Old Home Week

Dec. 3-4

Joanna called John, one of her friends from the old neighborhood who joined the group for dim sum. He had offered to help us find our way around, and Joanna thought it would be fun to visit the place where she used to live as a girl.

The place as she remembers it is gone, replaced by new and larger projects, so we needed a guide.

John met us on Nathan Road. We took the metro to the Prince Edward station and changed to another line for a few stops to Shek Kip Mei, the area of the great fire that prompted the construction of the resettlement blocks and the inadvertent discovery of the ancient Han Tomb. 

This isn’t anywhere near the New Territories, but when Joanna lived here things were pretty rustic. Her family moved after the fire to another neighborhood of wooden dwellings and then moved again to a less-flammable bungalow in the district known as Tai Hang Sai.

The Tai Hang was a large drainage canal. There’s a paved street now where there used to be a couple of country roads and an open ditch. Her family lived in a one-story bungalow on the ninth lane west (sai) from the Tai Hang.

It was here, Joanna said, that she saw the police responding to a murder. A man had killed his wife and her lover. 

Joanna was a youngster in the crowd that had gathered as the police brought the bloody bodies out.

The lanes have gone the way of the Tai Hang, and so have the bungalows. Now a high-rise apartment block covers the entire site.

John led us up a hill to a mall, where we went to a dim sum restaurant called Baat Yeud Faa, literally “Eighth Month Flower.” The English equivalent is “Jasmine.” 

The menu had something I haven’t had in a long time, snake soup. It had strips of snake meat and vegetables in a hazy broth. And it was delicious—savory, not too salty—and besides, I was getting to eat snake.

There were seafood dumplings and a few other dim sum offerings, too, which the three of us shared.

The tea was new to me, a green tea called Sau Mei, which had a good, surprisingly full flavor for a green. I usually think of green tea as milder than this one.

By the time we got back to the hotel, Joanna was tired and generally under the weather. Literally. The air quality isn’t great in Hong Kong and probably no better in Taipei.

After three weeks, it’s finally getting to us. I wound up running out for some wonton soup and a couple of appetizers (as well as a cheap bottle of red for me).

The soup was good. So were the pork dumplings and the chicken wraps. 

Joanna gave me a useful warning about the dumplings. They’re very juicy. You have pop the whole thing in your mouth before you bite it, like sushi. The sushi because it falls apart; the dumplings because they burst with gravy.

The wine, a blend of Shiraz and Cabernet Sauvignon from Australia, I think, was pretty rough, very sharp and acidic. The food helped, and after a couple of glasses, it tasted better.

Tuesday, the fourth, we went across the harbor on the ferry again. It’s a beautiful ride, and four years ago it lasted for about half an hour. The ferry terminals on the Hong Kong side have been moved, so now you get there in maybe five minutes.

Still quite a spectacle though, like almost any ride on the water by a city.

We had some sketchy Google Maps directions to follow to get a bus. Somehow, we managed to find Harbour Road and a stop for the 18P bus to Kennedy Town. That’s the eastern end of the Hong Kong cross-island tram. 

The bus driver put us down at a spot on Belcher Road, which is where Google said we should go. We were to walk a half block back to Smithfield Road and turn left.

Only it wasn’t Smithfield. We saw a metro station, and I decided to give it a try. It probably wasn’t the tram stop, but we might find a human being who could give us directions.

Before we got to the station, though, Joanna saw a woman selling a savory treat that she has been trying to find since we got here. It’s sticky rice wrapped in a bamboo leaf. It is flavored with pork and mung beans.

She asked the lady for directions to the tram. Two blocks in the other directions.

For some reason, I had expected some kind of cable car. But the tram is an old-fashioned electric trolley that runs on tracks in the middle of the street.

We boarded a trolley for the far side of the island around 4:30. The entire trip takes about an hour and a half. We didn’t ride all the way, but did go from late afternoon into early evening on some of the most varied commercial streets I have seen. 

