Everlasting Love

Bit of culture for the weekend – I dragged Ross to an HK Dance Company performance called “Everlasting Love” – a reimagining of tradition Chinese folklore love stories. The theme revolves around a central character, of indeterminate era, who is struck by how these traditional stories are still relevant and have continued to evolve – after all, love stories are pretty universal. I think Ross was right to be skeptical about it. The dance was immaculately performed (or at least looked it, to my untrained eye), the costumes were by turns beautiful or ragged, and the music was, well, Chinese. Somehow the “story” felt rather incoherent. Each love story, with a theme such as “Encounter” was presented in a series of vignettes, some of which were faaaar too long. Towards the end the music, costumes and the number of dancers on stage at once conspired to make it all a bit “Les Miserables”. I don’t think that was what they were aiming for.

The really astonishing thing is the late comers. It’s no secret that everyone is always late in HK (sweeping generalizations, moi?!) but this takes the biscuit. 5 minutes into the performance, at what they call an appropriate break, the house lights come up, and another 30 or 40 people come in. They chat a bit, rustle some stuff and settle in, before the performance starts again. I’d say this has happened at about 60% of the dance performances I’ve been to. It’s a tad distracting.

We’ve seen a few performances here now – of the contemporary ones, the two that I’ve enjoyed most are The White Body by Ea Sola, and an Outdoor Dance Gala by Helen Lai, performed by the City Contemporary Dance Company.

The White Body was very moving, and affecting, because somehow the message was clear enough for me to see and understand, but not patronizingly obvious. It was also extremely well performed, with music which perfectly reflected what was happening. The combination of high energy dance and music is pretty hard to resist!

I enjoyed The Outdoor Dance Gala partly because there’s not a lot of outdoor art here, so it was good to see that it is possible, and partly because it was hard to watch. The dancers were performing on the piazza outside the Cultural Centre in TST; it’s just a paved area near the harbor front. It was a very physical performance, with lots of flying bodies, hard impacts and noise. The risks and potential injuries kind of challenge what you expect from dance. In fact, the actual injuries do too. Being so close to the performers, you can see the grazes and scrapes gathered along the way.

PPS

Today I literally cannot see the other side of the harbour from the office. It's less than 2km away but all that lies beyond the HK-side waterfront is a big white wall of rain.

PS

It is essentially dark now, at 11.44am. The palm trees across the way do not look happy. And even though I'm nowhere near a window, on the 19th floor of a 36 floor tower, I can hear the rain. It's pretty miderable. At times like this, I really crave a good old Engligh pub with a roaring log fire. To be fair, it hasn't really rained since the last typhoon (October?) so I shouldn't complain about the weather, but I will because ngoh hai ying gwok yan.

Should've guessed it'd be like this, as this Thursday is a public holiday here, and will be time for the annual dragon boating extravaganza.

On the other hand, today is a Bank Hol in the UK, and the temp was the same there as here yesterday....

The day that the rain came down

Actually, it started a few days ago, and hasn’t stopped since. So after weeks of moaning that weekends were too busy, and we never got a chance to relax, I had relaxation thrust upon me this weekend. And man was I bored. Ross still sailed, despite the downpour, and came home with the usual quota of bumps and bruises. Meanwhile, I had braved Causeway Bay, for a spot of shopping. Now, it’s usually quite frustrating to walk around in HK for many reasons 1) it is often uncomfortably warm to walk any distance 2) the pavements are very narrow, and most importantly 3) people walk veeeeerrrryyyy sloooooowly. And they don’t look where they are going, stop dead in the middle of the street, generally weave about and make life difficult. Which is why we often walk on the road not the pavement (don’t tell the police). Now imagine that scenario when it’s still 25 degrees (nice and sticky!), it is absolutely pissing with rain, there are about 500,000 people walking around Causeway Bay, and every one of them has a big fat umbrella just waiting to poke your eye out. Then try to get those people to move through a bottleneck-y bit of the street in an orderly fashion. Not gonna happen. It’s like that situation where the traffic lights go out of order at a roundabout and utter chaos ensues, even though everyone patently knows how to tackle a roundabout with no traffic lights.

