scenes of hong kong

For those of you who want to see more photos of Hong Kong on my blog...

First, the bad news. My camera is still not functioning. I can't afford to fix it or buy a fancy new model. Right now, it's a gosh-darn fancy paperweight. I do have pictures on this blog, some of which are supplied by friends who do have cameras. (A big thank you to those friends - you know who you are!)

The good news: there are a lot of websites with cool pictures of Hong Kong. One site I found recently, with near-Tourist Board quality photos, is this site. Each picture has, in Simplified Chinese, a one-phrase description of what is pictured. (One of the longer descriptions simply says "Night scene of HK skyline".) The Tourist Board itself has wallpapers and webcams available for viewing. And there are plenty of other Hong Kong bloggers, with at least two photobloggers. So don't panic!

green legs, pale buns -- and brown sauce

This past weekend was a three-day weekend, due to Lord Buddha's Birthday. Devout Buddhists would spend the day in worship at a monastery or temple. My weekend was a little less structured...

My original plan was to see the world-famous Bun Festival on Sunday afternoon. This is an annual festival held on Cheng Chau Island [look right, see map]. But I had previously agreed to meet up with some people for dim sum that morning. So I figured, "OK, a quick dim sum then I can still make it to the ferry pier in plenty of time." But the dim sum was so fun that one thing led to another. Basically, I ended up with my English classmate (and her Welsh friend) at her flat to watch a Cantonese movie. With two Brits in the room, quite a few of my classmate's suppressed English habits suddenly emerged. She had a sudden desire for a "cuppa" and a "fag". (Translated, these terms are "cup of tea" and "cancer stick", respectively.) Her strangest pre-movie craving was for fried fish balls in "brown sauce". "Brown sauce?", I asked her. "Yeah, as in HP sauce." was her sarcastic reply. At my puzzled look, she continued to explain the wonders of this British sauce. (There's no exact US equivalent, but Heinz 57 or A1 sauce comes close.) Fish balls in brown sauce aren't bad pre-movie snacks, especially when watching a movie where the male lead eats a turtle claw. (Classic quote from that movie: "If you've had turtle claw, you must try the turtle liver...")

After we watched the movie, it was too late to head to Cheung Chau. But my classmate's Welsh friend was, coincidentally, planning on heading to Cheung Chau the next morning. I was invited to join her and two of her friends on their outing. These two friends were Cantonese, and Cheung Chau is much less Westernized than Lamma Island. So this trip was much less Westernized than my Lamma trip of a couple weeks ago. We missed the Bun Festival itself, but there were still some pale buns remaining. We hiked up the hill on the north of the island. We hired a kaido (see boat pictured below) to explore a pirate cave on the south of the island. By the end of the day, we felt tired after all of our walking and exploring. We decided to have dinner at one of the outdoor Chinese seafood restaurants Cheung Chau is known for.



For those of you who aren't familiar with Chinese meals: if there's four people, normally four courses are ordered and shared all around. The two Chinese offered to choose all four dishes for us, and we (the two Westerners) agreed. The two seafood dishes -- quick-boiled shrimp and crab with green onion -- were dishes I've had before. The third dish, Chinese spinach with egg, was slightly strange because some of the eggs used were "thousand year old" eggs. The last dish was the strangest of all: the two ladies had changed their original order of stir-fried lemon chicken to stir-fried lemon frog legs. The frog legs were covered in batter (so in this case they weren't green) and -- to me, at least -- the taste was very similar to chicken. The small bones were definitely not chicken bones: Kermit The Frog's quote of "millions of frogs on tiny crutches"(The Muppet Movie) passed fleetingly through my head. Surprisingly, I don't feel guilty about trying frog legs. I just don't want to hear someone tell me, "If you've eaten Kermit the Frog, you must try Gonzo..."

checkers, fire drills, and toast

Another cherished myth of mine was proved false today. Chinese checkers aren't Chinese after all.



In my Cantonese class this morning, we discussed the names of various board games. Chinese chess is called jeung kei, or "board game [that uses] elephants". Go is called wai kei, or "board game of surrounding". Chess is called sai yeung kei, or "Western board game". Then my instructor asked me about a game she'd seen in a trip to the USA. "This game uses marbles of different colors. The board was shaped like a star, with lots of holes in the board. The Cantonese name is bo ji kei, glass marble board game. All these Americans kept asking me to play this game with them, but I don't remember the English name. Do you know the English name?" When I mentioned it was called Chinese checkers, she started laughing. "What? Isn't it a Chinese game?", I asked her. "No, it came to Hong Kong from America." was her reply.

Certainly, this should not have surprised me. Plenty of items, in both America and Hong Kong, have false nationalities given to them. "Chinese fire drills" - where, at a traffic light, all the occupants of a car get out and change seats -- are clearly not Chinese. One doesn't need to fly to Paris to realize that French toast isn't French. Nor does one need to fly to the USA to realize American spaghetti comes with marinara sauce, not sweet-and-sour sauce. So why the surprise?