The route started in an area that caters to the locals. Lots of food stores selling preserved seafood, dried herbs, 

There is no air conditioning on the old trolleys, so the windows were open. It’s still hot in Hong Kong in early December. 

We could smell the dried and salted fish as the trolley rolled past the stores.

A few minutes later, we were in fat city. The road was lined on both sides by stores hawking luxe goods for tourists and top local earners.

We weren’t far from the end of the line when we realized we were tired and hungry. So we stepped off the trolley and crossed the track to head back.

We had seen a couple of metro stations on the ride east, so we looked for one as we rode the other way. 

I had originally said we needed to go to Central station or at least to Wan Chai. Of course, that was wrong. We could get into the metro system at any station.

So we were looking for any station. A man next to me must have heard us talking. 

Are you looking for an MTR station? Yes. There’s one at the next stop.

He changed his mind and said the stop after next is closer. So we took that and went to a station named for Tin Hau, the divinity of the sea people who has the temple on Temple Street in Kowloon. 

The section of Hong Kong Island where we got off is also named for her, and she has a temple somewhere not far from that metro station. 

Everything went well till we got to Admiralty, the transfer station for the line that would bring us home. It was rush hour. Three trains came in too full for us to get near them. 

We finally worked our way near the door and the next train—get this—was empty, sent to clear out the crowd. The system works very well here.

We went to Carpaccio for dinner. The manager and the waitress both said welcome back. I was surprised that they remembered us.

I had a craving for pizza and wine, and didn’t trust any other place around here. Carpaccio earned my confidence with its carbonara.

Joanna had an excellent lasagne, savory brown meat sauce between thin layers of pasta. I tried a bite. Very nice.

The pizza was fine, a Margherita made with sauce instead of plum tomatoes, basil (although there’s never enough to please me), and mozzarella. It wasn’t Naples, but was as good as any I’ve had in the States.

I had a glass of Chianti and finished Joanna’s Montepulciano d’Abbruzzo.

I managed to find a cheap Bordeaux, a mix of Merlot and Cabernet Franc, at a 7-Eleven. It probably wasn’t great, but it was a hell of a lot better than the blend of the night before. 

Good night, all.

Here’s wishing good travels and better wine.

Harry

Fire, Ashes, and the Clash of Cymbals

Nov. 30-Dec. 2

That dehumidifier building keeps getting closer. Here we were, back at the same Best Western as before,  but now, when I look out the window there’s the big white appliance with the dented grill.

First off, we made a quick run to Sam’s and picked up my new clothes on Friday. Everything fit just fine. 

I carry a lot of stuff in my pockets, so I need jackets with plenty of room. 

I had these things made to fit me. I don’t know that I could afford to do this in New York, but at Sam’s they cost less than jackets off the rack at a mid-price department store in the States.

Later we headed for Temple Street (off Jordan Road) to look for a place to eat. Even when the night market is closed for the day, the street is busy. Eateries of all descriptions line the sidewalks.

Before we reached Temple street, Joanna saw a sign on Parkes Street for one of the multitude of Tsui Wah restaurants in Hong Kong. A Tsui Wah in Central was where I had my first meal in Hong Kong four years ago. 

If I remember right, Joanna and I had pork tendon and boneless chicken feet.

I was in the mood for pork tendon again, but didn’t see it on the menu. We did find something called Kagushima style pork cartilage. Close enough.

It came as fatty morsels in a thick brown broth with a bit of choi sum. We also had fried rice with diced chicken and preserved olive leaves.

Both dishes were wonderful. We could taste the olive leaves; they gave the fried rice a real kick. The pork was falling-apart tender and very savory.

Three young women at a nearby table were finishing lunch when we sat down. They were primping their makeup. They were wearing short cocktail dresses, clearly date clothes, not for the office. One dress had glitter in the weave. 

Maybe they were working girls of a different sort, not confined to an office and not keeping regular hours.

If so, they or their colleagues could have been working the other night when we came through here, but we wouldn’t have noticed them because the crowd was so dense. 

