Hong Kong Island Promenade is Complete

Visitors can wear shoe covers on the glass walkway

During the Covid-19 pandemic, after dinner during the week I walked along the Hong Kong waterfront from Kennedy Town to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre and back, a good 10K.

I enjoyed being among people, in the fresh air and getting exercise.

The last 1.1K section was unveiled to the public

Then on the weekends my friend and I would walk further to Sai Wan Ho, but when we got to Tin Hau and Fortress Hill, there were breaks in the path and we had to walk inland a few blocks before getting back on the harbourfront path.

But yesterday the last section, about 1.1K long was finally completed, from the North Point Promenade to Hoi Yu Street in Quarry Bay. Now people can literally go from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan in 13K.

Part of the North Point section features a glass walkway, where visitors need to wear shoe covers... seems a bit over the top for a path that's mainly for looking at the scenery above than below the water.

Nevertheless this project of designing and constructing a 13k promenade is 16 years in the making and it's great to see it's finally finished.

The path is a great way to see the city

It's a fantastic way not only for locals to enjoy their city, but also for visitors to see how accessible Hong Kong is and to appreciate the views from the waterfront. 

When I recently visited Hong Kong I was staying in North Point and walked along the waterfront towards Causeway Bay a few times. 

Can't wait to go back and walk the whole 13K!

Sex in the City Resonates with Gen Z

Samantha, Miranda, Carrie and Charlotte for the Gen Z crowd

This morning we had dim sum early with some family friends and their adult kids who are in their 20s and living in New York and Boston.

Funnily enough they told me they were watching episodes from Sex in the City, a show I watched in the late 1990s to early 2000s.

The cable show created by Darren Star, was based on the newspaper column and book of the same name written by Candace Bushnell, a columnist for the New York Observer.

The show focuses around Carrie Bradshaw, based on Bushnell, a writer who has an addiction for shopping, especially for Manolo Blahniks, flirty publicist Samantha Jones, prim and proper Charlotte York, and feminist lawyer Miranda Hobbes.

So I was surprised to hear they were watching the show, bringing me back to when I watched it weekly on Saturday nights in my 20s. We discussed the characters, and they felt Miranda resonated with them the most, and I agreed, adding I liked how Samantha is so liberated.

They said the storylines are still relevant today, particularly about men! 

One thing we definitely concurred on was that Carrie was so hard to relate to, being so flighty and having such a bizarre wardrobe. But more importantly that it was frustrating to see her keep going back to Mr Big! haha.

Then I asked the two sisters what they were doing after dim sum and they said they were going to Aberdeen Centre in Richmond with their parents. 

They looked up that the Chinese shopping mall was renovated in 2003 -- the same year the younger sister was born. 

I couldn't help but remark that was the year I helped produce a radio broadcast for Chinese New Year in the mall!

Now I feel really old! 

Making Hakka Style Stuffed Tofu

Hakka style stuffed tofu we ate in Mui Yuen last month

Last month my mom and her siblings went to Mui Yuen, or Meixian county in Guangdong province, where her side of the family is from.

They last visited in 2008, where they went from Hong Kong to Shenzhen, and from there arranged a van to take them to Mui Yuen, which took about five hours on the road.

Tofu with seasoned ground pork stuffed in them

Seventeen years later we took the high-speed rail from West Kowloon station in Hong Kong to Meixian county in just over two hours, including three stops in between.

For my mom and her siblings it was a great way for them to get together, reminisce and speak Hakka, which I didn't understand...

While we were in their hometown for a few days we of course had to have some Hakka food, but to be honest, what we tried overall was meh.

We had asked our tour guide to take us to the best restaurants, but either she didn't know the best places, or they were and weren't that good.

It's hard to comprehend since over 90 percent of the population there is Hakka, so it's not like a non-Hakka person cooking dishes they didn't grow up eating.

Napa cabbage in the Dutch oven and stir-fried

Nevertheless, one of the better dishes we ate was stuffed tofu, which was stuffed with seasoned ground pork and then pan-fried before it was braised. The tofu was also silky smooth, which required skills to be able to panfry and braise without breaking them.

I hope to eventually be able to make something similar, but in the meantime I was inspired to make another version from A Very Chinese Cookbook by Kevin Pang and his father Jeffrey Pang.

In it Jeffrey explains he is Hakka, and gives his relatively easy recipe of stuffed tofu which I followed and doubled for a big family dinner.

First step is mashing some fresh ginger and spring onion in some water for about 20 minutes until the water turns green.

With chicken stock added, tofu is placed upright

Then the water is strained and added to ground pork, along with soy sauce, oyster sauce, Shaoxing wine, white pepper, and sesame oil. Once that is mixed thoroughly that should be left to marinate for at least an hour (though I didn't do it for that long!).

