Hong Kong's Lunar New Year Fair

Hong Kong's Lunar New Year Fair is an eagerly-awaited seasonal tradition that runs for several days up to New Years Day, which is on 28th January this year. The main Fair is held in Victoria Park, an oasis of green in the midst of high rise buildings, in Causeway Bay, one of the main shopping areas on the main island. This year there were almost 500 stalls.

When I first visited Hong Kong about 30 years ago the stalls mainly sold flowers and some traditional foods and delicacies. Now, many political interest groups and charities, schools and associations all take stalls to promote their interests and there are some fast-food stalls as well.

Today, the Fair was crowded with - it seemed - most of Hong Kong's population of seven million, all desperate to get a bargain, to buy an essential prop for the New Year, or just to rubber-neck.

The politicians were there, making speeches, collecting donations, selling books, t-shirts and souvenirs or just 'pressing the flesh.'

I don't know if they are a political party as such, but there was a protest group there collecting funds for the 'June 4 Museum,' a museum to be dedicated to the suppression of democracy efforts in Tiananmen Square, Beijing, on June 4th 1989.

Inside the small cramped 'museum' tent were a few photographs (in negative form) of the ill-fated attempt to introduce democracy to modern China...alas, as they were in negative form, so you had to invert colours on smartphones to capture them in the original colours - but they still reproduce as shown below...

Apparently, the reason for this process was to make people re-create the event by re-developing the truth of the event like developing a photograph, the idea being that the mainland authorities want to maintain a distorted negative version. A little confusing? Anyway, the usual t-shirts etc were on display and sale.

Probably two thirds of the almost 500 stalls were taken up with things other than the traditional flowers, and there was plenty of shouting from eager sellers - and some general silliness with lots and lots of soft animals.

And, yes, there were flowers, lots of them. But first, remember the mandarin oranges so popular at CNY time? Well, there were hundreds of them...

Remember the odd-shaped gold coloured fruit that we saw before on CNY Countdown Number 1 of 16th January, 10 days ago.  Well, one seller that we talked to did not know the name of it -'its the New Year fruit.' The seller we talked to today was more helpful, apparently it's called the 'gold fruit.' Now we know! There were plenty of them at the Fair, check out the photos below...

 And, in a rare discovery for this mythical fruit - we even found some on the vine!

If we were worried that the regular flowers might be a disappointment after the excitement of the gold fruit, we needn't have worried, they were impressive enough in their own right.

In a corner of this vast park there is a statue of Queen Victoria, a hangover from colonial days. I wonder what the old girl thought of the Lunar New Year Fair?

We are MOST AMUSED, WELL DONE!

Sai Kung's Seafood Street

December 2016 was the third warmest year on record in Hong Kong and yesterday's forecast temperature was up to 24 Celsius (that's mid-70s Fahrenheit) so we headed to the fertile coast of Sai Kung peninsula for a seafood dinner.

Sai King is known as Hong Kong's back garden, equally renowned for its scenic hiking trails and its beautiful coastline with pristine white sandy beaches. The 'seafood street' of Sai Kung town is famous for its many seafood restaurants and when we arrived at 4pm the waterfront was bustling with hungry visitors.

You can either order your seafood from a restaurant menu or buy it from the many small boats (sampans) congregating at the two piers or tied up to the harbour wall.

At the first pier there were up to a dozen sampans tied up with small plastic boxes of fish and shellfish, some ready priced - but haggling expected!

 
The variety of fish and shellfish was amazing, all alive and apparently in good order. Each sampan had a fisherman/seller awaiting offers and ready to negotiate. Everything from octopuses to shrimps to clams was on show.

Our party, led by CK, who has spent a lifetime in the catering trade and knows his onions (and his grouper), decided to patronise one of the boats moored against the harbour wall.

The particular  boat we bought from had almost one hundred water-filled containers in which were a huge variety of seafood. We ended up buying prawns, razor clams, baby geoduck (a species of large clam), regular clams, two kinds of crabs (one the chunky red backed kind, the other red and white with long spindly legs), fish, and the largest prawns I have ever seen - mantis shrimps (also known as 'pee-ing shrimps' in Cantonese since they shoot a jet of water when picked up!)

There was also a boat that specialised in preserved seafood, sun-dried fish and clams etc, wrapped in polythene, but most of the custom was for the fresh seafood.

People were strolling along the harbour wall, enjoying the warmth and approaching twilight. Everyone seemed to be put for a stroll, grandparents, infants, couples, teenagers and amahs with a day off. There were benches every few yards and I was tempted to sit down - except my chosen bench was already taken...

Do you mind if I ...?

Grrrrr!

Actually, that's one of the changed I've noticed in Hong Kong over the last 20 years. The number of pet (especially dog)-owners has grown hugely. We passed two separate 'pet hospitals' on the way into Sai Kung and there were literally dozens of people with pets on a leash. However, one of the most amusing aspects is that many of the dogs are small, lap dogs, and are often carried around by their owners. And it's not just small dogs, there are dog-carriages for bigger dogs. Don't believe me? Look here:

We took our purchases to a restaurant and then went for an hour's stroll while they cooked the food. There must have been a couple of hundred yachts in the harbour, from seventy foot long yachts that cost almost a million US to plastic boxes barely six feet long that hardly floated.

