Hong Kong (part 1/3)

Hong Kong is a bit of a blur for me because just as I was learning about the Japanese culture and getting my bearings as to where everything was located, I had to fly over to Hong Kong. I did this because Hong Kong was only a 5-hour flight from Tokyo and I wasn’t sure when I would go to that side of the world again. Hong Kong is quite different from Japan. And no, I don’t have a photographic memory 😉; wish I did! I had to do research to recall some of the places I had visited.

I went there awhile back and was planning to write about it, but never got around to it. So, why now? Well, because China now owns Hong Kong and things are going to be much different. When I was there, people expressed their concerns about how things were going to change for the worse. Today, I don’t think they can discuss things as openly as they did back then. According to the Guardian, NGOs and bookshops are closing, media organizations are leaving and democracy activists are on trial.

Upon my late afternoon arrival, I looked out the window of my hotel room and noticed that all the buildings looked like gigantic long crayons. It was an eerie feeling to see so much forced to fit in a tiny space. I used to want to live there, but after my first day, I changed my mind. I left my hotel that evening, and decided to take a hop on and off tour, except I wasn’t planning to hop off. I just wanted to get the highlights of what I wanted to see. A big mistake!

If you’ve ever been on a hop on and off bus, they usually start at one point, go around a bunch of touristy as well as historical places, and come back to where it started. That was not the case for me. So, at some point the bus stopped, a woman came in and said that I had to change buses. So, I asked her if the other bus would also drop me at the station across from my hotel. She said yes. Well, it didn’t.The driver of the new bus was a mean grumpy guy who did speak English, but didn’t like foreigners. After a while, I realized that I had no idea where I was. So, I told him where I needed to be dropped off. He nodded, and dropped me off alright, but I was nowhere near my hotel as he had indicated. Imagine being in a country where you have zero knowledge of the language, it’s night time, the streets are packed with Hongkongers, Google map is loopy, you have no idea where you are, and no one speaks a word of English. Oh, yeah, don’t believe it for a minute that everyone speaks English in Hong Kong. Anyway, I was finally able to find my way back, but it was not an experience I would like to repeat.

After my first night there, everything went by smoothly and I met a lot of kind people. A few things: their subways are easy to follow and are clean. The buses running on rails look like a scene out of Harry Potter where the bus squeezes through cars. The traffic can be as horrendous as it is in Los Angles.

The food is amazingly good where ever you go, much better than any Chinese food I’ve ever had. I ordered the two veggie dishes and dumpling at a mall restaurant connected to my hotel. I have no idea what kind of vegetables were the long thingies, but they were yum.

I took the Kowloon food tour through Urban Adventures and TripAdvisor. Danny Fung was my knowledgeable tour guide, and we got along quite well. In fact, I ended up taking not only this food tour, but also two history tours. The carnivore in the picture, well…that’s another story. We did not mesh well. Danny took us through many Michelin star street food. But there was no way we could eat all that food. We ended giving most of it to him to take home.

One common thing they eat in Hong Kong is dessert soup. The above pix is of papaya, mango, and sesame ball soup. The sesame rounds were amazing.

After that, We also passed by some interesting buildings where people hanged their clothes outside their apartment to dry. Then we went to an outdoor market that sold everything from fruits and vegetables to specialty dried foods used as medicine.

The next day, I joined Danny’s tour to go to Pak Tsz Lane Park in central Hong Kong, located behind Hollywood Road. Tse Tsan-tai was an Australian Chinese revolutionary and a writer who wanted to get rid of the Qing dynasty. In the late 1800s, he, Yeung Ku-wan, and others, started the Furen Literary Society in Pak Tsz Lane, with the following principle: Ducit Amor Patriae: Love your country with all your heart. The Park was built to honor the Chinese revolution movements, and the Furen Literary Society.

The sculpture of a western man cutting the hair of a Chinese man is a symbol of freedom from Qing dynasty.

Principles of the Furen Literary Society etched in the pavement.

Site of Yeung Ku-wan’s assassination. He was killed by an agent from the Qing government.

Built in the late 1800s, Man Mo Temple is a landmark in Sheung Wan between central and western district of Hong Kong. It’s located on the Hollywood Road which used to be called Man Mo Temple street. Man and Mo are different deities. Man Cheong is the Taoist god of literature. Mo Tai is the god of war and fighting. This area has a melange of traditional and modern architecture that pulls you in and makes you want to stick around.

There are around 1275 trees like the one in the above pix in Hong Kong. These are cultural and historical Masonry Stone wall trees of Hong Kong that grow vertically on stone walls. They date back to pre-world war II and contribute to the island’s ecology. Most are Chinese Banyan or fig trees that help strengthen the old retaining walls, preventing landslides. However, for the past 17 years, some have been collapsing for various reasons such as vibrations from a close by construction or waste water. Residents are working towards protection and preservation of these trees.

Side Note: Taxis despise crossing the harbor between Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. So, don’t even try or you will get a major attitude, plenty of yelling, and medusa stares during the entire ride. This happened to me once, and I learned to never ever ever do this again. If you need to go from Hong Kong Island to Kowloon, take the subway or the star ferry. I think the reason is taxis on Hong Kong Island do not know how to get around Kowloon and vice versa. Also, they have to pay the government some extra fees and they would have to come back with an empty taxi, losing a fare because not too many people do this. To calm down my driver, I paid double his fees plus the added toll fee, and apologized. Only then, I could get him to crack a tiny smile.