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…

Dim Sum Dialogues: Double Happiness

by Stephen Greenwood on

In a continuation from yesterday on my post about Hong Kong weddings, I wanted to shed some light on the interesting history behind a prominent symbol that can be found decorating virtually every wedding in China. Double Happiness.

Sometimes translated as “double joy”, or “double happy”, the character itself is a ligature of two Chinese characters that mean “joy”, pressed together. It’s usually cut out of red paper – occasionally black, and can be found everywhere in a wedding. Walls, windows, doors and gifts that are given to the couple all bear the design.
The legend behind the design states that in the ancient Tang Dynasty, there was a student traveling to the capital for a national examination. The examination was to select ministers in the emperor’s court. Halfway through his journey to the city of the emperor, the student fell ill and was taken in to a small village by a herbalist doctor and his daughter.

The student and the doctor’s daughter fell in love with each other over the course of the stay, and both found it very hard to say goodbye when the time came. The girl said goodbye by writing down half of a couplet, for the student to contemplate and complete after his exam.

It read : “Green trees against the sky in the spring rain while the sky set off the spring trees in the obscuration.” After the student reached his destination, he took top honors in the examination. As a further test of the highest achievers, the emperor requested that he interview each one of them face to face. When it came time for the student to be interviewed, the emperor asked the student to finish a couplet that he had written. Luck was on the student’s side.

The emperor wrote: “Red flowers dot the land in the breeze’s chase while the land colored up in red after the kiss.” The student immediately realized that the girl’s half of the couplet was a perfect match. He answered without hesitation.

The emperor was delighted to see the wit and talent of the young man, and authorized him to be a minister in the high court.

As a special gift, the emperor allowed the student to return home before becoming a minister. The young man was overjoyed and rushed back to the village of the doctor, to meet the doctor’s daughter at her home. He shared what had happened and asked if she would marry him. They became married right away.

To celebrate the wedding, the couple showed their pleasure by doubling the chinese character for Joy on a red piece of paper, and put it on the wall.

From then on, Double Happiness has become a prevalent social custom and a symbol used in weddings throughout China.

Dim Sum Dialogues: Love & Marriage

by Stephen Greenwood on

Weddings in Hong Kong are big business. In every district, small shops advertise dress tailoring, videography or photography packages, and event planning services. Go into any of the big hotels on a weekend and you’ll find over 300 people congregating in the grand ballrooms, feasting over a ten-course meal that boasts elegance and affluence. A few months ago, I had the opportunity to help a friend shoot two local weddings, and on each occasion got an intimate look at the practices and traditions of modern ceremonies in Hong Kong.

The day starts early. The bride is joined by her mother and a few close friends, quickly nibbling on a light breakfast while a crew of photographers set up their equipment in the humble estate apartment of the Bride’s family. Immediately upon my arrival, I’m given a small gold & red envelope that I later discover holds $100 HKD – a generous welcome.
As the bride sits to have her makeup applied, the bridesmaids start setting up what appears to be a series of games. They pass around index cards, poster-boards, markers and containers of food seasoning. Bright red Double Happiness symbols are hung on walls and windows in the apartment, reflecting the hazy morning sun. We’re told that the groom and his groomsmen are in the lobby of the housing estate, and we rush to join them as the groom is handing out his own gold & red packets.

The men take photos and make their way up the cramped elevator to the apartment. Upon reaching the apartment door, they are denied access and the purpose of the poster-board is suddenly revealed. The groom must play a series of games and tests to gain access to the bride, while she anxiously waits in the back of the apartment with her father. The groom sings, answers trivia, and even outlines a chinese character through layers of mayonnaise, spices, and seasoning with his tongue. This is love.

After twenty minutes of displaying his devotion, the groom is allowed to enter and the bride’s father presents the bride to enthusiastic claps and laughter. She is dressed in a pretty, yet simple red dress adorned with gold stitching and small gems. The bride & groom then kneel on bright red & gold pillows to serve a special blend of tea to the bride’s parents.

The parents present the couple with special jewelry – large gold bracelets for the bride, and a small silver necklace for the groom. Pictures are taken, and then the whole party moves to the groom’s parents’ house for a repeat of the same tea ceremony and the opportunity for the groom’s parents to show their hospitality. After the second tea ceremony, the wedding party takes a lunch break. On my first wedding it was traditional dim-sum style food, and on my second it was gourmet cheeseburgers. Another example why you can never expect to always follow strict tradition in Hong Kong.

The next move is to the ceremony, typically held in a Christian church or in the City Hall, depending on the religious affiliation of the couple. The wedding in the Christian church was like most western weddings that I’ve been to with two exceptions: The groom sang a karaoke-esque song to the bride before she was walked down the aisle by her father, and the couple signed the legal marriage documents at the alter. I don’t think I have ever seen this done in an American wedding, but I could be wrong.

