What's different about Hong Kong

Walking:  Ever thought that walking in a big city might be an easy way to get around and see the sights? Well, walking in HK has its challenges.  As Jeff says, HK is a perpetual "step class".   We go up and down concrete steps all day long, and they are made for size 6 feet!  (Andrew beware)  Next to the famous escalators are corresponding steps to use when the escalators are not moving in the same direction that you are.  I counted how many steps there are between our apartment and the fitness club: 350!  Steps aren't the only challenge - sidewalks tend to come and go.  You can be strolling along the sidewalk on a main street (e.g. Hollywood Road), and suddenly, the sidewalk on your side of the street ends!  and it ends at a busy intersection with no traffic light!  and the cars are driving on the "wrong" side of the road!  eek!

Elevators:  In public places, there are elevator control staff to line the crowds up and direct them into the elevators.  I've noticed this in the HK Central Library, Sogo department store, and the Immigration building (where we got our HK i.d. cards).  No pushing, very orderly, and very polite.  (Reminds me of my summer job as an elevator operator at the Queen E. Hotel in 1968)

Attention David Sax (author of Save the Deli):  Delis here aren't the same as in North America.  In Jeff's blog of December 16th, he mentioned walking on Lamma Island and noticing the "Deli Lamma".  This week's South China Morning Post reported that the manager of the Deli Lamma appeared in court charged with allowing it to be used as a drug den!

Hong Kong is a city of festivals.  The Arts Festival is getting under way at the end of this week.  The subway escalators are lined with advertisements for the various entertainments of the festival, including a concert given by Sa Dingding, an award-winning Mongolian singer, whose "versatile, ethereal voice weaves a sonic tapestry of four languages - Tibetan, Sanskrit, Manadarin and a self-invented tongue."  The posters show her in a Shiva-esque pose, covered in coloured stones and jewels.  You can check her out on youtube.  An acquired taste!

The Literary Festival is coming in a few weeks.  Alexander McCall Smith is the biggest draw.  All of his events are sold out!  I've got tickets to see him "in concert" (literally) with Louis de Bernieres (Captain Corelli's Mandolin).  The lineup of authors is interesting, however the locals are complaining that in past years the Booker prize winner usually makes an appearance, but Hilary Mantel (Wolf Hall) has declined to show up this year (or perhaps the sponsors didn't offer her enough of an incentive).

We ate at an Italian restaurant the other night.  They advertised peking duck pizza.  Will try it next time.  They serve duck more often than chicken in Hong Kong.

McDonald's has 24-hour delivery.  Restaurant deliveries are on scooters, with boxes attached.

I've also seen "meals on wheels" delivered this way.

Dai pai dongs have become our favourite eateries.  They are Hong Kong's answer to delis and fast food. The fare is standard Cantonese, and we often have "won ton mien" for lunch - won ton soup with lots of noodles.  A meal at these places runs about $3-4!  Jeff and I ate at one in Kowloon recently (before the parade).  You'll notice the mini temple behind Jeff's chair, and the overcrowded tables in the restaurant.  They turn the tables over about 3 times an hour!  And they are masters at turning a table for two into a table for six.

Kung Hei Fat Choi

Happy Chinese New Year 2010 - the year of the tiger!

This is the most important holiday of the year, and it is celebrated as festively as Christmas in North America.  Chinese New Year is the "spring" festival.  It celebrates the new agricultural year.

The festivities began a month ago, when the decorations began to adorn buildings, shops and restaurants.  Festive red lanterns, red and gold good-luck banners, fake firecrackers, and lots and lots of lights lit up the city.  Each mall had huge decorations, both inside and out.  Here is a photo of the main lobby of Pacific Place, an upscale complex in Central.   In the second photo you can see the tigers in front of Fendi (thanks for the photo, Joan).  The stores were packed with shoppers, and there were lineups and crowd controls at Armani, Coach, Louis Vuitton, and all the other fancy shops.   We noticed everyone (except us!) walking around with fancy purchases.  Parents bought their kids new clothes for the holidays in preparation for visiting all the relatives. It reminded me of pre-Rosh Hashanah shopping when our kids were young.

