Crows feet
Posted in China | By tim |
Our first proper day in Hong Kong (after a day recovering from jet-lag) is spent running around after Chinese visas, Hong Kong dollars and airline tickets to Shanghai in a race against the clock before offices all over Hong Kong shut down for the 5 day handover holiday starting tomorrow. We manage to achieve everything reasonably easily though – visas and flights, our gateway to China, for under £150. Later we decide to head back into town by the remarkably efficient ‘Public Bus’ – a never-ending chain of minibuses which herd people around the city – to sample the night time delights of Hong Kong’s ex-pat party district and back-alley intoxication centre – “Lan Kwai Fong”.
We choose to eat first at a restaurant whose name is as memorable as the latter part of the evening. We choose it mostly because its menu is conveniently in English and seems to be remarkably lacking in either living or tentacled creatures. We are soon digging into savoury and conventional sounding dishes like ‘Beef in Oyster sauce’, ‘Roasted Pigeon’ and ‘Duck in Ginger’, filled out with bowls of steamed rice and washed down with tea. To eat with there are only chopsticks and Chris seems to have altogether more difficulty with this dexterous concept than either Llew or I. We have already refilled our bowls twice before Chris has succeeded in picking up his first peanut. He claims indignantly that the waiter has greased his sticks for sheer comedy value but we are not convinced.
Particularly bemusing are the white jelly-like items accompanying the duck. Thinking it to be squid or other such seafood, I have already eaten one and Chris is halfway through his – with it dangling unceremoniously from his chin – when Llew suddenly works it all out. ‘They’re ducks feet!’ he declares proudly, almost failing to disguise the almost sadistic pleasure from watching Chris’s expression rush through disgust and out the other side into horror.
By 11pm, onceLlew has sucked every bone completely dry at least twice, we decide to venture outside. Some Chinese men are erecting a huge inflatable doll of some kind in the gap between two apartment blocks and since everyone else seems to be enjoying the spectacle, we decide to stop and watch too. The huge mass of silk is causing some difficulty for the men, flustered by their audience, because it is twisted and can’t inflate properly. However it is not long before they succeed and the significance becomes all too apparent. The doll turns out to be a huge red woman (symbolising China) dragging along by the hand, rather reluctantly it seems to me, a gangling pink child (Hong Kong). The amassed crowd of lagered ex-pats and young fashionable Chinese seem to be loving this Chinese propaganda stunt but we resolve to come back later with a kitchen knife and watch her rocket. We end up in ‘Mad Dogs’ English pub where they are celebrating ‘The Last Days of The Empire’ and despite beers being more than £3 a pint we settle in and stay until 3am.
By this time we’ve had enough and head for the ubiquitous kebab shop to get our rationed lumps of microwaved chicken in pittas which actually taste very good to beered-up tastebuds despite costing an extortionate amount of money. Then we spend half an hour trying to persuade a taxi-driver that he actually would like to take three staggering Westerners dressed in shorts and drenched in kebab sauce on the twenty minute trip home. Unsurprisingly, none of them seem too keen. Nevertheless by 4am we are back at ‘Baguio Wan’. It is still burning hot and sticky outside but air-con and beds are calling. Our first night in Hong Kong spent in an English pub. Shocking.
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