In the meantime take firm tofu, cut them lengthwise and then into four small squares. Taking a spoon, make a small round scoop in the middle, and then carefully add the pork mixture, leaving a small mound. 

Chop a Napa cabbage in half and then half again lengthwise, and then chop into two-inch pieces and wash. Then heat up a Dutch oven, add oil and the Napa cabbage and stir-fry it for several minutes. Add chicken broth, and then using chopsticks, arrange the cabbage to create a nest before placing the tofu with pork upright.

After 15 minutes the pork and tofu are cooked

Cover it and let it simmer for 15-20 minutes and the dish is done. The sweetness of the cabbage along with the pork adds flavour to the tofu. I added a pinch of salt in the end.

I've also made an Indonesian version using fish sauce in the seasoning and cutting the tofu into triangles and stuffing the meat in a slit in the middle. 

Picture of the Day: Baked Sago Pudding

The baked sago pudding before digging in

Sago, or tapioca pudding is a favourite in the summer. Yeung ji gum lo 楊枝甘露, or mango pomelo sago mixed with coconut milk and evaporated milk is very refreshing and citrusy from the pomelo, balanced with sweetness from the mango and sago pearls.

In the winter, baked sago or tapioca pudding, called 脆皮西米焗布甸 crispy crust baked sago pudding (chui pei sai mai guk bo deen) is a warm dessert that is also satisfying, with a meld of flavours and textures. 

It has a pastry crust on top, and underneath is sago mixed with custard, and sometimes has a layer of either red bean, lotus seed, or black sesame paste.

Yesterday we had a massive Christmas feast featuring dishes like giant deep-fried minced shrimp balls, roasted pig, soy sauce chicken, steamed goby fish, pea shoots with yuba, and stir-fried lobster with vermicelli.

For dessert we had the baked sago pudding with a vanilla-flavoured egg custard.

Love the combination of the crunchy crust with the warm custardy filling with sago!

Chinese Solution to Turkey Leftovers

Turkey congee topped with cilantro to be extra fancy

If you ate turkey for Christmas dinner, what do you do with the carcass?

Put it in a big pot with some rice and lots of water and let it simmer for a few hours to turn into congee. 

It's a delicious hug in a bowl.

It tastes so comforting you will want to have another bowl!

We had turkey last night and had congee for lunch today.

So good.

Everyone has a Charlie Brown Christmas

If you go with the flow, you can survive this holiday season

We've been conditioned to make Christmas a special occasion, a picture-perfect celebration with delicious feasts around the dining table, fabulous gifts picked out and beautifully wrapped, homes warmly decorated and keeping traditions to the letter.

But things change over time, and so do expectations.

Years ago we used to write Christmas cards to a long list of people, then for years pre-Covid we summarised our year in a letter sent out with cards, but this year we only sent out a mere handful.

Expectations bring more tension and stress

We used to brine and roast a turkey every year, checking on it hourly and basting it to prevent it from burning in the oven. The last two years we pre-ordered a roast piglet and we still had lots of leftovers. Congee made from the bones is just as good as the ones made from turkey.

It can be so hard to hold things together with expectations to be happy and joyous 24 hours a day, which can lead to tension and arguments that reverberate to the rest of the family. It just ruins everyone's day, or the rest of the holiday.

Which is why I'm so grateful for A Charlie Brown Christmas, which celebrates its 60th anniversary this year.

The animated annual classic is about how Charlie Brown feels depressed and wonders if he will find the true meaning of Christmas. He eventually finds it in a small sad-looking tree that we all call "a Charlie Brown tree." 

A jazzy Christmas makes things better

When Charles Schultz made the TV special in 1965, it wasn't clear how A Charlie Brown Christmas would be received.

But maybe it resonated with people -- as someone on Instagram posted, they felt seen. 

Christmas for me is the soundtrack to A Charlie Brown Christmas. It's light, jazzy and improvised, cause that's what life is... go with the flow to survive the holidays intact!

MTR Trying to Catch Fare Evaders

Only seniors can use this card on Hong Kong transport!

In Hong Kong there are people who try to evade paying full fare when going on the MTR.

By using a green Octopus card for seniors, they can ride for much cheaper.

Last year it was reported more than 4,200 people were abusing the system.

My aunt, who is in her early 70s, looks young for her age as she exercises a lot.

During our recent trip to Hong Kong, she used the green Octopus card to get around on the MTR, and one time when she was exiting the turnstile, a female MTR staffer came up to her and asked her if she knew she was using a senior's card.

"Yes, because I'm a senior," my aunt replied.

