Hong Kong in October, Part 4

Squid for Breakfast and a Hooker Convention

October 19

We went went up an alley called Gilman’s Bazaar near the 88 Hotel and found a congee shop where Joanna ordered squid for breakfast. I later learned that it was tang tsai chok, or sampan congee, made with squid bits, pork, and aged egg. It was very good, even better I think than the congee we ate a couple of days earlier. Rice gruel absorbs the flavor of whatever you put in it.

Then I got two coffees to go at Affinity Cafe. There is no coffee, at least in our part of Hong Kong, before 7 a.m. The Capo’s Espresso doesn’t open till 7:30.

We didn’t do much, wandered a bit, packed, read the paper back at the hotel. Then we took a cab to the Macau ferry.

We sat down for lunch at a restaurant called Lan Fong Yuen in the terminal. Joanna looked at the menu and started laughing. One dish is described in English as fried egg, bolognese sauce, and chow mein over white rice. In Chinese it is yin yan gwei lo fan. That’s yin and yang white devil rice. I had to have that, and I ate it with a fork.

All they had was Carlsberg beer, and the waiter had to say it. An “r” and an “l” together (let alone two more consonants right behind that) is as difficult for the Chinese to say as it is for a Yankee to pronounce the diphthong in “heung.”

It’s an hour boat ride in the jet ferry from H.K. to Macau. It takes you past the Kowloon peninsula. At one point there is a small harbor, sheltered by jetties. Joanna told me it’s where the small boats at Aberdeen can go for protection during typhoons. Part of the voyage to Macau crosses the South China Sea, but I didn’t see any pirate junks.

The signs here can be a bit of a trial at times. A man at the welcome desk told us to go outside and turn left to get the bus to the Lisboa. OK, there are signs. We followed them: went down elevator, followed more signs. No bus. “Where?” we ask a lady who was tending the bus for the Galaxy Hotel. She points. “But there’s nothing up there.” We thought she meant the other end of the road we were on. She meant back the way we came.

Seems we were supposed to ignore the posted signs and make a sharp left toward the girl hidden around the corner holding the Lisboa sign.

Next bit of confusion: There are two Lisboas. The van pulled up in front of one, and before I could get out, Joanna was told in Cantonese that this was the wrong hotel. The taxi had to drive about six blocks, around a traffic circle, up an avenue, through hell and back to get across the street to the other one, the Grand Lisboa. 

This is like all the challenging parts of driving in Queens, Philadelphia, and Boston all at once. Let a professional do it.

                                    Grand Lisboa.

We get to the desk and are told that no, we belong in the first one, the regular Lisboa, after all. This time we followed a bellman through a tunnel.

                                   Standard Lisboa.

I don’t count either of these events as getting lost, because in looking for the bus we followed signs and in hotel mixup I wasn’t driving. But if you don’t get lost, you are not traveling hard enough, so I was working on it.

The hotel lodged us in high-roller territory. The bed in my room looked like the one Henry VIII so often used in “The Tudors.”

The bathrooom was just about as fantasy-inducing. I really liked the octopus mosaic in front of the toilet.

We unpacked and went for a walk. There is a strange-looking park full of glass structures--think of the Sydney opera house if it was made of windows--in the island of the traffic circle by the hotel. Weird, useless, unusual--it was my kind of place. So how do we get there? We could try to run through a break in the nearly endless stream of buses, motorbikes, and taxis. I’d give us a good 30 percent chance of survival, too.

Then I notice more glass structures, but these are on our side of the highway. I have a flashback to London. I imagine us strolling down a few stairs and crossing securely under the crush of hectic wheels overhead. But no. We descend flight after flight to a parking lot. Is this place the bowels of the earth where all the bad cars go?

All I can see are parked cars and directions to hotels, and there is no hotel where I want to go.

We try a couple of these these stairwells with largely the same result, just different hotels.