The day is capped off with a large banquet at a nice hotel. Everything has been arranged by the hotel staff, from the welcoming signs and displays to the towering eight-tier cake that stands on top of the main entertainment stage. Perfectly orchestrated lights and music are timed to dramatize the presentation of over ten courses of food. Vegetables, fish, chicken, pork, dumplings, noodles, crab, fruit, and even the environmentally taboo shark-fin soup are elaborately presented at tables of ten or so. There must be at least three hundred people in the room – undoubtedly more people than were actually in the audience at the ceremony. There is more singing, a few slideshow presentations, and a video highlight from the day’s events. The banquet climaxes with the couple making rounds to each table in rapid succession, to toast the guests and thank them for coming.

It occurs to me that the bride has changed dresses yet again into an evening gown, and the bride and groom each make speeches on stage. As everything is winding down, they stand at the ballroom’s exit with their family and form a line to shake hands and say goodbye to the exiting guests. A few red faces stumble and slur their way down the line – the sign of a little too much wine, but all in all the wedding is a success. The extremely tired bride & groom collapse on a couch, take a deep breath and get ready to catch a flight to their honeymoon in London.

Check in tomorrow for a look into the legend behind Double Happiness and it’s prevalence in Chinese weddings.

Dim Sum Dialogues: Family Business

by Stephen Greenwood on

I arrive at the Houston Center of East Tsim Sha Tsui dripping in sweat – a product of the battle between Hong Kong’s unforgiving humidity and my mild-weather Californian blood. I’m here to meet with 23-year-old Ray Lok, a mutual friend and aspiring businessman in Hong Kong. I hope that a quick breather in the air-conditioned lobby will help dry out my shirt, but within minutes I see him step out of the elevator – dressed in a sharp striped shirt – no tie, chequered trousers, and fashionable black shoes. He approaches me with a slight grin and says “Why are you sweating? Did you run here?”

In the elevator up to his waterfront office, we exchange business cards. His reads “Ray Lok, Director – Yulok Company Limited”. He comments on the thickness of my business card, “Where did you get these made? I think this is now the thickest business card in my collection”. We laugh and walk through a series of rooms strung with countless plastic & woven bags hanging from metal racks. Next to the bags are an array of textiles and various clothing fabrics.

He explains that the Yulok Company specializes in manufacturing carrier bags for retail stores around the world – South Africa, Israel, Australia, and throughout Europe. They range from simple bags with printed logos to custom designed bags for carrying bottles of wine. The Yulok Company also mass-produces simple plastic bags found in supermarkets, plastic trash bags, and more obscure products like billions of stirrers for coffee cups – it’s a diverse inventory.

Ray’s parents started the company in 1979, when his mother was employed by a trading company and approached by a client to help start a new venture. The success of the business took off despite the economic downturn in the 90’s – and at one point the Yulok Company maintained three factories in Hong Kong. Because of rising costs and regulations, they’ve since moved their factory to Vietnam – a complicated process that involved completely disassembling the factory machinery, relocating and then reassembling it.

Like many other young people in Hong Kong, Ray went abroad for his education – graduating in 2008 from USC’s International Relations & Global Business program. He remarks that he was impressed by students that were able to work jobs and study full time – and enjoyed his professors in the program. But he argues that the course itself wasn’t interesting and often inapplicable to business in Hong Kong. His real education came from sitting in on meetings as a child and watching his parents run the company.

For lunch, Ray leads me to a fancy Chinese restaurant a few floors below the office. The hostesses immediately recognize him, which is no surprise – he says he’s been coming here for 23 years. I ask whether or not he felt pressured to come take over the family business after school, and he shrugs saying that there was never any family conversation about it – as a male in a Chinese family it was expected of him. I ask him if this bothers him, if he’d rather be doing anything else, and he replies “It’s better than working at a bank” – referring to the large majority of the young, educated Hong Kong workforce.

We discuss the new plastic bag tax that hit Hong Kong’s consumers on July 1st of this year. There’s a 50¢ fee for every plastic bag used at supermarkets and convenience stores. It doesn’t concern him because he’s seen it implemented in other countries only to fail shortly after. He says that consumers often blame manufacturers for the environmental damage caused by plastic bags, but in reality it’s not the manufacturer’s fault – it’s how the consumers use and dispose of them.

Ray wants to expand into larger production of biodegradable bags, but adds that the government isn’t funding R&D enough to make them truly efficient…claiming that biodegradables can be just as bad for the environment as plastic bags are.

It seems that he’s genuinely concerned about environmental issues, but effectively dismisses any claim directed against the plastic bag industry. My ignorance on the subject forces me to return to my crispy noodles, hot tea, and sweet egg tarts. I ask him about his hobbies and aspirations, and he mentions that he’d like to explore an internet startup if he can find the time. His ideal dream would be to own a boat and escape Hong Kong on the weekends, but for now he spends his free time shooting photographs & toying around with fast cars.

