Hong Kong Blues*

27 March 2009
And Reds and Greens and Blacks – in fact most colours seemed to be represented in Hong Kong this weekend as it is the All Nations’ Rugby Sevens (or something like that and England had a spectacular win last night says the South China Morning Post) so the city is full of men with odd shaped balls. Needless to say we avoided that and carried on with our normal perambulations. Despite having an excellent public transport system of ferries, subway trains, trams, buses and the world’s longest outdoor undercover escalator there is still a phenomenal amount of walking and step & hill climbing and by late afternoon G’s knees were beginning to seriously complain.
We had started the day with a ferry over to HK Island, a tram ride and a walk through Hong Kong Park – deliberately designed to look anything but natural with Fountain Plaza, Tai Chi Garden, a huge concrete Viewing Tower and a vast walk through aviary. At this point we’re not sure what we’ve done the most of on this trip: weird temples, sky trains or walk through aviaries – and here is another walk-through aviary and yes, we walked through it but not without first having climbed up several flights of stairs to reach it. It is home to hundreds of birds in a huge and convincing re-creation of a tropical forest habitat – in fact so convincing that G got bitten by a mosquito, it wasn’t until afterwards that we read the warning about Dengue Fever!!



A little further on in the Park we went to Flagstaff House, the oldest colonial building in the city (1846) which now houses the Museum of Tea Ware where, inevitably, there is a fantastic collection of tea bowls and tea pots (this is China not Japan)as well as fascinating videos about the development of tea making and tea drinking (including why Tenmouku glaze was developed for green-tea bowls) as well as the methods and flavours used by the numerous different ethnic groups in China – anyone fancy their afternoon tea with salt and yak butter whisked into it in the Outer Mongolian fashion? The highlight though was an exhibition of Yixing purple clay teapots, some of them dating from the 9th century. These delightful little teapots are still made today and there is a whole tea making ritual associated with them – they are only ever washed with water, never soap or detergent, so that after years of use they develop a tea ‘patina’ and add flavour to the tea being made in them. There is a story that one pot that had been in use for several generations only needing water adding to it in order to brew a delicious tasting tea. At the end of the tour around the museum (no photos allowed so you have been spared more pictures of ceramics) there was a gift shop selling these precious objects – you know the rest (well, we’d already bought the tea; it would have been silly not to get a tea pot). Next door was a delightful Tea House serving vegetarian dim sum (note to Brenda: whenever we say ‘vegetarian’ dim sum or ‘vegetarian’ meals here in HK we mean ‘vegan’ – wonderful and amazing) and it had a tea menu which was longer than most wine lists; Chris had DongDing Oolong and Gregg had 15 year old Pu Erh with chrysanthemum flowers.
In the evening we went to the famous Temple Street Market which makes Walthamstow Market look classy! And as an antidote to all this Chinese food we went to a Sino-Italian restaurant which did a very passable Tiramisu (of course not as good as Gregg’s). As a nod to Earth Hour part of the Light Show was turned off! Tomorrow we head to Japan.