"Can I see your HKID?" asked the staff member.

My aunt had her Hong Kong passport on hand as she had just renewed it.

When the staffer looked at my aunt's birthdate, she was disappointed at being unable to catch a fare evader.

After my aunt told me this story, I told her it was a compliment!

Jumping Over the Wall for this Soup

Abalone, sea cucumber and fish maw presented on a platter

Today is Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, and the Chinese like to mark the occasion with a dinner that could be equated to Thanksgiving. Family members get together around the table and have a feast that includes tong yuen, or glutinous rice dumplings filled with black sesame paste in a sweet soup.

This evening we were invited to a Christmas party that doubled as a Winter Solstice dinner at Grand Crystal Seafood Restaurant in Burnaby.

On the menu were dishes like lobster stir-fried with mung bean vermicelli, soy sauce chicken, sweet and sour deep-fried fish, bok choy with yuba, or tofu skin, and fried rice. We didn't have tong yuen, but baked sago pudding with red bean paste.

The highlight was Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, served in a massive tureen. The clear broth was so flavourful, soaking up the ingredients it had been cooked with -- abalone, sea cucumber, fish maw, Chinese ham, goose webs, shiitake mushrooms, and conpoy.

The soup was given this name with a tale that the smell of it was so tempting that a vegetarian Buddhist monk could not resist and would jump over the wall to try it.

This particular soup was delicious, the broth was clear and hardly oily; we ate the abalone, sea cucumber and fish maw separately with abalone sauce.

Whenever I get the opportunity to have Buddha Jumps Over the Wall, it reminds me of when I first tried it back in the late 1990s in Hong Kong.

I was a young journo at the time trying to learn as much as I could, and had one assignment to interview a chef about this dish. I went to a Chinese restaurant in a hotel and the chef explained all the different ingredients in the soup (at the time it included shark's fin), ginseng, and a curious slightly round disk about 1cm in diameter with a small hole in the middle.

The hotel public relations manager and I asked what this was.

"Deer penis," the chef sheepishly replied, adding it was supposed to be for men's virility.

We giggled and asked, does it have any effect on us women?

He didn't have an answer and went back to the kitchen.

We drank the soup and it was delicious, having been simmering for hours on the stove.

That evening I went home and could not sleep! I was tossing and turning for ages.

The next morning I called up the PR manager and asked her if she was able to get some shut eye.

"I couldn't sleep either!" she exclaimed and we wondered if it was because of the deer penis in the soup...

 

What Coins areThe Worth These Days

A silver coin from the Republic of China era 

My paternal grandmother gave a bunch of old coins dating back to the Qing dynasty and Republic of China to my dad a long time ago. There was one silver coin from the Republican era, and several bunches of copper coins wrapped in light beige paper, denoting their circulation during different Qing emperors.

Now that my dad is getting on, he has been downsizing a bit, and wondered if those coins were worth anything. We took pictures of them and sent them to relatives in Hong Kong to show a coin buyer to see what they thought.

The other side of the silver coin

The verdict? Can't really tell from the photos so bring them here so we can see them in person.

So I packed them in my suitcase and after we arrived in Hong Kong, I met up with my relatives at Century Plaza, a small shopping mall in Mong Kok, Kowloon.

But we weren't going in there -- they led us to an old multi-storey building behind the mall, but we could quickly see on the ground floor that there were small stalls filled with coins and bank notes from various countries.

My relatives didn't know a particular seller, but since there were three floors, we thought we'd work our way down from the top.

As soon as the elevator doors opened on the third floor we went to a stall that was open in front of us. The seller, a guy in his late 40s, early 50s seemed decent enough. 

Once I revealed the silver coin, I could see his interest right away. The coin was secured in between two pieces of cardboard with circles in the middle covered with cellophane and stapled together.

The seller carefully took the coin out and pronounced it legit and would give us HK$700 for it. 

As for the copper coins, he wasn't interested.

"You can give these to your friends if you want," he said.

But when I explained I'd rather just get rid of them, he said he'd give me HK$50 for the lot.

He opened the paper-wrapped coins and saw some were dark-coloured, while others looked shiny.

"Never ever try to clean the coins because they will immediately lost at least half their value," he warned. 

We didn't know what happened to these copper coins, as they were pretty much untouched for decades.

When we asked about bank notes people collected over the years, he said they weren't worth much unless the serial numbers were good ones, or in a sequence. The other problem is keeping them relatively pristine in Hong Kong's humid climate.

As for stamps, they are hardly worth anything at all, again for the same reasons.

However, if you have something like share certificates in excellent condition, like this one from The Kwongtung Tramway Co, Limited, then you could hit the jackpot.