Anyway… I went to the Football Club for lunch yesterday, very nice. We sat outside under the covered bit and watched the rain slant ever closer to horizontal. Also Brunch Club and Supper (odd name huh?) has opened on Leighton Road, and it is very lovely. The food is ok in the evenings, and more importantly they do great brunch – lots of egg options and stuff as well as healthy muesli + fruit. It’s also a really nice venue, much better than the pokey little one in CWB. It has loads of magazines, a piano, an OK view, and a kind of (fake) industrial loft feel. Recommended!

Les vacances de M Eymard

Salut tous! Hong Kong is all Frenchified at the moment - it is of course "Le French May", but more importantly Romain is here to check up on us.

After an eventful Friday night at FINDS (at least one evening in LKF is obligatory for all visitors) I managed to stumble out of bed for early morning Pilates. By late morning, we were all packed and ready. Ross headed off to Hebe Haven for an afternoon's racing on Struan, and Romain and I caught the TurboJet to Macau.

I'm thinking of starting a new guide book series, for rookie tourists - it's based on the I Spy books of old. Your little book would list all the things you need to do and see there in order to justifiably say that you've "done" Macau. Think that we covered just about everything in our 30ish hours:

1. Eat an egg tart. Preferably a custard-y one rather than an omelette-y one.
2. Eat bakkwa (strange-looking but seriously yummy pork jerky type stuff)
3. Visit one of Stanley Ho's establishments with the sole purpose of losing some hard-earned cash. How handy that they readily accept HK$ as well as Macanese patacas. And despite what you might believe after watching Casino Royale, you can actually go into the Grand Lisboa in jeans and flip flops.
4. Visit something "cultural" - we chose the Guia fortress and lighthouse, atop the hill just behind our hotel.
5. Make a ruckus in the hotel pool by talking (gasp!) while elderly ladies and gents warm up, then do a slo-mo front crawl in matching swimming caps.
6. Guys only - try to look up girls' skirts when you go to the ruins of Sao Paolo cathedral. The elevated walkway is mesh.
7. Pay your respects to the saints whose reliquaries rest in the Museum of Sacred Art. Oh, and remember, if you are suddenly outside again, you've missed it. Maybe you blinked at an inopportune moment.
8. Spend as long as humanly possible at Fernando's. IMHO, this lovely Portuguese restaurant alone is worth a trip to Macau. Pick your bottle of wine, tuck into a beautifully fresh salad and a succulent grilled chicken, and relax.
9. (see item 9) Order an unknown drink ("spirits") from the waiter in the yellow t shirt, and try not to laugh as four waitresses smell your empty glass to try and guess what it was so they can tot up your bill.
10. Dip your toes in the sea - let's hope it's that colour because the sand is black (hence Hac Sa beach)
11. Make sure that you come up with a new pose for each photo taken of you - if you run out of poses, just jump in the air. You'll look energetic.
12. Avoid the crowd of paparazzi with their giant cameras who are following a mysteriously un-model like Chinese girl.

Hiking again. I mean, yay, more hiking!

Loyal readers (Katharine) will notice that I haven't posted much recently - that's because nothing interesting happened. Believe me, I'm doing you a favour. The weather's been crap, we've been ill lots (which just goes to show that those surgical masks are a waste of gauze) and we haven't done much.

Stage 2 of the Lantau trail this weekend, which reminded me of just how very much I hate steps and or steep slopes, when you have no choice but to climb them for over an hour. We got the ferry to Mui Wo ("Plum Nest" in Chinese - aka Silvermine Bay) and then a bus for a couple of stops to a random middle-of-nowhere place called Nam Shan, which gave me an opportunity to practice my fledgling Cantonese on the bus driver. Of course there was the requisite toilet block, rain shelter and map board at Nam Shan, it being the start of a Lantau Trail stage. Also a large, empty rubbish bin surrounded by trash, which we very conscientiously picked up. Under the wooden arch, and onto the trail proper.