The restaurant that we chose was at the far end of the harbour wall, almost as far away as it was possible to get from the self-proclaimed Michelin-starred restaurant near the entrance.  Many of the restaurants are a bit sniffy about cooking food their patrons have brought in - but it's worth making an effort to find the ones that will cook it, that way you guarantee the quality and freshness of your dinner - and save some money; it will cost maybe HK$60-80 per dish for the restaurant to cook for you, but it's well worth it.

Many of the restaurants had their own fish tanks, indeed some restaurants were wall-to-wall fish tanks, while there were also specialist fishmongers along the seafront.

I'd never seen so many fish in my life. 'Here's looking at you, squid!' (with apologies to Humphrey Bogart in the film Casablanca).

The restaurant we chose was at the far end of the harbour wall, and did not look so appealing from the water...(it's on the far left below).

But after an hour the food was all done, steaming plates of seafood accompanied by salty fish fried egg rice and cold bottles of Carlsberg beer. What stands out?

Well the streamed prawns that we started with were succulent and juicy, the mantis shrimps (above) had a huge amount of lobster-like meat, the razor clams were unexpectedly tender with the sweet juicyness of lobster coming through the sauce, the regular clams were extra tasty and the crabs went down well. I'm not a fan of crabs or lobster cooked Chinese-style, the meat ultimately extracted seems out of proportion to the effort required, but the rest of family certainly enjoyed them, possibly their highlight of the evening.

And so home to bed...

First of January 2017

Today we celebrated the octave of Christmas, First of January 2017, the feast of the Solemnity of Mary, Mother of God. And we celebrated it at my favourite church (apart from Sacred Heart, Hove), St Joseph's, Central District, Hong Kong.

We arrived half an hour early for the 11.30am Mass. There were eight separate Masses scheduled for today (count them: English at 7.00, 8.00, 9.00, 10.00 and 11.30 am plus 6.00 pm; Tagalog at 1.00, 2.30 and 4.00 pm). 

When we arrived, there were long queues and when we entered the church we found that the main body was already full, standing room only, so we went up to the balcony which also filled quickly. Before Mass began I amused myself by trying to calculate how many worshippers there were based on the number of people to a pew and then the number of pews; my estimate was 500-600 downstairs plus 300-400 in the balcony plus another couple of hundred taking Communion in the car park, as the Mass was also relayed there by loudspeaker...and this was one of eight Masses, today - and every Sunday!

The balcony from where we were sitting, at one side; it's standing room only

  The Mass was celebrated by elderly priest accompanied by three deacons. There was also a choir of 22 with a leader. The Mass responses and the words of the psalms and hymns were projected onto two large screens so that everyone could - and did - participate in the singing and responses. 

A special word of appreciation for the singing. 

The choir were excellent, very professionally outfitted in white robes with a red collar, and supplemented by a keyboard, electronic drum set, guitar, tambourine and maracas. The Filipinos are known as the musicians of Asia and St Joseph's congregation seems to be 95% Filipino, particularly maids who work as Amahs in Hong Kong. The responses and the praise were loud, tuneful, joyful and made with huge gusto - I'm sure there were smiles of appreciation and pleasure in Heaven.

After Mass, everyone  milled around for a while.

Some took the opportunity to pay their respects in front of the Tabernacle, or at the Crucifix, or at the crib. Given the huge numbers attending Mass, it was great to see how effective the uniformed ushers were in directing attendees and keeping things moving.

According to Wikipedia, there are 379,000 Catholics in Hong Kong. Hong Kong Government statistics for 2015 showed there were almost 175,000 Filipinos here. Since more than 85% of the population of the Philippines is Catholic, I would not be surprised to learn that Filipinos make up as much as 40% of local Catholic worshippers (obviously more in the urban areas). They are a wonderfully visible (and audible) proportion!    

And of course, since cellphones are ubiquitous in Hong Kong, the selfie sticks were put to use too after Mass ('Look Mum, we're at Mass today. Happy New Year!')...

The Curious Case of the Disappearing Hong Kong Bookshops

It’s a mystery, Holmes!

What is?

Why -  the case of the disappearing English-language bookshops in Hong Kong, of course.

Tell me more.

Well, there used to be lots of English-language retailers in Hong Kong, now there’s only a handful. Let me see: Swindon Book Company; Kelly & Walsh; Hong Kong Book Centre; Bookazine (10 small stores) and maybe I can include The Commercial Press branch in Causeway Bay (they are really a Chinese language book store but with a decent English book selection). That’s it!

Kelly & Walsh in an upscale shopping mall on HK Island

Hong Kong Book Centre - down the steps into the basement shop; Central

Bookazine - main branch in Prince's Building, Central

The Commercial Press, mainly in Chinese but with a large English section - Causeway Bay

Swindon Book Co in Kowloon side
 

The presumption is that there were previously more English-language bookshops?

