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!

Remembering the Abalone King

Chef Yeung slicing the abalone with a knife

Chef Yeung Koon-yat, known as "the abalone king" has died at the age of 90.

I had the opportunity to interview him twice, the second time was in November 2017 for an interview. It took him a while to show up, perhaps he had forgotten or was not up to it, but eventually he came and put on his showman face.

When the camera started recording and I asked questions about his youth and how he became known as the abalone king, it was apparent that he had signs of dementia. I tried to gently ask questions in a different way or ask him to remember dates, but it was difficult for him to answer.

Massive dried Japanese abalone

But what he could not remember he made up in his cooking demonstrations, making his famous fried rice which was still so delicious, each grain of rice evenly flavoured in the claypot with egg, Chinese sausages, conpoy and spring onions.

As making abalone takes a long time, they were prepared ahead of time so he posed for the camera spooning the thick, shiny, flavourful abalone sauce over this prized seafood delicacy.

He was born in 1932 in Zhongshan, Guangdong province to a poor family. When the Sino-Japanese War broke out, his family was destitute and his parents sent he and his younger sisters to his grandmother to raise. When she died, the three children were put in an orphanage where his two siblings starved to death. 

Determined to find a better life for himself, Yeung came to Hong Kong in 1949 at around the age of 18.

Like many migrants he found work in the restaurant industry, where he could get three meals a day and a place to sleep (on the dining tables, using table cloth as sheets).

Yeung worked his way up, learning to cook and together with some friends opened Forum Restaurant in 1974 with HK$600,000. The restaurant didn't do well at first, serving home-cooked dishes, so he had to find a way to differentiate it from competitors and decided to focus on abalone, a very expensive ingredient.

Not only did Yeung perfect how to cook abalone, but he also taught a generation of diners to eat it with a fork and knife, cutting it lengthwise in relatively thin slices to best appreciate the dish.

Yeung was the ultimate showman

Soon after he was known as the abalone king for over six decades, well known in Hong Kong and was probably the first Chinese chef to travel to various countries to cook for foreign leaders, showing them what Cantonese delicacies were, particularly abalone.

The first time I met him was in the late 1990s with a good friend who is also a food writer. He handed out his business card to us which was extra large to fit in all his titles including the Club des Chefs des Chefs. 

He showed off how he heated up the already braised abalone in front of us table side and we enjoyed every bite. But then we were even more impressed by his fried rice that he also made before us. 

It smelled so good even before we had a bite, that we knew it would taste delicious.

Before we left the restaurant he insisted on giving us each a bottle of wine -- Chateau Lafite Rothschild 1982.

I carefully brought the bottle home, and years later my parents and their friends drank it -- without my knowledge!

Nevertheless as my friend says, Yeung was the ultimate showman who was passionate about cooking and you could taste it in his food.

A culinary gem has left this world, though we will not forget these words of wisdom: "Be even more outstanding when others are outstanding," another way of saying work harder for your success.

He is proof of that. Thank you chef.