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