Sunday, December 18, 2011

Dubai, here we come!

Off to Dubai for Christmas, so won't be around until next year unless I discover an internet cafe while I'm there, in which case you'll be hearing all about it.

I've been neglecting this blog lately, I know, but I've been writing a novel which I hoped to have off to the publishers before the start of 2012 which I now realise won't happen.  It's a shame, but what can you do. I'll do it at the start of next year, fingers crossed.

So if you don't hear from me in the near future, I wish you all A Very Merry Christmas and a wonderful New Year, and here's a little something to make you smile:

Friday, December 16, 2011

Happy Hearts Love Sharks!

In his attempt to save the oceans, Jason - a former dive instructor and current patents lawyer - has set up his competition wherein any Hong Kong couple getting married who refuse to serve sharkfin soup at their wedding banquet are entered into a draw for a trip to Fiji to dive with sharks. 

If you know anyone about to be married in Hong Kong, perhaps you can send them to the website:

http://happyheartslovesharks.org/hk/prizes/grand-diamond-prize/

Good one, Jason.

Oh, and Jason organises an annual "Clean Up the Beaches" campaign with the Canadian Embassy if anyone is also interested in ecology and doing something hands-on.  It really is a lovely day out, by the way, and you may just get a junk trip by way of gratitude.

Wasabi Chocolate

The Mighty Marg and I were wandering around the gardens at Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill today when we saw a sign for home-made chocolates and decided to check it out. Can you believe it?  She was selling wasabi chocolate!  Marg thought it was too weird for words however I decided that she needed to expand her comfort zone and so, when she wasn't looking, I bought her a couple.

It was really just a joke but the lady proudly packed them so beautifully for us ...


... and the presentation was just so lovely I felt mean for treating her product so lightly, so I bullied Mighty Marg into eating one ... and only two bites and she's desperately reaching for the tissues.


However, being a right clever smarty pants, she managed to find the exact right drink to take away the wasabi-bite:


So now you have a new fact for your foodie arsenal: Cedraia is the perfect drink to accompany Wasabi Chocolate.

And then she challenged me to eat the other, and though I'd like to say I refused, I didn't. I'm willing to expand my comfort zone, and can tell you that wasabi chocolate has a vicious bite ... but five minutes later you feel like more.

So Mighty Marg, also with an entirely new comfort zone, went back and bought more ... but as a gift for Judy, although I'm not sure if this counts as a pass-it-forward joke or if she genuinely wanted to share an entirely new taste sensation, or if it was just that she really liked the little red box they came in.

The Emperors' Old Clothes

The Mighty Marg is currently in town, so today we set out to visit the Exhibition of the Last Emperor's Clothes.  The posters for this Exhibition are everywhere but are all in Chinese so I found out where they were supposed to be ... Pu Yi Plaza ... but we spent the entire afternoon wandering around the more obscure parts of New Territories looking for it, without any joy. No one had even heard of Pu Yi Plaza, let alone the Exhibition, and let alone the Last Emperor.

However we decided there's something very right and fitting about NOT being able to see the Emperor's Clothes.

People were lovely anyway and lots of folks tried to help us but English is rare in NT so we ended up being directed to this Exhibition instead ...


... and since it was on the Sacred Caves up there in Dahtong in the northernmost reaches of Mainland China, and since I'm crazy about sacred caves, we didn't mind at all.

Btw, did you know that these sacred images aren't anything like the ones in Pak Ou, in Laos, where the sacred objects are carved in the limestone.  That's what I thought I was going to see when we eventually get there, however in Dahtong Caves the statues are made out of clay and plaster and look like this:



74,000 of these up there in Dahtong, can you imagine? These caves are in a really obscure part of China and in an industrial, coal-mining part of the Mainland too, singularly unpretty apparently, and there's nothing else to do there, but no one I know who has visited has ever complained.

Maybe the Mighty Marg and I can visit sometime in the near future, which she wants to mainly because, I suspect, Madam Chang was little more than a child when she mapped those caves and Marg loves to discover new heroines for her Wall of Feminist Heroes.

