Travel Diaries Hong Kong 2006 Day 3 - Religion and the Family | Day 3 - Religion and the Family |
| Wednesday, 06 September 2006 | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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I awoke this morning still feeling tired, but feeling less jet lagged. After breakfast Clara needed to visit her Grandma in her nursing home in Kowloon. Clara's mum Polly was coming along to show us the way as Clara hasn't been in a long time. We set off by taking the number 40 bus from Robinson Road to Admiralty, the bus was full of commuters and I ended up having to squeeze between two people on their way to work. At Admiralty we changed to the MTR to travel north into Kowloon. At few stops later at Mong Kok we changed to a new line and took the train up to Kowloon Tong station. At the end of the journey I began to feel a little strange. Over the last few days I hadn't really been drinking that much and I think it finally caught up with me. Over the next couple of hours I had to drink a couple of litres of water and I was feeling much better again. Before we went to visit Grandma we had to go and pay respects to the 'graves' of ancestors of Clara at a local temple. The 'graves' are small squares with pictures of the loved ones that are situated in large rooms with rows of others. To pay respects the person must light a number of incense sticks and then place them between hands in a prayer position. The hands are then waved up and down three times in front of the photos. Clara also paid respects to her 'ancestors' which was another small patch on the wall of photos. The paying of respects to the dead is one of the traditions of people in Hong Kong and is part of the Buddist religion. This also starts to show the respect for the family and the importance that is paid to the elderly (and those that have passed away) by the Hong Kong people. After leaving the temple it was a 10 minute walk to the nursing home, past another reminder of home, York Road! We were now in a residential area of Kownloon, which lies directly under the path of the old airport. Clara told me that this area used to be quite bad, becuase of the flight path, but now the area is nice and actually is made up mostly of houses making it an expensive area to live in. On reaching the nursing home we signed in as visitors. By now I was beginning to feel a little better and had drunk a litre of water to rehydrate myself. The weather was extremely hot, roughly 34 degrees and the humidity must be very high. By the time I reached the nursing home even Polly was sweating, which made me feel better about being soaking wet! As we entered the home, Clara's grandma was doing exercise and she came out to join us 10 minutes later. Her grandma is about 95 years old and was looking quite frail, but seemed very happy to see us. I had been taught to greet her with 'Poor poor lei ho' (hello grandma), which I hope she understood! Clara's grandma does not speak any English so Clara and Polly chatted with her, occasionally translating some of the conversation to me. We stayed in the home for about 45 minutes before Clara's grandma was whisked away for her lunch. We made the journey back to Mon Kok MTR station, still drinking plenty of water, and got a MTR back to Tsim Sha Tsui on the tip of Kowloon. This is the closest point to Hong Kong Island and could eventually be only a matter of 100m from Hong Kong Island as they continue to reclaim land! Tsim Sha Tsui is the location of some of Hong Kongs many hotels including the Peninsula which is situated in a colonial building and is where Michael Palin stayed in 80 days around the world! Also located here is the 'Avenue of Stars'. This is a new attraction that is a walkway next to the harbour which has around 100 plaques of famous Hong Kong movie and television stars with a signed handprint. We managed to see the handprints of stars such as Jackie Chan, Tony Leung and John Woo (Mission Impossible director) as well as a statue of Bruce Lee (obviously no handprints!). The avenue is also a great place to take picture of Hong Kong Island - arguably the most famous skyline in the world. It is also a good place to see the Star Ferry which leave from the tip of Kowloon to Central and Wan Chai. Walking along the waterfront we saw the Hong Kong Cultural Center (basically a very large museum and theatre), the Hong Kong Space Museum and the clock tower which marks the location of the original train station that the British built in Hong Kong. Our next trip was on Hong Kongs most famous transport the 'Star Ferry'. We opted for the top deck, which is 50 cents more expensive than the lower deck - but still only costs $2.20 (8p) for a journey to Central. We waited in the pier for the ferry to arrive and again there is a television so that every Hong Konger can have something to do while waiting. The ferry arrived 5 minutes later and boarding takes a matter of minutes and everyone piles onto the ferry. As it was the middle of the day there were only about 50 people on our ferry, although there did seem to be more people on the lower deck. The journey accross gives a good view of the skyline including the International Finance Center (IFC), Hong Kong's tallest building. The journey only takes about 7 minutes, but Clara tells me it used to take 10 minutes before they reclaimed more land. As we appraoched the pier in Central we could see that they are buliding a new pier for the Star Ferry in preparation for the next area of land to be reclaimed for more buildings. When we reached Central we ate our lunch which we had bought earlier. Our lunch was a large ball of rice with shredded pork, hot dog sausage and egg inside. We bought this earlier from a fast food outlet in the MTR and was very tasty. The shredded pork is a bit dry (basically its powder) and is nicer in small amounts! After lunch we looked back to where we had been in Kowloon from Queen's pier in Central. As I had not felt great all morning we decided to have a short afternoon. We walked through central and the commercial district taking in the sights of the Bank of China Building (that's the one that is very funny shapes with two prongs on top), the HSBC headquarters and the old buildings of the British government (now home to the Hong Kong Legislative Council). We walked through a number of exclusive shopping malls where every shop was from a famous designer, we even managed to see Marks and Spencer! By this time it was the lunchtime of most of the workforce and the streets were busy. We walked through central to the bottom of the mid-levels escalator. We took the escalator up halfway to Hollywood Road to see one of the more famous temples in Hong Kong, Man Mo Temple! Anyone who is a fan of computer games will realise this is in Shenmue - the epic Japanese RPG. Man Mo Temple sits in the middle of one of the older districts in Hong Kong with lots of older, quite shabby, looking buildings. On all sides of the temple it is now dwarfed by newer developments of up to 40 stories in height and the temple almost seems to get lost. Inside the temple is a very smoky environment filled with incence burning (see the photos - the curly brown things are incence burning from the roof). The temple is a working temple and there were people worshipping at the altar, they seemed oblivious to the tourists walking around. Unlike many temples, photos can be taken throughout, apart from the room where families pay respects to their ancestors. The temple has many ornate sculptures of Buddha and many saints. See the pictures for a brief history of the temple. One danger with the temple is that incence is burning all over and small pieces are constantly falling off that have burned to ash and you have to watch it doesn't set you alight! After leaving the temple we walked back to the mid-levels escalator passing by a number of traditional looking Hong Kong streets, many of which had steps instead of a road as they are so steep! The area around Man Mo Temple (Hollywood Road) is famous for antique shops and there are many selling everything from big stone statues to antique Chinese furniture. We took the mid-levels escalator up the last few parts until Robsinson Road and paid a quick trip to the local bakery to get more buns for breakfast. Buns in Hong Kong are basically breadcakes (baps or bread rolls if you not from Yorkshire!) but in Hong Kong they are never plain and contain everything from pork, hotdog sausages and cheese. Tonight we're off to a French restaurant and then coming home for a rest! Tomorrow our friend Sunny is coming over from Macau, so we're spending some time with him.
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