wait and wait some more for flow control and weather problems to get resolved, such a lot of wasted time for so many people.  Terry's midweek flight from Guangzhou to Shanghai was delayed 5 hours.  He arrived around 2:30 a.m. in Shanghai, where he then had to wait in the taxi line for nearly an hour because all the backed-up flights had arrived at nearly the same wee hour.  Repeat versions of this a few times over a few days and the work week gets a little long.  Train travel starts to sound more attractive, but unfortunately the high-speed rail line between Guangzhou and Shanghai is still under construction.
     This week I read online about newly-available flight delay insurance from one airline in Shanghai.  When passengers book their tickets they can buy the insurance for around $3.  If a flight is delayed more than 3 hours the payout is around $30, and a 6-hour delay would yield $60.  It's hard to imagine  travelers saying,"Oh boy, I won!" when they've been hunkered down in an airport for hours on end during turbulent weather, but it probably happens.  You'd hope that this insurance would put pressure on the airlines to reduce delays, which in turn would prompt the airlines to put pressure on the Chinese government to release the military's stranglehold on air space.  Good luck with that....

Those Summer Uniforms

     Last week the weather abruptly turned steamy.  The schoolkids returned from spring break wearing their warm weather uniforms, usually dark cotton shorts and short-sleeved white shirts for the boys and light cotton dresses for the girls.  Most school uniforms here are amazingly conservative, right out of the 1950's, especially for the girls.  The warm weather dresses are often white, with each school's signature color added in the collar, as a small tie at the neckline or in a few buttons.  White cotton anklets and sensible shoes complete the uniform.  These white dresses and the most sensible of the shoes make me think of what nurses used to wear 40-50 years ago.
     At left are two schoolgirls riding the tram a few nights ago, probably on their way home from a tutoring session.  Hong Kong schools are known for their rigor and competitiveness.  Maybe the uniforms are part of their success:  there's no student decision fatigue about what to wear to school and no need for teachers and administrators to have to sort through students' dress code challenges, so the focus and energy can go into the curriculum.
     I expect I'll get used to seeing these uniforms out and about.  For now, though, I do a double take when I see some of them.  They're so different from what I'm used to seeing students wear in the U.S.
    
    

Checking Out the Cargo Wharf

     Last week a friend said she wanted to show me a good place to go walking in the neighborhood.  Great, I thought, I'd love to see it.  I pictured some rambling path up the mountain, lots of trees, some blooming shrubs, a snake warning sign or two.  Not...this.        Across the street from Belcher Bay Park is a cargo wharf that's at least a half-mile long.  It's not pleasantly scenic in the usual sense.  But people of all ages come out here to go walking, running, and biking, particularly in the early morning and in the evening when there's little commercial activity.  It's wide, flat and mostly free of vehicles.  You don't find many places like that in Hong Kong.
     On the left in the above photo are bundles of bamboo that will be use for scaffolding.  There were lots of other construction materials sitting on the wharf--concrete blocks and slabs, pipes of all sizes, steel beams.  Some of these are likely destined for the subway construction going on only a couple blocks away.

     I never would have found this place on my own.  You have to cross a busy street and walk through a gate past a security guard and a sign that says if you can't account satisfactorily for being on the premises you can be fined $HK2000 (love that leftover polite British verbage).  Even if I'd made it past these intimidating hurdles, I wouldn't necessarily think it was a good idea to walk here.  But it kind of grows on you.  I've gone back a couple times in the evening on my own since my friend first took me here.
     What really appealed to me was rounding the corner on the east end of the wharf and then walking out on the pier you see in the distance in this photo.  You catch a breeze off the water that feels great on a warm humid evening like tonight.  Even better is that you can smell the salt water instead of the usual traffic fumes.  It's relatively quiet.  Out on the tip of the pier you can watch the ferries hurrying across Victoria Harbor.  Kowloon and the hills behind make a postcard-worthy backdrop.

