Posts tagged with "Chinese culture"

Wong Tai Sin Temple

As a Taoist, I felt it was only nat­ur­al that I vis­it the most famous Taoist tem­ple in Hong Kong while here.

Maybe I was being naïve, but I was pic­tur­ing some­thing like Washington Square Park, except instead of chess board tables, there would be peo­ple sit­ting around, dis­cussing Chuang Tzu’s para­bles, or spright­ly con­ver­sa­tions about the hap­pi­ness of fish. Instead, it was more like a gigan­tic for­tune-telling, wish­ing well extrav­a­gan­za. People go there to wor­ship Taoist deities by burn­ing incense, pray­ing to them for their wish­es to come true, and have their for­tunes told through the prac­tice of kau cim, which is when they shake a con­tain­er full of bam­boo sticks until one falls out, and the char­ac­ter on the stick is inter­pret­ed by a sooth­say­er1.

It amazes me how vast­ly dif­fer­ent the Taoist phi­los­o­phy is from the reli­gion. I could­n’t relate to any of this at all. The Taoists here are try­ing to get a hol­i­day — on Lau Tzu’s birth­day, if I under­stand cor­rect­ly — because oth­er reli­gions get a day off. This strikes me as some­what strange, since Lao Tzu is still dis­put­ed to be a myth­i­cal fig­ure, with an unknown date of birth. I also have to won­der if Lao Tzu would approve of such a rit­u­al.

At one point, there was an old lady wor­ship­ing at the entrance of a build­ing, and a woman came out and said, “Ma’am, this is the infor­ma­tion booth. You don’t need to wor­ship us.” My uncle and I could­n’t stop laugh­ing.

(This was a qui­et day in the mid­dle of the after­noon. Apparently, on spe­cial days of the Chinese lunar cal­en­dar, it’s packed, and the incense smoke too thick to breathe. Superstition has always been a part of the Chinese cul­ture.)

  1. That’s the part of the video where the peo­ple are kneel­ing, and you can hear the bam­boo shak­ers. It’s a short clip because I was­n’t allowed to film there. []

The Usual Comments And Questions

Pretty much every­one I’ve met so far has said one or more of the fol­low­ing things to me:

You have a lot of white hair. They see it main­ly in the sides of my head, where it’s short­er and more obvi­ous. It seems like most peo­ple in my fam­i­ly dye their hair black, so my grey stands out, even though I’m youngest.

Are you dat­ing any­one? This is usu­al­ly fol­lowed by, “Are there any girls are after you?”, which is a sort of way of fig­ur­ing out if you want to date, or just don’t have the option.

Is your Tai Chi teacher white? Except instead of white, it’s “guai” or “ghost”. This is the only ques­tion I resent, because I feel like I have to defend the fact that he’s a com­pe­tent teacher, even though he’s a “for­eign­er”.

You’re a hand­some boy. The word for hand­some in Chinese — “leng” — is the same word for pret­ty when applied to girls. This one is good. I like this one. More peo­ple need to say this to me.

Aren’t you cold? It’s get­ting very hot and some­what mug­gy, so I’m wear­ing as lit­tle cloth­ing as pos­si­ble. This is in con­trast to every­one else, who are still wear­ing scarves and coats.

Do your tat­toos come off? Although the lit­er­al trans­la­tion is more like “Do your tat­toos wipe off?”. Many peo­ple here don’t know how tat­toos work, which is under­stand­able, since they’re so uncom­mon. Related to this is, “Did you draw it your­self?”. This ques­tion sur­pris­es me, because the char­ac­ter was drawn by arguably the most famous Chinese cal­lig­ra­ph­er, Yan Zhenqing, and is so beau­ti­ful and per­fect and far beyond some­thing that I could have done myself.

