Stateside

Recently eaten: pork meat cake
Recent annoyance: my browser still thinks I am in China

All right, I admit blogging about my trip was way more labor-intensive than I thought it would be. And taking my camera out at every meal just wasn't going to be possible especially when I am hungry. When my family sits down to eat, it's best not to put any fingers or valuables in jeopardy. So I'll slowly leak the remainder of the details of my trip now that I am back Stateside. I do have some things I am thankful for now that I am home:

1. Real toilets
2. Personal space
3. Walkable sidewalks
4. Relatively coal-dust free air
5. Mattresses
6. Other kinds of people who aren't Chinese
   

Mall in the Family

Recently eaten: eel
Recent annoyance: my inability to speak in full and meaningful sentences in Cantonese

To take a break from turned out to be my not so scintillating trip to mainland China, here's what I've been doing in HK since I got back.

Tai O Fishing Village: Located on Lantau Island, Tai O is an authentic fishing village known for it's houses on stilts and dried fish products. I will remember it as a quiet fishing village full of cats and the cleanest public toilets I have seen anywhere in Hong Kong. The road to Tai O is a small two-lane highway (which is really only about 1.5 lanes) that goes over the small mountains on Lantau Island to the easternmost part of Hong Kong. One of my uncles is originally from Tai O. My mom said that when she was in high school, there was no road to Tai O. When they went on a school trip there they had to walk for hours over the mountains to get there. I can't even imagine the kind of waiver they would need nowadays to undertake such a trip.
It was refreshing to finally go somewhere that wasn't crowded with people, or full of the honking buses and taxis. The fisherpeople in Tai O now make their living selling fish to tourists. In fact, there isn't enough fish to pull in anymore, much of the fish they sell comes from mainland China.

We ambled about the narrow streets. I saw cats of all kinds all over the houses and yards. And I made friends with a small stray dog. All in a day's work.

I'll Have Some Food With My Rice, Please

Recently eaten: duck
Recent annoyance: no internet

So the Mom assures me that where we are going in China has no internet. I am not entirely sure about that, but still worried I might suffer the same fate as some Chinese blogger.

Last night all of my Mom's 6 brothers and sisters came from all over for a big dinner. I must have seemed like some poor unfortunate outlander with no knowledge of Hong Kong culture. Had my cousins not been placing food morsels in my bowl, I might not have gotten anything to eat. Having grown up with just 4 in our nuclear family here, the 17 people sitting around the table all jockeying for control of the lazy susan holding the dishes was a little overwhelming.

One cousin noticed my poor shrimp peeling abilities (I kept quirting the brains everywhere when removing the head) and peeled a small mountain for me. another cousin noticed my chopsticks weren't fast enough or adept enough to pick up the food I wanted before it whizzed by to the other side of the table. And the ultimate humiliation, my Mom still had to remove the bones from my fish for me like a baby. I am pretty sure that this is rite of passage is like a Chinese barmitzvah. Once a young person is able to eat whole fish and remove the bones without choking on them, only then are they able to say "Today, I am a man." Even my youngest cousins stared at me like I was some backwards country bumpkin that had never seen the right side of a piece of duck before.

So expect radio silence for the next 7 days. I'll be in the wilds of an internet-free China.

I'll Be The Fat and Red-Eyed one

Recently eaten: fish balls and pig skin
Recent annoyance: smog makes my eyes dry

Full day number one in Hong Kong. I slept about 4 hours last night...

This morning, the mom and I woke up starving at around 7 AM. She sent my uncle, and her younger brother on his bike to find us some food...and quick. Thank goodness for my mom's seniority in the family. He returned with a morning favorite: little rolls made of rice and water in soy sauce and peanut sauce. See pic below.


Mom and I are staying in a house that my family built when my grandfather was still alive. Most of the houses around here are mostly made of concrete and tile. Seems as though most houses are constantly in a state of either construction or repair. One nice change is that there are many fewer stray dogs running around. When I visited as a child, one of my greatest scares came from stray dogs running through the streets between the houses and barking ym cousins and I. I was probably about 13 or 14 when I found out that you could thoroughly confuse a charging dog by opening an umbrella in its face.

After our early breakfast, Mom, two aunts and an uncle went to dim sum. if you've never been, there is an art to it and especially in Hong Kong. Dim sum may be eaten at almost any time of the day, although the earlier yoou go, the older the crowd is. When you sit down you get one pot of tea and an empty pot. The empty pot is for the tea yoou use to wash your plates, bowls, cups and chopsticks. This is not considered rude, but a necessity in a aplce where the running water is not sanitary. The plate is for your cup of tea and any bones or wrappers you discard in the course of the meal. And for god's sake, do not leave your chopsticks crossed on the table or stuck in the middle of a plate of food. It is all right to use hands for buns etc. but you should grab that with your chopsticks first. These rules can be more lax when dining with family.

