a spoonful of medicine

In small towns across North America in the 19th century, the general store was the center of community life. Not only were they the main place to buy foodstuffs and household supplies, but they also served as a place for socialization. The older men of these community would chat with each other (perhaps over a game of checkers) and with the store's proprietor.

My aunt and uncle's medicine shop here in Hong Kong reminds me of those general stores preserved in "museum villages" back in the States. Doesn't their shelves of Chinese medicines in the back of his store remind you of the myriad jars and barrels in a general store?




What can I tell you about Chinese medicine? Well, I know Chinese medicine relies on herbs -- lots of them! My aunt and uncle stock several hundred different types. [Click here for a pic: chinese%20herbs%201.jpg.] Unlike Western prescriptions (one chit, one bottle of pills), Chinese prescriptions consist of mixing several herbs together. These prescriptions, usually written by a Chinese medical practitioner, are very precise and tailored to each individual. Some herbs are ground into a powder, while others might be chopped into larger pieces. My uncle, who is the store pharmicist, will then bundle these ingredients together into large parcels or a smaller packets (one parcel per dose). The packet items are sometimes brewed and drank as tea.



More often, the items in the packet or parcel are used for a soup or broth. Sometimes, the packet provides merely a soup base: the customer would then add the chicken or fish or eel. (No word on whether matzo balls or noodles can also be included!) More often, this broth would be sipped -- no need to ingest the actual herbs.



Just as CVS stocks more than prescription drugs, their shop stocks more than herbs. Behind the counter are Chinese ointments, British pain-relievers, and cigarettes from all over. German tissues, American infant formula, Japanese hair-care products, Shanghai washboard laundry soap -- his shelves have all the types of items in the personal care aisle of an American supermarket. And while these toiletries comprise the bulk of shop sales, my aunt and uncle are most passionate about their herbal business.

The herbal business is also what interests the shop's most regular customers. Next to the area where my uncle prepares the herbal mixtures is a stool and a few meters of empty counter space. Throughout the day, different regulars will sit on the stool or lean on the counter. Different customers may chat about health matters (not a surprising topic inside a medicine shop), horse-racing, neighborhood gossip, or current affairs. While I rarely join in the conversations (as a younger foreigner, my kibbitzing would be seen as disrespectful), I'm usually allowed to listen in. I've definitely learned a lot about HK, and improved my Cantonese, from their conversations. It shouldn't be surprising that my aunt and uncle's store has become one of my hang-outs here in Hong Kong. Too bad he doesn't have a checker board...

daytripper

It's been several months since I started my Hong Kong sojourn. Only on Thursday did I manage to cross the border and step foot into Mainland China.

This was not one of my typical trips. I had mentioned to a friend how I hadn't yet made it into China. "Funny you should mention that", she says. She needed to get some shopping done in China, and she definitely didn't want to go by herself. So she proposed that I accompany her on her planned trip to Shenzhen. I saw this as a win-win situation: she could get what she called "moral support" for her shopping, and I could get my first glimpse of China with someone who has been there a few times before.



Shenzhen, I should note, is not your typical Chinese city. Twenty-five years ago, Shenzhen was a farming village on the border with Hong Kong. Then the national authorities proclaimed the village a "Special Economic Zone", where socialist rules would be relaxed in order to encourage foreign investment. And voila! The Chinese version of Tijuana is born! Instead of rice paddies, new factories were planted. Instead of shacks for peasants, new concrete towers were built to house the millions of migrants who flocked to Shenzhen. And like Tijuana, Shenzhen also has plenty of, um, "entertainment" to lure visitors from across the border.

Just one hour after leaving Central HK we arrived at Lo Wu, a border crossing immortalized in literature. After clearing PRC immigration, we strolled to the main commercial plaza in Shenzhen. Visiting this place was the main reason for my trip -- and the main reason my classmate needed my "moral support". She literally could not walk more than two steps without someone shouting "Missy manicure!", "Missy need shoes?", "Missy you buy jewelry?". She tried to say "No thank you" in English and Cantonese, but that only made things worse. These people would then follow us, sometimes repeating their sales pitch, occassionally asking me "You want-ee watch? DVD? Memory card? Watch?". (Touts in HK neither hound pedestrians as aggressively nor use such bad English.) It took us quite a while to find a store where we weren't hounded at. And once we got to the actual shopping -- my classmate needed to have couch coverings sewn -- it was (almost) enjoyable. The owner served us tea while we flipped through booklets of cloth patterns. Since my classmate's husband couldn't come along on the trip, I had to play the part of her husband (i.e. 'bad cop' vs. her 'good cop') during the bargaining. Very strange.

After shopping and lunch, my classmate had to get back to Hong Kong. This gave me a little time to do some sight-seeing in Shenzhen on my own. I did my patriotic duty as an American and stopped off at a neighborhood Wal-Mart. I then hopped on the Metro to Lychee Park, which houses the main tourist attraction in Shenzhen: a billboard of Deng Xiaoping!



You can learn a lot about a city by visiting its main tourist attraction. In Paris, you can pay people to take a picture of you in front of the Louvre. The equivalent locale in Manhattan is Ground Zero. In Hong Kong, it's the harbor. In Shenzhen, you can pay people to take a picture of you in front of a billboard. (The slogan says "Adhere to the policies of Deng Xiaoping for a hundred years!" Ooh, catchy!)

