Cultural Week

Part I- We started cultural week by making the Hong Kong original egg custard dessert/breakfast item. I was expecting much more chaos as I took the elevator to the third floor and prepared for about 400 kids crammed into one room with egg and flour everywhere. There were about 40 people all mixing dough, putting it into tins, putting in the egg mixture and then waiting as their concoctions baked in the mini toaster ovens. I was instructed to take off my rings and wash my hands as they are sure to integrate exchange students. So after being asked if someone could take a picture of me (the poor guy was really embarrassed) I consumed a freshly baked egg tart. Scrumcious.

Part II- I have now seen it all I think. Two hours of “cultural” night and I have witnessed a Hong Kong version of a high school talent show or something. They are big on “teams” here so we saw the dance team (think Berkeley’s “Movement” team), the drama team (try deciphering what exactly is going on during a half hour performance in Cantonese)and the band team perform. Now, recall Rocky, the guy who so graciously took us shopping with his little giggles, he told me then that he was in the “band team”. So, I naturally assumed he played the tuba or the flute but, NO, he meant “band team” in the rock band sense of the word “team”. So we heard him rock out and pump up the house with his Cantonese rock as he jumped up and down and touched all the ladies hands. He was the best Asian front man I’ve ever seen. My friends and I jumped up and swayed with the lot of them as the bands played songs from My Chemical Romance and Green Day to Cantopop and apparently Cantorock.

But the show was impressive if only to see the sense of hall spirit and comradery between the students and their friends performing. Additionally, the whole thing was run by students (hence all the technical glitches). I was glad I attended.

Snapshots

Australia Day: we went out to celebrate it at about 5 and came home at 2. The Aussies I was with complained about the crap music but the free sausages were a perk. Everyone was in a coffee shop around 10 o’clock dropping in their chairs and ready for bed. Lucky that a second wind came on or else Erin and Lorna wouldn’t have been able to talk to the British and Australian Consulate. Erin really is racking up these sporadic lunch dates (I will keep you updated about the highly random and potentially mortifying event coming up this Sunday).

Going to the gym: This is a new phenomenon here in Hong Kong. I have gone a few times and have honestly felt a bit masculine. The ideal of feminine beauty here is something more delicate and petite than the American or Western conception. Sometimes I feel more masculine than the guys in the gym. I swear one guy just kept walking around the gym, looking around and he barely lifted a weight. Either way, Lorna and I compete with the other girls for the one elliptical available and listen to the news in Cantonese on the television. Hey, at least I am trying to burn off all the panda cookies I eat late at night…

Most expensive meal yet: Ordering without a care leads to you being down $200 HKD which is only about $25 USD but still is quite steep considering my lunch was $1.50 USD. An enjoyable meal but sushi of all things doesn’t make your stomach feel like you got your money’s worth.

My problem: So I have finally solidified a major problem that I have. I found a simple metaphor in my Buddhism class that really sums it up nicely. One of the first questions I asked my professor (the cute man with the robe) was what the Buddha says about the origin of life. I understood that there was something he called Karma but I couldn’t grasp how he explained that the various life forms came about to begin with. In a later lecture, Buddha’s wisdom concerning the answer to my question came to me. The Buddha asked his follower “if you were shot by an arrow would you immediately ask who shot you and with what poison and from what position?” Clearly here (for those of you who really need it spelled out) the answer is NO, you would be running to a doctor or anyone close by for help about how to remove the arrow and to cure your wound. Such is human life. If you realistically believe that we begin our life in a position of suffering then you start out as the wounded man. Hence the questions “Why are we here? Why do we suffer” are pointless and we should instead be asking questions about how to end suffering. This is my philosophical insight for the blog for the day. Hope that if you know me well enough, you see how this whole dialogue makes sense. Hope it helps you solve all your life problems as well.

random

*Shopping for pashminas (I've already bought two...)
*Starr Ferry (a seven minute ride from one side of the harbor to the other)
*Alison and I mimicking the cute little Asian rat cartoon characters (that are everywhere because it is the year of the rat this upcoming Chinese New Year!)

BOBA!!

The Minor Adjustments

Pictures: The beautiful indoor mall, the food I made, me getting my hair chopped, the girls hanging out in the pantry (kitchen) after we topped the meal off with some Oreos

Showering: the girls are very modest here and so it is a big “no no” to run to and from your room in a towel when showering. So, I now learn to take all my clothes and towel to the bathroom so as not to offend the other girls who don’t want to see my white legs.

Loudspeaker: There is a serious invasion of privacy here in that every night at about 11 there is an announcement. You know like in middle school when you got a morning new bulletin? Except this is college and it is pretty late and they don’t make you say the pledge of allegiance but instead force you to listen to “cantopop” (pop music in Cantonese) for a solid two minutes. Not ideal for studying…then again, nothing here really seems to be.

