Festivals...and Food

Last week and this week are both "holiday" weeks in HK, in that we got last Thursday off for the Mid-Autumn Festival and we get this Friday off for National Day. Tom and I were pretty excited for Mid-Autumn Festival, because the HK Tourism site makes it sound like it's the second biggest holiday of the year here (after Chinese New Year). However, HK was pretty subdued on the day of, and when we wandered down to the harbor on Wednesday evening we saw mostly families headed home with their kidlets holding little blow-up "lanterns." No dragon marching through the street (that happens in a neighborhood on HK Island). No one else carrying beer as they walked (we take advantage of the lack of open container rules when we go out, since the beer we buy at home costs about an eighth of what it costs in a restaurant).

However, the government had set up a lovely little lantern display on the promenade in Tsim Sha Tsui (overlooking the harbor and HK Island). The display was themed "Memories of HK," or something similar, and contained vintage "street signs" and other paraphernalia from HK's 1960s hey-days. The lantern display in conjunction with the everyday beauty of the lights over the harbor was quite nice, and upon more detailed examination, the kidlets' lanterns were actually pretty cool feats of construction -- little blow-up toys in all sorts of shapes with a non-heating lightbulb in the middle, so the wee ones could get in on the action without all the danger of a flame surrounded by flimsy paper that real lanterns bring.

Besides lantern displays, families in HK eat "moon cakes" and contemplate the moon during the Mid-Autumn Festival -- and when we got down to the water we actually saw people doing this (so HK celebrated after all...!) Tom and I bought two moon cakes to try as well, since we'd read a lot about them and were quite curious as to taste. Moon cakes are round pastries with a lotus seed paste filling and other items inside -- traditionally an egg yolk, but now they put more palatable beans in some (in fact, to cater to western tastes, now they make ice cream sandwich moon cakes! We tried ones with lotus seed paste -- but no yolk). The tradition of moon cakes derives from a legend about Ming Dynasty revolutionaries who hid messages organizing their overthrow of Mongol rule in the cakes and/or as ciphers on the characters written on the outside of the pastries. We didn't know too much about the tradition, but were eager to try these delicacies that they'd been hawking in the metro for the past month. I made some tea and we cut the cakes into fourths, as per tradition. They were actually pretty delicious in a weird, fruity sort of way!

In addition to the rather anti-climactic festival, Tom and I have spent this past week making progress on our planned trip through China. We're going to take a 24-hour train to Beijing on October 16, and we had to get Chinese visas to do so first. This entailed a labyrinthine trip to the Chinese embassy, where we were lucky to squeeze in before 5 pm (and where I picked up our passports with the new visa stamps just yesterday). Chinese visas are expensive -- since the U.S. makes it expensive/difficult for Chinese to come into our country, China has apparently decided to reciprocate in kind. However, the line at the embassy was long both times we went -- China is really a hot spot right now. [Note: for more proof, check out the NYT front page today -- the congressional bill regarding Chinese refusal to reevaluate the renminbi has sparked a variety of articles and Op-Eds]. I am particularly excited to visit China thanks to all my Peter Hessler reading (see previous blog entry).

After a few hours of bureaucracy, Tom and I set off in search of food in the area, since I could feel the beginnings of a migraine tickling around my head and was entering into my distinctive "hungry" (read: cranky) mode. We were determined not to eat at one of the ubiquitous fast food chains, be it American or Honky (is that even an adjective? If not, I like it, and I'm going to use it to describe things "of or from Hong Kong"). After a moment of hesitation, we stepped into a little place with noodles in the window, drawn in by the smell (and the fact that the restaurant's hawker spoke a little English :-)). I ordered rice noodle soup with shrimp dumplings and Tom ordered egg noodle soup with brisket, and while mine was good and hot and chased away the crankies, Tom's was superb. The broth reminded me of "pho" from a Vietnamese restaurant -- rich and nuanced -- and the noodles had more flavor than mine. We slurped away happily at the soup and at two glass bottles of Sprite, and mentally marked the address so we could return.