We find a man next to a car, and Joanna asks him directions. He walks us to staircase P4, which promises us a jardim. There was one, but not the one we wanted. It was a green strip by the water, and was pleasant enough. So we sat on a bench to enjoy the breeze and watch the Wynn sign cycle through its lights for a while. We never did find the way to the island.

We strolled toward the Wynn and got there in time for the first fountain show of the day. This was an occasional burst of flames and waving jets of water done more or less in time with a recording of “Diamonds Are Forever.”

We never got to the jardim on the island. That doesn’t really constitute getting lost, only frustrated. I simply was not traveling hard enough.

We took a little walk up a street with shops on it, as opposed to bank and hotel towers and casinos, which make up the primary landscape in this part of town. Most of the stores seem to sell watches here. I didn’t see any Gaultter, but have seen Patek Philippe, Rolex, Tag Heuer, and a few other familiar names.

It was time for a snack, so we stopped in at a 24-hour eatery for some of the best wonton soup ever. Besides wontons, the broth was full of Chinese capellini. Joanna said the broth was made with dried fish. Even the fried rice was outstanding.

They had bottles of a local brew, Macao Beer, which the label said was a blond ale. It certainly tasted like ale, a good one at that, and was easily the best local brew that I was able to find this trip.

While I was working on that, three men sat down at the other side of the table and ordered two pints of brandy, which came with tiny whiteware stem cups. They spoke Mandarin, Joanna told me.

They said they were drinking the spirits for strength. I guess they were gamblers taking a break from one of the casinos. They asked where I was from and Joanna told them.

Apparently that surprised them. If I was an American, why was I eating rice? And with chopsticks. They told Joanna something to the effect that Americans don’t like rice and I should be eating a sandwich. They were all in good spirits and so this was probably not their first drink for strength of the day. The one who did most of the talking was a little blood-shot.

I tried to tell them that I even eat gwei lo rice, but am not sure they understood me.

Joanna and I took a walk up a boulevard and through another park that looked like an old city wall repurposed. Then we stumbled onto a local open market. There was dragon fruit, which is magenta and green, and other fruits and vegetables, more dried seafood, including dried fish stomach. I remembered stepping into the market near Bangkok last January and Larry telling me, “Welcome back to Asia.”

There was a wet market there, and we explored that: pigs’ heads, fowls’ necks, fish, and bladders. We even remembered to go out by the door we entered so we wouldn’t get lost. We didn’t cross the street, because we weren’t sure you could get there from where we were, so we came back on the same side, and found the hotel without a hitch. We had found the home folk’s Macau or at least part of it, but still hadn’t gotten lost. We simply had to travel harder.

Joanna put on her purple dress and I tied on a tie to go to the casino. She had never been to one. The Crystal Palace on the first floor was semi-boring, mostly baccarat tables. I have seen Sean Connery in his tux playing baccarat, and know that it’s something like Blackjack, but you want to make eight or nine without going over. There was another with dice in a container and mah-jongg tiles, and I had no clue what was going on. People were betting “big” and “small” on the total of the three dice. The table had other places for laying bets, and I still couldn’t figure out what the mah-jongg tiles were for.

We went upstairs to another casino and this was more like it. There were blackjack tables, but casino blackjack zips along so fast, I couldn’t read all the cards. More baccarat. And slot machines. We had some coins and were going to drop a few just so Joanna said that she did. But the machines only take credit cards. This is serious gambling country.

We wandered and wound up at the sister hotel next door, the Grand Lisboa, which looks something like the big ball at Epcot Center that has exploded. They have a high stakes room in one of the casinos there. One table had a minimum bet of a hundred thousand Macanese patacas, about eight grand American. It must get pretty exciting for the players. All of a sudden there was a shout and a fist slammed a table. I took that as an expression of more than mild disappointment.

It’s a round room from which there are several doors leading to additional rooms. In front of each door is a sign that says it is a reserved table.