And since you probably don't want to, like us, spend an entire afternoon wandering footsore and weary looking for THIS Exhibition, it's in the very easy locate-able spot of Chi Lin Nunnery in Diamond Hill ...
 An arial photo of Chi Lin Nunnery.

... in the wonderful little museum in the gardens ...

Monday, December 12, 2011

Simple Prejudice. Or not.

Pete, a true HK urbanite, is moving out to live in Hong Kong's New Territories. It's a surprise, definitely, but what's most surprising is just how surprised everyone is, as though HKNT is so outside the scope of anyone's idea of possible places to live that it's almost as if it isn't possible for anyone we actually know to live there.

Do you know New Territories at all?  If we're not talking about the various islands - which we and this blog have been to many times - I certainly don't. That swathe of land beyond Kowloon all the way up to Mainland China is something I've only passed through on the train to Shenzhen. Keith's been several times, sure, taken by his Parents and Teachers Association, but that's the extent of our NT jaunts.

No, wait, I once went on HK Historian Jason Wordie's amazing World War II Tour, to see what happened where during HK's Japanese Invasion but that was before I started this blog and so I don't have a record of it ... although I may still have the photos.

Yes, found one:

The wonderful Jason Wordie
on his magnificent WWII tour
although here we haven't yet reached
the New Territories which we can see 
off in the distance.
Here we're overlooking the spot where the
invading Japanese crossed over
to Hong Kong Island and 
standing right where the Allies
tried to hold them off.

So that's it, the scope of my NT experiences, although Sai Kung is in NT so that isn't quite true because I've been - and taken this blog - to Sai Kung many times. And I find the jewelry stores in Ap Lui Street  up there in Sham Shui Po irresistible, and Dragon Lee Gardens, and the Tang Ancestral Village and and ... oh, so perhaps I've spent more time in NT than I actually realised.

But anyway, Pete announces he's moving to NT to live and everyone is immediately stunned, and then the jokes started:

"Don't forget you have to illegally dam your local creek." and "You need to start exercising your traditional right of access by blocking the local road off from anyone who doesn't share your Clan surname." "And don't forget that you can key (scratch with your car keys) any car which is parked in the village and owned by a non-villager."  "And later make sure you demand a parking "fee"."

And  "Start collecting a pack of feral dogs." and "Always remember to stick a toothpick in the side of your mouth." and "Build an illegal structure on your roof.", "Practise your banjo day and night.", "Hire out your back garden for crate storage, and don't ask any questions about what is in them!" and "Don't forget that you can legally set off fireworks during CNY.", " Yeah, and don't forget to have your feral dogs yelping and barking all day and night" "Especially after you set off those fireworks during CNY."

And "Get yourself the Hakka granny hat." "Yeah, don't forget the Hakka granny hat. You'll need it when you're pretending you don't see the convoy of dump trucks flytipping construction site debris over into your garden." "Yeah, that garden where you're growing "herbs".

And "Don't forget about demanding your hereditary village plot rights, which you will then sell on to the highest bidder at grossly inflated prices before moaning about the loss of your traditional way of life in the face of an onslaught of outsiders."   

Also  "More importantly, don't forget that the plot of land at the bottom of your garden can be rented out to those who want to build a columbarium so they can milk the poor folk who want to house their dead relative's ashes or a memorial plaque." and "Have you signed up for banjo lessons?" and "Can you ask the Heung Yee Kuk offer any loyalty programs say for Frequent Intimidation?"

And Pete's reply to all this, apart from "Time, gentleman, please." was "The first thing on my agenda is to build an illegal extra storey on top of my house, and then, to defend my traditional rights, I plan to lead an unruly mob through the streets of the town and set fire to the local government offices." which got the reply along the lines of "Unfortunately, those unruly mobs don't speak English so good luck with organising them."

Anyway, good luck to you Pete. You're a better man than I am.  And don't forget you'll have to write a book about your adventures up there in NT so we'll all know if  if our simple-minded prejudices about the place have the slightest validity.