Celebrate Chinese New Year, Hong Kong style

by Jeremy Kressmann on

For anyone not of Chinese descent, Chinese New Year is a confusing concept. Travelers who visit Hong Kong during this important festival are likely to have questions. What’s the significance? How do you celebrate? But fortunately, Hong Kong is the perfect introduction to this most significant of Chinese celebrations. Hong Kong’s unique blend of familiar Western amenities and authentic Chinese culture make it the perfect place to begin your Chinese New Year experience.

Understanding and enjoying Chinese New Year in Hong Kong depends on three distinct activities: the main rituals, the typical foods and the public celebrations. Each of these activities is tied to longstanding Chinese traditions, dating back centuries, and are designed to ensure good health and prosperity in the year ahead. Experiencing the festival in the dense urban environment of Hong Kong adds an additional layer of fun, allowing you to enjoy the festivities on a huge scale.

Ever wanted to learn more about Chinese New Year? Don’t know the Year of the Tiger from the Year of the Ox? Let’s take a closer look at how to celebrate in Hong Kong and how to get started. Keep reading below for more.The Rituals
To truly understand Chinese New Year, you need to get familiar with the festival’s unique rituals. The best place to get started is at Hong Kong’s Chinese temples, where citizens head to pray for good luck, burn incense sticks and have their fortunes told. Hong Kong’s most famous temple is Wong Tai Sin Temple in Kowloon, which sees nearly 300,000 visitors during the New Year festivities.

Upon arriving at Wong Tai Sin, take a moment to soak in the temple’s solemn atmosphere with worshipers bent on their knees, the air thick with sweet incense smoke. Grab a tube of fortune sticks from the table near the entrance to inquire on your prospects for the year ahead. Ask a question, give the cylinder a shake, and wait for a stick with a number to fall out. Then bring your number to one of Wong Tai Sin’s numerous fortune tellers to have it interpreted. Good or bad, the answers you receive are meant to help guide your decisions in the year ahead.

The Foods
Chinese New Year is a time heavy with symbolism. This is particularly true of the holiday’s typical foods, all of which are laden with spiritual significance. Everything that’s eaten during these important days is intended to bring prosperity, happiness, longevity and good fortune in the months ahead.

A good place to begin your culinary exploration is at Hong Kong’s daily markets. In neighborhoods like Wan Chai, you’ll find a flurry of activity in the days leading up to the festivities, as market goers pick up supplies for the traditional reunion dinner. Butchers wield cleavers like madmen, chopping, hacking and yelling. Giant carp thrash about in bubbling fish tanks. Typical Chinese New Year foods are everywhere. At the dried goods stalls you’ll find a variety of New Year specialties like chocolate coins, dried oysters and Chinese Sausage. At the produce stalls, take your pick from New Year favorites like juicy mandarin oranges or crunchy melon seeds.

Each New Year food has been specially chosen to bring good luck in the New Year. For instance, the Cantonese word for dried oysters (ho see) sounds similar to the words for “wealth and good business.” It’s eating that’s as much about symbolism as it is about the taste.

The Events
The celebration of Chinese New Year in Hong Kong happens on a scale and size like nowhere else. The city’s seven million residents come out in force to enjoy a variety of festive activities surrounding this annual event.

On the first day of the New Year is the annual Hong Kong Chinese New Year Parade, packed with colorful floats, wild drumming, manic dragon dancers and throngs of spectators. The parade is a microcosm of Hong Kong’s frenzied street life, awash in a flurry of sensory delights. Make sure to secure yourself a spot a few hours early and watch out for pickpockets, as the crowds can be intense.

On the second day of the New Year, the city celebrates with a massive fireworks display over Victoria Harbor. Few places in the world can boast of such an impressive light show set against the city’s towering skyline. Whether you choose to watch from the harbor or from on high at The Peak, you’re sure to have some of the best seats in the house.

Celebrating Chinese New Year in Hong Kong is much like the city itself – an overwhelming array of sensory pleasures and confusing rituals. But with a little background info from Gadling and a spirit of fun, you’re guaranteed to enjoy all it has to offer. Kung Hei Fat Choi!

Montreal Musts, To Eat: Liverpool

by Tom Johansmeyer on

Little Burgundy was once home to jazz musicians who fled Prohibition for Montreal to resume “normal” living – or at least get wasted regularly. Now, the pace isn’t what it was in the 1920s, but you can still find plenty of reasons to head over to this part of town. Among the best is Liverpool House, a small restaurant with a profound menu.

From the outside, Liverpool House looks like a neighborhood restaurant, the sort of place I’d find in my part of New York. The signage is subtle, hinting that you should really know about the restaurant already, and the external décor is almost unassuming. Yet, when you step through the front door, the scene changes entirely. The restaurant is overflowing with activity, from guests talking over meals to waiters and waitresses dashing around with plates of delicious food.

Make sure you have a reservation, particularly for peak nights, or you could be waiting for a while. If you don’t mind sitting at the bar, though, you should be able to squeeze yourself in at just about any time. Whether you choose this or to eat at a table, make your first stop Ryan. The bartender, he obviously has his finger on the pulse of this restaurant and can recommend dishes and wine pairings, explain the food in front of you and provide the insights that can unlock a spectacular culinary experience.

