Hong Kong Weekend

So I made an effort to get to know my new home away from home this weekend. 

I walked around town on Saturday, engaging in the official sport of Hong Kong--shopping. In SoHo, the up-and-coming trendy district where all of the expat bars and art galleries are, there are some great little boutiques. I happened on some sales and bought a really cute dress and skirt. It's really odd to hear that your total comes to 600 dollars, but then I remember that it's Hong Kong dollars, which have a 7 to 1 ratio with US dollars (so 600HKD is about 85USD). It's difficult to adjust the mind to such an odd ratio--how often does one divide something by 7? I'm using the calculator on my phone constantly just to reassure myself that I'm not spending my life savings, because even knowing that the ratio is broad it still seems crazy to for over $70 for a cab ride. I suppose it will just take some time to adjust. 

I'm liking urban living--taking cabs and the metro line everywhere. It makes me feel very cosmopolitan :) The pollution in this urban center, though, is extensive. Just walking around outside for an hour or more, I feel my eyes and throat stinging. The smell of stale cigarette smoke in most of the cabs isn't very pleasant either. I think the idea of breathing so much pollution would really bother me if I was going to live here for an extended period. 

Today, Sunday, I went into the Central district to find some authentic Chinese food. I'm not brave enough to venture into the shops where the menu is only in Chinese--the cleanliness of those, and the source of their ingredients, is questionable at best. But I found a place in the mid-levels (between Central and SoHo) that had it's menu in both Chinese and English, so I thought is was a good compromise. I ordered Tsing Tao, the pre-eminent Chinese beer (really light; a lot like a Heineken), and Kung Pao Chicken. It was phenomenally spicy, which I had missed out on in all those weeks in France, and completely delicious. I managed to use chopsticks for the entire meal, which I was excited about--the rice is tricky; I need more practice. I've heard that Hong Kong has the best Chinese food in all of China, so I want to make sure that I go out and try a lot because I'm pretty much eating the same things with the family as we ate in France, which is kind of sad. An additional note about food: I am so excited to be in a place with proper customer service! I got used to the complete lack of consideration for paying customers that is displayed in most of Europe, but the service industry here reminds me what a dining or shopping experience should be like. Here, unlike in France, waiters don't act like you're inconveniencing them by ordering food, it doesn't take 20 minutes to get a tea at Starbucks, and I can ask for a different size in something without eyes rolling. How nice. 

One of the many super-cool sky-scrapers:

Typical street in Central:

After lunch, I took the metro (blissfully easy to figure out, clean, and cheap) over to Kowloon to see the Wong Tai Sin Taoist Temple. It's in the middle of a bunch of run-down, high-rise apartment buildings, which seemed to me an odd place for a temple. To be honest, it looks a bit contrived--more like what a bad Hollywood movie placed in the China Town of an American city would produce. It looks like a characature of what I thought it should look like. But what do I know? Apparently, it's genuine. People go to pray to buddha, lighting big bunches of incense sticks that make the whole place smell fantastic. They cup the incense and bow forward over and over again, wishing for whatever is on their list, and then leave the incense in big pots on the alter. 

It's also the place to go to have your fortune told. In the main temple, you pick up a cup of bamboo sticks, kneel at the alter with a question in mind and then rock back and forth, praying, shaking the cup until a stick falls out. The stick has a number on it, which can then be given to one of the fortune tellers outside who will find the corresponding fortune paper and interpret it. I went to a women who read my palm and my face for an overall picture of my future, and also explained my fortune from the bamboo sticks. Of the sticks I asked, separately, whether or not law school would go well for me (number 55) and whether or not my time in Hong Kong would be enjoyed (number 11). She said that law school would be rocky at first, but that by January or February of next year it would smooth out. That makes sense I suppose--rocky in the first semester, smoothing out in the second. She said my time in Hong Kong will be well spent; that I will develop some good relationships. Reading my palm and my face, she first said that I am very independent, I like to make decisions on my own, I'm a bit stubborn, but (based on the depth of the center of my palm) I am deeply loving and caring with my friends and family. The plumpness of the sides of my palm indicate that I will make plenty of money (yay!), and apparently I should invest more in property than in the stock market. Until the age of about 28, money will be kind of easy-come-easy-go, I won't be very good at saving (accurate for the moment). But after 28 my career will become more steady, I will be better at building wealth, and the money will flow in. I should not get married until age 26 or later (certainly wasn't planning on that any sooner anyway). I can have 3 kids if I want to. After age 30, I can start my own business and prosper if I so choose, and it would be beneficial for me to take on a partner (this is so because my index and ring fingers are the same length). I should continue to move around, either within the US or abroad, because that will bring good fortune to my career. I will bring my husband good fortune, too, so he will apparently also make plenty of money, which the fortune teller told me I can spend (that's how she phrased it: "you can spend your husband's money" Awesome). Around 38 or 40, I can stop working as hard, maybe retire. My life line is long, though I will have some trouble around age 55. She said something about not driving by myself around that time, and that I need to have regular check-ups so that whatever problem is going to come will be dealt with and not get too big. Lucky years for me are those of the horse, the dog and the pig--my husband, my kids, my business partner should all be of these years, and I should undertake important decisions in these years. Bad luck for me are years of the snake and the monkey--but I try to avoid those anyway :) 

The Temple:

Funny random side-note:

On Friday we (me, Victoria, Henry and Alessio) got into the elevator along with a Chinese man. As are most of the older Chinese people, he was quite short. Henry, my infinitely curious 2 year old, asked Victoria "why is the man tiny?" She tried to ignore him, because he had spoken pretty softly, but he's endlessly tenacious so he asked 2 more times until Victoria clamped a hand over his mouth and hurried out of the elevator on our floor. We burst out laughing hysterically. We can only hope that the man didn't hear him...gotta love kids.