30 April Hong Kong, China
The Olympic countdown continues. It is now 100 days until the Olympics are held in Beijing. The torch is due to arrive in Hong Kong on Friday for its first China stop. It is the day I leave to go inland. Already things are happening here, such as activitists being detained at the airport and returned to their points of origin. Friday will be a holiday--May 1, sort of Spring Festival and Labor Day rolled into one. Streets are exptected to be crowded. Some 20,000 extra police are being prepared in case of problems. The Olympics have become a source of national pride for the Chinese but also has put them into the world's limelight over their policies, especially in regard to Tibet. The newspapers here are pretty candid about the situation, but Hong Kong enjoys a special status with its one country, two systems government. Things are a little more free here than I suspect to be true on the mainland. Still, there is excitement in the air about the Olympics.
Chinese Hot Pot: I have to tell you about my dining experience last night. I got swept up with three other guys--two local and one living here who is from Perth, Australia--who invited me to join them for dinner. George manages and owns several restaurants in the area, Ringo works for the Hong Kong department of education as an administrator, and Graham from Australia has recently moved to the area. They thought it would be fun to have a crazy American world trekker join them, and you know me, I'm always ready for something new. George and Ringo don't sound much like Chinese names, which they indeed aren't. It is a common practice for Chinese to adopt a western name for ease of communication in business dealings, etc. I asked Ringo how he got his name. It seems that he asked a teacher in school to give him a name. She came up with the name Michael, but he thought it was too common and asked for something more unusual. She must have liked the Beatles, for she suggested Ringo "as a bit different." It stuck and now he is Ringo.
They invited me join in to a "Hot Pot" meal. Therein lies this story. We walked to a nice restaurant. Of course, George got the best table and the instant attention of the wait staff. We sat at a round table with a inset burner in the center. A large bowl of boiling water was brought and placed on the burner which kept the water at a constant boil. George ordered for us. Ringo asked me if there were any foods I did not like. If so, I should say now. But I told him that I couldn't think of anything I didn't like. He laughed and said that was dangerous in a Chinese restaurant, but I stuck with it, trusting George to proceed. He ordered for us.
Soon plates and bowls of various uncooked foods arrived at the table--leafy green vegetables, shrimp on skewers, oysters, squid, thousand-year-old eggs, strips of beef cut like bacon, pork, fish with eyes glaring, plates of meatballs of beef, pork, squid, fish, and various mixtures. This was going to be a feast!
We were each brought a bowl of soy sauce to which we added hot chili peppers to our taste and bits of garlic. This would be the sauce we would dip our various foods in for seasoning.
George then dumped slices of beef, shrimp skewers, and the thousand-year eggs into the bowling water. I should mention that the eggs were not truly a thousand years old, but they had decayed to a point of hardening, and as gross as it may sound, they were quite good. After a few minutes, we dipped up these items and began our meal. At each course, George would add new items--meat balls, squid, fish. Between courses he would add the leafy greens which also were quite tasty. He seemed delighted to find a tourist who was not put off by these foods. They were good and I relished each of them.
The dinner went on for some time. We took time to enjoy each round of new goodies from the boiling pot. We talked about my travels, about the upcoming Olympics--George is an expert on all the Olympics since 1976, about Hong Kong business and living, and life in general. It was a grand good time with people I had just met.
Finally, I had my fill--and yet there was more. We slowed and finally concluded this feast. We divided the bill. Each was $118 HK. Sounds like a lot, but it works out about $18 US. Not bad for such an extravagant feast!
Travel involves a lot of sacrifice sometimes, but tonight wasn't one of those times!
Yesterday, I toured the Hong Kong Arts Museum. It is an excellent facility not far from where I am staying. There were special exhibits on the "Taste of China" about France's thirst for all things Chinese in the 18th & 19th centuries. There was also an exhibit on Chinese Antiquities. I saw more gold here than I had seen since I visited the the Gold Museum in Lima, Peru back in February. It showed how the craft for making gold artifacts progressed over time and in the various Chinese Dynasties. There was even a gold plated saddle.
Hong Kong is proving to be a real gold mine for this itinerant traveler.
What's next?