I had no idea, for example, that the boar belly I ate was smoked in the restaurant’s back yard … in a smoker the owner built with his own hands (literally welded it together himself). This is why you have to talk to Brian.

The service was prompt without being rushed. I received the courses as I expected them – they didn’t stack up on each other and did not leave me waiting impatiently for the next round. The oysters were from eastern Canada and perfectly delightful, and the boar belly evades any attempt at complete description. The combination of tenderness, texture and taste was perfect, but you’d have to taste it to understand. I also ordered the caprese salad and learned that some of the tomatoes are grown in the garden out back (in the same yard as the smoker). Liverpool House mixes in some of its own tomatoes but isn’t able to grow enough to support the entire restaurant (and the other two – on the owned block – that the owner has).

The star of the evening was the “lazy lobster.” By 8 PM, there were only two left, so it’s obviously a popular item (if you want it, get to Liverpool House fairly early). The lobster is served cracked and on a bed of lobster roe-infused mashed potatoes. Even if it means eating earlier than you’d like, make sure you have reservations that keep you from missing this.

The Little Burgundy neighborhood – and thus Liverpool House – is a bit of a hike from the downtown and Old Montreal hotels, so take a taxi both ways. It’s a bit of a pain compared to the ease of just eating near (or even in) your hotel, but the experience will be worth the 30 minutes (roundtrip) spent in a cab.

Disclosure: Tourisme-Montreal picked up the tab for this trip, but my views are my own.

Roadside attractions along the Pacific Coast Highway

by Brenda Yun on


I just completed a whirlwind tour of the Pacific coastline this past week and within a few days I got a taste of some pretty eye-popping roadside attractions along Route 101. While most of the sights I discovered were pretty kitschy, there were other natural wonders that inspired at least one or two ooo’s and ahh’s. While I’d like to say I drove the whole thing, I have to admit that I was only able to run the stretch between San Francisco, CA through Aberdeen, WA. Here’s a little taste of the roadside wonders waiting for you along the Pacific coastline:

Northern California

  • Golden Gate Bridge: A trip to NorCal wouldn’t be complete without seeing San Francisco’s iconic Golden Gate Bridge. While the building of the bridge itself is enough to place it firmly in national lore, many are sadly inspired to jump from the bridge to their death into the frigid bay waters below.
  • Redwood National Park: The towering redwood trees in Humboldt county along California’s “Lost Coast” are truly a sight to behold. At one point, the cars along 101 weave amid the trees.
  • Bigfoot country: While my friend may claim Bigfoot lives in her small town of Ada, Oklahoma, northern California also claims Bigfoot lives here, and the locals immortalize him by making lots of wooden statues of him.
  • Trees of Mystery: If you’re into tall tales like stories about Paul Bunyan (that giant lumberjack of a man), the audio tour along the “Tall Tales Trail” in the Trees of Mystery park should inform you of all you need to know about big country legends. Enjoy a ride on the Sky Trail gondola if you want to travel amid the big trees in the park.



Oregon

  • Oregon Dunes: The sci-fi saga, Dune, was inspired by these sandy dunes in southern Oregon. The beach along this stretch of coast seems to go on forever. Sandy tumbling down a rolling dune is a must.
  • Prehistoric Gardens: A popular tourist trap right off the 101 is the dinosaur-filled park better known as the Prehistoric Gardens. Apparently, someone thought it was a great idea to create life-sized dinosaurs and place them throughout a forested park for tourists to stumble upon as they strolled amid the trees. A little scary, if you ask me, but the Gardens draw quite the crowd.
  • Tillamook Cheese Factory: The famous cheddar cheese company has a large amusement park-like factory complete with an ice cream shop that features over 30 original flavors. This place tops even Ben and Jerry’s as a must-see.

Southern Washington

  • The world’s largest frying pan: Once you cross the state border into Washington, the roadside pickings get a bit slim. Take a slight detour along the Long Beach Peninsula and you will find the world’s largest frying pan, which is a 10-foot tall specimen of shiny iron.
  • Oysters: The Willapa Bay just north of the peninsula is home to lots of oysters. As you drive into South Bend, you’ll see a sign declaring it’s the “Oyster Capital of the World.”

The World’s Favourite Mollusc

by Brett Atkinson on

Oysters – love ’em or hate ’em. Apart from chili-fried tarantulas in Cambodia, there’s probably nothing on earth that polarises people more than the world’s favourite mollusc. My favourite bivalve-related memory is arriving in San Francisco after an eleven hour flight from Auckland and going straight to the Swan Oyster Depot for lunch. Apparently sunshine and exercise are good for jetlag, but experience shows that a winning combination of Anchor Steam Beer, oysters and sour dough bread also does the trick.

The world’s biggest oyster festival is prised open on August 28 in the town of Hillsborough in Northern Island. The highlight of the five day festival is the World Oyster Eating Championships on the following Saturday. Expect a truck load of Guinness to be consumed as contestants do their best in front of a global audience of more than 12,000 visitors.

Thanks to adonovan on Flickr for the pic of a winning combination.