Of course there were! Look, the Dymocks chain, an Australian franchise with 13 branches, closed down almost two years ago. Their bookshops were excellent, professionally run with an excellent range of magazines and books; they stocked the latest issues and promoted Asian writers too. Then there is Page One, a Singaporean group that owned three mega-stores, at Harbour City, Festival Walk and Times Square. They closed down a couple of months ago. They weren’t my favourite booksellers; while they carried huge stocks, customer service was sometimes lacking, books were occasionally misfiled and rarely displayed effectively.

I thought the  big Taiwanese bookseller, Eslite,  opened stores in Hong Kong recently?

Well yes, there are a handful of mega-stores now but Eslite is hardly a bookseller. Granted, the stores have 10,000+ books, most in Chinese language, but they also sell a lot of rubbish – boutique homemade jewellery, designer home wares, wine accessories, leather bags, organic products – expensive tosh.

Eslite - Tai Koo - describes itself as a 'bookstore'...ho hum!

You’re a little biased aren’t you, Watson?

I think a bookshop should just sell books, Holmes – maybe a decent cup of coffee while one is browsing - if that’s biased, then I’m biased.

And both Dymocks and Page One have closed down in the last couple of years?

Yes…but it’s even worse. The number of bookshops at Hong Kong Airport has also been drastically reduced. Page One and another company were granted a lease on 16 stores from 2009, now Page one has also lost its lease on its airport shops and the other company, Relay, is down to five shops…and, Holmes, you will not like this, a mainland company, Chung Hwa, will run five of the remaining ten.

Smell a rat do you?

Well, you have to wonder. There was all that kerfuffle last year with the booksellers who were allegedly kidnapped and ended up in mainland China. The airport bookshops often sold books that were very gossipy and salacious about the Chinese leadership…makes you wonder.

So, it’s all due to mainland censorship is it?

Do you have a better reason Holmes?

Tell me about the economic situation in Hong Kong just now.

Not good, I suppose. Retail sales are down, high street rents are down by up to 40% since the peak in fourth quarter 2013, there is slowing growth in China and the anti-corruption drive in mainland China shows no signs of slowing.

Even with the English-language bookshops that remain, they are reducing their stocks, not investing in as many new books. You know, I visited all the bookshops looking for the latest paperback by a Singaporean writer and ex-lawyer, Shamini Flint, and couldn’t find a copy. Just a couple of years ago most of the shops would have had a copy and several of her earlier works. Now, no one stocks her and there are very few new Asian writers supported.

Bookazine's flagship store on the top floor of Prince's Building in Central moved to a new location on the same floor in the last 12 months, one that is much smaller, the amount of books and magazines that they stock now is less than half the amount they had 12 months ago. The 'flagship' store has become a sampan store.

Do you notice anything in the streets, when you walk about, compared to, say, our last visit one year ago?

Well, there’s many fewer tourists. Westerners definitely, but also mainlanders; there used to be lots of them everywhere - do you remember the big crocodiles of mainland tourists with the leader holding an umbrella or flag at the front? Even the little entrepreneurs, the men and women who bought cheap stuff for resale back in China, they used to squat outside the stores and stuff their huge suitcases for the journey back across the border.

And did you notice any difference in the types of stores that you see now in the luxury shopping malls?

Now that you mention it – yes I did. I mean there are fewer restaurants and food outlets, more high end retailers of jewellery, watches, high end fashion brands. I suppose they can afford the rents. They say that while retail shop rents are falling, the rents in luxury malls are being maintained – just!

Maybe it’s become too expensive for booksellers?

What about alternative forms of consumption?

What do you mean, Holmes?

Do people just read books and just buy them in shops?

Well no…that’s good thinking, Holmes. You’re right you know! Everyone is on their smartphone now. I’ve never seen so many people using smartphones, they’re looking at them all the time, everywhere. I suppose they are also reading news…and articles, books even. Maybe they are ordering books on the internet too? Yes, of course they must be. And there are lots of free newspapers given away in the early morning by these old ladies who stand at the entrances on the MTR stations.

What about the use of English in Hong Kong?

Now, that’s definitely falling. Fewer people speak it, or speak it well; go into the big shops now and the priority is Mandarin or Japanese. In fact, although Chinese and English are the two official languages of Hong Kong under Basic Law, they tell me that more people speak Putonghua than English now. I suppose it makes sense with the shortage of Western tourists too. After all, this is a Chinese city, about 95% speak Chinese and only 3.5% speak English so perhaps it’s no surprise it no longer supports a lot of English-language bookshops, especially when the economy is suffering.

Hey! Maybe that’s why the number of English-language bookshops is falling? How did you work that out Holmes?

It’s elementary my dear Watson! I believe you will also find that the successful bookshops are those that have a longstanding agreement to supply textbooks to local schools and colleges; that makes them especially resilient in a downturn…yes, it’s quite elementary.