When things jam up like that, I don’t see as much because it’s a full-time job to keep my pockets free of thieves and not step on anybody.

There was a lot of day traffic, but not the shoulder-to-shoulder press of the other night. The hookers were more evident, like the lady standing on the sidewalk by the open door of a small hotel.

A trio of girls were lingering at a corner. A few feet up the street, a girl in black shorts was standing by a brick wall.

We walked up the street. Then somebody walking fast brushed past my elbow. It was the girl in black shorts. 

A few steps behind was a young man maintaining a short distance. She abruptly turned to pass through a door and up a staircase. He turned and, keeping the same distance, followed.

Score one.

After a rest we took a different direction for an evening walk.

We took Austin Avenue to Chatham Road where the Rosary Church is. We passed several bars that had been closed when we went this way before. One, the Tipsy Tap, advertised craft beer.

We roamed the busy area near the foot of Nathan Road.

We were walking along when I realized the inside pocket of my jacket was empty. 

Whoa. I usually carry a wallet there. It has little cash and no credit cards. It’s where I keep my notebook. It also had Sunday night’s opera tickets.

I’ve frustrated two pickpockets who went for it in the past—one in Rome and another in Naples. Had my luck run out?

Joanna said, Let’s go right back to the hotel to look for it.

On the way, I’m making notes of what I have to do—get new tickets, new Oyster card, put stops on a couple of blank checks. 

We got back to the Best Western and found the notebook wallet in a pile with my address book and calendar by the laptop.

Whew.

It’s going to take a while for me to live this one down, Joanna says.

We ducked out the back door of the hotel for a light supper at the Flame Bar. We started with a plate of wings. 

We asked for mild, but that was still a bit hot for Joanna, so she ordered the carbonara. 

She didn’t expect it to be like the carbonara at Carpaccio, and it wasn’t. 

It wasn’t bad, either, but was made cheat-fashion, with cream in the mix.

We made the short walk down Austin Avenue, past the Durian Land snack bar, back to the Tipsy Tap.

The bar runs 15 taps or more. Brews came from England and New Zealand. A few were of local Hong Kong origin.

From the States, there was Stone, one of my favorite California brewers, and one from the States that was new to me, Epic, which is based in Denver and Salt Lake City.  

Salt Lake City? How many Mormons do you have to dodge to make beer in Utah?

I was in Utah probably for the last time a couple of years ago to see the Dinosaur National Monument. I had to drive to Colorado to buy a six-pack. And that was probably illegal.

Epic seemed to be getting even. Three of the four Epic choices were imperial stouts with alcohol content between 11 and 13 percent. That’s wine strength. Imagine drinking wine a pint at a time.

The list included more IPAs than I could handle in a single sitting. 

I started with Soundwave from a brewery called Siren in England. At 5.6% alcohol, it was the mildest of the bunch. It wasn’t quite Samuel Smith’s, but it was good. 

Lid Ripper hazy IPA from Behemoth in New Zealand had a little fragrance and was more bitter. It was also stronger, at 6.9 percent. I think they call it hazy because it’s unfiltered.

Halcyon, an imperial IPA from Thornbridge in England, runs 7.4 percent. It was listed at 70 IBU, more than double the rating for Lid Ripper.

IBU is an index of bitterness based on the concentration of certain acid molecules from the hops that have been altered in brewing. The higher the number, the sharper the ale.

It was bitter and fragrant, with a floral edge.

We decided to avoid the crowds on Nathan Road on Saturday. We put up with it long enough to board a No. 6 Bus to take us up the line to a neighborhood where Joanna and her friends used to hang out when they were kids.

But Bus 6 travels through the prime shopping districts, the very places we wanted to miss. In fact, the sign on the front of the bus read “Shopping 6.”

The first one to come by was so crowded that the driver didn’t open the door. The second had room for four or five people, but not us. 

We decided to change plans and trust to luck. After all, I was already someplace else. Anywhere in Kowloon would be fine with me. 

