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!
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