None of the side games had started and the doors were open. In each room was a baccarat table where a uniformed dealer sat motionless and impassive. Just waiting.

It reminded me of the guy shows up in "Godfather II." He doesn’t have a line; his expression never changes. He just stands behind Al Pacino and he can kill a guy with a coat hanger.

They allow smoking in the casinos and just about nowhere else indoors in Macau. I guess the players need the tranquilizer.

After having enough smoke, we decided to call it a night. We found our hotel, all right, but then couldn’t figure out which wing we needed, or how to get there. We wandered through the halls, including one that contained groups of young women in pushup bras striking up conversations with stray players. Then as we followed the curve of the wall around, there were more ladies with amplified cleavage. It was a parade of hookers.

We had been told the ladies would be downstairs working at night, but I thought that meant outside. It never occurred to me that they would be working inside the hotel under the supervision of the security staff. I guess the hotel considers it another service that it extends to high-rollers.

That was an interesting encounter, and we never would have fallen on it if we hadn’t been lost. But that we still were.

I got an idea. Let’s look for the Crystal Palace; then we can backtrack from there. But we couldn’t find that casino either. After about a half hour of trying to get our bearings, we asked directions. At that time, we were next to the elevator bank we wanted, but were on the ground floor instead of the lobby floor and so we didn’t recognize anything.

It was time to go upstairs and sack out. The island park is right below the window of my room. It lights up at night, like everything else in this neighborhood.

Hong Kong in October, part 3

Following Suit

October 18

I may be adjusting to the time difference. You may notice that I can now remember what month it is.

I didn’t take a nap yesterday. By eight o’clock last night I was so wiped out that I started to fall asleep in front of an open beer in the hotel room. It was my first beer of the day, so that proves how tired I was.

I slept through till five or so. I had so much energy when I woke up that, after three coffees, I had a caffeine high.  That’s always a good sign.

But before I went out for coffee, I developed a plan. We leave for Macau on the 19th and return to Kowloon next week. If I drop the laundry off in Kowloon and order a suit there, I can pick them up in a few days, when we get back.

First order of business, though, was to send a postcard to Karl and Jeanie. Karl likes postcards. He sends me one when he’s traveling and I try to send him one.

It took us over an hour to find a store that has postcards. We finally found a rack of them in Kowloon next to a currency exchange office. The post office was easy enough to find. Right off Nathan Road on a street not far from PJ Murphy’s Irish Pub. Need you be told where Harry had lunch? 

Nothing exotic, but it was good: half pints of Guinness (for Joanna), Lowenbrau (the German one, not made somewhere else under license), and Boddington’s (a light English ale). We shared a steak sandwich as a break from all the Chinese food we’ve had lately.

We dropped the laundry off at a cleaner on Hankow Road and then checked a few tailor shops. We didn’t bother with the dozen or so guys who came up and pressed their business cards on me. 

I had flashbacks to Pattaya. I was wearing the linen suit again, and everybody offered to make me an exact duplicate. I bought that suit at Daffy’s for a hundred dollars.

I wasn’t going to buy until I checked Sam’s on Nathan Road. It is supposed to be legendary. 

And maybe it is. The inside of the store is filled with pictures of celebrities and framed checks from members of the British royal family. 

In the room where I changed my pants, there is a photo of some duke named Henri. Lucky for him he’s a duke, because he can’t spell.

I figured if this is good enough for Kevin Spacey, it has to be good enough for Harry. So I bought a navy two-piece suit. It was about 75% of the price I’d pay for a made-to-order suit at My Suit in New York. It’s about half what I’d pay for off-the-rack at Lord & Taylor, where I generally do not shop.

Joanna had brought a skirt that she wanted to have duplicated, and she ordered that.

A tailor measured me, and then Sam and crew told me to come back at four, (This was before lunch, around noon or so.) So we had time to kill in Kowloon.