Hong Kong Food Diary: Week 1

Chocolate mousse

Thumbnail: Stir fried abalone mushrooms with pork
Thumbnail: Stir fried Chinese broccoli
Thumbnail: Coconut mousse
Thumbnail: Coffee, citrus, and sago taro root jellies
Thumbnail: Stir fried crabs in black bean sauce
Thumbnail: Chinese dinner platter
Thumbnail: Chinese duck and chicken
Thumbnail: Egg chicken in soya sauce
Thumbnail: Fresh bread
Thumbnail: Chrysanthemum honey and aloe jelly
Thumbnail: latte
Thumbnail: Mango mousse
Thumbnail: Mango pudding
Thumbnail: Strawberry and chocolate mousse
Thumbnail: Oysters in the half shell
Thumbnail: Phoenix talons (chicken feet) and spare ribs in oyster sauce
Thumbnail: Fried black pepper pork chops with onions and potatoes
Thumbnail: Pork knuckles, eggs, and ginger in Chinese black vinegar.
Thumbnail: Pork neck fried noodles
Thumbnail: Salad bar
Thumbnail: Steamed scallops with black bean paste
Thumbnail: Seafood
Thumbnail: Seafood fried noodles
Thumbnail: Seafood fried rice with egg
Thumbnail: Seafood linguine
Thumbnail: Steamed shrimp in garlic sauce
Thumbnail: Soba noodles
Thumbnail: Chinese soup
Thumbnail: Steak pizza
Thumbnail: Steamed fish
Thumbnail: Black steamed fish in sea salt.
Thumbnail: Sushi platter
Thumbnail: Tofu and crab ball
Thumbnail: Tofu flower
Thumbnail: Yin yang shrimp
 

I’ve decid­ed to break up my food pho­tos by week, since there’s so much to write about. I’m an extreme­ly picky eater, but I’ve rav­en­ous­ly con­sumed every­thing that’s come across my plate (aside from one type of fish, and a dish involv­ing bit­ter mel­on). I’m not sure if it’s because the food is fresh, cooked well, or because I can’t cook Chinese food myself and have been with­out for a long time, but every­thing tastes so good. And these aren’t pho­tos of all the food I’ve eat­en so far; there have been a few times I did­n’t have my still cam­era with me.

Fish is bought fresh every day since the mar­kets are so close. I don’t get a chance to eat fish very often, but now it seems to be in every meal. I don’t think I’ve had the same dish more than twice. This is the rea­son why I was going to come with Pat and Jen last year, who are gour­mands beyond me. And Bronwen, because she loves try­ing new things, espe­cial­ly food relat­ed.

If you want descrip­tions and expla­na­tions on each dish, you’re going to have to break out of your feed read­ers and use light­box to see the cap­tions. They look so much bet­ter on black any­way.

Other weeks in my Hong Kong Food Diary

Mama eats jelly

Having It Maid

It’s the maid­’s day off.

To be hon­est, her brief absence has shown that I already got used to hav­ing her around.

But then again, it’s not hard to get used to such a lux­u­ry. You wake up and feel like eat­ing some­thing, and she’ll have it ready by the time you’re dressed and fin­ished brush­ing your teeth. She draws your bath water. She irons your clothes while you wait. She picks up the gro­ceries for din­ner when you decide what to eat. Some of the dish­es are so com­pli­cat­ed that she begins cook­ing the night before, and has her niece (my aunt and uncle’s maid) come over to help.

Nothing needs to be said when it comes to chores around the house. When a meal is fin­ished, every­one gets up and heads to the liv­ing room. The next time you come back, the dish­es are gone and the table wiped clean1. I fold my sheets before leav­ing the house, and when I get back they’re refold­ed, only neater.

My grand­moth­er has a his­to­ry of live-in ser­vants, although there haven’t been any wet nurs­es, gar­den­ers, or chauf­feurs for a while. Ever since her chil­dren grew up and left the house (or coun­try), she’s only need­ed one maid at a time. It seems to be a great rela­tion­ship, as there’s a respect that goes both ways; the maid is extreme­ly good at her job, and we treat her like fam­i­ly. When the last maid died after 30 years of ser­vice, all her funer­al arrange­ments were tak­en care of. In the last years of her life she had gone blind from dia­betes, and was then served her­self. That’s how we found the cur­rent maid, who’s been with my grand­ma ever since.

One of my favourite rit­u­als2 is the way the maid is giv­en din­ner. After all the food is cooked, the maid lays the dish­es out on the din­ner table, but does­n’t take any for her­self. So my grand­ma will take a plate, pile food onto it, and bring it to her.

  1. Admittedly, this was the hard­est thing for me to get used to. Something in me would keep scream­ing, “PUT THE DISHES IN THE SINK”. []
  2. And as a Taoist, I’m gen­er­al­ly deri­sive of rit­u­als. []