It’s hard to pry deep into his personal aspirations – so I revert back to business.

We finish our lunch, and I ask him if he’s happy working so much at his age. He replies that his parents always told him “When you’re young, you sacrifice your health in exchange for money, and when you’re old you use your money in exchange for health.” I laugh to myself, and consider the truth in that statement. Wise words for a young professional in Hong Kong.

Dim Sum Dialogues: The Chungking Mansions

by Stephen Greenwood on

This is Nadim.

Nadim is originally from Pakistan. He came to Hong Kong seven years ago with his wife and two children to find a better life. He tells me that he never envisioned his better life to be what he has today, but he’s happy, and enjoying moderate success selling mobile phones out of his shop.

The shop is actually a small stall, at most ten feet wide and four feet deep, situated in a maze of hallways perpetually bathed in dim fluorescent light. The stalls next to him sell a variety of cheap suitcases and even cheaper t-shirts and jackets. No one mentions the word ‘fake’, but it’s quite apparent that most of the items have emerged from a mysterious cloning lab in the heart of mainland China. Thirty footsteps down the hall brings you to the counter of a small Indian restaurant with fresh naan, thalis, curries, and samosas. Next to that is a convenience shop, stocked wall to wall with canned goods, bottled liquor, tobacco and candy. Ten more steps and you’ll be surrounded by head-high stacks of bootlegged Bollywood films.

Welcome to the Chungking Mansions.

The mansions are a series of five 17-story high blocks, connected by a two-level foyer with shops, food stalls, and currency exchange bureaus. On any given day an estimated 4,000 people live here, not including the backpackers that take advantage of an array of cheap guesthouses in the building, and the curious shoppers that wander through the halls. On a weekend, the five lines that form for the elevators in each block display Hong Kong’s multiculturalism at its best. Indian hawkers wait with their filipino girlfriends, young dreadlocked australians rub elbows with african women in brightly patterned dresses, and the chinese security guard carefully monitors the live CCTV footage that comes from inside the elevators.

Chungking, which means “great (and returning) prosperity” is just blocks away from the world-famous Peninsula Hotel in the Tsim Sha Tsui, or “TST” district. TST’s waterfront property offers the best panoramic views of Hong Kong’s iconic skyline, making it some of the most prime real estate in the city. Yet the Chungking Mansions have avoided any signs of gentrification, and seem to be proudly surviving as the central hub for minority culture in Hong Kong. Moreover, it’s an important place of business – a living example of how a low-end globalized economy functions.

I stand outside the entrance to the building, chatting with one of the many touts that persistently offers tailoring services and “copy watches”. The favorite line among this crowd is “Hey boss, guess how much for a suit!”, with the occasional peddler that approaches us to offer a slew of drugs. The tout says to me, “See, you can find anything you need in Chungking Mansions. Anything from A to Zed – you tell me, I can find it within twenty minutes.” I consider testing his offer, but decline and watch as two young men struggle to maneuver four grossly overstuffed suitcases down the entrance’s steps.

The young men with the suitcases are most likely carrying mobile phones. Nadim told me that most of the business he sees is from wholesalers that buy these cheap phones in bulk, and take them back to countries like Kenya, Zambia, and Nigeria. Apparently, one fifth of all of the mobile phones in sub Saharan Africa have passed through the Chungking Mansions at some point – and 70 percent of Kenya’s handsets come from here. Serious traders come to the Mansions with money and a destination, and everything else is handled for them.

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The mobile phone trade might be cheaper across the border in Guandong, but the trading laws and security of Hong Kong are more appealing to the Nigerians and Pakistanis that can’t easily obtain Chinese visas.

The Chungking Mansions have even been able to resist interference from the infamous Triad gangs – but still have issues with gangs of different nationalities that spar with one another. One restaurant owner tells me “These guys that deal drugs back here think they are big time dealers, but really they’re nothing – they are very small time in the scheme of things.”

The building has a bad history of electrical fires and suspicious activity. Signs can be seen at bars around Hong Kong advertising the disappearance of a female backpacker in March, last seen at an apartment in the Chungking Mansions. In 1988, a fire broke out and killed a Danish tourist. A series of arrests in the 90’s spurred the management to install 208 CCTV cameras throughout the building. Of course, it’s really not an extremeley dangerous place, but travelers that stay here should be aware of their surroundings, and shouldn’t entertain invitations into private rooms within the building.

A group of retired Americans in full tourist garb passes by Nadim’s stand, the fluorescent lighting only making their pale skin stand out more against the rest of their surroundings. I ask him what he thinks about tourists here, and he responds “I think it’s good – I don’t think you can come to Hong Kong and not see the Chungking Mansions. If you come to this city, and you don’t see this place, then you haven’t really seen Hong Kong.” Nadim has a valid point, and for a place that’s been dubbed “Asia’s World City”, you’d be hard pressed to find a better example of globalization in action.