| Submitted by: Mark R. Leeper United States |
| Submission Date: 09 February 2005 |
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The hell with not passing judgement on different cultures with
different customs, there are people in the halls of this building who
are nauseatingly disgusting. The juxtapositioning of this 'hotel' as
well-maintained as it is, and the hallway just a few feet away is
amazing. What a contrast! I suspect that China, or at least people
from the mainland, have the concept of a nice house but not of a nice
neighborhood.
Binayak wanted to try Chiu Chow cuisine. No, that's not fair. He
just suggested it; I think we all wanted to try it. Anyway we had to
find the place. There was a sign on a nearby block but no sign of the
restaurant. We asked at a local store and they thought the restaurant
was over in the next block. There was a lot of searching. It took
about an hour, I think, but we found the restaurant, and it was full.
We went instead to a Shanghai cuisine restaurant nearby. We wanted to
try that cuisine also. We had squid in a hot sauce, eggplant in a
hotter sauce, drunken chicken, and abalone soup. Shanghai cuisine is
much like the food we had in mainland China. Chicken cut, bones and
all, as if it were a loaf of bread. The restaurant was moderately
unfriendly. When we ordered soda and beer they picked up the teacups.
Well, we wanted tea with the meal. Every other table, even with drinks,
had tea. The bar drinks like soda were expensive. We asked the waiter
why they picked up the teacups and he said to make more room. However,
we asked the waitress for tea and she brought back the cups. I watched
a sort of mini-comedy that took place behind our table. I think I was
the only one who saw it. A young waiter was given a baby's milk bottle,
clearly to warm it. He kept looking at it quizzically and asking other
people how to warm it (I assume). Finally he went over to the bar, got
an ice bucket, filled it from the tea machine, and dropped the milk
bottle in. He carried that off to unknown parts. A few minutes later
he brought the ice bucket back to the bar with a satisfied look on his
face.
October 8, 1990: Breakfast was another disappointment. There is a
bird market nearby and the guide books said that there was a restaurant
where bird owners hung up their birds and had breakfast. The birds
socialize with each other. We found the place but it was closed.
Instead we tried a restaurant a few doors down. They knew no English.
I pointed to a dish and four of us had it. It was like a bowl of
Japanese ramen with two fried eggs on top. The whole breakfast for five
people (four noodle dishes, Barbara had pastries) cost HK$40. That is
about US%.17, including tip.
From there we returned to our hotel and Barbara cut the pomelo she
had bought the day before. It is much like a grapefruit and tastes a
little sweeter. Binayak claims it was the ancestor of all modern citrus
fruits.
From there Evelyn and I set out for the Star Ferry to Hong Kong
Island. There after some hassle we found the bus to Tiger Balm Garden.
Aw Boon Haw was a sort of razzle-dazzle man who built an empire selling
a liniment-like ointment medicine called Tiger Balm. He built behind
his house his own park (later opened to the public) filled with garish
statues from Buddhist lore. Many mythical characters are rendered in
brightly colored cement with considerably more enthusiasm than either
imagination or taste. Most are larger than the people visiting them.
There is a whole structure of cement mountains with an intricate network
of cave paths. In all there must be miles of pathways and steps. You
visit dragons and phoenixes, and humanoid animals, and statues of wise
Buddhists and foolish generals. There is also a priceless collection of
jade that we didn't know about and missed. Then there are scenes from
the ten hells that look like scenes out of Dante's Inferno. One is the
hell for sellers of false medicines. In this hell the inventor of
China's 'Absorbine, Jr.' might have had a special interest. Presiding
over the whole sorry affair under a palatial canopy is a bronze statue
of Aw Boon Haw, successful businessman, devout Buddhist, paragon of
human wisdom, megalomaniac, and laughing stock. And a spirit very much
akin to many we find in America.
On the way back we talked to another couple who had been traveling
in Singapore and Indonesia, and were finishing in Hong Kong. I asked
them what was the one thing they wished they'd known a month before.
'If a town looks at first like a hell-hole, don't stay. It won't get
any better.' They also had had some interesting adventures I will leave
to Evelyn to relate. We returned to the hotel with a minor diversion by
crossing on the Star Ferry three times. Once we went first class, twice
we went economy. You get a very nice view of Hong Kong from the Star
Ferry. If you go economy, it costs about US$0.13 to cross. First class
is about three cents more.
On the way we saw them selling in a store 'Rice Paddy Dolls: Short
Grains'--plush cushion-faced dolls who were supposedly recent immigrants
from the PRC. Each came with its own passport. The line between homage
and parody is thin.
The afternoon was somewhat wasted, I think. We wanted to see the
historical museum in Kowloon Park. It was very small and only mildly
interesting. It had one exhibit on the history of Hong Kong and another
on art motifs in children's clothing and toys. We also stocked up for
Thailand and shopped a little. We made a reservation at the restaurant
we could not get into the previous night, the Golden City.
We went back to the hotel to write but we each fell asleep. We
have been waking up early, unintentionally, and writing in our logs (a
constant battle to keep up to date when we travel). We woke up at 7 PM,
when we'd agreed to meet the others for dinner. They'd come knocking.
Barbara had a big lunch but the rest of us went, little knowing that we
would be taking part in the Battle of the Turtle Soup.