     Walking a little more slowly in the rain on the way back tonight, I stopped to take pictures of some of the homey offices on the wharf that have been made out of retired cargo containers from the ships.  Here a pallet makes a step up to the door.  Not only is there some kind of festive red good fortune poster on the door, but there's a red sidewalk altar down near ground level similar to what you see outside the doors to many business in the neighborhood, where the proprietors burn joss sticks and leave food offerings to the house deity.  At lunchtime the black table is most likely pulled out to the middle of this space under the awning and a bunch of people pull up plastic stools to eat lunch together.  One person can sit up to the table on the black seat that's attached to the pole.  Some of these container offices had lots of big, healthy potted plants sitting in a cluster to one side under the awning.  You can't see them here, but there were a few plants sitting off to the right of the door to this office.
     I wonder how many other unique neighborhood sites there are like this one, sitting right underneath our noses.

Dragons on a Stick

     The last time I saw the dragon and drum welcome committee serenading a new business in the neighborhood, the dragon was shaking its big head and snaking its way down a fairly quiet street.  Today I saw the same ritual on a little bigger scale.  There were two dragons this time, and I got to see both of them go aerial.  Here's the second guy shimmying up a bamboo pole.  The dragon costume he's toting probably weighs about as much as he does. The whole time the group was assembling and the dragons were getting ready and then making their ascent, a drummer was banging away, doing a snappy cadence on something that looked like a stout barrel on wheels.  

     No snaking down the sidewalk for these two festive creatures.  There's a subcommittee ready to push their red trolly down the street.

      As soon as the two dragons were perched on their poles and their costumes adjusted, the parade took off down one of the lanes of Belcher's Street, drum ratta-tat-tatting.  Traffic disruptions were minor until the group reached Queen's Road West a couple blocks away.  Then the traffic-directing subcommittee stopped three lanes of traffic while the parade crossed the street.  It must not have been too upsetting for the drivers who had to wait for them, because I didn't hear any honking--we've noticed that when Hong Kong drivers get the least bit upset about a delay, they lay on their horns.

     Here's part of the parade headed up Queen's Road against the traffic, taking up one of the lanes.  You can see the dragons using the spiky footrests at the top of their poles.  I didn't follow them any further to see which new business they were welcoming.  There was probably a second spectacle watching the dragons descend and do the shake and snake near the business.

     Watching all of this made me think again about how many deep-seated traditions and symbols are part of Hong Kong Chinese culture.

Ruth Harbo's Hong Kong Twin

     Apart from my extended family, no one reading this blog knows about Ruth Harbo.  Ruth was a lifelong friend of my mother's, one of those rare people you meet who seems put together in all kinds of ways.  She was unfailingly pleasant and smiling, calm, subtly outgoing, and showed genuine interest in whoever she talked to.  She was full of grace and engaged in life until she died last year when she was in her mid-90's.
     I don't even know this woman's name, yet I consider her a friend.  She goes to the exercise class in the park that I go to most mornings.  Like Ruth, she's sweet and tiny on the verge of frail.  She always smiles at me and greets me, and if I'm near her she'll take my hand and then hug me, a long lingering hug.  She always lifts my spirits.
     Today on the way home from the bank, I was standing on a street corner with some other pedestrians waiting for a green light.  When I felt a hand on my arm, I turned and saw my friend, smiling away at me.  She took my arm, and we crossed the street and walked down the the next block together, she squeezing my arm and chattering away in Cantonese.  I didn't comprehend a word she said.  She may or may not have understood me when I told her that she reminded me so much of my mother's friend.  Halfway down the block, I took out my camera and asked to take her picture.  When it was time for me to cross another street, I said goodbye.  She watched me walk to my apartment door and waved to me.  Then she pointed ahead and up with her cane, telling me that her apartment building is across the street from mine.  How about that.
     The next time I see her I'm going to have someone help me ask her name and write it down, so I can call her by her real name, instead of "you remind me of Ruth Harbo".
    