Nathan Road is the same kind of commercial overload that you find on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. Only instead of St. Patrick’s and St. Thomas, the big church is a mosque. There is also a St. Andrew’s so the Anglicans aren’t left out.

We found our Kowloon hotel, the Kimberley on Kimberley Road. So we won't have to search for it when we get back from Macau.

Unlike the neighborhood in Central Hong Kong, they have bars there. 

Across the harbor, where we are staying in Central, I have to travel for draft beer to Lan Kwai Fong or to the Red Light District.

Our street in Kowloon is also in the wedding district. Every second shop sells bridal gowns or other whatnot for Western style weddings. A few also show traditional Chinese red dresses with the high Mandarin collar.

One of the great finds in our wanderings was Kowloon Park. The part we saw this day was paved with mosaics, but best of all was the Avenue of Cartoon Stars. 

One, Lo Fu Ji, was familiar to Joanna from when she was a girl, and she had passed the tradition on to her sons. He is a symbol of wisdom. [Later, I’d see Lo Fu Ji on posters explaining proper coughing manners, a leftover of the SARS era.]

I was down to the shirt on my back after spilling breakfast on one and sweating liberally into the other two. So they were in the laundry. It turns out that shirts are as hard to find here as postcards. I finally bought two overpriced models at a Tommy Hilfiger shop on Nathan Road.

The photo of the day is a shot taken from Nathan Road. I have a feeling that Gaultier did not approve that message.

Joanna pointed out, quite literally by the way, that it’s easier to find a Tsui Wah restaurant (like the one next to our hotel) than it is to buy a shirt in Hong Kong.

By four, Sam’s had the shell of my new trousers and the jacket tacked together. The tailor secured the fly of my trousers with a straight pin. The jacket had one sleeve. The tailor marked adjustments.

Wherever I go, the fitter wants to make a suit fashionable. If I wanted to be fashionable, I’d settle for one of these new tight suits they sell off the rack.

I kept trying to explain. No. I like the trousers loose. I have very big thighs and when I sit down they get bigger. No. I want the jacket big and roomy. I haven’t been happy with fashions since the Miami Vice zoot suit went out of style when the 80s were over.

It was pushing five when we left the tailor shop, and we had reservations at a tourist restaurant called Cafe Deco on Victoria Peak. As it turns out, we were lucky that we didn’t have too much time. We took the subway to Central Hong Kong and a cab to the peak. We were dropped off in a transport hub that might be what the New York Port Authority Terminal would look like if it was a single story.

We weren’t sure where to go, so we headed for the same exit where the traffic was going. Then we saw the iconic building that is the tourist navel of the peak. We went up the stairs, and there was Cafe Deco, so we wouldn’t have to look for that.

We had about an hour to explore the park.

The dominant feature of the peak park is a grotesque building that looks like a slice of watermelon balanced on a pedestal. The roof is an observatory. The rest of it is filled with fast food and sellers of souvenir trinkets. Somehow Swarovski also got in there.

We started going up the escalators. To encourage us to continue were signs telling us that at the top was “the higest 360-degree viewing platform in Hong Kong.” Kind of a qualified statement, even if it is “the higest.” I remembered the sign on I-80 between the two exits for Clearfield, Pa.: Highest point on Interstate 80 east of the Mississippi. Almost impressive.

We decided to bag the escalator trip and hit the trail instead. We couldn’t find how to get out of the building. I started to get claustrophobic. We wandered up one promising avenue of escape and encountered a horde of people coming towards us—sort of like trying to catch a train out of Penn Station during the morning rush hour. Did they fit all those people into one tram car? That must have been a gruesome experience. I was glad we took the cab.

But this still wasn’t the way out. Maybe I was going to be trapped in this place full of chattering kids and lost tourists forever. This isn’t right, Buddha. I gained merit yesterday. I said a Hail Mary in front of Kuan-Yin.

We  finally found a lady in uniform who couldn’t understand “How do I get out of this building.” She did understand the question phrased less desperately by Joanna in Cantonese.