Mahjong: For those of you who lived in Stebbins with me you should recall my domino playing tendencies. They have a game here that all the people on my floor come together to play in the pantry. Sound carries loudly through the halls but even still, I know when they are playing this game because mixing around the tiles makes quite a sound! I have been told it is like gin rummy and that if I can learn which Chinese symbols stand for which numbers then I am set. It is my goal to know how to play it by the end of the semester.

The buses: There are minibuses here that don’t have designated stopping spots. You have to say “yauh lohk” (please let me get off here) loudly to the driver who will then pull off whenever he can and just plop you off. They drive like madmen but it is cheap (I paid less than $1 to go from one end of the island to the other side). Just don’t ask them to turn up the music and sing loudly to it (Alison learned the hard way).

Boba tea and street food: I haven’t actually tried the various street food available. I have been told to be skeptical of it. But I have purchased bubble tea (otherwise known as Boba) here which is scarce here because apparently it is a Taiwanese thing. But I have yet to try to doughy waffles they sell for a buck. I’ll keep you posted…

Cooking food: We have been to the big supermarket here, Wellcome, a few times now. It has a pretty decent selection and due to refrigeration restraints I have to refrain from buying too much. But the other night we decided to make dinner in our little kitchen. So, I basically monopolized on the planning and got salmon, tofu, some fresh veggies (because when you order vegetables here, they are just different) and rice. I cooked the ever so easy yet delicious blackbean/apricot salmon and five of us girls huddled around the table eating our homecooked meal to the sound of Mahjong in the background. The slight adjustment for me here was buying the fish and prepping it. Dad, I think you will appreciate this tidbit the most in that the part of the salmon they were selling was not what I am used to. It had all the bones and skin on and had a little ambiguous circular side part that I was later informed was the “belly”. So, I didn’t cook that but after prepping the fish for what seemed like ages we had significantly less salmon to work with but a first successful meal.

Hair: I let Emma chop mine! I feel pounds lighter and have a new French or potentially Asian hair cut. I figured I would'nt be seeing any of YOU people for a while so why not…

Elevators: You know how they give stats about how long car owners will spend waiting at red lights. I feel like in Hong Kong the stat should be about spending years of your life waiting for elevators here. You know the old tradition of trying to fit as many people into a phone booth as you could? I swear there is some record here for most people squished in an elevator.

Malls: Yesterday was a big shopping day for me although I had little to show for it. The mall we went to was indoor (thankfully because it was pouring) and highly resembled Powell St. Station Mall in SF. We went with a new friend, Rocky, who helped tell us what he thought looked good and what didn’t and who eventually led us to a small complex where he said more of the locals go to shop. Here we found very small boutiques that must have had no more than fifty items of clothes, there was one person watching the store and when you came in they basically watched you look at their clothes. It is awkward but maybe it will dissuade me from buying too much. After this excursion, shopping all day, I wondered whether or not my day could be considered partaking in Hong Kong culture…they do shop a lot.

I am still feeling the after effects of my decision to play volleyball with my hall Sunday night. Everything happens later here so we began practice at nine and arrived back home at 11:30. The way that belonging to a hall works is that you have to sign a lot of forms pledging that you are going to join at least one kind of club or team. Then you religiously have to participate in the “hall culture” by attending weekly practices, meets or performances. So there is quite a wide selection of things to do here and at any mention of an interest the local jump on trying to recruit you to join. So I might play soccer tomorrow after class (girls soccer here isn’t very big so I am assuming that many of the girls haven’t played before this year), I watched the dance practice and table tennis practice last night and have dodged many fliers in the halls of the school to avoid any form of commitment. I want to join but am trying to not commit to anything because I want my schedule to be open for traveling (I just booked a long weekend trip to Thailand!!). So, attending volleyball practice was fun because I love to play but interested because it was further insight into how the activities are run here. Seriously is the answer. Hong Kong Uni students are very proud people of what they do, their halls reputation and bolstering spirit. So, I got to witness the pep talk that the girls gave the boys after practice telling them they weren’t taking it seriously enough if they wanted to do well at their upcoming inter-hall competition (which was all in Cantonese of course but I got the translation). So, it hurts when I sneeze or laugh to hard now (working muscles I haven’t used in a while) but it was worth it!