So we walked to a different station and took Bus 280X. 

It turned off Nathan Road at Jordan Road, very soon after we boarded. Joanna asked lady in front of us where the bus was going. Sha Tin.

I wanted to go to Sha Tin, Joanna told me, but it’s such a long way. That’s no problem today.

Much of the route was highway. We passed by some of the dragons that give Kowloon its name. “Kowloon” is the English pronunciation of a Cantonese phrase meaning “Nine Dragons.” 

There are eight mountain peaks around Kowloon. the city itself is the ninth dragon.

We came into the New Territories—so called because the British leased them from China in the 1890s and opened them for development. The Brits had already taken Hong Kong Island and Kowloon as a prize after one of the Opium Wars early in the 1800s.

The influx of people, especially of refugees from the Reds, increased population density everywhere in Hong Kong, so the only place to go was up. Everywhere is dotted with clusters of soaring high-rises

We passed a sign for a village called Fo Tan. Joanna translated it for me—Fire and Ashes—and said there must be a story behind that name.

The bus route passed the village, a collection of vintage low-rise apartments in a hollow surrounded by skyrises and mountains. It’s just before the bus begins the final climb—I dunno; maybe 20 miles straight up—to the end of the line.

We walked around on top of the mountain. I hoped to get a look at the village from above, at least.

There was no way we were going to be able to walk down the hill. The road is too long, steep, and perilous. There are no sidewalks.

We met a man in the car park, who told us all we had to do was take any bus from the terminal for two stops. 

So we did that. 

The man explained the origin of the place to Joanna. The people in the area had been farmers. The government needed their fields for the soaring resettlement housing that dominates the area. 

The Fo Tan apartments, which are on a more modest scale, were built for the people to occupy after their lands were taken. Fire and Ashes, I don’t doubt.

Walking through the village, which does not have cars on its streets, just bicycles, is uncannily quiet. Even the highway noise seems far away, when you hear it at all.

Some of the Fo Tan houses that you can’t see from the highway are much older than the apartments. Families have set up ancestor shrines among the houses. 

The village has its own parking lot at one end. It has a few shops selling food or haircuts. Someone collects used electronics.

We went to Tai Woo later for dinner. We were going to order the crispy pork but the waitress confided to Joanna that it was not very good tonight. So we substituted char shu.

We each had a roast pigeon. There’s not a lot of meat, and there are little bones. It isn’t as difficult to manage as frog, but still takes a bit of patience.

You really have to eat it with your fingers. It’s right up there with duck or goose as a savory dark-meat bird.

The best I could do for beer at Tai Woo was Tsingtao, as lagers go, not too bad, but still a lager.

We went back to Zhang Men on Kimberley Road. This was Saturday night, so the place was fairly packed. 

I tried three IPAs. One, I Love Hong Kong, is described as an English IPA. It was very dark brown and the malt had a strong flavor of chocolate. I couldn’t find much hop flavor in it.

At first I thought the taps were mislabeled and that it was a porter or a stout. The stout on draft, though, was smoked. I tried a sample and it tasted like bacon. This was definitely not what was in the other glass.

I moved on to two ales called American IPAs.

One named Turbo was bitter with good amber malt. It was my favorite of the trio.

The other, Hope, was a little stronger, at 7.4 percent alcohol versus 6.6 percent. It had a mild fragrance and a citrus and pine flavor. The citra hops put it in the Lagunitas family.

Sunday we took it easy. We went to Uni-Qlo to pick up a few things during the day.  

It was after two when we left the store. We thought about taking a bus ride somewhere, but didn’t have much time for that. 

We had 5:30 reservations at Madam Hong Restaurant in the Ko Shan Theatre. Curtain time for the Cantonese opera “Happy Marriage Achieved” was 7:30.

We had a steamed omelette with dried scallops and minced pork, and a vegetable dish with zucchini, cloud ear fungus, and foo chok.

The foo chok, a soybean curd skin that is peeled off simmering soy milk, is always a treat. It was the hit of the meal for me.