Night was falling when we got instructions to the trail head. It’s a gentle climb with trees and shrubs lining the walk. Every now and then there is a sign pointing out highlights of the flora or history. There was one about ferns, but it was dark and I couldn’t see them.

There was another about possible derivations of the name Hong Kong. A fierce pirate surrendered here to the imperial authorities early in the 19th century, and for a while after that, Hong Kong was known as the Peaceful Island.

According to one legend, a red incense burner washed up on one of the shores. So the place was named for that: Ho Heung Lo Kong (Red Incense Burner Harbor). 

Heung Kong is now generally interpreted to mean “Fragrant Harbor.”

About 15 minutes up the trail, we had been told, was a spectacular view of the city. And yes, there is, right on schedule. It was night and everything but Harry was lit up when we got there.

The restaurant sat us near a window. All the tables are near windows. “I can’t believe I’m tired of Chinese food,” Joanna had said earlier in the day. We shared a salad of grilled asparagus and arugula. Then we each had a pasta dish. Joanna’s was scallop tortellini with fish roe and a crispy salad on top. Mine was a clam sauce with tomato.

I had an Italian Chianti, which was mild as chiantis go. Joanna’s wine was more interesting, an Australian mix of cabernet sauvignon, shiraz, and merlot. It had an unusual edge, which I attributed to the shiraz. I’ve had wine made of that before, but not for a long time.

The tram line was still miles long and we were worn out, so we took a cab back to the hotel.

I didn’t even try to open a beer.

Hong Kong in October, part 2

Come Back, Suzie Wong

Tuesday Oct. 16

Up at 7:30 again. I scrounged some coffee from the hotel breakfast room, but that wasn’t enough, so I got some more at 7-eleven. We also needed bottled water. I forgot about my Octopus card and paid cash.

Later we took the 91 bus to Aberdeen. Google showed us the bus we needed, but once we were on the street, we couldn’t find where to pick it up. We asked a couple of policemen, but neither of them knew. One of them stepped aside and used his radio to call for directions. We were looking on the wrong street. We needed to go one block up to Queen’s Road.

Aberdeen is where the floating city—well, all that’s left of it—sits in the harbor. That’s where Dolph Lundgren, Jean-Claude Van Damme, maybe Jackie Chan, and lots of other guys used to do the chases from boat to boat. They’d run into people’s laundry, knock over baskets of fish and vegetables, and then somebody would eventually get away on, under, or over the water. I had to see that.

We sat on the upper deck of the bus, and got a great view of the street. We passed at least three shops specializing in selling edible bird’s nests. Other stores had huge bags of incense sticks out front. Then we passed through a stretch of the road where everything seemed to be a college. St. Paul’s College, Hong Kong University, and several others.

This is the harbor seen from the bus.

There was also a cemetery owned by several Protestant churches. I saw the sign on the way out, but on the way back, the cemetery itself. The dead are buried on narrow terraces down a steep mountainside. The island is largely made of mountains except where they have been leveled or there is landfill.

It was after one when we got off the bus at Aberdeen. All I had to eat so far was a half a cup of watermelon and some coffee. So we—that is, Joanna—found a likely spot for lunch. We had suckling pig—strips of pork with the fat and crisp skin—chicken, and roast pork, all served over white rice with a little gai lan on the side. I ordered tea and got it Hong Kong style. It was as dark as coffee. You couldn’t see the bottom of the cup. It puckered the inside of my mouth. But I needed the caffeine.

On the way to the waterfront, we passed through a park where men had hung their caged birds in the shade of a gazebo. Joanna said they do that every day to give the birds fresh air and to sit around and talk. Most of the birds were small gray and yellow finches. One was dark gray. When I came for a closer look the bird became very agitated and started leaping around its cage. Maybe it could sense that I was a stranger, or maybe it didn’t like hats. In any case, I moved off before it could hurt itself.

