Hong Kong in October, Section 8

A Night at the Opera

October 23

I went back to Sam’s yesterday afternoon to try on my suit. It was perfect, pegged pants, full around the thighs, jacket not too tight. It’s navy blue with stripes, a classic gangster suit. It makes me want to shake somebody down or launder money.

It’s too heavy to wear here because it’s autumn in Hong Kong, which is equivalent to Christmas time in Chiang Mai or an August heat wave in New Jersey. The suit is stored appropriately enough in a black bag.

This morning we explored Kowloon Park. We revisited the Avenue of Comic Stars, passed the swimming pools, and strolled through the Chinese garden.

It is maids’ day off in Hong Kong and the park was filled with small ladies in groups of two, three, or more. Some were picnicking. One group of about a dozen women stood in a circle singing a song, which included clapping their hands very loud in unison at one point of the refrain.

I asked Joanna what they were singing, but she didn’t know. She guessed they were from the Philippines.

Joanna told me that May, the lady we met for dim sum, is retired now but used to interview maids for a living. They would apply from places like Manila, Jakarta, and Bangkok. They live with the families that employ them, and go to the park on their days off.

I started heading for something I had discovered on my own on Monday, the Garden of Life and the tree walk. But on the way, we discovered the aviary.

It was filled with parrots, parakeets, pigeons, and cockatoos in various colors, but the star attraction was the rhinoceros hornbill.

It may be the size of a turkey. Its plumage is black and white. It has a long swordlike curved bill and above that an orange horn that looks almost like an extra upper bill. It is native to Borneo and Java, and other exotic places known for headhunters.

It is also hidden in a corner of its area, so I wasn’t able to get a shot of it.

The aviary is round and sectioned off into about a half dozen wedges for different kinds of birds. Several dozen pigeons of various species mix with some cockatoos, for example. The rhinoceros hornbill had the biggest wedge and had it all to himself.

When we were there we saw a lady across the way practicing tai-chi with a sword. She was too far away and in the shade, so I couldn’t catch that on video.

We went to Kung Fu Corner where there is a sculpture garden. One piece attracted our attention. It is called “Budding” and may represent a seed with the first sprout coming out. But I don’t know. It could have been a fanciful animal head. But why would anyone want to put those things in bronze? I’m pretty sure it’s a naked lady bending over.

Kung Fu Corner had not one, but four people practicing tai-chi with swords. One lady seemed to be instructing the other three people. It was like the movies. The swords had tassels. 

After a few minutes, they put their swords away and went through a coordinated tai-chi routine accompanied by music. We just sat on a bench and watched. It was as relaxing as watching the tide rise at Southampton.

The Garden of Life includes a formal rose garden, where the perfume is terrific. There is a fountain with Chinese and English inscriptions by people who have received donated organs.

The tree walk includes one called flame of the forest, which blooms with a red flower. There’s a photo next to the tree to show how it flowers. It is out of bloom now, but is still spectacular with an exotic double-compound leaf that looks very sexy indeed, like lace in the sky.

Another tree suitably called camel’s foot (genus Bauhinia) has a leaf that is shaped like a camel’s footprint.

There was also an orchid tree. Its flower, which looks very much like an orchid, is on Hong Kong’s money.

The Discovery Center at the park contains artifacts found during archeological excavations in Hong Kong. Some pieces date to the Middle Stone Age. They even had reconstructions of what the people from that time may have looked like. They were based on remains found at Stone Age burial sites around Hong Kong.

One room was floored in glass panels and underneath were thousands of shards of blue and white porcelain from the Ming Dynasty. They were recovered from the site that became Hong Kong Disneyland.

We stopped for more noodle soup at the Yuen Kee restaurant across from the hotel. Shrimp wontons, vermicelli, and preserved vegetable in a fantastic broth. Also Tsingtao.

We came back to the hotel after that to take a long rest and let the sweat dry in our clothes.

All that Joanna had eaten today was a piece of toast and half a bowl of mai fun noodles in broth. She was finally hungry by five o’clock.

We went to back to the Taiwanese restaurant for dinner. It’s not everywhere that you can sit down and order the Taiwan combination platter: chitterlings, roast duck, spicy duck tongues, and some kind of egg dish.

It was all right for a cold platter, but most of it may have tasted better warm.

I thought the eggs were treated yolks returned to the white, like deviled eggs back home. But it wasn’t egg white around the yolk. It was squid. These were pretty good.

