Three Countries in a Week
Well, it’s three countries if you are like most people from Hong Kong and consider themselves separate from China. I went to Hong Kong to meet my parents and took them to Macau and Shenzhen in China. Mum and Dad were flying through to England and decided to stop over for a while to meet me. I found Hong Kong slightly too western for me, but it was nice to get to a country that spoke some English and didn’t just point and say “Waiguoren” (foreigner). Plus, there were beaches! I think it was still a bit too Chinese for Mum and Dad.
The first stop was to meet Mum and Dad at the airport and catch up for a while, over dinner, of course. Mum and Dad braved Cantonese cuisine and made a good attempt at my favourite foods: seafood and green stuff, noodles and green stuff and just plain green stuff. However, by the end of the night, I could feel a definite sense of “make sure you provide Western food tomorrow night” emanating from my parents. I took note.
The first day of touring involved transitting Hong Kong Island and Kowloon. After what seemed like several days on the bus picking other tourists up, we eventually headed to a small temple complex called the Man Mo Temple dedicated to, of all things to combine, the God of Literature and the God of Martial Arts.
Next, we headed off to Hong Kong Island for a ride in the Victoria Peak tram to view the Island and Kowloon. There’s not much to say except that a picture says a thousand words.
Afterwards, we took a sampan ride through the Aberdeen Fishing Village, a pirate den converted into a fishing village. Over 60,000 people are supposed to live in Aberdeen. While we saw a few boats containing washing machines and microwaves (plus a variety of other electronic devices), I assume that most of the 60,000 live on the land surrounding the river. I particularly liked the tires around the outside of the boats… each one had its life jacket.
We then headed for the stock standard jewellery factory tour where foreign tourists are expected to spend millions of dollars buying expensive “one of a kind” jewellery. It always amazes me when I spot a foreign tourist doing this without bargaining. Anyway, we headed to Stanley market for more shopping in a market selling the same stuff as markets across China but on a relatively larger scale.
After the shopping expeditions, we crossed the river again to the Kowloon side on the Star Ferry…not much more than a regular ferry, but I loved it anyway. I love ferries! I think that there should be more boat travel in this world. We walked alongside the river, viewing the Chinese version of the Avenue of Stars.
Finished the day with dinner on the edge of the river and a chance to see the “spectacular” symphony of lights show. I can guarantee it’s nothing to write home about… but it seems to pull a crowd anyway. Not sure why!
The next day it was up bright and early for a tour of Lantau Island. Lantau Island is larger than Hong Kong Island but with fewer people – only about 20,000. Lantau has been inhabited since Neolithic times, and many residents make their living through fishing. First, we had to get over the Tsing Ma Bridge, the longest road/rail suspension bridge in the world. It took us longer to get away from the photographer that wanted a photo of us in front of the bridge to put it on a plate and try to sell it to us, but I did manage a couple of photos before we ran away.
We finally crossed onto Lantau Island and visited a beach…my first in a long, long, long time. It was simply brilliant to go and dip my feet in and feel at home. We then drove alongside beautiful mountain scenery to Tai O Village, one of several traditional fishing villages now struggling thanks to the popularity of Hong Kong Island for the youth of Lantau. Tai O, the largest city in Western Lantau, has sometimes been titled the Venice of the East. If you look below, it doesn’t look much like Venice, even though it can stake claims to being centred on water. Not only can you buy fish of all kinds from buckets (see below), but you can also see and smell fish drying in the plentitude of shops along the walkways in town. Like many villages in Lantau, you can see houses built on bamboo stilts. Tai O also saw my first, but not my last, taste of quail eggs. So very delicious.
Situated near Tai O Village is Po Lin Monastery (Precious Lotus). Po Lin stands where three monks set up a meditation retreat in 1905. They built stone huts, other recluses joined them, and the monastery was officially inaugurated in 1927. The building was simple and peaceful as there was no road, just the Pilgrim’s Path from the fishing village of Tai O to the west. Obviously, as in most of China, things have changed, and the main tourist attraction at Po Lin is the colossal bronze statue of Buddha (Tian Tan Buddha). Over 100 feet tall, it’s the world’s largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha.
We ate a late lunch at Po Lin Monastery’s vegetarian restaurant and headed back onto Hong Kong Island for the tour’s finish. Took Mum and Dad out to a steak house that seemed to please their palates a little more than the first night’s Cantonese food.