Eating in Hong Kong is like a religion. There are as many if not more small cafes and restaurants lining the streets as shops and stores. My mom asked me if I was full after brunch, but noted that we would probably just eat later before dinner anyway. Sounds about right.

I also snapped a pic of this odd toilet in the tea house before we left. The toilet seat had an automatic system to put a seat cover on it and it was possible to have the seat heated. Pretty posh.


We stopped at the train station to get some fare cards and I noticed this disturbing ad for a weight loss system of some sort.
I'm not exactly sure if the weight is in pounds or kilograms or whatever, but if I weighed 120 anything, I'd be jumping for joy. 120 stone, 120 bags of flour. I have already been referred to as "big-boned" numerous times by my relatives and my mom. Apparently, I am quite the oddity. My cousins noted my "broad shoulder" but stopped short of calling me fat. Nice to know that I would have to get down to 105 boxes of butter before I could fit into any jeans sold here.

While walking back from our afternoon snack of sweet tofu and fishballs and pig skin, my mom saw a bird she had never seen before. She asked my aunt what kind of bird that is, to which she replied, "the kind that tastes good in soup." Gee, I wonder where I get it.

Book Me Baby, One More Time

Recently eaten: coconut and tapioca dessert
Recent annoyance: jet lag coupled with Daylight Savings

Well, we are officially in Hong Kong. The Mom and I started our adventure on Saturday morning. Due to a nor'easter churning off of Cape Cod, our flight from Boston to NY was canceled. My mom pretty much lost it that point when I told her there were no other flights that Delta could offer that would get us to our connecting flight. Thankfully, her daughter has entered the 21st century and purchased a laptop. I was prepared to just book another one way ticket for us to NY to get on our flight. And in fine Dad tradition through this utter chaos, my father was busy preparing a 5 course breakfast for us before we left for the airport. he was appalled that we even mentioned we might grab something when we got there. As luck would have it, my parents did not have any internet.Furthermore, all the digital cable purveyors in my enlightened hometown had secured their wireless networks. I was shut out.

No worry, I got the phone and called M. I very rudely woke him up and demanded that he play ticket agent for us. Luckily, he is a terrible insomniac, and was probably just mulling over his latest strategy to beat the 12-year olds playing Battlefield Earth online. He was able to secure the Mom and I 2 one way tickets on JetBlue to NYC. Might I add, though for no perks or flight upgrades in return, JetBlue is a great airline so far as I can tell.

So, we make it to NYC relatively problem-free and have about 5 hours until our flight leaves direct to Hong Kong. Since we are so early, they aren't even checking in general boarding, but the Mom and I wander up to the counter anyway. The ticket agent, perhaps taking pity on us because we looked a little rag tag, or amused to find a mother and daughter so similar in resemblance and mannerisms that he gave us 2 free passes to the First Class Lounge. The Mom and I, both skeptics at heart, decide that these vouchers are probably only good for a coffee or a diet coke, so we opt to eat at McDonald's. It's typical conversation, I mention something about my cholesterol, the Mom tells me not to worry about it too much between mouthfuls of french fries and she laughs through yet another unfunny story of her falling down on the sidewalk.

We walk into the First Class Lounge like a couple of teenagers sneaking in an R rated theater. We pull out every piece of documentation we own, and I give my mother a look to pretend we don't speak English if we don't get in. To our surprise, we are waved in. The lounge is like some utopia for the privileged frequent fliers and business class folks. While the rest of us plebes have to be herded into the gate area and knock elbows jockeying for a space at the front of the line with a carry-on that is just barely small enough to be considered carry-on.

The Mom and I remark on the presence of cup-o-noodles, a family favorite, and laugh at the weary travelers snoring away on comfy looking recliners. Knowing we had a 15 hour flight in front of us, the small luxury was welcome and probably kept us from killing each other. I asked my mom about Chinese people and traveling.

• Why do Chinese people especially bring their own food in containers on planes or anywhere, even if they are going to get Chinese food? (I asked this just moments after a woman had tried to sneak through an entire, unopened jar of chili-garlic sauce, and an old lady was switching her rice porridge from one tupperware to another in the ladies restroom.) My Mom shrugged at the question, and suggested that Chinese people really like to have their own food and eat their food they way they like to prepare it. I was hoping for a meatier answer, like American food is laced with all sorts of strange mind-control chemicals.

The flight was uneventful. A baby cried the entire way through, this old lady kept getting her special meal before everyone else to coincide with her medication times, and the Mom kept losing the foam pads on her cheap airline headphones so we'd fish around for them until I was sweaty in my seat.

We tour around a bit tomorrow and then we are off to mainland China on Tuesday. I hope to have pics in the next post.