I’d heard about chit’lin’s, of course, but had never tried them. They’re pigs’ intestines. I’m not sure that I’d ever seen them before. They taste all right, and they are chewy, the way calamari can get at times.

The roast duck would have been better hot. There was a vinegar dipping sauce that gave it a nice tang.

The duck tongues have a cartilage that runs down the middle and you scrape the meat off that with your teeth. I think there’s a Western vegetable (an endive?) that gets eaten much the same way. They’re a lot of work for the meat, like Buffalo wings.

This was a great meal, though. I don’t know that I’d order any of this stuff again, but hell, now I’ve had chitterlings, duck tongues, and egg yolk wrapped in squid. Also more Tsingtao.

For dessert, we walked up the hill to Bahama Mama’s, but there was a different guy behind the bar, so I didn’t get to deliver my apology. I did speak to this guy and asked for a Stella Artois, a rare tap in Hong Kong, by the way, although not unique to this bar.

While I was working on that, a lady in a Heineken suit (I am reporting faithfully, I swear) came up and tried to persuade me to try Heineken. I didn’t go into details—like how well it goes with space cake, for instance—but told her I was familiar with Heineken and liked it. She mentioned one that was new to me, called Edelweiss. For all I know, Larry, I had that in Amsterdam and was so blasted I forgot it.

I didn’t order it then because we were headed for the Temple Street Night Market, and I had some walking left to do.

Temple Street is like the Jersey boardwalk crossed with a flea market. The vendors set up under tents and sell clothes, leather goods, electronics, and weird stuff. You can buy a refrigerator magnet, for example, that reads “Queen of Farts.” I’ve not seen that anywhere else in the world.

But what we really came to see, was outside Temple Street, past the fortune tellers. There is a group set up right by Nathan Road (I think it’s Nathan Road) that perform Chinese opera.

Like all music, it is much better live than recorded. I had expected to hear a couple of minutes of it and have enough. We arrived during a duet by a man and a woman accompanied by a percussionist who could make crashing gong sounds, cricket chirps, and other special effects, and by two Chinese violins. Joanna told me the name of those instruments, but I have forgotten.

The duet continued for a while, and it was fascinating. I had expected a piercing, high, nasal falsetto, but it was subtler than that. It was downright beautiful.

A lady passed a bowl for contributions, and I was glad to kick in. There was no photography allowed, and I’m not sure why. They were serious about that though. A man walked up and pulled out his camera. The lady singer, without missing a note, pointed at the “no photos” sign. The guy agreed.

When the duet was over, the lady who had passed the bowl stepped up to sing. She did a duet, too, dropping her voice an octave to sing the man’s part.

I don’t know enough Cantonese to know this. Joanna told me: The duet was an exchange between a wife and a husband who is about to leave on an extended trip. She is concerned that he will forget her and take up another woman while he is away. He promises that he will not. She gives him a jade hairpin as a token of faith.

The video is of other people, a pop duet around the corner from the opera singers.

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Bahama Mama’s is on a stretch of bars and restaurants known as the Lan Kwai Fong of Kowloon. I don’t know the real name of the street.

It’s a steep walk up from Kimberley Road, and that’s OK because there is beer at the top. There is also an easier way to get up there. You walk into a shopping mall at the corner of Nathan and Kimberley, go up the escalator, out the exit, up a short flight of stairs and down another flight.

Then people behaving like hawkers for real estate, tailor shops, handbags, and counterfeit watches get in your face, trying to foist menus on you. I clearly had the upper hand this time. “I want a beer. At the bar.”

Most places don’t have seating at the bar, so they struck out. We wound up back at Bahama Mama’s where I tried the Edelweiss. This was strictly a research beer. First off, if you hear “weiss” in the name, it’s a white beer made from wheat. So I knew what was coming.

This one wasn’t really bad. It was made with a lot of citrus, which most white beers need to have much flavor at all. I had to buy a half liter because the bar didn’t have anything smaller. It was 73 Hong Kong dollars, or little more than nine dollars American. I don’t pay that for beer in New York, and some of that is the best beer there is. Remember that when I was there earlier, I had a pint of Stella, a pretty damned good lager, that was only 48 H.K. dollars, or about six bucks.

Edelweiss, like the rest of the Sound of Music, was a disappointment.

I’m back at the Kimberley Hotel now, drinking Tsingtao and about to wrap things up.

Love to all and to all a good night.

Harry