We got to the restaurant and they started to put us upstairs.
Steve and Binayak followed somebody up. We thought we should tell them
that we'd had a reservation. So I did and they said in that case they'd
serve us down on the lower level. The hostess used a walkie-talkie
called the waitress leading Steve and Binayak upstairs and told her to
bring them back down. Steve said it was nicer upstairs, but we ate in
the lower and more hectic section. Very quickly the waitress brought us
menus and little cups of Iron Buddha Tea. We ordered dishes mostly with
an eye toward trying different animals. We had goose, pigeon,
cuttlefish, and turtle soup. While we were reading the menu the
waitress had picked up the Iron Buddha teacups. I hadn't even gotten a
chance to taste mine. The portions were small and we almost had to
fight the waitress to keep her from taking them away as soon as you
could possibly interpret them as being almost finished. She took away
the pigeon when there was still a piece of meat on the plate. Steve
asked if we thought we were getting the 'bum's rush,' which, of course,
we were. Then came the last course, the turtle soup, which came only
about twenty minutes or less after we first sat down. The waitress came
and distributed the small servings, not even distributing everything
from the serving tureen before taking it away.
The natural and most efficient way to drink a fluid is to put the
source to your lips and drink it that way, but of course in a nice
restaurant that simply isn't done. Using a spoon takes a lot longer.
Also, it is very hard to get all the soup out of a bowl with a spoon.
At some point you start getting diminishing returns in the amount you
are able to pick up. To really thoroughly eat soup from a bowl is a
long and time-consuming process, particularly if you want to savor every
spoonful. I suddenly decided this soup was good enough to savor every
spoonful. The others finished their soup while I was only about one-
quarter done and appreciating the smooth texture of the broth. The
waitress took their bowls away when they were not quite finished. Steve
reassured me that I should take my time. While I was still enjoying the
texture of the meat, the waitress decided to see if she could rush me
out and asked if I was finished. 'No, I'm still working on it,' I said,
stating the obvious.
I was trying to appreciate the subtle interplay of the flavor of
the broth and the meat when the waitress decided to embarrass me by
removing every item from the table but my soup. She went to grab for
the dish the pigeon had been on but stopped herself mid-grab when she
saw that I was now gnawing on a bone from the pigeon. I went back and
forth between the pigeon and the soup, trying where I could. Truly each
dish brought out nuances of flavor I had not noticed in the other.
Finally the restaurant capitulated and brought out glasses of tea
for each of us and another tray of little cups of Iron Buddha tea. At
least I think it was a capitulation. It might have been just a new
strategy. It was at this point that I began to notice that I was
becoming nauseated by the very thought of turtle soup. I set aside the
nearly empty bowl of soup--as empty as if I had picked up the bowl and
drunk it. I drank my tea and asked for the bill. They brought it very
quickly. On the way out I resisted the temptation to make a reservation
for the following night, just to see their reaction. The whole meal
took about seventy minutes.
We went back to the hotel to pick up Barbara and then walked
around, ending up down at the Star Ferry where there is a nice walkway.
Then the group stopped for a snack at .... No, I'm sorry. I refuse to
tell you where they stopped. I had a chocolate shake.
October 9, 1990: Well, things had been a little adventuresome till
now. Hong Kong is, after all, reasonably exotic for us New Jersey-ites.
But Hong Kong in general is reasonably tame. It was a preparation for
what was to come. The real adventure starts with Thailand. And this
was the day it was starting. We were interested in dim sum breakfast
and so was Steve, so the three of us went to the same place we went the
first day in Hong Kong. The selection was not as good as it had been on
a weekend day but we managed to get what we wanted.
After breakfast we went back to the promenade where we'd been the
night before. We looked over water to Hong Kong Island; we shot
pictures of the water traffic. One little boat seemed almost on the
verge of capsizing every time a large boat came by, though I assume the
man standing in it and guiding it knew what he was doing. Several of
the boats seemed to have whole families on board, including pets. One
dog angrily barked at other boats in the hopes that they wouldn't
realize there was no possible way we could be a threat. The dog was
ignored. After a while we decided just to walk in a more or less random
direction and ended in a Chinese neighborhood in which we were the only
big-noses. (On our trip to mainland China we'd referred to Westerners
as 'round-eyes.' Since Westerners sometimes refer to Chinese as
'slant-eyes,' we figured that if they had a similar term for us, it
would also refer to the differences in the shape of our eyes. I later
heard they did pick out a physical feature but it wasn't the eyes.
Chinese think Westerners have large noses.)
There were meat shops with the strong smell of hanging meat. There
were herbal shops. There were street hawkers selling things as familiar
as underwear or as unfamiliar as frogs. We'd see a sort of writhing
stringbag and inside would be a pile of frogs. Buyers could choose to
have their live frog 'cleaned' as you'd clean a fish. One scene quite
grisly by our standards was the snake merchant. He had a basket of live
snakes. If you wanted one he would flay it and leave it whipping around
in a box until it died. This has sort of put me off eating snakes.
From there it was the Metro back to our neighborhood, then to the
grocery to pick up some final goods and to our hotel to settle the bill
and to grab a bus for the airport. |
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| Copyright © - "Mark R. Leeper" |
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