Up until the past couple of weeks, we haven't tapped into the legendary food in HK so much -- we're on grad student budgets, and have weird schedules that sometimes mean when we're hungry we're so hungry we just want to eat something we know instead of trying to navigate something new and different. But the little things -- trying mooncakes, getting weird and different drinks at the 7-11 each time, our noodle soup lunch -- are keeping us interested. In addition, we've made a vow to try some more restaurants from "the book" (aka the Lonely Planet guide). This vow sent us last Saturday to a meal that I'm still dreaming about -- and that only cost us about U.S. $60 total!

Crystal Jade is an HK chain -- there are probably 4 or 5 in the city, including one in the airport (in case anyone ever has a layover -- GO HERE). We had to take a number and queue in line, and it was in a mall (like everything in HK!), so it wasn't like it was some cool little hole in the wall that we discovered, but the smells when we got inside were hitting every tastebud I knew I had and some I didn't. In fact, when I wrote that sentence, my mouth watered :-). We got noodles with shredded cabbage and pork (my favorite) and shrimp in spicy sauce and Shanghainese dumplings (which are filled with pork and broth) and it was all so good that Tom and I have talked about the dumplings alone at least 3 times since Saturday. So. More food exploring is on our horizon, for sure!

Now we're off for a bar night with some friends from my program -- more later this week!

Epic Weekend, or, Lantau Island

So, about that epic weekend...

It all started when we met with friends of friends for a drink last Wednesday. First of all, they were delightful, and we felt like we were catching up with old friends rather than meeting new ones for the first time. There was a lot of laughing (and a lot of wine). Secondly, they had us meet them at this outdoor bar called RED, where we got to sit on a breezy patio overlooking the "fragrant harbor" (that's the phrase from which the name "Hong Kong" derives). It felt just right -- EXACTLY what one should be looking at while in this skyscraper city.

But most importantly for this story, they were quite a bit more familiar with the city than we were, and suggested some hiking options for us for whenever the weather cooperated. We decided to follow their advice over the weekend, and planned a trip out to Lantau Island to hike the second smallest mountain in Hong Kong, Lantau Peak.

Lantau Island is west of HK island (still part of the SAR though), and its northern part contains the airport. But the rest of the island is a mix of mountains, beaches, and parkland. We took the metro to the end of the line, which got us onto the island. Then we hopped into glass gondolas to travel 25 km up and over some beautiful scenery, bringing us to the town of Ngong Ping, which houses a lovely monastery and the "Big Buddha" (the biggest, outdoor, seated, brass Buddha in the world -- kind of impressive, except for all those qualifiers and the fact that it was built solely for tourism purposes within the past 20 years :-)). We walked quickly through the town to the trailhead for Lantau Peak.

The Lantau Peak trail is nicely maintained, but it has no switchbacks on the side we were climbing, so it basically goes straight up. And no shade -- which makes it quite the sweaty trail to take at high noon in the most humid city in which I've ever lived (sorry D.C. -- you've been trumped!) Plus, it's been awhile since I did any kind of hiking :-).

After lots of breaks on the way to the top (each of which had a breathtaking view), we made it up and over the peak. When we got down from the mountain, only about 3.5 or 4 hours had passed, so we thought we'd head straight to the beach. However, the trail placed us right on the side of a highway, albeit a highway with a sidewalk running alongside it. We trudged down that highway to the tantalizing beaches that we could see spread out below, but as much as we walked and walked and WALKED, we couldn't get any closer to them. After a couple more sweaty hours, we finally caught a bus to a town where we could hop the ferry back to civilization (HK island), but we were beat.

We woke up the next day with incredibly sore legs, having not used those muscles in that kind of way in awhile. But we still had "beach" on the brain, so we dragged ourselves out to the island again and hopped on a bus by the metro station, crossing our fingers that it was the right one.

After a speedy ride over some pretty big hills, we spotted what seemed to be a homemade sign for the beach we had in mind, and got off the bus (again with those crossed fingers that we weren't getting ourselves lost). We headed down a driveway and stepped through some trees to...paradise!

The beach was not too crowded, the sand was yellow, the open-air restaurants were serving BBQ and beer on the beach, and beautiful mountain scenery surrounded us. Tom and I took turns swimming in the South China Sea (someone had to keep an eye on our stuff -- although it seemed no one else on the beach was taking that precaution), and stayed to have dinner in the dusky evening at a South African restaurant. It was perfect.

