EcoLog07 - Hong Kong Cultural Experiences

The hills around Mui Wo are dotted with concrete grave sites. Twice a year around the grave clearing festivals of Ching Ming at the beginning of April and Chung Yueng in early September, the Chinese people visit the grave sites of their ancestors. They burn incense and offerings of paper models of things that the dead relatives liked having around them…all sorts of things including paper computers, microwaves, mobile phones, hell bank notes etc. Invariably these burnings sometimes get out of hand. The hills around are scarred from many fires. There were two particularly bad fires in Mui Wo this year. One started on the lower slope of Lin Fa Shan mountain early one afternoon. The one helicopter they employed to dump water on the fire was totally ineffective and this fire burned up to and over the top of this 750m mountain, eventually burning itself out a couple of days later. The second fire was a little closer to home. I joined other locals and the fire brigade with fire beaters to put this one out. The result of this fire is a rather scarred hill top just on the edge of our valley. We have been involved with tree planting on these former fire sites both locally on the hills above our home with the school children who come to Ark Eden programmes and in Discovery Bay with the DB Green Group.

We are members of the Royal Geographical Society of Hong Kong. As well as this enabling us to go to some superb lectures our membership has given us the opportunity to attend RGS day trips. The last one we went on proved a little more ‘exciting’ than we anticipated. It was meant to be a walk up the Tai Mo Shan, the highest mountain in Hong Kong to study the geological formations of the mountain. It turned into a wild walk on Hong Kong’s highest mountain during a T3, with winds gusting at 100k+ and driving rain. Typhoon Naguri was closer than the RGS organisers realised!

We do like to take the opportunity to house sit for friends generally as animal sitters. The week after we came back from NZ we stayed at Kate and Gary’s to look after Rosie the dog and also Theo the teenager. We were doing quite well caring for both of them until one day we went out for the evening locking the door as we left. Unbeknown to us Theo, who had taken Rosie for a walk had gone out without his key or his phone. We got home a couple of hours later to find a sorry looking pair waiting for us on the doorstep. Talk about feel bad – although probably not as bad as Theo felt! He was very civil about it though…even cooking our dinner as he had originally planned to do while we were out.

We also stay in Soho, the restaurant district of Central, looking after Mister Goodcat a possum look a like friend. His owner Nissa, is a model who travels quite a bit so she is often looking for people to look after her very affectionate apartment moggie. He was very pleased to see us when we arrived the second stay and promptly settled down inside my briefcase. He spent most of the day smooching next to us, which later became a problem because he decided that it was appropriate after a day of sleeping to play all night. Mister Goodcat became Mister Badcat….but he is so cute that one cannot stay cross with him for long!

We seem to have had many opportunities for cultural outings over the past couple of months. Through our association with the Kiwi Society we were invited to help out at a NZ Art Exhibition as care takers of the work during the day. Being volunteers enabled us to attend a talk about the works by the artists as well as the exhibition opening.

We also had invitations to see Te Vaka, a great Polynesian dance group. On another evening Louise went to a reception for Raewyn Hill, a NZ resident choreographer who choreographed a dance based on photos of rugby players taken at the 2007 Rugby 7’s. As well as performing, dancers had their photos taken in the same athletic poses of the rugby players and these photos were placed side by side with the rugby photos. It was very clever! On the same evening I went to a reception with the NZ Rugby 10’s team.

We had not planned to go to the Hong Kong Rugby 7’s this year but by chance on the day itself we managed to score a couple of tickets to the Friday night session. It was great to have had the chance to experience the Hong Kong 7’s and to watch the Kiwi’s playing who of course eventually went on to be the winners of the tournament.

Witi Ihimaera was also in Hong Kong for the Hong Kong Literary Festival and according to Louise gave the most wonderful talk and readings at a function at the New Zealand Consular Generals home on The Peak.

We had a day trip to Macau where we experienced the fake opulence of The Venetian Casino (for about an hour as we wandered through NOT stopping in the smoky gambling halls filled with Chinese mainlanders). We then taxied to the small village of Coloane to lunch at a local Chinese/Portuguese café and experience the more traditional side of Macau.

Well by the length of this update I can see that I really need to write them more often! There are many other experiences that I would like to share but I will save these for the next instalment.

We would love to welcome visitors to our Valley to experience a little of ‘our’ Hong Kong, so family and friends, don’t be shy! In any case we also look forward to hearing all about what YOU are doing wherever in the world you are.

Grow well
Dr Merrin

Thanks Mothers

A big thank you to all the Mothers! I am sure you had a great day!

A special thank you to my mother!

Parts of the world celebrated Mother's Day on Sunday 11 May. I say parts of the world for a couple of reasons.

