Nov. 19-21
Before I left New Jersey, I made a mental note to order a couple of replacement things at Sam’s. The summer jacket was one. The other is a dark vest with chalk stripe that makes me feel like Orlando, the hero in “As You Like It.”
I don’t wrestle as well as he does, but I do have his clothes.
On my first visit to the New Globe in London, I saw one of the happiest, funniest, most energetic renditions of the play that I have found so far. It was the Globe’s touring company version.
The set was a cargo container, and one actor with salt-and-pepper whiskers played Duke Senior, his usurping brother duke, and Audrey, the country girl. Sometimes in the same scene.
The play was in retro dress—early 20th century, that is.
Orlando came out in a brown tweed jacket, charcoal trousers, the chalk-stripe vest, and a pair of dark cordovan shoes. I took one look. I have all those clothes.
I put them together when I got home (still had a home then) and have put them on as a suit ever since.
The vest is the oldest part of the get-up, and it’s going fast. Joanna has applied her artistry to give it more time, but there’s only so much that even a talent like Joanna’s can do to stretch the life of a failing garment.
I can’t find anything like it in stores, but I knew I was headed to Sam’s. Then I got distracted by the low-contrast black-gray herringbone and forgot to order the chalk stripe on Friday.
So I added that to the list when I went for my fitting Monday.
The jacket will be nice and boxy. You can’t buy things like that in stores right now because they are out of fashion.
The herringbone vest ditto. It will have a belt in back for adjustments according to beer consumption.
During the fitting Joanna snapped a couple of photos. Then Sam, the owner, stepped in for a couple of shots.
The store has photos posted on the walls of all kinds of celebrities. Many are standard handouts of people ranging from Prince Charles and Angela Merkel to Barry Manilow and John Boehner. There’s one of Roger Moore being fitted by Sam himself.
Joanna joined us. Here we were, having the photo of the day taken with Sam.
It won’t go up on Sam’s wall or anything, but even so, wow, we were in Roger Moore territory.
Later Joanna and I took a short ride on the No. 6 bus to a district called Hung Hom to see a temple dedicated to the Kwun Yam, the Buddhist Virgin Mary.
I had seen a reference to the temple during a Google Maps search for the Kowloon Walled City Park.
Kwun Yam is a Cantonese transliteration. In Mandarin the name is Kuan Yin. The Cantonese pronunciation, which I learned from Joanna, sounds almost like Goon Yum.
I think she watches over me so it’s not polite to pass up a chance to visit one of her shrines.
It is a small, traditional temple in an area that sort of resembles a commercial district almost anywhere in the world. Imagine North Newark or Passaic, when somebody has hit the “translate this page” button for Chinese.
The temple, however, is one story high and has carvings. They run along the rooftop. They and the gold-on-red traceries of the walls will confirm that the temple is the real thing.
We went inside and added to the smoke already wafting from coils and sticks of incense large and small. A priest in an embroidered robe was chanting next to a civilian in one corner.
I lit three sticks of incense at each of 12 altars. A lady speaking Cantonese to Joanna led me through the ritual.
Later Joanna told me she was asking why I would do this if I didn’t know how.
Another surprise was the effigy of Kwun Yam. The face is dark brown. Was it made that way? Is it the result of years of sitting in a fog of incense smoke?
The parallels between Kwun Yam and the Virgin Mary are many. Kwun Yam is sometimes shown holding a small child, for instance. Both are sources of mercy.
So there is also a black Kwun Yam, echoing the black Madonnas of Europe and South America.
We stayed for a few minutes, tapped the drum, rang the bell, each three times, just as the priest had done before us.
When we had crossed the street and were heading down Kun Yam (still another variant transliteration) Street back toward the bus stop, a man from the temple ran up behind us and handed us two red envelopes. He said they held prayers of good wishes from Kwun Yam.
We strolled up and then back down the main street before we stopped for a beer at a hotel bar called Moreish Malt. After all, I had been to a church so it was time for a beer.
They had a decent beer lineup for a Hong Kong bar. I was about to order a Stella on draft when I saw they also had craft beers in bottles.
There were a few from Brewdog, a craft brewer in Scotland. One, Punk IPA, I had enjoyed in London a couple of years ago. I opted this time for one I hadn’t tried, called Indie Pale Ale.
“Indie” as in “independent,” apparently, not as in “Jones.” I think it was very good. Or maybe it was just me at the time.
I was so thirsty that my glass of water tasted good. But no, I think Brewdog’s Indie would hold up under any circumstance.
Dinner was the first miss so far.
The place is brand new. The contractors were still working on it when we checked into the hotel.
Lack of experience may account for some of the problem.
We ordered beef sauteed with mustard greens. Apparently they had run out of mustard greens and subbed them with string beans. Not my favorite, but still OK.
It’s the mayo they didn’t warn us about. Stir-fry with mayonnaise? Where did this idea come from? Indiana, maybe?
The sickly sweet smell damned near killed my appetite. They couldn’t take it away soon enough to suit me.