So it's true that some of HK's most delightful past-times are to be found, not in the impressive skyscrapers, but in the outdoorsy "hinterlands." Tom and I are headed back this Sunday to hike the other major mountain on the island and get some more time at the beach. Just as soon as my legs stop aching!

The Peak

Following an epic weekend (which will be blogged about once I'm caught up) I find myself at school on Monday with a pile of reading to do -- but obviously writing on the blog comes first!

Tom and I had talked about going to the top of "the Peak" since we got here, but wanted to wait for a perfectly clear day so we could take advantage of the views. "The Peak" is actually "Victoria Peak," and it's the tallest mountain on the island of HK, although it's about half as tall as the tallest mountain in the entirety of the SAR. The top of the Peak used to be the exclusive address to have in HK, and the only way residents could travel between their homes and downtown was via sedan chair (or on foot -- but they wouldn't want to get their fancy clothes all sweaty walking up 500 meters every day).

An enterprising chap came up with the brilliant plan to build a tram to the top of the mountain instead, and that began operating on a steam basis in 1888. Sometime in the 20th century they switched to electricity, and essentially that's what exists today: tram cars pulled up and down the mountain on cables thanks to electric power.

Like most things in HK, it's extremely touristy at this point -- but still very cool. The car goes up a very steep gradient while you hang on inside for dear life (it's enclosed, so you're not actually in danger, but still...) and stare out the windows at the skyscrapers getting smaller and smaller below you. When you get to the top, you come out into (what else?) a mall. But you can leave the mall and the Starbucks behind, and walk around on your own to peer at some very posh apartment buildings and a few colonial structures, and take in the view.

Oh, the view. It really is pretty damn awesome (that's right readers, I said "damn" instead of "darn" -- that's how cool it is). You stare down over the tops of hundreds of incredible skyscrapers and the harbor, and any kind of weather that is making its way over the city is visible from miles away. The perspective makes the skyscrapers kind of shimmery, because it's a bit bizarre to be looking at them from the top. Plus, when we went there was a stiff breeze blowing, which was such a welcome change from the oppressive humidity of the city that I could have stared at any view for hours.

We walked around a shady trail for awhile which circles the mountain, and managed to head back down without purchasing anything or succumbing to the "Bubba Gump Shrimp Co." restaurant (with table signs saying "Run, Forrest, Run" -- seriously, the pieces of American culture that HK has chosen to adopt are downright silly sometimes). But I've heard rumors that a professor at my school begins each morning with a brisk hike up to the Peak, and it makes me want to go back (if not every morning... :-)).

Rains in Asia

So, I'm still catching up from my week off of blogging here. As this post will demonstrate, that week off wasn't exactly due to a plethora of exciting adventures -- more like the reality of classes settling in. Over the weekend, it rained BUCKETS, and Tom and I tested our skill at amusing ourselves indoors in our tiny apartment.

HK has a very advanced weather warning system to keep its residents apprised of impending typhoons and/or flooding. The HK Observatory issues a rain warning at three levels: Amber, Red, and Black. Generally, when there is a "Black Rain Warning," everything is cancelled. For typhoons, the Observatory "hoists" signals of either 1, 3, 8, 9 or 10. A signal 10 means a direct hit, and HK is pretty much going to be a disaster (if I remember correctly, only one or two signal 10s have been issued here in the 20th century).

Luckily, we weren't facing typhoon warnings over the weekend, only rain. We were at Amber alert, which is the lowest one, but darned if it wasn't more rain than I've seen in the States (except that one freak morning thunderstorm in D.C. this summer). Since we'd stocked up on granola bars, frozen dumplings and beer at the grocery store, we were quite content to stay inside whenever we peeked out the windows in contemplation of leaving.

The question was what to DO inside. Certainly not schoolwork (sorry Mom!). In an interesting change from the casebook culture of law schools Stateside, neither of our programs really assign set books for reading -- more like a selection of pieces in a range of different books, none of which can be posted online or photocopied by the professor because of HK's strong copyright rules. So, schoolwork has to be done at the library with the books on reserve.

