A Lesser Known Local Treasure

The same friend that brought us on our journey to Ling To Tsz also told us about another remote and somewhat secret haunt that we visited Saturday night.

In Hong Kong the city, down a back alley with limited lighting you can find (only on Saturday nights) a very small, but fantastic, underground jazz club. The ‘building’ it’s in, really it is one room with a partial loft, only has one entrance which is in the back somewhat hidden away.  It actually numbers 93 1/6, for those of you that have seen establishments with a 1/2 address this will give you an idea about the size. I would say you could, at the very most, fit 20 people if they are feeling cozy.

During the day it functions as a barber shop with one man who owns it and works there.  I haven’t had my hair cut there, but after hearing about the Zen journey he takes his customers on, I am definitely planning to visit him! The owner, Banky, has traveled the world and discusses everything under the sun and want to get to know the person before styling people’s hair (upwards of 3 hours per customer).  Then on Saturday nights he brings in jazz musicians and hosts intimate performances where the one rule of no talking while the musicians are playing, and the dim lighting make for an ambience that is both peaceful and exhilarating.

While I would absolutely recommend this experience to anyone in Hong Kong, I feel like I must keep with tradition and let you all find it on your own or be guided their by a local instead of just giving you the address.  Some of the best experiences start by stumbling into a local haunt.    

Ling To Tsz Temple

This weekend a local friend took us to a very old and rather remote temple/ monastery: Ling To Tsz.  This temple is said to have been on this location for 1500 years and was originally at a different location a little further up the mountain side for even longer.  It is unlike other Buddhist Monasteries in its small size and lack of a compound.  It is really just the temple building itself that stands on the land.  Ling To Tsz is no longer actively functioning as a monastery according to the caretaker we met, but is still kept up very well. One of the strangest features of this temple is the placement of the door.  It is not on the front of the building, but rather it was moved to the side because the local people at the time felt it had better Feng shui that way. 

The temple itself has beautiful detailing and artwork (apart from the statues inside).  The fish on the side are actually water spouts that when it rains act essentially as gutters and the ridge along the center of the roof depicts the story of the first monk arriving to the site in a teacup down a river. 

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The location of the temple in my opinion adds a great deal of serenity to the whole experience of being there. To get to the site we took a taxi up winding roads, through rural villages, and past industrial plants to the very base of the mountains.  But standing around the outside of the temple all you hear is the quiet babbling of the nearby stream and all you feel is a light breeze. Everything else is pure silence.     As we exited the temple we saw a white heron take flight from the stream, which is a very auspicious symbol meaning (as I understood it) good luck and honor from ancestors and/or it’s a good sign for your journey/path (in life). Regardless of the exact meaning I’m told it is a spiritual occurrence and it honestly felt that way.

Drinks on Top of the World

Later Sunday night I met up with two friends who I actually met on my Israel trip last winter.  One is working in Hong Kong currently and the other was just passing through.  We had dinner and then went to the top of the Ritz Carlton to have drinks in the highest bar in the world, aptly named Ozone.  The view was incredible and my ears popped so many times in the elevator ride up. Also, as someone who doesn’t tend to frequent Ritz Carltons of the world I can’t say what it’s like in other cities, but this was by far the bougiest hotel I’ve ever been inside of… and we were SO under dressed.   A fancy man met us in the lobby and escorted us across to the elevator with a single giant button.   I felt like I shouldn’t touch anything for fear of leaving smudges from my peasant fingertips….

Run away to Shek O

This Sunday my friends and I went to Shek O and had a great time at the beach and hiking in the area.  It’s a bit of a trip from the New Territories to the far end of the HK Island, but it was completely worth it.  One of my local friends lives in Shek O Village (2 minute walk to the beach) and it is such an amazing place.  The beach area is a bit touristy of course, but the village itself has retained its beach town vibe.  It has narrow winding streets with crisscrossing alleyways and small houses that are full of character. Some parts have definitely been gentrified and have grandiose homes with multiple fancy cars in the driveway, but I fell in love with the small homes wedged between restaurants and the locals sitting in between the houses enjoying the weather and the company.  If I was going to become an expat in HK I think this is where I would want to live.  The atmosphere is great and so is the view!

 

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Happy Mid-Autumn!

So this past Thursday was the Mid-Autumn Festival here in Hong Kong.  This is a traditional harvest festival held on the 15^th day of the 8^th month of the lunar calendar on the night of the full moon. The celebrations for Mid-Autumn happen at night so people get out of work around lunch time and then get the next day off, so it’s a nice long weekend.  There are big gatherings and lantern displays in many cities and it is also a time when people travel home to have dinner and spend time with their families.

We went to the big celebration in Victoria Park on Hong Kong Island. There were performances and food vendors and amazing lantern displays.  There was also a fire dragon dance in which a 65(ish) meter dragon made out of incense is lit and paraded around.  The smell is so strong and there is so much smoke from it that it makes your eyes water.  Of course the crowds were so insane it was very difficult to get a good picture of the dragon.  Also before they lit the dragon there were some performances essentially to open for the dragon dance, but it was bagpipes and Irish step dancing and the announcer was speaking  only in Cantonese so I really have no idea how that all fit together.