China Visitor Comes to Hong Kong

     China residents have to get a visa to travel to Hong Kong.  Yan, a young friend of mine from just across the border in Shenzhen where we lived last year, recently got a Hong Kong visa for the first time.  She came to visit on Saturday.  She took a bus across the border and then took another bus that dropped her off in Central, the business/financial district on Hong Kong Island.  I'd told her I'd meet her outside the Starbucks close to where she got off the bus because I figured if my emailed directions and photos weren't sufficient to help her find it, she'd quickly run into someone who'd know where the Jardine House Starbucks was.  She found it fairly easily and was smiling and sipping a latte when I arrived, which made me smile.  I have yet to buy a cup of coffee here in Hong Kong, especially at inflated Central prices.  That's fairly easy for me because I usually don't drink coffee, but I'm also reflexively thrifty when it comes to this sort of "extra".  And here was my young friend, also careful with her money, splurging and enjoying it.  Fun to see.

     First on our agenda was doing the most touristy thing that people do in Hong Kong, taking the Peak Tram to the top of Victoria Peak.  On the way we walked by one of the handful of surviving colonial buildings in Hong Kong, St. John's Cathedral.  This is an Anglican church built soon after the British laid claim to Hong Kong Island in 1842.  It's a distinctive old building in the business district, standing in the midst of sleek banks and government buildings.  Yan noticed it right away, saw a few people going in the open doors and wanted to go inside, so we did and she took a few photos.  She told me she's a Christian, but she'd never been inside a church.  This isn't surprising since the Chinese government is twitchy about religion, although there's more freedom in this regard than there used to be, especially in southern China.

     Because it was Easter weekend the line for Peak Tram tickets was longer than usual, but when we got closer to the ticket window we jumped to a shorter line for combo tram/Madame Tousard's Wax Museum tickets.  I would not have made this choice on my own, but Yan was very sure that she wanted to do this because someone had told her that the museum was a must-see.
     The views on the less-than-15-minute tram ride up to the top of The Peak are dramatic. If you're unlucky enough to not have gotten a seat, it's a little more challenging to appreciate the views because the grade is steep much of the way and you're focused on staying on your feet.  Fortunately we had seats like these people and could admire in comfort.

     Once at the top Yan headed right to Mme Tousard's.  She had a ball looking at all the celebrity figures--Chinese, American and British movie and sports stars, musicians, politicians--and had me take dozens of photos on her camera of her posing with many of them.  I had thought that once we were done with that we could go outside and take one of the walking paths around the mountain, which I've done before and enjoyed.  At 1800', Victoria Peak is the highest point on Hong Kong Island and has superb views of the western side of the island, Victoria Harbor, and Kowloon across the harbor on the peninsula.  It's also a lot cooler on the peak.  The first British colonialists built their homes up there to escape the summer heat and humidity down below.  Yan found it uncomfortably cold on Saturday, though, so after I took this photo of her outside and we did a quick walk to the end of the viewing platform, she was ready to take the tram back down.
     As an aside, Terry and I, like other Westerners, notice that our body thermostats are different from those of most Chinese in southern China.  When we're comfortable in shirtsleeves, many Chinese are wearing down jackets.  When it gets hot and sticky here we're sweating buckets, but most Chinese are barely glowing.

     We headed to Stanley Street next, a few blocks up from this food stall area, for lunch at Nam Kee.  Terry and I have walked by this restaurant a couple times, but we've never eaten there because it usually has a long line of Central office workers out the door on a weekday.  It's known for a great bowl of noodles for less than U.S. $4.  On Saturday there were only a couple people ahead of us in line. A tower of just-delivered boxes of dry noodles stood inside the front door.  Yan admired them approvingly, took a picture of them and told me that those particular noodles were famous in China.  I thought my wonton soup was delicious, but Yan told me outside afterwards that her noodle dish was too sweet.  She grew up in an area northeast of Shenzhen and Hong Kong, where the preference is for spicy chili condiment on most everything, instead of the not-spicy and sometimes sweet Cantonese flavors of southern China.