So after the tour we got let off early to make our floor dinner. We went to Mong Kok to shop around the area for a bit, found the temple street night market and continued to look at the various stands there that sold anything from crazy man thongs to ancient Chinese coins. I had no idea that you could just set up shop some places and sell sex toys right there in the open. As if my stomach wasn’t already uneasy, we had clay pot seafood based dinner. We met the rest of the floor (co-ed) and hiked up these inconspicuous stairs to this fluorescently lit room. I was commenting on the harsh lighting to Emma when she pointed out that it was really a good thing because with the new strange things we were eating…we wanted to actually see our food. Such an interesting contrast to being on a bus with exchange students all day, our floor mates truly defy all the rumors that go around about the locals not being friendly. I will admit that I wasn’t that adventuresome and only tried fried oysters and this fish dish in the claypot. But everyone else was massaging large shrimp to get the meat out and delicately placing the rest of it on the table. They had snails and eel, liver and honey sausage. It was quite a feast but I left it without having eaten much (which was just fine for what was to come afterward).

*picture of dried food store included

Stop#5: Museum of Coastal Defense. I don’t really know why we came here. The tour company must have gotten some sort of deal because I think of all the places we could have gone, learning about canons and whatnot. So not much to report here except a great view and a place to talk further with exchange students. A handful of people I have talked to have done back to back exchanges in different countries. This seems like a cultural shock overload but also a cool alternative to doing a year in one country. One American girl went from Rome to Hong Kong, a German guy went from Korea to Hong Kong and another German girl went from Sydney to Hong Kong. I don’t think I could do this whole process twice…too draining emotionally and monetarily.

Stop #4: Stanley Market and Murray House. Again by the water, rows of restaurants lining the boardwalk, rows of shops selling touristy things (admit to buying some cheap art to adorn my empty wall). The Murray building was not really something we went into but it was a recently reconstructed colonial building that was moved from one spot to another by being separated into over 3,000 pieces and then transported by boat to be reassembled at Stanley building. Found more boba tea (not really popular here), which, coupled with the sunshine, made the day an instant success.

Stop #3: Repulse Bay. Ill named, this bay was gorgeous. It was apparently called this because of the original need to repel the pirates who would come infiltrate its shores. We were given a couple of hours to just chill in the glory of the warm day on the sandy lowly populated beach. So even though I certainly thought it was January, I could have easily burned out there with my popsicle dipping my toes in the still chilly water. The only locals I saw were men in speedos and I managed to sneak a pic of a hardcore beachgoer doing pushups in front of a concave hotel towering over the beach. Only a mere fifteen minute bus ride from our dorm…definitely returning.

Stop #2: Aberdeen. This is the historic fishing village of Hong Kong where we took small wooden motorized boats called “Sampans”. Apparently this means literally “three pieces of woods”. We took a half hour ride through the typhoon shelter and saw all the dogs on the various boats, the tires hanging over the boats as bumpers. It really is a little floating community and but it seemed that the boat drivers main expeditions were for tourists. The stone faced man we had navigating us around put out a tip jar and made noises signaling to us that we should tip him. So, we did. Easy as pie. But because Hong Kong has such good public housing and welfare (even though our Australian friend thinks it is worse here than she is used to) that there are hardly any homeless people. So, although Hong Kong is a big city, I have never before been asked for money. And in this case it was for a tip and not just a random handout. This is to give you some idea of the quality of life here. Though don’t be fooled; the minimum wage is very low and entire families live in very small apartments with only one room. I think this is the nature of city life where the lack of space forces everything to become vertical but I can’t imagine not ever being able to have my own house, let alone room. This is often why going abroad is a good idea—it makes you realize how much you have.

"Live it. Love it" <- slogan of Hong Kong (good advice)

So, all day tour number two. All a bit more rested than the day before, a fresh batch of us headed off to get a traditional Hong Kong breakfast. Not the healthiest thing ever, we ate a pineapple bun (which can be found everywhere at the pastry shops here) and an egg custard tart thing. All of this was topped off with the Hong Kong original morning beverage of “yuen yeung” which is a mixture of coffee, tea and, as always, condensed milk. I vouch that without the weird milk, it could have been a winner. Over our caloric feast we befriended some Canadians and one girl, Fellon, from Holland.

The last stop of the day was to the Museum of History. We had decided to spend more time in the gardens and so we were only allotted thirty minutes in the museum. I think I could have spent three or four hours in there so let’s just say that I am not yet an expert on Hong Kong’s history but hopefully will be picking up bits and pieces of it here and there. We arrived back to campus tired and ready for the comforts of home. So here I sit at my computer typing to you all, because I don’t really know what else to do.

The second temple was close by but a complete contrast to the crowded, smoky chaotic scene of the Taoist temple. We entered the recently built garden surrounding the Buddhist temple which was tranquil and lovely. There were paved walkways to guide our way but the sights we saw, although natural, were works of art. There were trees that we certainly don’t see in the U.S. and I don’t think I have ever appreciated rocks before as much here. The architecture was traditional Chinese and it was all very natural feeling aside from the occasional bright gold ornament here or there. We made our way to the nunnery (is actually called the Chi Lin Nunnery) and aside from containing a vegetarian restaurant also has real monks within it. There were some everyday people kneeling down before the scattered doors of the temple where the Buddha was represented in all his glory. There seemed to be less ritual about it and it seemed more of a personal experience than a public one. Needless to say, I will be returning and if any of you come to visit me I will be sure to take you here.