Since the full moon is a big part of Mid-Autumn mooncakes are also a huge part of the celebration. I haven’t gotten a definitive answer about the origin of the mooncake tradition but one explanation I got was a myth about mooncakes being used by the Ming revolutionaries in their effort to overthrow the Mongolian rulers of China at the end of the Yuan dynasty.  Supposedly, they circulated a rumor that a deadly plague was spreading and that the only way to prevent it was to eat special mooncakes, which would revive and give special powers to the user.  This led to the quick distribution of mooncakes which had a message (coordinating the Han Chinese revolt on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month) printed on the surfaces of mooncakes (which came in packages of four), as a simple puzzle or mosaic. To read the message, each of the four mooncakes was cut into four parts. The resulting 16 pieces were pieced together to reveal the message. The pieces of mooncake were then eaten to destroy the message.

 

Today there are two main kinds of mooncakes in Hong Kong, traditional and snowy.  The traditional mooncakes have an egg yolk in the center and the snowy ones have a variety of fillings and are covered in something similar to mochi.  I’m a huge fan of the snowy ones and needless to say I spent my Mid-Autumn eating a ton of mooncakes! (the one below is a traditional mooncake… I was too busy eating the snowy ones to take a picture)

Symphony of Lights

This week we made our way down to Victoria Harbour after work to catch the famous Symphony of Lights.  It’s the nightly light and music show put on against the skyline of Hong Kong Island.  The pictures don’t really do it justice… I would definitely recommend a visit if you ever go to Hong Kong.  If not for the show itself then at least for the atmosphere and street performers that fill the promenade at night.

From City to Serenity

This past weekend my friends and I kept ourselves pretty busy.  First we went to the Chi Lin Nunnery and the adjoining Nan Lian Garden in Kowloon.  The nunnery was built as a retreat for Buddhist nuns and the garden was a project of the nuns.  Both the nunnery itself and the garden are beautiful and wrap you in a sense of peace as you walk around the grounds.  The most amazing thing is that both are located directly in the middle of a city and are thus surrounded by highways and traffic. And yet once you enter the grounds the only reminder of the city around you are the towering buildings in the background of your photos.  It creates a really fascinating juxtaposition of tranquility amidst the tumult.

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Afterwards we journeyed to the old walled city of Kowloon.  Here’s a brief background of the city for anyone that doesn’t know.  I also suggest googling images of it in it’s former ‘glory’ to get a better idea of what it actually was.  There’s also videos from before it was demolished that I recommend because it is just not possible to imagine the conditions people lived in.

Kowloon Walled City was a very dense and mostly ungoverned settlement in Kowloon City, Hong Kong.  It was originally a Chinese military fort, but it became a civilian enclave after the New Territories were leased to Britain in 1898.  After WWII the population in the city rapidly increased until it contained over 33,000 residents within its 6.4 acres (these people largely lived in ramshackle and subdivided apartment buildings with apartments averaging 200 sq ft.  Because of the dirty and cramped conditions, and the fact that most residents lived well below the poverty line and without public services, police and city officials avoided venturing into the settlement.  This left it to be controlled by the Triads from the 1950s to the 1970s (probably what it’s most well known for).  In 1987, the Hong Kong government announced plans to demolish the Walled City.  A long drawn out process due to the difficulty of evicting the population, it was finished in 1994 and the area was turned into the Kowloon Walled City Park.

The park also serves to preserved some of the remains of the city and houses a small museum about its history.  Seeing it now, you would never imagine that so many people once lived there like that.

Hitting the Gym

The gym at the university… pretty inspiring to be honest.

Cheung Chau

So this post is a bit delayed and I really have no excuse to offer except that being an adult is apparently very tiring so sometimes I just would rather go to bed at 10pm instead of writing….

Last weekend my friend and I took the ferry to one of Hong Kong’s outlying islands Cheung Chau.  It’s a somewhat smaller island but they have amazing street food.  Needless to say we spent a great deal of our time on the island eating.  There was fresh juices, mango shaved ice, potato spirals (think chips not fries), baked clams in the shell, and steaming ice cream that we bought specifically for the steaming part. And all of it was delicious.  Although the one downside is that since food and seafood in particular is such a big thing there you are hit with many, strong, overlapping scents that can be a bit off putting while you’re eating…. there’s also the fact that people are selling dead sea creatures all along the road in the hot sun (I’ll let you imagine that particular scent).

 

Another really cool thing about Cheung Chau is that no one on the island has cars.  There are police cars and such, but all the regular people ride bikes only.  And I do mean everyone from tiny children to grandparents and even the occasional dog!  It makes it really easy to walk in the roads and stuff without worrying about getting hit (although in my experience bikes can also be a menace).

One of the popular tourist attractions in Cheung Chau is the pirate cave which of course I had to go to even though it required a rather arduous hike to get to.  This cave is said to have been a stash place/hideout for the famous Hong  Kong pirate Cheung Po Tsai in the 19th century, an today visitors can have the experience of climbing down into it and walking/crawling through the VERY small and VERY dark tunnel (keep in mind my previous mentions of the humidity in this part of the world as well)… which of course we did!