     Next we caught the tram that runs east and west along the Victoria Harbor side of Hong Kong Island and went to the Wan Chai area so she could buy presents for family and friends.  Most important on her list was 8 bottles of special "medical oil" from Singapore for her mother and grandmother and 6 aunts and uncles.  I didn't understand exactly what this oil is used for, but it sounds like sort of a cure-all for aches and pains.  She went into quite a few Chinese medicine shops, read lots of labels and compared prices and finally made her purchase at this shop.
     We hopped on the tram again and took it practically to the front door of our apartment building on the far west side of Hong Kong Island.  I wanted to drop off the present Yan had very thoughtfully brought for Terry and me, a half-dozen bags of various kinds of tea that she'd carefully picked out for us, knowing how much we enjoy this Chinese treat.

     After resting a bit and having some water and fruit, we set off to take the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbor to Tsim Sha Tsui in Kowloon, another must-do for tourists.  It takes only 5 minutes to cross the  mile-wide harbor.  This view from the ferry looking back at Hong Kong Island is particularly nice in the evening.  The skyscrapers continued to light up as we walked along the promenade on the Tsim Sha Tsui side.  I had planned on our staying for the nightly Symphony of Lights at 8:00, when 40-some buildings do a synchronized lights-laser-fireworks-music show.  Yes, the tourist checklist again.
     But after a quick dinner at a tiny Chinese restaurant up a few blocks from the harbor--Yan specifically said she wanted rice for this meal--we had to rush to the subway.  She told me as we were eating that she had to get to the Sheung Wan station back on Hong Kong Island and then find the nearby ferry terminal so she could buy a ticket and get on the last ferry back to Shenzhen at 8:30.  After we had our lunch she'd said that we needed to walk slowly so that our food would digest better.  There was no time for slow walking after this meal.  We rushed through the subway tunnels, fortunately found helpful signage to get to the ferry terminal, located the ticket window, and then said a hurried good-bye.  Yan emailed the next day that she got to the ferry only 5 minutes before departure, maybe just a little bit too exciting an end to her first trip to Hong Kong!
    
  

     

More from Suzhou: Venice of the East

     Besides being famous for its gardens, Suzhou is also known for its canals.  At one time there was a grid of canals serving the many merchants and artisans in the city.  Some of them have survived into the 21st century.  I found this one by accident the second day I was in the city, when I was walking from our  hotel to the Suzhou Museum and avoiding a traffic-clogged street.
     A light rain fell that whole day.  We'd been told that late March would typically be rainy in Suzhou, but this was considered an ideal time to visit because the appearance of the city in the rain would bring to mind a traditional Chinese black and white ink drawing. After spending most of the afternoon outside and getting plenty damp, I wasn't so sure that I was enamored of the idea that rain enhanced the beauty of the scenery.

     Shi Po Bridge across the same canal is supposed to be more than a thousand years old, as evidenced by the carving that's from the Song dynasty.  It might be more accurate to say that there has been a bridge here for more than a thousand years, because it appears that much of it has been rebuilt.
     I'm picturing people a few hundred years ago walking down those steps to get some water to do laundry or take a bath.  Oh my.

     Here's a tea shop/cafe along the canal, meant mostly for tourists, I think.  Judging from the lack of business, I wasn't the only one who needed to keep walking in order to keep warm.











    

     This canal intersected with the one in the previous photos.  I like the idea of the pavilion at the crossroads.

     Anything Mao can be had at most every souvenir stall I've seen in China.  This particular choice of display seems fitting for a leader who was all about utilitarianism.  I wondered if the vendor was taking advantage of the rain to wash off the dust and lure a buyer.

Easter at St. Anthony's

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     Here I am with my friend Rose, who invited me not only to attend mass at her church on Easter morning but to come an hour early to join her in the choir practice.  So I did and I did.  I thought that it would be safe to show up for choir, given that Rose didn't ask if I could carry a tune but emphasized that it would be in English.  English I could do!  The choir of around 25 was half Chinese and half Filipina, mostly women, some like Rose with quite beautiful trained voices and a couple who stood near me in the alto section who had some trouble hitting the harmonizing notes.  We sang 5 pieces, several of which were familiar to me.  The last 10 minutes of rehearsal we tackled what the conductor called the big one, "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".  This piece was saved until the organist could join us at the piano in the rehearsal room.  He looked about 15, with a stylishly tousled mop of hair, wearing jeans and a rumpled shirt with the tails hanging out from his sweater--refreshingly nontraditional!  And he was quite competent at the keyboard.  I figured he was a Hong Kong University student, since St. Anthony's is located right across the street from the university.
     I haven't sung in a choir for many years--maybe not since high school--and I enjoyed it, though I'm afraid I did not add much to the quality of the singing.