The opera was a hoot. Imagine all this: outlandish makeup, elaborate costumes, fake beards, clashing cymbals, nasal stringed instruments, dancing, acrobatics, singing, even chanting. You know you’re somewhere else, and it’s fun. 

I was able to follow the story because Joanna would fill me in now and again.

The plot is over-the-top in the same way good Elizabethan dramas are. 

There’s a woman making her living as a quack doctor. We find she has been married before.

A local official posts a notice seeking information about his mother, with whom he lost touch during a war. By coincidence, the quack doctor was with the mother when she died and has some tokens to give to the son.

Instead she poses as the long-lost mother. So begins sub-plot one.

Sub-plot two involves a young woman who has taken a lover. But she is contracted to marry the official, the same one who is looking for his lost mother.

She tells her friend, the daughter of a real doctor and a harsh critic of the quack. The friend promises to help. 

Then she tells her brother that she loves someone else and is already sleeping with him. 

What is his name? The girl doesn’t know. 

When the friend meets the official in her effort to persuade him to break off the engagement, she immediately falls in love with him, and he with her.

There is a war brewing. At the imperial court, the local official and the brother vie to become leader of the emperor’s army. The sister, the one who doesn’t know her boyfriend’s name, comes in and convinces the emperor to make her the top general.

Then come several scenes of choreographed duels and somersaults. Lots of great cymbal work, too.

She captures the rebel general.

The final scene is reminiscent of the last scene in “Cymbeline,” where all the characters come forward one at a time and tie up their share of the loose ends.

One of the rebel officers is the lost husband of the quack. The doctor’s daughter is a foundling and is really their daughter. 

The girl who had been contracted to the official recognizes her boyfriend, who also recognizes her. It’s the emperor, who had apparently been hooking up incognito and now wants to marry her.

The official gets together with the daughter. A good time was had by all, Harry included.

We repaired to Tipsy Tap, where I tried something new from Stone, Mojay IPA. It has a slightly floral fragrance and flavor. Stone is always good. 

There was also a Scotch-style ale called Snap 09 from a Hong Kong brewery called Heroes. It’s strong, 9 percent, and has a sharp alcohol bite and OK hops.

Good thing it was a short walk back to the Best Western because by that time, we were beat.

good night, gang.

Sleep well.

Harry

Pork Both Fake and Real

Nov. 26-29

Monday we took a cab to the National Palace Museum.

It’s about six or seven miles from the hotel. We probably could have used the metro, but the trip involved a few blocks’ walk at the end, and it was raining.

We only saw a bit of the museum, which is housed in two large buildings. And they can only show a small fraction of the complete holdings at any one time.

One of the ladies at the hotel had recommended three objects not to miss. According to the museum guide, they’re all on the third floor.

But we encountered some curious sights before we made it to the elevator. 

We passed a scroll illustrating a work by an ancient poet, about a trip to a river valley with a few friends. The scroll itself was hard to see. A wall-size video monitor carried a very graceful computer-animated reproduction.

One of the treasures on the must-see list was a bronze cauldron more than 3,000 years old, the Mao Gong Ding. A ding, Joanna told me, is a three-legged ritual urn, and this one is named for Duke Mao. 

The inscription inside it runs about 500 characters and is the longest extant bronze inscription from Chinese antiquity.

It outlines the changes a new ruler wants to make because he is taking over during a period of disorder in the kingdom, a lot of “do nots” and “the king orders.”

The text also says Duke Mao is now in charge of running the kingdom’s daily affairs.

The most fascinating part of this exhibit is the inscription itself. The archaic characters are reproduced on a wall. These are the ancestors of today’s Han characters.

The contemporary ideogram appears like a footnote next to each old character. Often the connection is clear. At other times, not so much. 

The Han character representing wine or liquor is called “tsau” in Cantonese. It is the character for “sai” (pronounced “sigh”), “west” with a few extra strokes.

In the ancient script, it is a drawing of a wine jug. 