In any case, seems like coins are the best bet. "If you have anymore of these silver coins, bring them back," the seller said.

Picture of the Day: Hong Kong Street Art

A nice surprise to see this piece of street art!

When I was walking around in Hong Kong, I was surprised to come across one or two beautiful manhole covers like this one!

Turns out the Drainage Services Department held a design contest in 2019 and did it again last year to celebrate its 35th anniversary. The entries were shortlisted by a panel of judges before the public could vote on the ones they liked best.

There are some 200 decorated manhole covers across the city with different ones reflecting the places they are in. For example, the one in Tai Wai features an egret, and the one in Tsuen Wan has the design of a bird called the red-whiskered bulbul and a squirrel.

At the Central Ferry Pier, the manhole cover has the Star Ferry, Victoria Harbour and Victoria Peak. 

This one I stumbled upon in Central turns out to be the runner-up winner in 2024 and it encapsulates the energy and vibrancy of the city. 

Shenzhen: Hanging Out in the Mall

MixC is a massive retail development in Shenzhen Bay

During our stay in Hong Kong, we also did a day trip to Shenzhen. We had heard a lot about how the city had changed in the last few years, how people and families go there on the weekends to shop, eat, and have massages with really good ambience and service at a fraction of the cost in Hong Kong.

And it's easy to see why seniors love going across the border, because with a JoyYou card, they can travel to the border for just HK$2. That's even cheaper than regular fare going one stop on the MTR line.

The mall looks sleek, but hardly any shoppers

We took the longer route of taking the MTR from Admiralty to LoWu, and the border control on the Hong Kong side hasn't changed much.

Then we crossed the bridge to the Chinese side where at first foreign passport holders were expected to fill out an arrival card online. There were technical difficulties and the officers gave up and handed out paper forms instead.

I downloaded the app Didi ahead of time and ordered a car -- but as we didn't know the Shenzhen train station well we got lost trying to find the meeting spot! The driver called us and we saw the Shangri-La Shenzhen ahead of us and rushed over there to meet him. Thankfully he was very patient despite only making 36 kuai from us!

He drove us about 30 minutes to a new shopping mall that friends had recommended we check out. It's called MixC and it's been around since 2017, but we went to a new location near Shenzhen Bay, which opened in October, which might explain why it was pretty empty? Or is it a sign of China's slow economy? 

Vietnamese lunch of vermicelli with pork

The mall is sleek and modern-looking, filled with luxury brands from Louis Vuitton to Christian Dior, Gucci Kids (I couldn't even afford a child's handbag), an upscale supermarket called Ole, and a movie theatre.

In the supermarket one could buy a giant king crab, or palm-sized hairy crab, blueberries the size of 5-cent coins, and even Nicholas Tse "low-temperature processed black pork luncheon meat".

For lunch we ate at a Vietnamese restaurant in a kind of food court in the basement, which was busy. We ate pho with beef and sausage, and warm vermicelli with spring roll and pork slices, and a plate of young water spinach that was delicious. We went to another kiosk for gelato that other people were lining up for.

We walked off the calories by wandering the mall. Seeing there was a roof garden, we checked it out and were impressed by the design of the space -- global firm CallisonRTKL, which my architect cousin says is only interested in massive projects like these, with lots of space to design.

The mall is spread over several city blocks

The concept is "city crossing", where we would wander through one part of the mall, emerge outside and see a bridge to the other side, cross it, and enter another part of the mall, and it would continue like this for several city blocks. 

The stores were pretty much empty except for the staff inside them, and the restaurant calibre looked impressive. There was DaDong Roast Duck from Beijing, a Shanghainese restaurant that had a nice decor and menus that were large books filled with big pictures. 

MixC is next to a bullet-shaped tower that had no obvious signage, but it is a China Resources building, as the entire development is owned by the state-owned enterprise. And next to this futuristic building is a nice open space, with water features, and a Monet-like sculpture with figures dancing in a circle.

We ended up having dinner in a vegetarian chain restaurant called Qing Chun Perma, which gives of a zen-like vibe with its minimalist decor. Diners walk into the open kitchen, seeing staff preparing dumplings, stir-frying or making desserts wearing white chef jackets and gray fedora hats.

Mushroom xiaolongbao at Qing Chun Perma

Each table is set in a booth-like atmosphere and shielded with bamboo screens so that you can't see the people sitting at the next table, but you can hear them.

The menu has a mix of Chinese and Western dishes: The mushroom xiaolongbao were big, generous dumplings with thin wrappers, and lots of flavour in the fillings. We also had an asparagus and morel mushroom warm salad, a pumpkin soup with coconut milk, braised tofu with morels, and stir-fried pea shoots.

