Dim Sum Dialogues: Expat ultimate frisbee

by Stephen Greenwood on

Confession time. Time to come clean. It’s something I’ve been meaning to get off my chest for a while. Something I didn’t know how to bring up before, but here goes… I did the most caucasian thing that an expat living in Hong Kong could do.

I joined an ultimate frisbee league.

Like the majority of twenty-something American males, I had a brief flirtation with ultimate frisbee in college – but had never devoted the time or effort to learning the strategy of the sport or even the full extent of the technical rules.

So when a few new friends invited me out on a Sunday for a pickup game of frisbee, I thought it’d be good to practice a sport I thought I knew and maybe I’ll make a few friends along the way. What I came to realize was that I knew absolutely nothing about ultimate frisbee.”Okay let’s count it off from the left for D – force flick and make sure we keep pressure the cup. On the turn let’s run a vertical stack, making quick cuts to the outsides. Can I get two more handlers? And if we change to a horizontal, please make sure everyone stays in their lanes!”

I nodded my head and pretended that I had the slightest understanding of what was going on. I wasn’t even sure if I would be able to stand on two legs for longer than 5 minutes in the thick summer humidity.

Sunday afternoons were pickup games – open to everyone. Tuesday nights were league games – a more serious affair. Thursday nights were practice – I guess to fill in the gap between Sundays and Tuesdays. All of this play would eventually lead up to international tournaments over short weekends – Singapore, Beijing, Bangkok, Shanghai…with the HK team being represented by a few elite teams made up of experienced and mid-level players.

The players around me were from all sorts of backgrounds – a vibrant display of Hong Kong’s diversity. A handful of Hong Kong professionals. An Irish teacher. A German engineer. A Dutch designer. An Aussie pilot. A Thai accountant. An Indian film producer. A Canadian student. A British accountant. An American in the shipping industry.

It sounds like a setup for a bad joke, but it was just another Sunday on the field with the Hong Kong Ultimate Player’s Association.

As I got introduced to more people between games, it became apparent that newcomers like me were a dime a dozen. The first question was usually – “where are you from?” And the second was – “well, how long will you be here for?” The group was immediately welcoming & friendly, but I got the feeling that there was a hesitance to make strong friendships too quickly.

After a couple months of showing up three days a week, the names started to stick to the faces, and I started being accepted as more of a regular. It became apparent that there was a strong core group of people that were devoted to the organization, and then a fringe set of transients like me – people who disappeared from Hong Kong almost as soon as they had materialized, eager to learn names and possibly trade business cards.

Many foreigners in Hong Kong come over on temporary contracts. Five weeks. Three months. Six months. It becomes common to make new friends, only to try and organize a last minute going-away party for them a few weeks later. HKUPA let me experience the full extent of Hong Kong’s transient expat community, and allowed me to feel like I was a part of something, if only for a little while.

Eventually, I became proficient in the techniques of the flick, the hammer, cutting, handling, pulling, zone, horizontal, vertical, and occasionally even scoring. The summer league came to a close and the three meetings per week turned into once-a-week relaxed weekend beach games. My league team even took the title… although I don’t think I was exactly the deciding factor in the path to victory.

I consider my progress in a sport less valuable than my adoption into a small community for a few months. In a city so dense, so huge, it’s easy to get lost – and HKUPA became a welcoming place to plant some temporary roots. So for fellow travelers or transients out there, if you’re having a hard time getting settled, try frisbee. If you need an explanation on the verbiage before you set foot on the field, leave a comment and I’ll give you the expert scoop.

HKUPA’s fall season is starting up soon. If you’re in the Hong Kong area and interested in joining or passing through for a pickup game, see their website for more information: HKUPA.com

Gadlinks for Wednesday 8.26.09

by Brenda Yun on


Welcome to Gadlinks, your source for the latest comings-and-goings in the travel blogosphere. You’ll find these selections a bit indicative of where my brain is at the moment: on surfing, warm weather, and road trips — which is probably because I’ll be embarking on a surfing road trip of my own today. Happy virtual traveling, everyone!

Want more Gadlinks? Go here.

Dim Sum Dialogues: Ngong Ping

by Stephen Greenwood on

The world’s largest outdoor seated bronze buddha.

It sounds more like an obscure sports statistic than a record for a religious statue – and it left me to wonder – where does the largest indoor standing silver buddha reside? My skepticism about the buddha at Ngong Ping was barely trumped by my interest in finally visiting a historically and culturally significant monument in Hong Kong – fantasizing that it must have been built at least a few hundred years ago by devoted buddhists that used sacred, ancient methods of construction.

And yet again, my assumptions failed me.

The buddha was built in 1993. Nineteen Ninety-Three. The same year Intel shipped the first Pentium chips. The same year that the first corrected images from the Hubble telescope were taken. Hardly the timeworn, historical relic that I had pictured. I suddenly felt bitter and betrayed, like someone was trying to pull a fast one on a poor foreigner. But it seemed to sum up the story of Hong Kong; a new shining structure built upon a connection to Chinese heritage, in the hope of attracting foreign dollars.