Fourteen parks in HK hosted huge flower markets the week before the holiday.  Joan and I visited the market in Victoria Park, Causeway Bay (close to  Jeff's office, and across the road from the HK Central Library).  I expected to see row after row of flower stalls, but as Jeff says, everything is done Hong Kong style - i.e. capitalize on the space and sell all kinds of "stuff", not just flowers!  Two long rows were filled with the flowers that symbolize good luck, good business, romance, and good health: lilies, narcissus, peach blossoms, orchids (Susan: you must visit next year's market!), and tangerine trees.
 

The rest of the park looked like a carnival/country fair!  Young kids were selling cheap toys, hawkers were demonstrating brushes, squeegees, and brooms (this is also "spring cleaning" time), and food kiosks were selling traditional cakes and sweets.  The crowds were overwhelming, and we decided to leave when we realized we were being borne along by the crowds, rather than our own feet!

Sunday (Valentine's Day) was the first day of the holiday.  Jeff and I had prime tickets to the night parade (we stood in line for two hours the week before at the Visitors' Centre - no online purchasing).
Our seats reminded us of the t.v. stands that we sat in many years ago at the Orange Bowl Parade in Miami with the Kofman family.  There was a loot bag, courtesy of Cathay Pacific, on each chair.  The bag included a plastic raincoat (much needed!), candies, a programme, and some blow-up tigers.  All of the acts stopped in front of our stands to perform their routines.  The highlights were the flag wavers (Italy), the tiger band (from Switzerland, not Princeton), and the stilt-walkers from Belgium.  The floats were Disney-esque, advertising airlines, places near and far (Macau, Hainan, Thailand).  Many of the local ballet and dance academies had routines.  Oddly enough, the San Diego Chargers cheerleaders and mascots pranced across the stage, too, and so did the scantily-dressed Tropizana dancers from the U.S. (like Copacabana - they must have been freezing, since it was only 9 degrees and raining!).

The fireworks on Monday night were spectacular.  We stood with 200,000 other people on Kowloon watching the blasts of light right across the harbour.http://english.ntdtv.com/ntdtv_en/ns_china/2010-02-16/055268377038.html

On Tuesday, day 3 of the holiday, with the rain still coming down and the temperature well below 10 degrees, Jeff and I looked at each other and said "Next year - Phuket with all the other expats!"

Miscellaneous facts:  Retailers did a roaring business this year - in some malls, revenues surged more than 25% over last year.  Mainlanders flocked to HK to shop, shop, shop and buy, buy, buy.  More than 78,000 people showed up at the Sha Tin racecourse and forked over more than US$140,000,000 on Tuesday alone.

Please don't ask us if we watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics - none of our 15 sports channels get any coverage.  

And for those of you who think our apartment (last week's blog) looks rather small, take a look at this amazing video:  http://planetgreen.discovery.com/videos/worlds-greenest-homes-hong-kong-space-saver.html

  

The apartment and the neighbourhood

This blog should answer most of your questions about our apartment and our neighbourhood.  Marion suggested that I include photos of the local cleaners, cafe, grocery stores, and other places where we "hang out".

Let me introduce you to our building:  the Palatial Crest on Seymour Road, Mid-Levels. Many of the high-rises in Hong Kong have fancy names, like mansion or palace.  This are often misnomers, as in the case of the infamous and notorious Chungking Mansions in Kowloon.  (Michael Connelly's latest book, 9 dragons, takes place in L.A. and H.K.,  including a fast-paced, gruesome scene at Chungking Mansions)  Our building is decked out for Chinese New Year, which begins on Feb. 14th.  There are so many plants in the lobby, that it's hard to walk through to the elevators!

Welcome to Flat E, 28/F .  Thanks to the Pelcs for the beautiful mezuzah adorning the front door.  The tiny kitchen is on your right as you walk in.  We still haven't figured out how to use the convection oven.  The fan works, but we can't seem to get any heat.  Another call to the property manager...  Our major investment last week was a two-slice toaster.  We are quickly becoming Japan Home Centre's best customers (the Canadian Tire of Asia).  There's a small storage room off the kitchen.  Jeff assembled an Ikea shelving unit so that we can store cleaning stuff and extra tupperware on it.