For dessert, a bowl of glutinous rice dumplings in sweet rice wine, and mango sago cream with pomelo.

At times it was hard to flag down the servers -- all women -- but they were friendly and helpful. When we finally got a hold of someone asking for the bill, she told us to scan the QR code at our table and pay that way. No need to tip. Just pay electronically and then you can leave.

Then we made our way back to Hong Kong, getting a car to drive us back to LoWu, and then after going through Chinese immigration, we took the train back, very tired!

Review: Fantasia

The Sorcerer's Apprentice is just one of eight segments

Each month VIFF in Vancouver has its Pantheon series, featuring what they think are the greatest movies of all time. In addition to the showing is a film expert who gives some comments beforehand and there's some feedback afterwards from the audience.

Yesterday was the showing of Walt Disney's Fantasia. I watched it so long ago that I can't remember when, and thought it would be neat to watch it on the big screen. So did over 150 other people! The show was practically sold out on a rainy Sunday late morning.

Before the screening, Alla Gadassic, associate professor in Media History and Theory at Emily Carr gave a talk on the history of Fantasia, and explained how Disney poured a lot of money into the film and how it was such a risk for the studio, which lost money when it was first released in 1940.

The dancing Chinese mushrooms

She said nowadays we live in a very visual world, more than other senses, like sound. But in the 1910s and 20s people were thinking about how to represent sound visually. Gadassic showed a painting by the abstract Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky, who is believed to have synesthesia, where people associate music with colours, or certain letters or numbers with colours. 

Around this time film was believed to be a way to represent sound visually and there were many experimental films at this time, showing sound waves, or shapes representing sounds. People like animator Oskar Fishinger believed that since music or sound didn't have historical or cultural context, neither should the visual representation of it, which is why simple shapes were believed to be a good way of doing this.

Disney probably saw Fishinger's work, and recruited him to work on Fantasia. However, they later had a falling out, as Fishinger felt his work was possibly too abstract for mass audiences and left the studio; he was never credited for his work on the first of eight segments of Fantasia, Toccata and Fugue in D Minor.

There are eight in total, each different from the others, which is why Gadassic suggests looking at Fantasia as an anthology. Disney himself chose the music, while different teams of animators worked on the segments and Gadassic says it was a group effort, where everyone collaborated. One theory is that Mickey Mouse was included because his popularity was flagging.

When a hippo and an alligator dance together

The eight segments are:

Toccata and Fugue in D Minor: Live action of the Philadelphia Orchestra conducted by Leopold Stokowski gradually fades into abstract patterns determined by the music.

The Nutcracker Suite: Various pieces were chosen, such as the Asian-looking mushrooms dancing in "Chinese Dance", beautiful fish frolicking in the sea in "Arabian Dance", and flowers and leaves blown by the wind in "Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies".

The Sorcerer's Apprentice: Mickey Mouse is is an apprentice told by the sorcerer to gather water to put in the cauldron, and tries to use magic to make his life easier...

The Rite of Spring: How life began on earth from protozoa to eventually dinosaurs and how they became extinct.

Intermission/Meet the Soundtrack: The master of ceremonies announces there's a 15-minute intermission to which we snicker. The film cuts back to the orchestra members returning to their seats and have an impromptu jazz jam session.

A giant devil in Night on Bald Mountain

The Pastoral Symphony: A romantic scene of centaurs and "centaurettes" complete with cupids and fauns. Interestingly the female centaurs don't have their breasts defined which somehow escaped the censors, though they do wear revealing organic tops, covering their chests with leaves and flowers. Bacchus is super drunk, and they are all caught in a big thunderstorm created by Zeus above.

Dance of the Hours: A strange scenario of dancing ostriches, hippos and alligators.

Night on Bald Mountain/Ave Maria: A giant devil summons spirits and ghosts to dance for him (and there are brief shots of bared breasts) until dawn breaks and robed monks are carrying lights through the forest as Ave Maria is sung.

Gassadic also explained that a large number of women worked on Fantasia. They not only painted all the cells by hand, but a handful of them were the lead designers of some of the segments. She said Disney was a good manager, they didn't just work on Fantasia, but also Dumbo and Pinocchio, hence the dancing elephants and pastoral scenes, having already experimented with drawing and painting them in Fantasia.

Fascinating to get the context of the film before watching it to have a greater appreciation and understanding of the anthology. No wonder it felt so disparate before!

We Didn't Jump on the Tai Bo Cafe Bandwagon

Steamed pork patty at Sang Kee in Wan Chai

After I came back from Hong Kong, a Vancouver friend told me about Tai Bo Cafe in Yuen Long, which has become a viral hit. Someone on social media raved about the cafe's pork patty rice, and now there are 2-hour queues for it.