     Rose issued her invitation to me on Friday.  I googled the church address and did a trial walk that afternoon so I'd know where I was going this morning and how long it would take.  I followed a couple familiar streets and then did a long climb up aptly-named Hill Road, which follows under the curving flyover you see in this photo.  It took only 15 minutes to get there. Good thing it was cloudy and almost cool today so I didn't arrive all sweaty.
     There are a fair number of Christians in Hong Kong who celebrate Easter, but there are many more who don't.  It was business as usual for many shops I went by today.

     Here's St. Anthony's Catholic Church on Pok Fu Lam Road.  Rose says she grew up going to this church and went to its primary school.  The parish is English-speaking, so it brings together a wide variety of cultures. Besides Chinese and Filipino people earlier mentioned, there are also Indian, Sri Lankan, and European members.  I saw people leaving three different masses during the time I was there today and the sanctuary seemed to be full for each, not surprising for Easter, I suppose.  I was particularly interested in the numbers of Filipinas, who have been employed for decades here in Hong Kong mostly as domestic helpers.  I have noticed that some of the churches here have extensive outreach services for domestic helpers.
    
    
    

Sheep Pizza

 

     Not kidding.  That's what it was called on the menu.  

     One night last week in Suzhou we had dinner at a Uighur restaurant with a couple of people who went along on the factory visit with Terry.  Here's Terry with Irishman Alan on the right.  Alan has lived in China for 8 years and recommended this dish because he's had it before and liked it.  It was actually quite good.  

     "Sheep" was the unfortunate English translation for numerous lamb dishes on the menu of this restaurant run by people from the Uighur region of far western China.  Sheep pizza was actually a savory lamb and vegetable stew served on a pizza-like flatbread cut into wedges.  We served ourselves the chunky parts of the stew in the bowls at our places and then as Alan is doing here, picked up a wedge of the crust underneath, which had soaked up the flavorful juices from the stew.   

     A Chinese woman, an Irishman and two Americans eating a Muslim lamb stew served on a pizza crust, with chopsticks and accompanied by dark SinKiang beer.  (Really? A Muslim beer?)  Talk about a melding of cultures.  

     To the right of the pizza are two small bowls with appetizers that were on the table when we sat down, roasted peanuts in their red skins and golden raisins.  Good practice with chopsticks to munch on those particular appetizers, especially the peanuts.

Suzhou's Master of the Nets Garden

     Last week after we left Beijing we traveled to Suzhou, where Terry was visiting a factory to do an energy efficiency assessment.  Suzhou is a relatively small Chinese city of only 5.7 million people, not far from Shanghai.  It's a very old city that's most famous for its ancient gardens and canals.  There used to be over 100 gardens, but most have been destroyed as the city has modernized.  The few that remain draw lots of tourists.  Suzhou makes much of the old Chinese saying "Above there is Paradise, on earth there is Suzhou and Hangzhou".  

     We got into the city very late so I didn't have a chance to get my bearings until the next morning.  I used  our hotel address to get directions to the most famous of the gardens from Google Maps--twice--and was very surprised to discover that we were stuck in a hotel 70 km from the garden!  I asked at the hotel desk how people usually traveled from the hotel to the Suzhou Gardens.  By train?  No, no, not a train, you can take a taxi, the young man said.  How long does it take to get there, I asked, about an hour?   No, no, only about 10 minutes.  He handed me a map with all the major Suzhou tourist sites.  It turned out that Google Maps had been less than helpful:  the tourist map showed that our hotel was only a block away from one of the most famous sites, the Master of the Nets Garden.  So that's the one I visited.