We wound up having beef in black bean sauce. The other dish came as advertised, clams in black bean sauce. Both were OK, but I don’t think we’ll go back there again.
Tuesday took us in pursuit of another chance find, a 2,000-year-old brick tomb in a district called Lei Cheung Uk.
The area is named for two fishing villages that originally stood there. Years of landfill have removed it considerably from the waterside.
The district became a refugee haven, first in the 1930s and early ’40s, during the Japanese occupation, and then later as people fled the Red Chinese takeover.
Huge squatter settlements developed. They were firetraps.
A fire in 1953 displaced thousands of residents. A photo on the wall of the museum shows the settlement in flames. The memory was vivid for Joanna because she witnessed that fire. Her family lived there.
After the disaster, the hazards of the squatter settlements were clear to everybody. So the Hong Kong government began building resettlement blocks to provide better housing for thousands of people.
Workers were preparing ground for construction when they came across the tomb. It contained grave goods, but no human remains.
You can stand on a platform and peer inside through a glass seal over the entry. Temperature and humidity in the interior are controlled and periodically checked.
The tomb has a domed central chamber surrounded by four vaulted chambers in a cruciform pattern.
It is made of bricks, most of which are decorated with geometric and stylized animal images. A few inscriptions, which have helped set a period for construction, refer to Panyu, the county administration that governed the area for the first 200 years A.D., during the Eastern Han Period.
The museum next to the tomb devotes as much space and time to the resettlement project and its culture as it does to the tomb itself.
I have read some of Joanna’s memoirs of her life in China. She describes the night of the fire and also talks about the culture of mutual support that grew up in the refugee community.
Museum exhibits and films explore both of those topics. It was all fascinating, and even more so was the privilege of watching Joanna take all this in.
It was a deeply moving experience for her. What started as a bus ride to see an ancient and curious artifact turned out, maybe because of that blessing from Kwun Yam, to be something much more important.
We also visited a small park built around the tomb site, where we got to stroll among long-tailed birds and enjoy the contrast between the more traditional park architecture and the packed high-rises across the road.
Wednesday’s first objective was to head for the ATM. We’ve been using HSBC in Cameron Road, about a block below Sam’s.
That put us near the foot of Nathan Road and a warren of small streets that we had only superficially explored. We came to Cameron Road and Cameron Place (where we had bought the opera tickets) and then to Humphreys Avenue.
We were walking along when Joanna pointed to a sign across the street. The place was offering very traditional Hong Kong dishes. Couldn’t miss that.
We had onion stir-fried with lamb. There was also a variant of that dish called “fried onion with cow fat,” but Joanna wanted to be more conservative than that and opted for lamb.
We had it with a side of tong sum choi sauteed in shrimp sauce.
I always try to eat my vegetables. And since we got here I have been enjoying them more than usual. This was another terrific plate of greens, much like the water spinach called morning glories in Thailand.
The lamb and onion combination was also great.
Joanna gave me long slice of something out of the sauce and asked how I liked it.
I chewed on it for about half an hour, and wondered if it was really supposed to be food. What is it? Leek.
I should have known. That’s why I hate leek. It’s about as tender and savory as straw. Actually, I hate leek except for the tender inside bits. So some of the leek that I had later was OK.
The restaurant had a Chinese lager with a colorful mask on the label. The name in Chinese translates as “snow flower.” It wasn’t bad, for a lager.
The tables were interesting in themselves. They were glass-top cabinets holding artful displays of Chinese tchotchkes and ephemera.
There was tiny currency that looked like a translation of Monopoly money. Joanna told me they were ration tickets.
We took a break at the hotel for the afternoon before we went out for a family dinner.
Gregory and Eugenia, Joanna’s son and daughter-in-law, are in Hong Kong. Eugenia is a citizen of Hong Kong, so they have homes here and in New York.
We met them in front of Maxim’s Cakes near Exit G of the Central MTR station. They led us to the restaurant, where Eugenia’s parents were waiting for us.
Joanna and Helen, Eugenia’s mom, keep in touch by telephone. So they had plenty to talk about. Most of the conversation was in Cantonese. Every now and then Eugenia or Joanna would give me a quick recap.
Sometimes someone would apologize for speaking Chinese. I don’t know why. It was fascinating.
The Peking duck was superb. The char shu was surprisingly tasty. The pork and vegetable soup was mild and soothing. (It’s believed to have medicinal properties, so I must be better off for it.)
We had an interesting dish in which minced crab was sauteed with vegetables and then baked in the shell.
When the Peking duck comes out, the server carves small slices of meat and crisp skin, which you wrap in thin pancakes with some dressing. The meat left after that serving was removed, chopped small, and cooked with a few more ingredients.
Toward the end of the meal it came to the table. We ate it wrapped in leaves of iceberg lettuce. Its a tossup which I liked better, the first or second serving of the duck.
We got back to the hotel before 10. I was feeling wiped out. I hadn’t had a beer since the Snow Flower at lunch and didn’t even want to go to the Flame Bar for another. I just wanted to sleep.
So I did.
Sleep well, everyone.
Harry
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