Seriously? 

Legit prawn toasts covered in sesame seeds

Apparently it started back in March when someone asked for a restaurant recommendation and one of the comments replied, Tai Bo Bing Sutt.

Then a few months later, that same commenter would mention the cafe when others posted about things not even related to food, from complaining about academic stress, asking for job vacancies, or raving about their favourite music artist.

People saw Tai Bo Bing Sutt mentioned so many times that they had to check it out themselves, hence the super long queues.

Apparently the person suggesting the bing sutt is a friend of the owner's daughter.

True or not, it has helped this eatery become super popular with the term "tastebud nuke", where the flavour of the patties explode in your mouth, overwhelming your oral senses.

Lovely steamed threadfin fish with chicken oil

I obviously didn't go to this place as I hadn't heard of it until I returned home.

But I did have a pretty good steamed pork patty at Sang Kee, a restaurant known for Hong Kong specialties. Opened in 1976, the place is now located in a non-descript office building on Lockhart Road in Wan Chai.

On the third floor you can hear the hustle and bustle of the place, the small dining room packed with mostly large tables. The one next to us was celebrating a birthday, and there was even a table filled with Europeans enjoying the food with red wine.

Not long after we ordered the food arrived fast and furious. We started with braised duck tongues, nicely balanced, not too salty, and we munched on those until our plate of prawn toasts came. 

Cold starter of braised duck tongues

These beauties were perfectly deep-fried and generously covered in sesame seeds. Another dish was a half portion of a roast piglet, the skin was very crispy, and a thin layer of tender meat underneath. 

Then came our steamed pork meat patty. It was a large portion for the five of us, drizzled with diluted soy sauce and spring onions. You could easily tell it had been hand chopped from the mouthfeel having a bit of a bite to it. 

Another outstanding dish was the steamed threadfin seasoned with chicken oil and Chinese ham. The fish looked so plain, but its taste was so flavourful -- we couldn't stop eating the tender delicate white meat that was perfectly seasoned until we were left with a plate of bones.

The pork patty would have been good with white rice, but we had ordered congee with meatballs and a fish called mottled spinefoot. The congee had been simmering for hours, the grains totally broken down and had chunks of the fish and meatballs.

Simple steamed rice cakes for dessert

Finally for dessert, steamed rice cakes that weren't too sweet, and had a honeycomb-like texture.

The dining experience was not "tastebud nuke", but definitely memorable! 

Sang Kee

3/F, Sunshine Plaza

353 Lockhart Road

Wan Chai

+852 2575 2239

Delightful Dance Twist on a Christmas Classic

Students put on a fun, re-imagined Nutcracker show

This evening we went to see "Mixed Nuts", a performance put on by the dance students at Arts Umbrella at the Vancouver Playhouse. Instead of the traditional take on the Christmas classic The Nutcracker, this one is reimagined and features not only ballet, but also modern dance and some contemporary elements like hockey and snowboarding!

The students range in age from teens to early 20s, with the latter taking on most of the dances, mostly ballet in the second half. The story has Clara and a "godfather" Drosselmeyer character, but it's actually a cross-dressing male dancer, dressed in a frilly blouse and black coat and strutting in high heels. After the intermission he becomes like a fairy godmother in a white dress, again in those white heels.

Male and female parts are danced by both the young men and women in the corps -- the girls have their hair pinned up and wear trousers and shirts, or in some parts the boys don a skirt with leggings underneath. There's even a sugar plum fairy dance -- and there's a male fairy complete with wings and a tiara like the others.

This dance was inspired by peppermint swirls

The theme is candy, so dances are inspired by peppermint swirls, Hershey's Kisses, cupcakes, gingerbread men and black licorice.

The gender-bending playful show is fantastic, normalising the opportunity for young men and women to dance each others' roles. That said, the line stops at the classical ballet dances, where they dance their traditional parts.

One dance featured the can-can, and the audience couldn't help but clap along, while they laughed as two (female) dancers pretended to be hockey players comically fighting each other. 

We sat at the third last row (the row behind us was empty, and the last row were the instructors and a video and cameraman). As the show progressed, the teachers were unabashed in praising their students out loud, while the audience, mostly made of parents and relatives of the performers clapped or hollered.

Most of the dancers looked like they enjoyed themselves on stage. One pas de deux featuring an Asian girl was fantastic and she smiled as she nailed all her moves. That dance reminded me of what made me love about ballet when I was a child, but also all the hard work that goes into being able to dance like that!

Partway through the show, I couldn't help thinking, these kids are going to be alright. They demonstrated how hard they had worked on the show; they apparently know all the parts and are assigned which ones they will dance just before the performance starts. 

