New Year moments...

The week following the Chinese New Year is a special time in Hong Kong with lots of great food, events, reunions, etc. I thought I'd share a few images from the week to give you an idea of what we chose to do...

Kwun Tong Flower Market

Massive flower markets sprout up all across Hong Kong during the first weekend of the New Year, so we chose to visit one very close to where Katherine's parents live.

A popular New Year decoration: poisonous Nipplefruit!

A popular New Year potted plant: Narcissus

Hiding amongst the Mandarin orange trees (with my unintentionally shorter-than-short New Year haircut!)

Strolling by the market stalls


New Year Dinner #2

Another feast whipped up by Katherine's mom, this time at their soon-to-be-former home and only for the immediate family.

Visits from Old Friends

Two of Katherine's HKU classmates, Helena and A-Gaai, brought their daughter (Baau Baau) to see us.

Random Encounters

To my surprise, while waiting at the bus stop, I turned around and discovered the tree which Lipton uses to grow their tea!

Hall Game Night

Most residents of the Hall went home for the New Year break, but some weren't able to, so we held a game night to raise their spirits. About 20 folks showed up, coming and going at different times throughout the evening.

Our little advertisement, posted in the elevators

Some Settlers of Catan (following a great game of Chinese Pictionary)

Evening Harbour Walk in Tsim Sha Tsui

On the final night of the New Year week, we happened to be in Kowloon, so we decided to head over to Victoria Harbour to take in the nightly light show. (Carson and I tried to watch it from Victoria Peak back in May, but came away unimpressed. I've since learned that the show was designed for people standing along the harbour front, so the experience is much better from that vantage.)

Outside the Peninsula Hotel, attempting to capture a rare phenomenon: a "smiling" moon (just above my head, but very tiny, and probably with Venus just to the left of it)

A slightly closer shot of the moon (upper right) over the Peninsula Hotel fountain

Lots of folks gathering for the harbour light show

Enjoying the majesty of the harbour


Bird's Nest!

You know, we've lived in Hong Kong for over a full year now, and this week I finally worked up my courage to try bird's nest. It's an ancient Chinese medicinal jelly purported to have many health benefits. And it's wholly made from bird spit (Swallow spit, to be more precise).

A big, ol' spoonful of bird spit. It's rather stringy, gelatinous, and even a bit chewy.

Down the hatch! It actually doesn't have any flavor or scent, so it wasn't difficult to slurp up.

A very nice week to start 2009!

Happy Chinese New Year!

We're a week away from the actual start of the new year on the Chinese calendar, but yesterday we celebrated early with a very nice family gathering at our place. As usual, Katherine's mother (and, this time, with one of her aunts) crafted a delicious feast. I'm not going to run through all the dishes, but I thought I'd highlight two...

As part of her traditional Indonesian satay meal, Katherine's mother prepared lontong. What you see above is the first stage: rice is partially cooked, packed into banana leaves, tightly wrapped, and steamed.
The second stage involves unwrapping the lontong and slicing them into bite-size chunks. The result is a very fragrant base for the meal (used much like standard rice or noodles would be).

We had a few different kinds of spring rolls, but I thought these were the cutest: they are simply fresh shrimp that have been peeled and deveined (with tails left intact), folded into spring roll wrapping, and pan-fried.

Here's the whole gang! Starting from Katherine and moving to the right: Katherine, Katherine's aunt (her father's younger brother's wife), Alice (Katherine's brother's fiance), Katherine's brother, Ting (Katherine's father's younger brother's daughter), Katherine's uncle (Katherine's father's younger brother), Katherine's uncle (Katherine's father's older brother), Katherine's cousin (Katherine's father's older brother's son), Katherine's cousin (Katherine's father's older brother's son), Carmen (Katherine's father's older brother's son's wife), Katherine's father, Katherine's mother, and me. Writing all this out in English sure takes a lot of space! For each of these familial relations, Cantonese (well, Chinese in general) uses only two characters...so the same description would take a whole lot less space in Chinese. ;>

After dinner we celebrated Katherine's brother's birthday with some delicious chocolate+fruit+cream cake!