This is the part of Hong Kong that was populated before the British seized the island during the Opium War in the middle of the 19th century. It was a little fishing village, when the rest of the area was used as a hideout by pirates. As cities go, Hong Kong isn’t very old. Many cities in the New World are much older.

There are still fishermen here. As we walked along the Aberdeen promenade on the water’s edge, we passed a family sitting by the way peeling prawns. Or maybe long, skinny shrimp.

There were some charter boats, a couple of yachts, and several large fishing vessels, along with several dozen boats that look like people may live on them.

But most of the sampans are for sightseeing. One lady kept coming up to us trying to sell us on the idea of taking a boat ride. No, not unless I get to see Van Damme take one of his ballet leaps across the bow.

Then it was time for a nap. I told you I have developed strange sleeping habits.

We got up at five in plenty of time to get ready and be in time to meet Eugenia, Joanna’s daughter-in-law, and her parents at a restaurant called Zen in a tony mall in Wan Chai.

We had char shu, spicy chicken with aged egg, some kind of sliced vegetable (maybe cucumber) with aged egg, short ribs, and XO sauce, a salty, tasty dish made of shredded dried scallops and dried shrimp. There were lots of other things, too, including nuts and vegetables. For dessert there was a cold soup that contained pomelo and mango, a steamed sponge cake, and something similar to chrusciki covered in melted sugar.

We got into the mall through the Conrad Hotel. We got out of the mall the same way, and saw this view of Hong Kong

Wan Chai is one of the richest districts in Hong Kong, according to Wikipedia. It is also home to the Red Light District, which occupies a couple of blocks on Lockhart Road around the corner from Fenwick Pier. As usual, I am dropping all these names because you can find them on Google Maps, if you want to go there.

That’s how I found them. This is where the rest of “The World of Suzie Wong” takes place. The hotel where William Holden’s character lived is still there, although much changed. It is the Luk Kwok around the corner on Gloucester Road.

Despite the lurid descriptions I had read, no hookers were chasing anyone or grabbing anybody’s arm. They were outside some of the “nightclubs,” all right, but they were just advertising. No high-pressure marketing.

I was dressed like a swell in a suit and vest, because I had just come from dinner, but of course Joanna was with me, so they knew we were just touring. I did stop for a Kronenbourg 1664 at a bar called The Devil’s Advocate.

There was a loud clatter at one point and a moment of possible tension outside a couple of bars across the street from us. Some passerby, a staggering drunk or impatient nerd, had toppled a sandwich board sign (hence the clatter) and may have nearly knocked the pint out of a drinker’s hand. There may have been more to it than that, but it ended when someone set the sign back up.

They tell me it’s autumn here, but I haven’t noticed.We took the tram back, sitting on the upper deck. All the windows were open. I was soaked through the back of my vest by the time I got to the room. Joanna was wearing a sweater part of the time.

Dim Sum and a Bit of Extra Merit

September 17

I feel like I’m getting to know this town. Yesterday we went to a pastry shop and then got coffee at the 7-eleven and topped up my Octopus card. Then two of Joanna’s friends, Ron and May, met us at the hotel and took us to a restaurant in Kowloon for dim sum. We wound up as part of a group of nine people, most of whom were pals from St. Rose of Lima High School.

They get together and do this every Wednesday.

The restaurant, called the Seaview, was somewhere between the 25th and 225th floor of one of those towers that make up the skyline here. There was shumai filled with pork and topped with fish roe, fried rice with dried scallops, beef in black bean sauce over fried noodles (one of my favorite dishes). There were buns and dumplings and shrimp, oh my.

I couldn’t get the shrimp out of the shell with my chopsticks, so someone handed me a fork that came from somewhere to pry the meat out.

Ron was sitting on my left and made sure I had a sample of everything.