Amazing.

Picture of the Day: A Big Catch

Giant eel on the pavement that tried to eat the fish (underneath)

During our trip to Hong Kong we stayed in a hotel in North Point, near the harbourfront.

We managed to get in a few walks along there, soak in some Vitamin D from the sun and burn off a few calories before lunch.

I really enjoy walking along here, as part of the path is underneath the overpass, making good use of the space while offering stunning views of Central and Kowloon. 

You can see the newest landmark, the Kai Tak Sports Park in its purple hue, and nearby the Kai Tai Cruise Terminal where there were one or two cruise ships docked there.

Along the harbourfront there are a few anglers trying their luck to catch some fish for the day. 

When I used to live in Hong Kong, most people caught tiny fish about the size of a man's hand or smaller. Probably enough food for a cat, but not a human!

But one day as we walked by on this visit, one man happened to catch a giant eel!

It was khaki green in colour with dark spots, about a metre long,  and writhed on the pavement with a hook stuck on its mouth.

Someone had a big feast that day!

A Trip Down Memory Lane with Noodles

This shop apparently has better quality noodles

My mom's formative years were spent on a farm in Kam Tin in the New Territories. She has told me many times how after school she and her siblings had to help inoculate lots of baby chicks before dinner and then do her homework.

On the weekends, a big treat was being able to go into town -- in this case Yuen Long -- and watch a movie, and then have a bowl of noodles at Ho To Tai.

Plump wontons with egg noodles in soup

The noodle shop was opened in 1946, and still retains its old school look, with the menu of 16 items written outside the shop complete with a phone number with five digits! Today there are eight.

The interior still has a lot of tiles on the walls, uncomfortable tables and chairs, and glass Coke bottles for drinks. Customers can also buy boxes of dried noodles to make at home.

When we came back this time, our relatives told us the Ho To Tai business had split up between two families, one taking the Yuen Long shop, the other set up the next station over in Long Ping, and the latter's noodles were supposedly better.

So we made a pilgrimage to that place, a quiet district that didn't have a giant shiny imposing shopping mall like Yoho Mall in Yuen Long.

Less than a 10-minute walk from the station we found Ho To Tai and it wasn't busy.

Tender beef brisket with radish

The menu is pretty straight forward and the three of us, my aunt, mom and I ordered several things to share: wonton noodles, noodles with dried shrimp roe generously sprinkled on top, beef brisket with radish, a plate of vegetables, and deep-fried dace fish balls with a briny sauce.

The noodles weren't extra thin and springy like those at Mak's Noodles, but they were comforting to eat, simple and delicious. The beef brisket was very tender, and the dace fish balls were bouncy and flavourful.

It was a simple dinner, and while my aunt and mom ate, they began reminiscing about their childhoods; they are nine years apart in age, so their experiences growing up were different. But it was fun listening to them talk about commuting to school, going to the wet market to buy food for their elder brother to cook, or boarding at school with five other girls in a room.

They had much tougher childhoods than me, though they seemed to find joy in their experiences, or grateful for the discipline drilled into them, or just accepted that this was the way life was back then.

Deep-fried dace fish balls with a briny sauce

After we finished eating, we paid the bill at the cashier, where the were yellow and orangey-red boxes piled high. The yellow ones were shrimp noodles at HK$70, but the latter were more expensive at HK$98! When we asked why, the staff explained it was because they were totally covered in shrimp roe compared to the former.

We only wanted to give the best to my uncle so the HK$98 box it was!

It took us about an hour to get to Long Ping and another to get back, but it was a nostalgic trip worth spending the time.

Ho To Tai

G/F, Fook On Building

67 Yuen Long On Ning Road, Yuen Long (Long Ping MTR station)

The other noodle shop is at

G/F, 67 Fau Tsoi Street, Yuen Long (Yuen Long MTR station)

Listening to the Wickedly Funny Margaret Atwood

A lively conversation with Atwood (left) and Off on stage

This evening we had the opportunity to listen to the one and only Margaret Atwood speak at the Orpheum Theatre in Vancouver, the last event of the year as part of the Vancouver Writers Festival.

The Orpheum was almost completely full, save for a few seats here and there, and as my friend remarked, a lot of white people... 

In a way it's a bit surprising, as we all read her dystopian novel, The Handmaid's Tale in high school in the mid to late 1980s, and has since become a highly rated TV series. 

Atwood, 86, is arguably the biggest Canadian writer, with over 50 novels, graphic novels, short stories, poems, children's books, the winner of the Booker Prize twice, the Arthur C. Clarke Award, the Governor General's Award, and the Frank Kafka Award among others, and a champion of Can Lit, but also writers around the world, and co-founded PEN Canada.