Tom is in the middle of "War and Peace" and was all set for indoor activities, so I grabbed my less hefty book and settled in as well. The book I read was called "Oracle Bones" by Peter Hessler, and what started as a rainy day distraction quickly became one of my favorite reads in a long time. Peter Hessler writes narrative nonfiction in the John McPhee style (and studied under McPhee at Princeton). He came to China in the mid-1990's with the Peace Corps to teach English in the Sichuan province (the region where they had the horrible earthquake in 2008). He stayed in the country after his stint, moving to Beijing as a clipper for the WSJ and eventually becoming a correspondent for the Globe (and more recently the New Yorker). He's written three books over the past 6 or 7 years about his time in China, and his writing really made this moment in time for the country come alive for me. China is in a pretty darn exciting spot of its history right now, and the United States' relationship with China is inevitably in some kind of flux. Reading Hessler's narrative, which intertwined the stories of some of his former students with information about the country's preparation for the Olympics, the experience of scholars during the Cultural Revolution, and the journey of a Uigher middleman named Polat made me very excited for the trip to the capital that Tom and I are making in October.

HK's Favorite Past-time

It's been more than a week since my last post -- much to catch up on!

Last Wednesday, Tom and I went to the Happy Valley racetrack to participate in HK's favorite past-time: betting on the races. We arrived in the stifling heat to find a beautiful grass course surrounded by tall apartment buildings -- the lights were stunning. We were also pleasantly surprised to find that general admission tickets got us very close to the action -- we were able to drag a cocktail table over right next to the fence! After fortifying our stomachs with McDonald's (yes yes, I know, but they're everywhere, and are better for you than some of the local fried foods!), we ordered some beers and set to work figuring out the racing forms. There were 8 races scheduled, with a minimum HK $10 bet (about $1.25). We selected horses via a very scientific method (funniest/prettiest names -- at least that was MY method) and proceeded to lose our money race after race, except an HK $18 win-fall during the 7th when Tom correctly picked a horse to place. We also proceeded to drink a lot of beer.

It was awesome, even when (or particularly when) some of the loudest thunder I've ever heard rolled across the sky, and the clouds opened up with a vengeance, delaying the final race. Since every time I bring Tom to a horse race it rains cats and dogs (animal theme here), it was par for the course (oh I'm mixing my animal and my sports metaphors!). Everyone crowded indoors for about 20 minutes and the beer kept flowing, so we were fine. We finally headed home about midnight, thankful for the slight break in the humidity wrought by the storm.

For an interesting historical fact about Happy Valley, it was originally where a lot of westerners settled when they first got to HK. Since it's a muggy little valley, they all proceeded to get malaria, and many of them died. Consequently, there are several beautiful old graveyards in Happy Valley decorated in a cool gothic (?) style. I'm definitely going to have to check them out in more detail when I'm not distracted by the gambling...

More to come soon!

Very Superstitious

I noticed today that, like many buildings in eastern China, my building does not have a single floor that contains the number 4. No 4th floor, no 14th floor, no 24th floor. This is because the word for "4" is very similar to the word for "death" in multiple Chinese dialects. Thanks to a little Wikipedia research, I learned that the number 14 is even worse than the number 4, because the word for 14 in Cantonese sounds like "certainly die." I also learned that buildings in Hong Kong, in addition to skipping floor numbers that end in 4, also skip the entire series of 40th floors, so no floor 41, 42, 43, etc. Our building also doesn't have a 13th floor -- a common Western superstition -- which I think is a nice illustration of the "East meets West" culture of the city.

Tom's and my flat is on floor 9, which happens to be the luckiest single digit number in Chinese (hey, if I'm going to follow the bad superstitions, I might as well follow the good!). The number 9 sounds like "long-lasting" in Chinese, and therefore it is used a lot as symbolism in connection with weddings. Since a healthy portion of the conversations that occur in this flat have to do with wedding planning, I think that's a good sign! Perhaps even more interestingly (to some of you), the number 9 has a very similar pronunciation to a vulgar Cantonese word for male genitalia, and the people of HK make lots of plays on words to reference that. I'll leave it to readers to determine whether our living on the [penis] floor is good or bad luck ;-).

Tom and I start our informal (i.e. Rosetta Stone) Putonghua (i.e. Mandarin) lessons this week. But researching unlucky numbers has reminded me that it would be useful to know a little Cantonese, so I don't try to give someone my address and end up saying something completely inappropriate!