The next day, an extra-early morning departure saw us depart on a ferry to Macau. Portugal administered Macau until 1999 as an overseas province. Like its formerly British neighbour Hong Kong, Macau is a Special Administrative Region of the People’s Republic of China. Nowadays, Macau is known for its many casinos. The trip didn’t allow for much time in Macau. Still, general impressions were of a city trapped between the Portuguese and the Chinese, with religions standing side by side and architecture varying from building to building.
We stepped off the ferry into the Macau Peninsula, and the hordes of passengers made their way through customs. Known to me (but promptly forgotten), a new casino was opening in Macau, and thousands upon thousands of extra tourists were “visiting”. Even sillier, we waited in the enormous queues before realising that we could go straight in due to Dad’s seniority. Not a problem, we thought; we would have to wait for everyone else anyway. It turns out that the only others going to China also made their way through the quicker queue and spent an hour waiting for us to make it through. So goes an hour of the half-day trip to Macau.
We headed straight to the Sands Casino to view the statue of Bodhisatta Avalokitesvara. Interestingly enough, even though it is a Chinese deity, due to the influence of the Portuguese, the statue is European in design.
Escaping from the horrible heat into the confines of our non-air-conditioned minibus, we visited the ruins of St Paul’s Cathedral. St Paul’s Cathedral was built by the Jesuits from 1582 to 1602 and was, at that stage, the largest Catholic Church in the East. Japanese Catholics added the stone front wall of the cathedral from 1620 to 1627. The Cathedral caught fire in the middle of the night in 1835, leaving the stone wall as the only remains. I have seen and heard several stories about the fire. Two of the most common are that it was due to a typhoon and that someone accidentally lit a fire in the kitchen, causing it to burn down. An extension to either of these stories is that, even though different religions stand side by side in Macau, whilst it was being burnt down, everyone just stood and stared because the area was not Catholic. The alternative to this story is that they had to stand and watch, given the typhoon. To summarise, the ruins are still quite impressive even though only the front of the church remains. This could be because I haven’t seen any churches of late.
To combat the initial alternative, one could point out the temple of Na-tcha. Dedicated to the Chinese deity Prince Nata, it stood (and still stands) just around the corner from the ruins of St Pauls, sandwiched between the cathedral and the old walls of the city. Just minutes after being told of the enemy-like status of the religions, we were told about the friendliness of religions in Macau…go figure! The temple was a small (but not unimportant) building in a reasonably typical Chinese style, contrasting the sizeable European style of St Pauls.
After the Ruins of St Paul, we toured the “most excellent” museum of Macau… don’t go there. Waste of time! I have nothing more to say about it. Quickly forgetting the museum, we went for lunch at Babylon Casino to say that we had been to a casino in Macau. Security was up, and scanning everything through at four points during the walk-through and lunch (Macau style) was excellent. Sad to leave as I would have liked a little longer here.
Headed back to the ferry terminal and, after going through the much more subdued Customs, we boarded a ferry to Shenzhen in mainland China. I was excited to go to Shenzhen, not because of Shenzhen itself, but because of Mum and Dad’s reluctance to go to China. I hope they liked it, and I quite liked Shenzhen but mainly for the Splendid China Village (come to think of it, I think that was the name of my boat down the Three Gorges… minus the Village part of course).
Shenzhen, I quote, is “a 25 years old young city, which has created the “Shenzhen speed” as well as “Shenzhen efficiency” and won the honourable title of One-Night City”. What the?
To translate, Shenzhen is a relatively new city due to its proximity to Hong Kong. It was the first city in China to obtain status as a Special Economic Zone, given the status to attract business and business visitors from Hong Kong. It is a relatively large city and has only become so in the last ten years after many people returned or migrated to Shenzhen due to fear of what the Chinese take-over of Hong Kong could cause.
Shenzhen was about the mangrove swamp (don’t bother) and the Splendid China Village, 300 square kilometres of China in miniature. After a long argument with the miniature train company, which included me getting extremely annoyed with Chinese efficiency for probably the first time in my trip, we walked off only to see the train take off ten minutes later. Stopping it and running back to buy tickets, we managed to get on the train and take the tour around the village. Highlights of the trip include the mini Great Wall, the mini Potala Palace, the mini Forbidden City and, of course, the mini Yellow Crane Tower (situated in Wuhan). The sites were made all the better, given that I had seen most of them in real life.
By then, it was well and truly evening, and we sat down for a relatively traditional Chinese meal before heading to the “Dragon and Phoenix Open Air Show” featuring “5000 years of Chinese performing art in dance, acrobatics and opera”. It only went for a couple of hours, not 5000 years but well worth it nonetheless with dancing, spinning plates, comedic mimes and lots of flashing lights as only the Chinese can.