Feeling underwhelmed by the cultural side of Shenzhen, I decided to walk back to the border crossing. It was a different side of Shenzhen I saw in that hour-long walk: ordinary stores, normal eateries. Twice, I saw women (one with a baby) eating straight out of a garbage can. I lost track of the number of People's Policemen I passed. No one offered me fake watches or shouted "Hey mister!" at me. A group of women outside a beauty parlor did shout "Lou saai!" (roughly equivalent to "boss" or "pal" in Cantonese) at me, but I kept walking. Right before dark I made it back to the border crossing. It was an enjoyable day, and I was left wanting to return and see more of China.

fun for the whole family

Hong Kong's Cantonese cinema scene is world-famous. In the recent past, Hong Kong was the world's third most prolific movie-producing city, after Hollywood and Bombay. This is the city that put Bruce Lee and Jackie Chan on the map. Cantonese cinema has influenced directors like Quentin Tarantino and directors of other Hollywood action flicks.

Until a couple weeks ago, I made a concerted attempt not to go to the cinema to watch Cantonese films. Instead, I wanted to concentrate on watching Hong Kong films from the 1980s and 1990s. That was the era Hong Kong was becoming more of an economic power in the world, with a concomitant improvement in residents' standard of living. (Also a concomitant increase in movie-making budgets!) Yet the scheduled handover of political control from Britain to China added uncertainty to the future. These two trends injected a new vitality to local movies. Thus, the 1980's and 1990's are considered by many the "golden age" of HK cinema.

So if movies made ten or twenty years ago were from the "golden age", that would make today's movies (wait for it) not from the "golden age". Do you know what convinced me that Cantonese cinema had indeed declined from years past? Here's a hint:



Yes, you guessed correctly. William Hung, infamous for singing Ricky Martin's "She Bangs" on American Idol, was able to convince a studio in Hong Kong to have him play the lead in an action film. What's worse is that my relatives here actually tried to get me to see it. "He's American, like you. Why wouldn't you want to see his film Where is Mama's Boy?" That's when I had to explain why I didn't like to watch Chinese movies at the cinema.

So what changed my mind? Every year, Hong Kong hosts an International Film Festival. As part of the festival, they focused on the career of one Cantonese film star, Andy Lau. I knew of his earlier work from the early 1990s. I decided to catch a screening of one of his later films, Running Out of Time. I was pleasantly surprised: great action scenes and solid character development? Heck, lots of Hollywood action films can't get those two items down!

After I told one of my classmates about seeing that movie, she decided she wanted to try and see a present-day HK film. So on Monday we headed to Mongkok to see House of Fury. Unlike Hollywood movies that are tightly focused on a target demographic, Hong Kong still produces "crowd-pleasing" movies. That means: movies to appeal to the whole crowd. Thus, there were veteran actors and younger teeny-bopper decoration. There were plenty of fight scenes for action fans. There was the perfunctory love scene. There was some witty dialogue for the comedy fans. There were sight gags for those of us who can't understand Chinese word play. The villian, although Chinese, mainly spoke American English. Perhaps a shout-out to us foreigners in the audience?

a few fries short of a Happy Meal

I'm not a person who sees a lot of movies. But right now I'm in the middle of a movie-viewing binge. So the next couple entries will be about movies I've seen recently.



Last Friday, the American consulate in Hong Kong held a showing of the documentary Super Size Me on campus. (The consulate sponsors a Friday lunch-time film series at my university's library.) This movie is about a guy who spends a month eating nothing but meals from McDonald's. When he's not munching down Big Macs, he examines the impact of fast-food on America. Even though many people recommeded this film to me, I had avoided seeing it for a long time. I guess I figured this was going to be some Ralph Nader-type screed. I was wrong. This film was more entertaining than preachy. The documentary balanced McDonald's fanatics with lawyers who tried to sue McDonald's. And while the filmmaker lives in Greenwich Village, there was plenty of footage from other places in the USA, too.

But the main reason I enjoyed this film: I am a food fanatic. Unlike most food fanatics (but like most bachelors), I can -- barely -- cook to save my life. But if I can't "walk the walk", I can at least "talk the talk". I once talked for fifteen straight minutes about the difference between kettle corn and other types of popcorn. This is the sort of skill that impressed friends but scared former coworkers. (Perhaps they had mistaken me for one of these.) So if I enjoy talking for 15 minutes about popcorn, you can imagine what watching a 100 minute documentary on McDonalds food would do for me!

Ching Ming Festival

Ah, another Chinese holiday today.



The term "Ching Ming" is a misnomer. "Ching Ming", literally translated, means "clear and bright". Trust me, Hong Kong's weather in early April is NOT clear and bright. The purpose of this holiday is to commemorate one's ancestors. Therefore, this is the day where whole families head to the cemeteries and sweep their ancestors' tombstones. Some people bring incense sticks, paper money, and other paper items. These items are burned so the dead can use these items in the underworld. Other people bring roasted suckling pigs, steamed chicken, and rice wine to offer their ancestors. When their ancestors don't eat these items ("Are you sure you're not drinking this bottle of wine, Uncle Chan? You don't mind if we drink this bottle instead?"), the family will then have a picnic by the gravesite.

Despite the picnics, Ching Ming is (unlike a typical Chinese holiday) a somber day. There are no celebratory foods, fancy decorations, or special songs. There is a famous poem about Ching Ming, written during the Tang dynasty by Du Mu, which says 'All the people on the road feel very sad.' I would say that line rings true -- except that, in my neighborhood, there weren't people on the road. (The cemeteries in the New Territories are a different story.)

Our family didn't head to the cemetery today, though. My grandparents were the first generation of their family who immigrated from Mainland China, and they are still alive. Thus there are no graves in Hong Kong for our family to visit. So I decided to spend this holiday by visiting my grandmother. My grandmother took advantage of my holiday visit to give me a tin of Danish butter cookies -- which she got from the previous holiday!