Most of the conversation was in Cantonese. Then from time to time Ron or John, who was sitting next to Ron, would translate and then apologize for speaking Cantonese, but as John put it, it was “easier for them to express their feelings.”

I was having a great time. I actually know a few stray words of Cantonese and am able to pick out a familiar word now and then. Or at least imagine that I do. More on that later. 

It’s not exactly the sea, but the harbor, that spreads out behind the Seaview’s glass wall. Ron and May put Joanna and me in seats that took in the view. Suddenly I started to recognize stuff. The tallest building in town is the International Financial Center and just to the right of it is the block with our hotel (which I couldn’t see from the restaurant).

To the left is the China Bank building, which is on the face of some of the ten-dollar bills. It is covered with a huge zig-zag pattern that lights up in different sequences, a stripe at a time, at night.

A little farther to the left is the Conrad Hotel, where we entered the Pacific Place Mall the other night to meet Eugenia, Ken, and Helen. Hey, we took a cab there. From this perspective, it’s only about five feet from our hotel.

We had talked about sights to see. So Ron and John gave us directions to a timber temple called the Chi Lin Nunnery. We take the red subway line to Mong Kok and switch to the blue, which will take us to Diamond Hill. No, this is not leading where this kind of tale usually goes. We got out and back just fine.

One of the first things Joanna noticed when we came up from underground was Lion Head Rock. She had been up there.

They get a lot of visitors at the temple so signs are in English and Chinese. But this is an active church. Much of it is off-limits to secular personnel. Outside there is a lotus garden. 

Inside is a courtyard surrounded by shrines to various incarnations of the Buddha and one to Kuan-Yin, whose name in Cantonese is pronounced something like “Gun-Yum.” She is a lady Buddha, carried over from an earlier pantheon of pre-Buddhist gods. She roughly corresponds to the Virgin Mary in Christian lore. I knelt next to Joanna, bowed three times, and recited a Hail Mary silently. Maybe I’ll spend less time in hell when I die.

The central church has a large bronze Buddha and two smaller, but still large, lesser Buddhas. The original Buddha was a prince, Siddhartha Gautama, who became an ascetic and achieved enlightenment. His teachings showed others the way to become enlightened and therefore Buddhas. Those enlightened beings who choose not to enter Nirvana but to stay in this world—or to return to it from time to time—in order to show others the way are known as bodhisattvas. At least, that is what I recall from my Jack Kerouac-inspired Zen Buddhist days many years ago. Yes, I used to be a Beatnik, when I was thirteen, although I am sure no one could never guess that now.

There was no photography permitted in the church or central courtyard, as I expected, but I was surprised that everyone, including local people at prayer, kept their shoes on. In Thailand, there are racks where you must leave your shoes outside temples.

From the temple we crossed the street to the Nan Lian Garden, which contains pagodas and living things like Buddha pines and orange jasmine trees. The jasmines are clustered in a part of the park named Fragrance Hill. I can only guess what it’s like when the jasmine flowers.

Today’s photo is an illusion, an appropriate thing to say after a visit to a Buddhist temple. The roofs in the foreground are part of Nan Liang Garden. Those up the hill are the temple complex. The entire place is surrounded by residential and commercial towers.

In the garden, we passed a gent listening to a radio, and Joanna stopped to talk to him in Cantonese. Then she called me over to listen. It was an opera. It’s a very unusual style of singing to the Western ear. It is high-pitched and tends to be nasal. But then, consider how unnatural the singing is in European opera.

The man said something to Joanna. We smiled, thanked him, and left.

“Joanna, did that man call me a gwei lo?” “Fan gwei lo” means “white devil man” in Cantonese. That’s me.

No, the phrase was “lo gwai” which apparently means “getting old.” He’s getting old and still likes the old opera. Younger people don’t follow it anymore.

I know what he means. My favorite is Haydn.

[Editor’s note: Harry later learned that the phrase did include “gwei” in the sense of devil, but the man was referring to himself as an “old devil.”]