The second treasure is an illusion in jade from the Qing Dynasty. A naturally layered piece of stone was slightly altered to look exactly like crispy pork. It is shining. The skin is a lovely brown. The meat looks so tender. But it’s stone. 

There was one disappointment. A magnificent cabbage carved from jade was represented only by a few photos. 

The original, which usually occupies the same room as the jade crispy pork, had been removed to a temporary exhibit somewhere else in Taipei.

A small gallery is devoted to contemporary fool-the-eye pieces. Many are groups of cylinders that may have been 3-D printed. They sit in cases with mirrors behind them, and the reflections seem to be of different objects. 

A half dozen hollow cylinders, for instance, cast a reflection that make them appear square.  

This is hard to describe, so I’m sending it as the photo of the day.

The trick is created by the shaping of the top rims of the cylinders. They are not level but instead rise and fall. A three-dimensional object converted to a two-dimensional reflection becomes something very different.

Tuesday Joanna stopped at the calligraphy shop to buy the magic sheet sheet and brushes for her grandchildren. 

Then we came across two shops across the street from each other offering beef noodles. Joanna asked a cop who was parked on his motorcycle which he recommended.

Very low, so as not to be overheard, he confided it was the one on the other side. He told Joanna that it’s famous.

So we went there, and the food was good. This was different from the version we had in the alley shop. And I may have I liked the first one better. 

This was a little sweeter. In no way bad, but I preferred the more savory version. 

I may have mentioned that we are in the tony neighborhood. 

We walked a few blocks to the presidential office building. It is open to the public for a few hours a day. We didn’t care so much to go inside, and so weren’t disappointed that we had missed the day’s window of opportunity.

We walked around the block that the building occupies. We snapped photos now and then. None of the soldiers standing at the entrances fired his machine gun at us, so I guess photography’s considered OK.

There was a curious sight at one of the intersections. Workers were setting up in the street. Instead of flashing lights, they stood a life-size dummy, complete with reflective vest and hard hat, in the road. 

It has two mechanical arms that wave red flags. 

We continued toward Carrefour to pick up breakfast food and beer. The route took us to a place called Little South Gate. 

We didn’t see a gate but a metro station named for it, Xiaonanmen, in Mandarin.

We passed the gate later, but didn’t know it. It is on an island in the middle of a traffic circle not far from the station, but it isn’t labeled Little South Gate. Instead, the characters read “Chung Hei Gate.” Joanna’s not sure what that means. 

A sign by the station pointed us to the botanical garden.

The garden is a pleasant walk with a lotus pond, a garden of plants named in literature, and specimens of trees, including banana, which we’ve seen only a few times before. 

We went back to Cha for Two for dinner. We had pork dumplings and pig nose soup. 

The soup isn’t made with a pig’s nose. That’s the nickname for part of a lotus flower that is sliced and added to the soup. We had seen the original in the lotus pond at the botanical garden.

In the soup, the flower is white and has the consistency of perhaps a turnip. It has large holes where seeds once grew. They look like pig nostrils.

Wednesday we went back to 228 Peace Park to learn more about its history.

On the way, we stopped at a restaurant.  

After seeing that jade piece in the National Palace, I was craving crispy pork. OK, no problem with that. 

We also wanted something less conventional. We were eager to try the green beans with large intestine. 

But they were out of that. More popular than I’d expect. 

How about the steamed taro cake? Out of that too. 

We settled for sauteed cabbage, which was terrific. Joanna says Taiwan cabbage usually is. She can’t buy it at the Asian markets in New Jersey.

The 228 Peace Park is beautiful. Small herons roost on rocks in the pond. There are several small colorful pagodas. 

We found a display at the far end, which we didn’t reach the other day, about the indigenous people,. They have been pretty much dispossessed by the influx of Han Chinese refugees after the Civil War. A recent demonstration by one group protested an effort to deny them the right to own property.

The current president was elected on a campaign that pledged to help aboriginal minorities regain their rights.

