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.
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