(I should point out that Stage 1 of the trail involves walking up the road from Mui Wo - if you are familiar with the standard of driving on Lantau, you'll understand why we won't be doing that one.)

The climb starts here. And goes on for the rest of your life. I didn't moan much, preferring instead to let my asthmatic wheezing do the talking. Let's just skip over this part.

So eventually you reach something worth seeing - a cool open plateau between the twin heights of Sunset Peak. Scattered across the plateau are about two dozen little huts. They are made of stone and concrete, and I'd be lying if I said they were visually appealling. They were built between the wars as a retreat for missionaries working in China. I'm sure at one time they had a lovely view over the little fishing island of Chek Lap Kok - as I've mentioned before, thanks to the world's most aggressive land reclamation, the island is now 10 times the size it was then, and home to considerably more aeroplanes. The huts are kind of sweet in a way - each one is different, and many have a little verandah, or steps down to what might be thought of as a garden (if you have particularly active imagination). There's even a little swimming pool, made by damming a stream.

We skirted around Sunset Peak, which at 869m is the second highest peak on Lantau. Ross was annoyed when we got home that we didn't actually go to the peak, but we were very close! On the descent we saw some beautiful views across Lantau to the typhoon shelter of Peng Chau, and the rather exclusive-looking beach and village of Pui O. We'll be heading there next time it's a beachable day. By the way, the descent was also extraordinarily steep - our legs were jittering uncontrollably by the time we reached the bus stop. And I do Pilates.

Back to Mui Wo on the bus, where we explored the beach (nothing special) and laughed at the little dogs pulling along a man on his trike. Obligatory lime soda at China Bear, and the ferry back to Central so that I could embark on another supermarket crawl in search of ciabatta.

We got the 6 o'clock ferry from Lantau, so arrived back in Central about 6.45. This is my favouritest time in HK, as the sky turns lilac, then darkens to purple as the yellowy lights start to burn out of the windows of the city. Soon the sky is inky blue, and in the contrast the lights flash a brighter white. A rare thing these days, as we've been immersed in cloud for weeks. But the temperature is on the up, and spring is coming.

And the "No Shit, Sherlock" prize goes to...

...Sina.com, which tells us that "Sea gypsies live nomadic, sea-based life".

The Run

On Friday last week we decided to go see some comedy with some Aussie friends. There aren't many comedy clubs in HK, but TakeOut Comedy seems to be one of the better ones - and, even better, they had a comic coming over from New York. Al Ducharme and his wife Bernadette Pauley were pretty good, although I think it was all old material - whatever, it was lots better than the local comics...

Anyway, at dinner beforehand we learnt that one of the Aussie friends, Jo, had a spare ticket for the Standard Chartered 10k run. There is a full marathon, a half marathon (both of which actually go through a road tunnel under the harbour for a mile or so!) and a 10km run which goes along half the north side of the island and back again. So, being a little crazy, Sarah decided to take up the challenege.

Sarah did a great time of under an hour. That's a pretty good time, and is fantastic given the crowds, and that Sarah had to stop a number of times while people in front stopped to have their photo taken, chat with friends, get out their mobiles etc... You can see it's still dark - the race started at 6am because it goes down the main island highway so they need to get it back open again before everyone wakes up and goes shopping.

Nei hou

Ross and I went to our first Cantonese lesson last night (after several false starts courtesy of the YWCA) so now I can say good morning, hello, my name is Sarah, and I am British. The good news is that the way to say UK (ying gwok) is very positive - ying has heroic overtones, while gwok means country. When you use the correct tones of course. America, (mei gwok) means beautiful country, and Australia (ou jau) means round-ish continent. New Zealand is a complex, almost transliterated one, which I won't even attempt to replicate.

