Upper Lascar Row, also known as Cat Street, is a nar­row alley­way mar­ket that sells dec­o­ra­tions, trin­kets, and antiques. It’s not quite like other Hong Kong mar­kets because it’s less com­mer­cial­ized (i.e. doesn’t sell as many touristy things), even though the most com­mon buy­ers there seem to be foreign.

The name comes from a joke in Chinese: it’s said that if you have some­thing stolen, you’re likely to find it for sale on Cat Street. Thieves are known as “rats” in Cantonese slang, and peo­ple who pur­chase goods from rats are called “cats”.

 

The Kwun Yam Shrine is a Buddhist shrine off Repulse Bay (named so after the British fleet repulsed pirates based there who would ter­ror­ize Chinese mer­chants). Unlike other Buddhist shrines, this one wasn’t off-limits to pho­tog­ra­phy. It was quite inter­est­ing, as there are so many dif­fer­ent and colour­ful stat­ues, large and small.

Each statue rep­re­sents a dif­fer­ent fig­ure in Chinese mythol­ogy, and it’s said that if you per­form a cer­tain action to a statue, some­thing pos­i­tive will hap­pen. For exam­ple, there was the statue of a fish god there, and if you throw a coin into it’s mouth, it’s said you’ll have good for­tune. There’s also the Longevity Bridge; a plaque pro­claims that every time you cross the bridge, you’ll have three days added to your life. The two biggest stat­ues at the entrance — Guan Yin and Tin Hau — were wor­shiped as god­desses of the mercy and the sea, par­tic­u­larly impor­tant if you’re a fisherman.

At one point, I came to a statue of a rock with writ­ing engraved on it, and red rib­bons around the base. My dad said, “Jeff, you need to take a lot of rib­bons and tie it around the rock”. “Why?” “Because this is the god of mar­riage. This way you’ll meet a lot of girls.” Funny, dad.

 

My grandma’s apart­ment is in Kowloon City, a very old area of Kowloon, char­ac­ter­ized by dirty build­ings and slummy areas. There’s so much char­ac­ter here. It seems like every shop has a story, and every street a his­tory. My dad told me that since it’s so hard to find park­ing, some restau­rants have a valet park your car for you if you go in.

Since it’s a long-established area, there’s pretty much every­thing you need within a cou­ple blocks, or a few min­utes walk. This includes:

• fruit stands
• car deal­er­ship
• restau­rants of many ethnicities
• Chinese med­i­cine shops
• snack and pas­try shops
• a toy shop
• a mod­ern shop­ping mall
• butch­ers
• a famous park
• a shop­ping mall
• elec­tron­ics and appli­ance stores
• mag­a­zine stands
• gro­cery stores
• den­tist
• scrap metal stores
• cof­fin shop
• tire shop

One of Hong Kong’s famous real estate agents said that liv­ing in such high den­sity is a habit, and that Hong Kongers could expand out­ward (instead of upward) if they wanted to. I can under­stand why this is true, because every­thing is so close and con­ve­nient. When you live in the mid­dle of all this, you really feel like you’re part of the city’s pulse.

Everyone car­ries an Octopus card in Hong Kong, because it’s used every­where. When you take the bus, you pay the fare by tap­ping your wal­let (with Octopus card in it) on the scan­ner; the fare may change depend­ing on whether you take it before or after cross­ing the har­bour. Subway fares aren’t flat-rate either, so shorter routes are cheaper. The dis­tance you travel is tracked by scan­ning your card when you get on and again when you get off, and the appro­pri­ate amount is deducted.

Even vend­ing machines, park­ing meters, con­ve­nience stores, and restau­rants have Octopus scan­ners used to pay for their ser­vices. It’s also used as an iden­tity sys­tem, where stu­dents sign-in to class by tap­ping their cards on door scan­ners, or res­i­dents enter their apart­ment build­ings with­out need­ing a key.

The Chinese name for the card is “eight arrived pass”, because eight has spe­cial mean­ing in Chinese, espe­cially when it comes to direc­tions. The English name comes from an octo­pus hav­ing eight ten­ta­cles, and the logo is an infin­ity sym­bol that’s also in the shape of an eight. So clever.

 

I had the chance to take part in some apart­ment hunt­ing, and saw two suites in a new sky rise. The smaller was $1.3 mil­lion CAD, the larger $1.8 mil­lion CAD. Which pretty much means that I could never afford them, even if I won the lot­tery, but I still dream of liv­ing here one day. A cozy space with a nice view and mod­ern trim­mings. Mortgages go up to 30 years in Hong Kong. If you’re buy­ing a place that hasn’t been built yet, you get to design the lay­out of your condo like a house.

Space is so expen­sive here that offices are often com­bined with bed­rooms, unlike Canada where there’s a sep­a­rate room for each (unless you’re a stu­dent). Furnishing a place would be much cheaper though, since empty areas get filled quickly. I imag­ine that it’s hard to be a pack rat when stor­age areas are at such a premium.

 

I just hap­pened to be here dur­ing the Hong Kong Flower Show, a demon­stra­tion of var­i­ous flower cul­ti­va­tors and appre­ci­a­tion orga­ni­za­tions. Each group had their own lit­tle sec­tions to present their areas of spe­cial­iza­tion. It’s amaz­ing to see how cre­ative peo­ple can be with flow­ers; liv­ing things, no less.

Victoria Peak is the high­est moun­tain on Hong Kong Island, offer­ing an oth­er­wise unavail­able view of Hong Kong, includ­ing the Kowloon side. On clear days, you can see the hori­zon go on into the distance.

 

To get to the peak, you can a tramway train, which is about a five minute ride. On the other hand, wait­ing to get on the tram took me about 30 min­utes on a good day at a good time. The tram actu­ally has stops like a bus, because some peo­ple actu­ally live on the peak, though these are con­sid­ered lux­ury estates.

At night, the lights of Hong Kong’s famous sky­line start to turn on, and the view changes dra­mat­i­cally. The sky­line is nor­mally seen and pho­tographed from the Kowloon side, so this is a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive from usual Hong Kong photographs.

 

There’s an entire lit­tle vil­lage at the peak, with lots of touristy areas sell­ing over­priced memorabilia.