"Mayor of the Market"

One of the things that Tom and I keep reading in guidebooks is that haggling is part of the thrill of cheap shopping in Hong Kong. As our daily shopping routine includes scouting out the local wet market for fresh fruits and vegetables and char siu (bbq pork) (we haven't quite worked our way up to buying live fish or raw meat...not to mention the live snakes and frogs!), we decided it was high time that we put some bargaining skills to use. Tom, in particular, feels that negotiating down from the posted price is an absolute requirement.

Our first attempt came when we tried to buy some asparagus. The woman weighed the vegetable and showed us a price on a calculator. Tom countered with a lower price, and the woman calmly proceeded to remove half of the asparagus from the pile on the scale and then take our money. Five spears of asparagus for $20 HK is NOT a deal. Bargaining fail!

Our next attempt came when we tried to get a $5 HK adapter for $4 HK. The gentleman selling the thing seemed disgusted -- I guess maybe because $5 HK is a pretty great deal in the first place (it's only about 65 cents)!

These failures definitely bothered Tom more than me, and when we went to the night market on Saturday evening, he was determined to get some fake Oakley sunglasses for a much-cheaper-than-posted price. Some Tsingtao fueled our venture, and Tom stuck to his guns in order to bargain the vendor down from $130 HK to $70 HK with respect to those sunglasses. Victory in hand, Tom also bargained another vendor down from $150 HK to $70 HK for a dress (for me, not him :-)). That vendor, impressed with his skills, laughed and said to him as she handed him the dress, "You're cheap." It was pretty much the best compliment one could get there, and it fueled Tom's confidence. We strode up and down the night market, looking for a place to eat, and when other sellers called out their wares to us, Tom magnanimously waved his hand at them and said, "Not tonight...not tonight." I had to tease him for pulling that "Mayor of the Market" act, but I certainly appreciated the cheap dress (which I'm wearing right now ;-)).

Getting Settled

So our streak of effortless adjusting kind of came to an end when we went up to the Chinese University of Hong Kong to register for my classes. The Chinese University of Hong Kong is up in the New Territories, which is just north of the Kowloon peninsula and is called the "New Territories" because it was given to the British a few years after the other parts of Hong Kong. This is the part of the SAR (Special Administrative Region) that contains the majority of the green space -- in the form of mountains and foothills and rolling green. And the Chinese University is built into those mountains -- high, high up into those mountains! Since my map did not show elevation, when we arrived at "University" station, I figured we could skip the slightly confusing shuttle buses and just walk to where we wanted to go. Boy was I wrong. One sweaty hour later, we finally admitted defeat and climbed back down to get on a bus which was, thankfully, air-conditioned.

When I finally found where I was supposed to go, things resumed their smooth running. The process was easy and the people were friendly...and the views from the mountainous campus were gorgeous. Although my orientation will be on the main campus this week, I won't have much reason to go back there once classes start, as all my classes will be occurring in the Graduate Law Centre, which is in the middle of the business district on Hong Kong island.

Tom, who had kindly accompanied me in all this informal hiking, also accompanied me the next day when we went to check out the Law Centre. Just like his school, mine is connected to a series of malls. I think HK has so many malls because it's too hot to walk around outside during the summer, and too rainy during vast other chunks of the year. That, and the fact that the national past-time is shopping. But since we're poor graduate students with no money to shop, we just appreciated the malls for the air-conditioning.

The Law Centre was the last stop on a long day of exploring a different promenade in Kowloon, taking the Star Ferry over to Wan Chai, and taking the Lonely Planet's guide to "forgotten streets in Wan Chai" (which, although "forgotten," were pretty darn crowded with people!). After getting lost in the series of malls, we stumbled, sweaty and disoriented, right into a reception for the MBA students. They were wearing suits and had cocktails in hand, I was wearing my frizzy hair like a nimbus around my head and was clutching a crumbled map. Although the Law Centre itself was closed for the last day of renovations, hopefully now that I've found the place I'll be able to make a more dignified entrance next time!

One of the coolest parts about that long day, though, was the trip on the Star Ferry. The Star Ferry has been around since 1880, and used to be the only way people could get between Kowloon and HK island, as I think I mentioned in an earlier post. Although many still use it to commute, for us it was a breezy, 8-minute break from walking, which afforded us amazing views of the harbor, all for about 30 cents. I could ride that ferry back and forth for half a day!