Some of her books include Cat's Eye, The Edible Woman, Alias Grace, Oryx and Crake, and children's books like Princess Prunella and the Purple Peanut, Rude Ramsay and the Roaring Radishes, and Up in the Tree. 

Joining her on stage was Carol Off, the former CBC host of the current affairs radio show, As It Happens, as they talked about Atwood's latest work, Book of Lives: A Memoir of Sorts.

The pair seem to be good friends already as they shared barbs with each other. At one point Atwood talked about how she and her friend were underpaid when they did puppet shows for children's birthday parties and demonstrated with her shawl how she manipulated the fabric to make into a character.

Off put her hand under her velvet blazer and talked in character, to which Atwood quipped it looked like a "talking tit" to great hilarity in the audience.

While Off tried to get Atwood to expand more on her answers, it was obvious the author would rather people buy her big thick tome than reveal too much, from how she grew up a lot in nature as a child because her father was an entomologist studying insects, to remembering that she wore a white crochet dress with wooden buttons when she met the love of her life William Gibson, and how they lived on a farm with a peacock that was desperate to mate...

Over an hour later time was up and Atwood got a standing ovation from the audience, some of whom clutched copies of her book after the event.

Quick Day Trip to Zhongshan via Macau

At the Hengqin border inspection building looking at Zhuhai

After we finished lunch in Macau, we headed to Zhongshan via the Hengqin border check point.

Hengqin is actually an island near Macau's Taipa and Coloane districts, where many of the massive casino resorts are, such as Londoner, The Venetian, City of Dreams, Galaxy, and Studio City.

Hengqin is a special economic zone 

We passed by these expansive properties with dazzling architecture, in particular the Zaha Hadid-designed Morpheus with its exo-skeleton construction so that there are no internal pillars inside the 40-storey building.

What's interesting about Hengqin is that while it is technically Chinese land, the Macau Special Administrative Region has governance over this area, which is a special economic zone, much like what Shenzhen was over 45 years ago. 

After about a 25-minute ride we arrived at the Hengqin Border Inspection Building. Once inside we had to fill out the China arrival form and then the actual passport control process is straight forward: you step up to the first counter and it's a Macau border officer with a perspex gate. 

He had to wait because the counter right after is the China officer, who was still processing the person before us; once that person was completed, the gates opened and we were allowed to move to the China officer who took a while to process our passports.

Zhuhai has some very modern buildings

Those holding wui heung jing, or "return home permits" were very quickly processed, while others with passports take a while as they scan the passport, take pictures and scan fingerprints too. 

Once that we done we were basically in Chinese territory, specifically Zhuhai. A driver picked us up in an electric car called Aion Y Plus by GAC Aion from Guangzhou. I asked the driver about the mileage on electric cars, and he said it was around 400km on a full charge.

He explained there were many places to charge, and even after 20 minutes it's good to go for a couple of hours. While they are efficient, he said the battery will wear out after about five years, much like a smartphone battery, and by that point there is no point in replacing it -- it would be better to buy a new car.

It didn't seem very environmentally friendly... were there solutions in place for recycling and such?

The drive to Zhongshan took about 40 minutes, to a suburb area that has a gated community. 

A quiet gated community with a large garden

A lot of Hongkongers have bought property in Zhongshan for retirement, as real estate is much less expensive than Hong Kong. An unfinished flat around 1,000 sq ft costs around 2 million yuan (US$282,852), and about 60,000 yuan in renovations will make it ready for moving in. 

At one point prices for apartments doubled from speculation, but now the values have fallen back to the original prices, perhaps a reflection of the property sector in the doldrums these last few years.

The gated community we checked out is very quiet, mostly because many of the flats are not inhabited full time. There's a large beautiful garden in the middle, and has a very big swimming pool that is only open in the summer.

After a hearty dinner in a nearby restaurant, we took a car to get back via the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge. The 40-minute ride took us to the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge Zhuhai Port, where we bought bus tickets and then again went through passport control to exit China.

At the Zhuhai border to catch the bus back to HK

Then we got on the next bus available which took us about 40 minutes to get to Hong Kong. We went on the bus at night so there wasn't much to see outside, or in the tunnel, which seemed to go on forever. We arrived at the Hong Kong border checkpoint, and individually passed through immigration and then waited for our bus. We were near the airport because we could see planes taking off nearby every other minute.

Of the whole trip, waiting for our bus was the longest holdup -- about 15 minutes -- before it arrived, picked us up and drove to Hong Kong Island, and then to North Point.

What an adventure -- Hong Kong-Macau-Zhuhai-Zhongshan-Zhuhai-Hong Kong in one day!