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
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