I think (hope) we'll get the hang of the tones over time, they sort of make sense until you start trying to say something!

Kung Hei Fat Choi (again)

The Chinese New Year fireworks were, as you might expect, quite spectacular. Or at least, the first five minutes were, so I assume the rest were - it got somewhat smoky fairly quickly, so we couldn't see it all even though we had a stunning view of the harbour, kindly provided by Sisyphus and Bauble (and Benny). This video really doesn't capture the massive booms echoing up the hillside, but should give you a sense of the scale of the operation. For a longer (and frankly better) video, try this one on YouTube. It's pretty long...the last 2 mins are good!

Paying respects

Chinese New Year is a time to visit the graves of relatives, so we went over to the cemetary this morning, armed with a large bunch of yellow chrysanths (very festive, very bright, very Chinese) to cheer up Ross's great-gradfather's grave.

cough cough

This story is something of a worry, particularly today - the air pollution index is 112, or "very high". Here's what we can expect:

People with existing heart or respiratory illnesses may notice mild aggravation of their health conditions. Generally healthy individuals may also notice some discomfort.

Kowloon is hardly visible from HK island through the haze.

Year of the Golden Ox

Here's a personality summary of everyone who will be born between Monday 26th January 2009 and 14 February 2010:

Positive Traits
Responsible, dependable, honest, caring, honourable, intelligent, industrious, practical
Negative Traits
Petty, inflexible, possessive, dogmatic, gullible, stubborn, critical, intolerant, materialistic

Just realised that means that CNY will be on Valentine's Day next year. The year that has just passed was the year of the Rat; this means that Romilly and Astrid will be big fans of pork, peas and cabbage!

Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Well, that' s a bit early actually. Lunar New Year approaches, bringing with it the cultural minefield that is lai see. These innocuous-looking red packets are destined to be my downfall in the world of Chinese etiquette. However, I have extensively consulted both gweilo and Chinese colleagues, and come to a few conclusions. I'll give you the vague outline; if you want to read an amusing take on the whole situation, I suggest you mosey on over to Batgung, an awesome site kept up to date by two expats, Mr Tall and Mr Balding.

1. Married people are expected to give to unmarried people. Fair? I'll let you be the judge.
2. You are expected to give to any "subordinates" at work - I don't have any, so that bit's easy for me.
3. You have 15 days after CNY (which is Monday 26th Jan this year) to present the red packets.
4. Here’s the hard part – the packets have to be stuffed with money. How much to give? How to distinguish the red packets you’ve filled with $50 notes from the ones you’ve filled with $10 notes? New notes (the done thing) or used notes (the environmentally-friendly thing)? As I said, minefield.
5. Another issue is the recipient list – lots of people at the office, which really requires you to know whether all your colleagues are married. Not only colleagues, but other staff at the office. So that’s the super-friendly bin dude, the desk-cleaning lady, the aggressively smily loo-cleaning lady, and the surly vacuuming lady. And not only them, but also colleagues’ children, who will pay a lovely visit at some point. I’m ok with this bit, because people quite often bring their kids into the office, and everyone knows them already. Also lots of non-office service people – the (3) doormen at our building, our cleaner, the building cleaner, lift repair men, post man….

It’s tricky. Everyone’s getting reeeeally friendly this time of year, the doormen leap up to snatch the door open for you, and the bin dude has learnt to say “You’re welcome” in English. Actually, he almost certainly knew that before, just didn’t try it out on me.

It’s also a pretty austere time. While I’m not pretending that HK is as gloomy as the UK sounds, people are still tightening belts, or whatever the phrase is. So, it could turn out to be an expensive fortnight. Oh, and Ross and I both have to give packets to all the service people individually, we can’t give as a couple. Having said that, the service here makes life pretty luxurious so I am perfectly happy to hand over a few packets in return for the (almost universally) courteous and excellent service we get all over the place.

Photos

All our HK photos are on Flickr, here....