These are photos of our dining room and living room.  The armoire was ordered from a store in Macau.  We were hoping to keep it in the third bedroom (our storage/dressing room), however it didn't fit through the door.  Jeff even removed the door to the room, we dragged it down the hallway, and it still wouldn't fit.  At least it matches the dining room set!

Kudos to Jeff who assembled the Ikea wall unit in the living room.  This week a "techie" from PCCW (the internet/cable company) got us all organized with our t.v. and dvd player.  We have HD and sports look very real!  We also have HBO on demand - pretty good movies, which should make up for the fact that the rest of the channels have very little worth watching.  The remote control has a button that can switch the language from Chinese to English.  This prompted Andrew to ask:  Will it also switch from ping pong to hockey?

We never pull the blinds down in the living room since the view is spectacular.  (By the way - we are using our ottomans to store all of our files!) 

Bedrooms two and three are small, even by Merton Street standards.  Bedroom two has the trundle bed (very comfortable), as well as built-in closets.  We're using the dining room armoire for overflow jackets and sweaters.  Bedroom three has become our storage locker.  (We even considered renting a parking spot in the building and putting up a self-storage unit on it).  However, it has our favourite piece of furniture - the Chinese shoe cabinet!  

The master bedroom has just enough room for our queen sized bed, a small table, and a thin floor lamp (which we carried home on the bus from Ikea - no taxis in sight).  There are windows with more great views on two sides of the room.

Here's a photo of the Garden Cafe, which is a comfy coffee shop with good cappuccino and Starbucks prices.  It's three doors away.

Wellcome is one of the two small supermarkets on our street.  The other is Park 'n Shop (alias Park 'n Fly).  You'll notice the bus stop in front of Wellcome.  Jeff takes the 23 bus to his office in Causeway Bay.  Other buses take us to the MTR (metro) or the airport express.  The cleaners that we use is two blocks away.  It's called Kau Kwong Self-service Laundry.  We're not sure why they call it "self-service", since they do all the work.  A large load of laundry - washed, dried, ironed, folded - costs $3.50CDN.  Jeff's shirts are also a bargain, compared with Toronto prices.

Funny sign of the week (thanks to Joan who took this at Starbucks in Kowloon):

Superbowl in Hong Kong (Joan and Dale at Dan Ryan's restaurant 7 a.m. Monday morning in HK):

Guess the mystery foods:

KUNG HEI FAT CHOI

Recent activities here in Hong Kong

Lots to report and a few photos to enhance my ramblings (and as you all know, I do tend to go on and on).

For those of you who are concerned about Jeff's gout - it has cleared up, he is wearing normal shoes, and has no pain walking.  He has vowed to stay away from shellfish, mushrooms, cauliflower and asparagus. (He doesn't like any of them anyway.) He also has to take it easy on the wine and beer - that's another story.

Our boxes finally arrived on January 18th (that's January 17th EST).  The only furniture we shipped was our bed.  Luckily it fit into the master bedroom.  Everything arrived in perfect condition - the only problem that remained was "where are we going to put all this stuff"!!  We spent a few days organizing and reorganizing, and then decided we needed a few more armoires and shelving for storage.  I will post photos of the apartment in next week's blog.

Two weeks ago, we attended a "fireside chat" at the Jewish Community Centre down the road from our apartment.  Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks was interviewed.  I was impressed at how relatively young he was when he was appointed Chief Rabbi (Modern Orthodox movement) - not much more than 40.  His knighthood is recent (October 2009).  With so many distinctions, I found it odd that the interviewer addressed him as Chief, rather than Rabbi, or Your Lordship.  There must be a rule in Debrett's Peerage that governs this issue!  Although he seemed so relaxed, I can only imagine how stressful and how political his job is.  He did mention that the past few prime ministers of the UK have been pro-Israel, however, their governments are another story.  Here is a link to the Rabbi's biography: http://www.chiefrabbi.org/Articles.aspx?id=1849  (Question for Diane Short - is Golders Green the neighbourhood where your high school was situated?)