Chinese checkers is more important to my past than, say, a Chinese fire drill. I remember how, when I was a young boy, I would play Chinese checkers with my non-Chinese grandparents and cousins. It was a fun way for my non-Chinese relatives to acknowledge I was indeed part Chinese. So it's ironic to learn that Chinese Checkers was actually invented in America during the 1920s. American pop culture back then was going through a Chinese fad: one enduring example of this fad is Grauman's Chinese Theater. To cash in on this Chinese fad, the inventors of this game decided to call their product Chinese Checkers. Since my grandparents were children in this era, I'm sure they played this game in their childhood. And thus, they passed on this game to their grandchildren.

it isn't over till the shrill pasty-faced woman stops "singing"!

In a city of seven million, the diversity of different groups in Hong Kong shouldn't come as a surprise. There are traditionally-minded Chinese, various socialists, and Westerners from several traditions. All of them claimed yesterday -- May 1st or the 23rd day of the Third Moon -- as a holy day. All of them commemorated the day in some form in Hong Kong.

For socialists and left-wingers, May 1st is May Day, International Workers Day. Originally started by Chicago labor unionists and anarchists, it became an official holiday in most countries. Labor unions often stage marches on May 1st, and Hong Kong was no exception. May Day was an important holiday for the Soviets and still is important to present-day Communists. This would explain why the People's Liberation Army (the army of mainland China) invited students at my university to a May Day open-house of their barracks in Hong Kong. While I realize those soldiers were too young to have served sixteen years ago, I still doubt my "love of China" would be enhanced by a barracks tour.

So instead of the pleasures of military drill, I spent yesterday morning at church. Sunday, of course, is always a holy day for Christians. For Orthodox Christians, yesterday was Easter and thus was especially holy.

After church, I made my way to the Outlying Islands Ferry Pier. I had made plans to bring a (quite-attractive) Japanese classmate to go sight-seeing on Lamma Island. Lamma [look right, see map] is a small island where cars are banned and development is highly restricted. It's one of the few places in Hong Kong where people can live in actual, affordable detached houses. Lots of Westerners, turned off by apartment living, have moved to Lamma in recent years. (Perhaps a third of island residents are Westerners.) A fair number of these Westerners embrace a '60s "hippie" lifestyle. Think of Lamma as a (non-gay) Provincetown: cheap seafood, lots of small boutiques, and dozens of bars and Western-style eateries.

On Lamma, we met up with a friend of mine who lives on the island. "Would you two like to head to Powerstation Beach with our family and watch the island's pagans celebrate May Day?", she asked us. "Pagans? May Day? You are joking, right?" was my reply. (I later learned May 1st, being exactly six months after Halloween, is the second-most important day in the pagan calendar.) I didn't need much of an excuse to head to the beach, so I agreed. On the beach, there was a reception-sized tent and a Maypole. The very large tent, I assume, were for the pagan rituals of the night before. The Maypole ceremony, on the other hand, was open to non-pagans.



This was the first time I'd even seen a Maypole, much less danced with one. (This is a British tradition, not an American one.) There is a basic ritual. Each person grabs a ribbon. Half the people face clockwise, the others face counter-clockwise. As each person walks around the pole, one alternates going over and under other people's ribbons. It helps to keep time with the music -- yesterday provided by three long-haired bongo drummers. At the end of the dance, all of the ribbons should be tightly wound around the pole. The ends of the ribbons are then tied to the pole. If pagan, one would then give thanks to whatever goddess or deities one worships. I was surprised how fun it was to dance around a Maypole.

By this time, it was getting close to dark. As we were eating dinner in a sea-front eatery, the discordant sounds of Chinese percussion could be clearly heard. Yep, this year May 1st fell on the same day as the Birthday of Tin Hau. Tin Hau, in Taoist cosmology, is the Goddess of the Sea. Tin Hau is fairly important in Hong Kong, and even more so among the Chinese fishermen of Lamma. To honor Tin Hau, there was a temporary pavilion set up for Cantonese opera performances near the Lamma ferry pier. We had missed most of the Tin Hau festivities, but the evening Cantonese opera performance was just starting.



What can I say about watching Cantonese opera? On the positive side, watching Cantonese opera is less of a hassle than watching Italian opera. You can come and go as you please. You can chat during performances. You can even munch on grilled sausages and corn during performances. On the negative side, you have to listen to Cantonese opera music. This music tends to be high-pitched, with lyrics incomprehensible to mere students like me. Plus, my grandparents can't get enough of opera music and listen to it incessantly. So when my classmate asked if I wanted to stay and watch the opera with her, can you guess how I replied?

Um, did I mention she was quite attractive? Yeah, I stayed.

I just hope it's going to be a while before the next group of holidays fall on the same day!