Mother's Day is not the same day all around the world. Different cultures or countries have chosen to celebrate on different days. Some people also realise that celebrating mothers on only one day is no where near as powerful as celebrating them every day.

Now, have you taken time to celebrate ALL Mother's?

When was the last time that you paused and acknowledged:
- Mother Earth?
- Mother Birds?
- Mother Dogs and Mother Cats?
- Mother Whales, Mother Cows and Mother Lions?
- Mother ... the list goes on ...

So lets pause and acknowledge ALL Mothers whenever we can on any day.

Grow well Mothers!
Dr Merrin

EcoLog06 - From Winter we Spring

My last update on a ‘green’ life in Hong Kong was written in early February just when it was starting to get a little cool in Hong Kong. Actually it was bloody cold! Little did we know that most of February was to herald the coldest and longest winter in Hong Kong for about 20 years!! As you can imagine our little house at the top of the valley is not built for the cold (or the hot weather for that matter). We spent most of February huddled over a heater, wearing ski jackets and practically all the warm clothes that we’d brought to Hong Kong (which we never thought we would need). We were actually very lucky to have a heater as the cold snap caught many by surprise and all of the shops in HK had sold out of all the heaters that they had ordered for the whole season in a matter of days.

On some days the top temperature was 10°C …and that was inside our house. We needed to stop the gales blowing in through the cracks in the windows so you guessed it we had to rely on a little Kiwi ingenuity. .This amounted to buying a roll of bubble wrap and covering all of the windows and/or stuffing the gaps with newspaper to increase the warmth factor. I’m sure this approach did make some difference but it really was hard to tell some days.

Needless to say during this cold snap we still did not have a hot water system installed for a shower. As you can imagine this resulted in a few tears of frustration and stamping of feet from Louise, who was beginning to wonder why the hell we had left our lovely home on the hill in Wellington with all its mod cons. Thankfully I can now report that we do indeed have a hot shower in our little abode. With the help of a friend who spoke Cantonese we managed to enlist the services of a local electrician/plumber. Up the valley he cycled initially to install the electrical wiring. A few Cantonese phone calls to and fro and we established that he could also install the plumbing. So Sunday 2 March became a very auspicious day indeed! Voila….we now had a shower… There was one heart stopping moment a few weeks after installation when the water pressure (such that it is) dwindled to nothing. More tears from Louise! Being a good keen Kiwi man I managed to find the source of the problem (this being an air bubble in the pipe from the water supply) and soon all was good again. So for all of you, our friends and family who have been waiting for this modern convenience before you came to stay, I can now report that there is no excuse anymore. Oh course the 30 minute walk up the valley may still faze some of you but just think of the exercise value.

Now that there is a shower in the bathroom, Louise was of course on a mission to ‘decorate’ said bathroom. Actually ‘decorate’ seems a little far fetched. What she was actually trying to do was ‘create’ a bathroom. Off she went on many a reconnaissance mission to source the relevant accessories. The result is not the most stylish bathroom in the world but pretty good under the circumstances. She managed to source a shower caddy, trolley, wooden hooks, shelf, toilet roll holder and a mirror and two rather cool bamboo floor mats, which prevent one from getting ones wet feet as you walk ‘through’ the shower to get to the toilet. The mats were found in the Causeway Bay big GOD store…yes ‘Goods of Desire’ a great place to go if you want to add a touch of flair to…well any room in the house actually!

Actually the addition of a shower caddy suspended off the wall was a bonus in other ways! Prior to installation we had been having some problems with a visiting soap eating rodent. We thought that we had sufficiently covered all of the holes in the wet area (kitchen/bathroom) but a sneaky rodent was coming in and gnawing away at my soap! Not to mention rifle-ling through the rubbish bucket looking for other tasty morsels. Eventually a stop was put to his visitations by covering all small entry spots to the kitchen/bathroom outhouse with metal gauze.

As the cold winter period drew to a close I really started to notice nature changing in the valley. The pomelos in our garden finished soon after our return from NZ. They were replaced by some lovely large grapefruit on the tree growing next to the steps up to the house. The flesh of these is quite orange in colour but they are definitely on the sour side of the spectrum. Lovely to be able to pluck fresh citrus fruit for breakfast for several months of the year though! We had planted tomatoes and basil interspersed with marigolds as companion plants, prior to our NZ holiday. The cold slowed down the tomato crop but once it warmed up again we were able to continue to pick tomatoes right up till now. Have just pulled the last plants out and have replanted more tomatoes and basil, plus aubergines, parsley, lettuce chives etc. Just call us Tom and Barbara Good - aka Merrin and Lou living ‘The Good Life’ Hong Kong style. Actually I do love to head off into the wilderness that is our garden armed with a slasher and hoe, clearing paths and creating viewing platforms.