Two interesting excursions with my "welcome to HK" group from the Y:  

Last week we visited the Wong Tai Sin Temple and the Chi Lin Nunnery on Kowloon.  There were busloads of people lined up to pray at the temple.  It is very popular among gamblers praying for good luck at the casinos of Macau.  (By the way, the Wall Street Journal reported that Macau posted a nearly 65% increase in gaming revenue in January).  The scene certainly dispels the serenity and peacefulness of most places of worship that I have ever visited.  One old lady was praying, shaking her box of sticks, and making strange marks on her scrap of paper.  I whispered to Claire that she was probably saying a prayer for each of her friends and relatives.  Claire commented that she was probably choosing her lottery numbers!

We each took boxes of numbered sticks and shook them to see what our lucky numbers would be.  Mine was 53.  Then it was off to the soothsayers to seek our fortunes.  Although the sign said "English", my fortune-teller understood very little.  We were allowed to ask one question.  Mine concerned my health.  The answer was "Do not lend any money this year or you will never get it back".  He also asked me the year I was born, looked it up in a ledger, and then wrote my correct age on a little piece of red paper!

Chi Lin Nunnery is a quiet oasis in the middle of a very busy neighbourhood.  The grounds are immaculate, and it's the kind of place to sit and read on a nice day.  However, there are no benches or tables - visitors are encouraged to walk through the complex and then leave.  There is a vegetarian restaurant under a waterfall that looks like a nice place to cool off in the summer months.  We did not see any Buddhist nuns while we were there.  I always find the contrasts in HK very interesting.  There is a large, modern, shopping centre right across the street from the grounds.  It's called Hollywood Plaza!

This week, the group trekked to Tai O, a unique fishing village on the far west corner of Lantau Island (the airport, two very modern suburbs, Discovery Bay and Tung Chung, as well as Disneyland are also on Lantau).  Time seems to have stopped in Tai O.  The villagers live in tin huts built on stilts.  The surrounding barren hills reminded me of the Laurentians, and the village made me think of outports in Newfoundland.  We took a dolphin boat ride - first through the canals to see the houses, and then into the open water to see the endangered pink dolphins.  They are quite amazing to look at.  Their skin resembles the colour of pigs!  Unfortunately, they were way too fast for any of us to capture on our cameras. (The picture here is from the internet.)

We spent the rest of the day walking through the stilt houses "street" and looking at the dried fish in the open-air markets. 

Jeff and I seek out new parts of the city each weekend.  We follow our trusted guidebook "The Leisurely hiker's guide to Hong Kong".  On Sunday, we visited Kennedy Town, west of the central core.  We strolled along the waterfront, and noticed a large apartment complex which reminded us of home:

Then we climbed up to see the Tradesmen's Temple, but it was enclosed in bamboo scaffolding:

On our way home, we stopped at a bar in Soho to watch the Australian Open tennis championship, but left after the second set when it looked like Federer had the match in hand (we are sure that Eric was a happy camper that day!).

Books, reading, book clubs:  I've been to two different book club meetings so far! (didn't take me long to sniff out the readers in HK).  We reviewed Telex from Cuba at the first one (sponsored by the HK Literary Festival).  Had a lively discussion about expats, pre-revolutionary Cuba, and colonialism.  Wine was served!  The second book club reminded me of my mystery group in Toronto.  We sat around a big table in the YWCA boardroom, and dissected Marilynne Robinson's Home.  The group was lively and very well-read, however, the only Canadian author they are familiar with (they are a mixture of Brits, Aussies, and Americans) is Margaret Atwood!  None of them (including three English teachers) have heard of Mordecai Richler!  However, we will be reviewing Lawrence Hill's The book of Negroes in March, after we tackle Wolf Hall in February.  Right now I'm in the middle of The Help, which I am really enjoying.  (I'm always interested in your recommendations).   There is very little wait time for books at the central public library, and we can renew books five times!

Funny signs and strange clothing continued:

Fashionista on the escalators - she could barely walk in the gold boots!

And I am still looking for a good hairdresser!