One of the exhibits is a map that shows the distribution of almost a dozen languages on the island that are not Chinese. It also shows the prevailing theory of how those languages spread from Taiwan in all directions during more than 2,000 years to reach as far away as Micronesia, Easter Island, and Madagascar.

Nearby is a monument to victims of the White Terror, the 40-year period after Feb. 28, 1947, when many Taiwanese were killed and as many as 140,000 people were jailed for opposition to Chiang Kai Shek and the Kuo Min Tang.

There are folders with reproductions of news stories from the time, a wall covered by ribbons with names and prayers, and a gallery of photos printed on plexiglass. There’s a flavor of Cambodia about it.

The National Museum is next to the park, so we stopped there. One exhibit is devoted to elephants. Taiwan has at least two areas that are rich in fossils of early elephant species.

There are mastodon teeth, tusks, jaws, and a nearly complete skeleton. 

The museum also has skeletons of three elephants that became famous as zoo attractions after they were rescued from the Japanese at the end of World War II.

The third floor is devoted to native animals and indigenous peoples. There were headhunters in the hills a hundred years ago.

The Japanese did a lot of field work to record the various cultures. There are artifacts—a carved wooden shield, garments, carved wooden door posts—and several photos of remote villages.  

On the way back from the park, we stopped at the bar attached to the Oxygen hostel. They had bottles and taps of craft brew. One, whose name may be One, is an excellent pale ale that may hold its own when compared to the archetypal American pale, Sierra Nevada. 

I had a second pale from a bottle. It was good, but not up to the quality of the first. The bottled one was all right, but a little thinner than the draft.

The bartender asked Joanna where we were from. He thought I was English. 

Many foreigners think that—the guys in the bar in Luzern, for instance, and even one of Joanna’s cousins in San Francisco. I was once talking to a lady in northern England, and it took her at least five minutes before she stopped and asked, “That isn’t a British accent, is it?”

To myself, I sound like somebody from South Jersey, because that’s where my accent comes from.

Joanna asked the bartender where he was from. He was born in Taipei and considers himself Taiwanese rather than Chinese.

I asked if he spoke Mandarin at home. I speak Chinese, he said. 

He didn’t recognize the term. Joanna used a Cantonese term that he recognized.

Just about everything having to do with language is fascinating here.

Thursday we went back to Hong Kong.

We had a late flight, 7:30 p.m., so we found a historic neighborhood called Bopiliao that has been preserved. It’s about one block long and dates to the 18th century.

A museum devoted to traditional education and to the history of the neighborhood is in a house that once belonged to a doctor, who used it as a clinic.

We came across another striking bit of nostalgia for Joanna. The educational exhibit had examples of traditional materials used for childhood education.

I was across the room when I heard Joanna exclaim, “This was my first book.”

It was an introductory reader, a kind of Dick and Jane in Chinese. She read bits of it aloud with the rhythmical repetitions of words.

There was a religious observance on the street. A tent had been put up for the purpose. But Joanna wasn’t sure what it was for.

On the way back to the hotel, we stopped for bowls of congee, advertised as Canton style. It may be the best cheok I’ve had so far. 

It was savory without being overly salty. It had preserved egg and conventional chicken egg and bits of pork. The chives, though, really made the dish.

They even have craft beer at the Taiwan airport. I had two rye IPAs before we went to the gate. 

We had brought along some goodies from a bakery and ate them with the beer. One was a lotus seed cake, with a paste made from the part of the pig nose that wasn’t in yesterday’s soup. The other cake was made with pineapple.

Both were excellent with the bitter combination of rye and hops.

We reached the hotel sometime around 11 p.m. and went out for a snack at a bar near the hotel. We had duck tongues, which were tangy, and smoked duck breast that tasted like ham. Both very good. 

They had Stella Artois and Boddington’s on draft. 

That brings me up to yesterday. There’s so much going on that I can’t keep up.

Love to all, and to all a good night.

And if you're in doubt, test your meat with a chopstick before you bite.

Harry