A great New Year's celebration!

Holiday Excursions...

This week, before Katherine and I finish our holidays and return to full-time work, we decided to take a few afternoon trips to various locations around Hong Kong...

Excursion #1: Walking to Victoria Peak

On Monday, we decided (on an impulse) to walk from our place up to Victoria Peak. It happens that we are very close to an entry point for a large series of hiking trails which all culminate at the Peak, so we decided to take advantage of that for the first time...

Scaling steps leading to the trail head

About a third of the way up, looking north toward Victoria Harbour

Perhaps 100 meters from the Peak, looking down on the Ap Lei Chau and Lamma islands

All-in-all the walk took us about an hour and fifteen minutes - quite reasonable. Once we did make it up, we enjoyed a pleasant dinner and then took a taxi back home (which we thought would be faster, but probably ended up taking longer than the other method we considered: Peak Tram + bus).

Excursion #2: Aberdeen

Tuesday we hopped on a bus heading south along the Hong Kong island coast and chose to alight (a term widely used in the Hong Kong transportation industry) at Aberdeen...

Strolling along the Aberdeen Harbour (you can see Ap Lei Chau on the other side)

Digging into Aberdeen's famous fishball noodles!

Here we have a bowl of fish broth with fish noodles (fish meat, flour, and seasonings squeezed into noodle form) with pan-fried fishball slices, pork dumplings wrapped with a skin made of fish meat, and a few veggies in an attempt to provide some balance. It was absolutely delicious, but if you don't like fish, I suppose you might not enjoy it. ;>

Excursion #3: Hong Kong Wetland Park and Yuen Long

Wednesday we decided to head to the Hong Kong Wetland Park (a place that Carson and I had visited together in May, but Katherine had still yet to see)...

The day started out quite misty, as you can see in this picture of Tsing Ma bridge taken during our bus ride (while driving on Ting Kau bridge).

Before heading outside to the bulk of the Wetland Park, we spent some time in their aquarium / zoo area. It may be hard to make out, but coiled above me on a piece of safety glass is a seriously giant snake (we didn't see a label for it - perhaps an anaconda?) that appeared to be digesting something (a section of its abdomen was much wider than the rest of it).


Once we got outside, we actually ran into another snake - but this one was much smaller and hiding in the dirt on a path we chose to walk along. It completely startled us when it quickly slithered off before we accidentally stepped on it! Needless to say, it all happened very quickly, so I didn't get a change to snap a photo.

The park has a vast array of life on display, including gorgeous lily ponds like this one.

Here I'm about to snack on a baby mangrove tree (the small bean-like object in my hand).

This is one of the best places in Hong Kong for convenient bird watching. On this particular day, we were very, very fortunate to see (alongside a breathtaking array of ducks, herons, egrets, cormorants, etc) a gathering of Black-Faced Spoonbills...

(This picture is a little odd because we used one of the provided telescopes to capture it.) The Black-Faced Spoonbill is endangered, with an estimated 2000 alive worldwide. A portion of their population like to winter in Hong Kong, it seems, and we saw the proof.


The park is adjacent to the Tin Shui Wai district, and you can see its highrise apartments looming if you look over your shoulder.

After exiting the park (just as they were closing), we took the MTR Light Rail (yet another cool form of mass transit, this one specific to the New Territories) to nearby Yuen Long for dinner...

Dumplings!

Lai mien (hand-pulled) noodles with beef!

Hand-shaved noodles (a first for me) with Taiwanese fishballs stuffed with beef!

A soda made from grapefruit and honey!

After dinner, we meandered around Yuen Long a bit, picking up a few items...

Salak (or "snakeskin fruit", as it is called in Cantonese)! I'd never seen this before and it was pretty tasty. The skin was much more like a shell - a bit brittle and very easy to peel.

Wintermelon "wife" cakes! The most famous bakery for these is in Yuen Long, so we had to get a fresh box.