The valley is a wondrous place to be at times. To be woken up in the morning by the dawn chorus is quite special. There are also the ‘night birds’ who seem to spend all night calling to their mate and the owls hooting to theirs in their roosts near the house. As the temperatures got warmer I also noticed the return of the insects with different varieties taking it in turns to make their presence felt. When all the fruit trees in the garden were flowering a few weeks ago, the drone of bees was the most prevalent sound during the day. Now it is the drone or should I say high pitched screech of the cicadas. Wasps, hornets and beetles are also flying about but fortunately these do tend to mind their own business. The large and small snails and slugs are also about now and the other day there was a rather large worm trying to share my shower. I did however manage to encourage it out through the drainage hole in the floor. The butterflies are also many and varied around our home. They come in all shapes and sizes from really big brightly coloured ones to small white cabbage and common yellow butterflies. We also had an influx of brightly coloured tiger moths….actually hundreds of these flying around and settling in the trees around our home.

Last week we saw our first snakes of the season near the house. First we saw a Red Necked Keelback slithering up the bank near our vege garden. Later that same day another Red Necked Keelback (it may have been the same one) decided to curl up in the little drain hole of our patio next to where Louise was washing the dishes (outside in the basin filled with water boiled from the kettle – as you do). She noticed it when she went to place a bucket practically on top of it. Now this one was a little too close for comfort! Mind you, when it realised that this large thing next to it was trying to squash it with a bucket off it went down the wall. Lou then walked to what she thought was a better viewing spot only to disturb another snake also less than a metre from where she now stood! Talk about palpitations! Not sure what variety this one was but we did manage to take a photograph of it to try and identify it in the snake book.

A few days later when I was leaving to go to an early morning meeting. He opened the front door to find another snake similar to the brown one curled up on our doorstep! Needles to say out came the camera again (for identification purposes). As I was in a rush to catch a ferry into Central I left Louise to usher it off the threshold. This she managed to do by giving it a gentle poke with a ‘long’ stick of bamboo. We haven’t seen any more snakes quite as close to the house lately, just a few down the valley as we are walking home! Not so keen on the fact that the snakes come quite so close to the house but really there is not a lot that we can do about it. One just has to keep a wary eye out and ‘believe’ that they are more fearful of us than we are of them!

Of course, the most unwelcome critter at the moment (and one which definitely makes their presence felt) are mosquitos. We currently have daily competitions to see who can kill the most. It really is unwise to leave the door open on the damper days…especially in the early evening. One of our most useful Christmas presents was a mossie net for the bed. When we first started using it we did have a problem with rogue mossies sneaking in through the gap. Once inside they would have a feast! These little blighters even know how to bite you through the sheet! After a few nights of having to turn the lights on in the middle of the night to act as the great white mosquito catcher Louise fixed the problem by sewing up the gap!

We haven’t got any resident animals of the domestic variety (apart from our resident geckos). Stumpy the gecko (tailless due to some trauma) was one of our favourites for a while, but he eventually went to the big gecko place in the sky. Over the last couple of days the flying ants (these winged ants come in waves at certain times of the year) have been making a nuisance of themselves by coming into the house through every crack and cranny (of which there are many). The only good thing about this event was that we could watch gecko TV…i.e. watch the geckos scurry up the walls catching and munching on the winged ants. The bad thing about these nuisance insects (those not caught and munched by geckos) is that they drop their wings overnight and then you end up with a colony of ants inside!

If we feel the need to get close and personal to domestic animals we can go to Jenny’s and say hello to Charlie the pig, Cherry the cat, the 2 turtles and 5 dogs that make up her menagerie. We sometimes volunteer to take the five girls for a walk (Jenny’s dogs – Radar, a collie bitser, afghans Yuki and Carmen, Pepper a small fluffy something?? and ‘Belle the Beautiful’ - a pug who is the smallest dog but makes her presence felt the most). Belle is the self acclaimed star of the family!

We also always stop and talk to the self styled guardians of the Valley. These are the seven cats that reside around the ‘pink gates’ at the entrance to the valley (which is also where our letter box is - about 10 minutes walk from the house). They are wild cats but all have been caught by the cat’s protection society, taken away to be de-sexed and brought back to their ‘home’. They do not belong to anyone in particular but are fed by many people. All are a tad timid except for Mama and Boy (the names we have given them). My guess is that Mama is actually Boy’s mother (they are very similar in colouring and natures). She is the most gorgeous moggie who always stops for a chat and a roll. She sees us coming and runs up the path and jumps on the 1.5m high concrete pad for her chat and pat. Boy has also become more confident and he too is often hanging out with his mum lolling in the sun and waiting for our attention as we cycle by.

On that note of cycling – bye

Grow Well
Dr Merrin