     This is the smallest and probably the best-preserved garden in Suzhou.  It originated in the 12th century and was restored in the 18th century when a government administrator made it his retirement home and became a fisherman.  Like the other famous gardens in Suzhou, Master of the Nets features trees, water, rocks, pavilions and walkways, all carefully arranged for balance and harmony. What's unique about this garden is its clever design that gives the illusion of it being a much larger space.  I visited on a beautiful spring day, just warm enough, with a light overcast sky.  The plum and magnolia trees were in full bloom.  Here are some of my favorite scenes.

Ching Ming

     April 4 is Ching Ming, Grave Sweeping Day, which is an official holiday in Hong Kong.  People visit their ancestors' graves to tidy them.  At the gravesite they burn incense and paper money called "hell bank notes" for their ancestors to use in their afterlife.  They also leave flowers and food for their ancestors and pour wine on the ground at the gravesite.  Sometimes people set off firecrackers to scare away the evil spirits that are believed to be roaming about today.  Willow branches are also said to keep away the evil spirits.
     Ching Ming means "clean and bright" and is associated with spring.  Sometimes people have a picnic at their ancestors' gravesite, or they might fly kites.
     I didn't observe any of these Ching Ming rituals going on today, since there aren't any cemeteries close to us.  I read a couple notices about anticipated crowded public transit and delays due to large numbers of people expected to be traveling to gravesites.  There were still plenty of people left back here in the city.  Some business places on the street were shuttered, but many were open.
    Because it was a holiday Terry skipped his sweaty walking commute and worked from home today.  For a break this afternoon he broke out a newly-acquired Scrabble game that a co-worker brought from London a few days ago--we were never able to locate one here.  We sat at the kitchen table and played a game, while enjoying a perfect breeze blowing off the harbor.  This new Scrabble board is a jarring shade of bright green-blue and the tiles are plastic, which didn't quite seem like real Scrabble because we're so used to our traditional dark maroon board and wooden tiles at home.  We remind ourselves often that having to get used to new things should slow down aging!
     Something else that was new today was using our kitchen's wimpy-looking toaster oven for our evening meal.  We've only used it once before, to crisp up some stale rye crackers.  Yesterday at a store across the street I found a small glass baking dish that fits perfectly inside the toaster oven.  Tonight I used it to make a favorite dish we haven't had for months:  a roasted melange of chickpeas, eggplant, sweet red pepper, and onion, tossed in olive oil with curry powder and garam masala.  Success!  It took awhile, but it was delicious.

Beijing's Drum and Bell Towers

This is Beijing's  Drum Tower, viewed from the Bell Tower, both of which lie north of  Forbidden City.  In ancient times these150' structures towered over the city.  Originally built in the 13th century, they were rebuilt twice because of fires.  The drums and bell were used to announce time and regulate life in Beijing for over 700 years, until the last emperor left Forbidden City in 1924.  At dawn and again at dusk, first the drum would sound and then the bell would ring.  At the sounding of the bell at dusk, the city gate would close and traffic was cleared from the streets.  

This is the only drum remaining of the original 25.  

Five young people gave a performance several times a day on replica drums at the top of the Drum Tower.  I watched the young man in the middle get warmed up by jumping rope back in the shadows a few minutes before show time.

These steep stairs down from the Drum Tower were a thrill for someone like me who's not especially fond of heights.  Following me was a young man helping his elderly grandmother navigate each step, quite a harrowing descent.

The original Bell Tower from the13th century burned down and its successor burned, too.  This one was built during the Qing dynasty in the 18th century. The bronze bell inside the arched open door on the second floor is the largest and heaviest of its kind in China.  It's 23 feet high and weighs 63 tons.   Nowadays the bell is rung only on New Year's Eve.

The minder at the top of the Bell Tower took advantage of a slow tourist day to practice his calligraphy.

View of hutongs in the foreground and high rises in the distance, taken from the Bell Tower.