A fun series of trips, to be sure!

New Year's in China!

A little over a week ago I obtained my Chinese visa in preparation for a trip to Shenzhen. On New Year's Day, we took that trip!

We started by riding the KCR from Hung Hom to the HK-China border at Lo Wu. After clearing Hong Kong Immigration, we walked across a short bridge (spanning a small river) into Shenzhen and its own immigration and customs checkpoint. I flashed my visa (Karl) and strolled right through. Once on the other side, we took a picture to commemorate the moment...

(looking back toward Shenzhen's immigration and customs checkpoint)

We then hopped on a bus and joined a number of other family members (from Katherine's mother's side) for a wonderful reunion...

During the lunch that followed, I tried an interesting Indonesian drink: corn juice...

A thick (slightly thinner than egg nog) liquid that was positively bursting with corn flavor! ;> I'm not the biggest fan of corn (I know some of you reading this aren't either) and I can't say pouring it down my throat improved my opinion, but I'm glad I tried it.

Afterwards we strolled around one small section of the city (which is enormous - twice the land area of Hong Kong with a few million more people)...

...on our way to do some furniture shopping (not for ourselves, but for Katherine's parents)...


...in a building that was jam-packed with furniture stores of all shapes and sizes...


Once we were done there, it was time to head home. We took a taxi back to the border, crossed the China and Hong Kong checkpoints easily, and hopped back on the southbound KCR...

It was a really fun day and a great first trip into mainland China. I look forward to going back.

Though I only spent a few hours there, and only saw a very limited portion of the city, I do have a few comparative observations to share...

• Language: The dominant language was unquestionably Mandarin. Many people seemed to be able to speak and understand Cantonese, but it was not the language of first contact (as it is in Hong Kong). There was also much less written and spoken English.
• Demographics: Noticeably fewer non-Chinese. I think I might have seen only one or two people, other than me, who looked like they weren't ethnically Chinese. As such, I did notice people curiously looking at me more so than in Hong Kong.
  
• Architecture: Generally speaking, the buildings seemed quite similar in construction style to Hong Kong. (Each apartment unit, for example, had externally-mounted air conditioners, just like in Hong Kong)
  
• Layout: It felt wider and shorter, if that makes any sense. ;> Buildings had more space between them, so it was more spread out, and while there were highrises, there seemed to be a lot fewer than in Hong Kong.
  
• Transportation: Cars appeared to be the primary method of transport, not public transit, though it did look like they were rapidly expanding their subway system. Bicycles were also extremely popular, even on roads in major city areas (and highways!) - Hong Kong has very few bike riders by comparison. Taxis also seemed to be able to stop anywhere - including highways - to load and unload people (whereas, in Hong Kong, there are strict regulations governing that).
  
• Advertising: I didn't see any TV advertising, but the signs and printed ads around the city definitely seemed to have an emphasis on the use of women to attract business (much like in Hong Kong). I think this is perhaps more widespread in Hong Kong, but we did see something that we've never seen in Hong Kong before: ads for hospitals which used pretty nurses (as opposted to, say, good healthcare ;>) for bait.
• Smoking: There was quite a lot of it, and there seem to be no laws against it in public places, nor did there seem to be segregation of it (i.e. no separate smoking sections in restaurants).
  
• General feeling: In some ways more chaotic than Hong Kong and definitely more Chinese-nationalistic than Hong Kong. We saw plenty of bilboards and banners delivering Chinese government propaganda messages, something you definitely don't see in Hong Kong. It was also common for people to walk in the middle of streets and highways with little regard to traffic (and cross streets without heeding the crosswalk lights).
  

I think that just about covers it. I'll leave you with a sign, seen in a Shenzhen park, that I found particularly funny...

(If you do approach, the sisal hemp will attack you with the one end-all-be-all thorn that it has!)

Happy New Year, everyone! And congratulations to the Virginia Tech Hokies on a most excellent Orange Bowl victory!