The Taoist temple was full of other tour buses full of people who were actual spiritual practicers. We were phonies. But we indulged in the tradition by buying incense sticks outside the temple and then entering a smoky crowded courtyard where people were most certainly doing their thing. Everyone was carrying them over their heads to not get ash on anyone else. There were people kneeling and praying with the sticks by swinging them up and down in front of them. Some of them (like the woman pictured) gave offerings of fruit or even chicken to the gods. The instructions were to light our incense sticks and then put three in one place to the side and then three more to the main offering. So we did just this but without really understanding anything behind it. Then we got this cup of sticks with Chinese numbers and inscriptions on it. We were to talk to the gods in our head, say our name, why we were here and then ask the question we wanted an answer to. We shook the sticks while doing this and then tried to maneuver one to fall out. The stick that did would be our sign from the god. It had a number on it and then we paid $2 to get the translation. I am not going to disclose what I asked about but I didn’t take it too hard when Rebecca translated mine and it told me “medium to low”. It had a story about a King who no one believed but who knew what he spoke would be the truth because he was the king. So, I am going to selectively interpret this to mean that whatever I say something is and will, can be so. Convenient, no?

If we didn’t return to the bus on time we would be left behind. Rebecca threatened that it would be a HKD $500 taxi ride back home if we didn’t make it. So, most of us did. We shoved off to the religious portion of the trip. We were to visit two very different temples: A Taoist temple and a Buddhist temple.

The next stop on our tour was to the Wetland park. This is a noble attempt to incorporate some greenery into the lives of the Hong Kong people—to give them a breath of fresh air from the city life and to educate them on their environment. Honestly, I saw a fish or two in a pond that was supposed to have a lot cool things in it (like King Ghost crabs!), maybe two butterflies in the “Butterfly Garden” and the infamous crocodile was smaller than I imagined and seemed unimpressively lazy. So, kind of like lame segment of the zoo. My standards are high, I know. But I did think that it was a good idea. Kids might grow up for most of their childhoods and not know what stillness is. And, the closest I’ve come to silence and distance from the hustle and bustle was there. So, in addition to the surprisingly good club sandwich I got for lunch, I appreciated this stop if only for the brief silence it afforded me.

I am pretending to meditate here on this unprotected bridge (you just can’t see the people I am holding up to take the picture).

I also decided that the crocodile wasn’t worth taking a picture of and this cute little girl with the “Hello Kitty” backpack was instead. Even though the crocodile has a good story behind it. Basically crocodiles are illegal to have in Hong Kong (even though our guide told us that they help cure asthma) and so one day one probably was being smuggled across the border and escaped. People tried to catch it for months. They even called specialists like good ol’ Steve Irwin. But no one could catch it. Until finally an local old man threw a regular fishing net on it and the job was done. The Hong Kong government supposedly gave him new fishing nets but he said he would have rather had cash. My guide book made a good point in that this is an interesting symbolic case where a local problem was solved by a local person. Perhaps how it should be.

There are many imports that come to Hong Kong. There are over 20 ports which hold 18 ships each. This is still not enough to efficiently bring in everything that Hong Kong imports. They can easily ship to and from the U.S. without expensive taxes based on some past arrangement that mainland China isn’t privy to. One of the imported goods that I reveled in today were the flowers. The orchids here are plentiful and glorious. The roses are held tightly in nets to ensure they don’t bloom too early. There are many new strange “flowers?” here too like bright yellow ones that remind me of lemon chickens and others that look like green showerheads that some forest fairy might clean herself with. All of them are much cheaper than the U.S. so I might just have to brighten up my room one of these days with a new tree or bouquet of flowers.

Double Standards

The first stop that we made was the bird market. Birds are highly regarded here in China and it is common for elderly people to come to this market with their birds (in their bird cages which always seem one size too small) to hang them up, let them sing and look at other birds while maybe buying some fresh food for them, bugs. I never really thought having a bird for a pet sounded like a good idea. They are too loud and not cuddly enough. But I still don’t think that this warrants them to have to be locked up in jail cells with no friends. No one should be subjected to this. Even the grasshoppers and crickets that they fed them did not deserve their fates to be sealed into bags after having had their legs clipped off. Cruel I tell you. But where I might judge this scene if I were to witness it in America, I just didn’t in Hong Kong. It is something about respecting traditions and rituals and understanding that things are just different here. So I saw the solemn man who caught me taking a picture of him as a beautiful part of the Hong Kong vibrancy instead of some heartless bug chopper. Yes, bug chopper. The half hour we had left after seeing all the bird market had to offer was spent on a much brighter scene.