The obvious tourist-trap nature of it made me reluctant to make the 45-minute trek out to Lantau Island from the center of town – fearing that I would only go home disappointed. The only attractive factor seemed to be the Ngong Ping 360º – a 5.7km long cable car ride (also owned by the MTR corporation) that whisks MTR passengers from the Tung Chung stop to the village of Ngong Ping in new cable cars with (wait for it) glass bottom floors.

So when a friend came to town, I tucked away my anti-tourist snobbery and splurged on the $160 HKD “Crystal Cabin” ticket for the 360º – a $60 step up from a regular cabin ticket, but worth every cent. It’s a fun and disorienting feeling to hover across water, trees, and mountains – something that initially takes several minutes to adjust to. The path of the cable car provides panoramic views over the Hong Kong International Airport and several outlying islands – assuming that the weather is clear, which isn’t a safe bet on most days in the territory.

When the cable car ride was over, I suddenly found myself in a modern Chinese “village”, which is simply a strip mall disguised with traditional Chinese architecture and light music playing over a carefully hidden ambient sound system. The words that entered my head as I walked through the development was “China-in-a-box”. A packaged, polished, and easily digestible version of the China that is ironically nowhere to be found on the streets Hong Kong. An orderly collection of Chinese memorabilia, ready to be sold shipped back to the country of your origin.

I was ready to turn around and go straight home as soon as I saw the painfully familiar glowing green letters that practically spells tourist trap: S-T-A-R-B-U-C-K-S. Everything I had feared was true, and the icing on the cake was the whipped cream on the carmel frappachinos of tourists lounging at green patio tables. The only thing that stopped me from turning around was the beautiful, faint sound of someone plucking a guzheng.

It was a sound that I had heard only in recordings before, and had hoped to witness in person since my arrival in Hong Kong. A sound that when I followed it, led me to the doors of a (wait for it) traditional wooden tea-house. The type of tea-house that I had dreamed of discovering weeks earlier, sans a wise old man with a long grey beard. There were scheduled tea-samplings and lessons for how to brew Chinese tea properly, antique tea sets and a diverse selection of leaves. In an instant, my prejudice against Ngong Ping was turned upside down. Maybe it was a fabricated, lustrous version of a China that can’t be found on the streets of Hong Kong – but it had just satisfied my expectations as a foreigner with one fell swoop.

The rest of the day was spent visiting the buddha, a buddhist temple, and wandering through several nature trails that surround the village. I let go of my bitterness as I read the displays that documented the construction of the buddha. I had to concede that it was still an impressive attraction and feat, even if it wasn’t crafted out of thin air by hundreds of devout buddhist hands, and even if it did cost an estimated $68 million USD to build.

On the ride back in the Crystal Cabin, I looked down at my feet gliding above the densely forested mountains. The sound of the guzheng still rang in my ears, and I was thankful that I had spent the day as a dreaded tourist.

So if you’re planning on visiting Hong Kong, I’d recommend putting Ngong Ping on your agenda. But please, skip the Tazo® in favor of some local pu-erh or oolong…

Mongol Derby is an adventure on horseback

by Kraig Becker on

This past Sunday, a group of 25 riders set out on a unique adventure across the Mongolian Steppe that will have them following in the ancient footsteps of Marco Polo and the fabled horsemen that roamed that region centuries ago, as they raise money for a variety of charities in the country.

The Mongol Derby is the latest idea from the same group that brought us the Mongol Rally. In this case, it pits the entrants on a long distance horse race through some of the most remote areas on the planet as they make the journey from Kharkhorin to Ulaanbaatar following a series of routes that were created as a postal system by Genghis Khan back in 1234 AD. The race directors caution that this isn’t about the speed of the horse however, but more of a test of the skill and stamina of the riders themselves.

Along the route, the riders will have to check into a series of horse stations called Urtuus, where they will be forced to change out their mounts for fresh ones. Veterinarians will also be on hand to ensure that the horses are being well cared for, and not pushed to their limits. The course designers have also taken great pains to design a route that will pass by multiple water sources, meaning the riders and horses won’t have to go far to find a drink.

The website will offer updates on the progress of the riders as well as live tracking of their current locations. There is also a long FAQ that answers a lot of questions about the event as well. So if driving to Mongolia by a very slow car isn’t your cup of tea, perhaps you’d prefer to explore it via horseback instead, either way, the Adventurists have you covered.

Shanghai taking steps to correct funny Engrish signs

by Scott Carmichael on

For years, Chinese signs have been a fantastic source of comedy.

Entire sites have been created around the humorous translations used in signs, and while some are just plain stupid, others have become Internet sensations, pulling in millions of viewers.

That may all come to an end soon in Shanghai. Officials in the city have assembled a team of volunteers who will check signs, and report incorrect translations to the authorities. Those signs will then have to be removed and/or corrected.

The increase in poorly spelled signs can be blamed on poor translation software and poor user input. In fact, incorrect use of translation software can even result in really stupid signs like this one.

Whether the efforts in Shanghai will result in perfectly translated signs remains to be seen – similar campaigns in Beijing back in 2002 and 2006 have not resulted in a decrease of funny signs.

Thankfully, the Chinese are not alone in the world of stupid signage, as you can see on this Welsh sign.