A Matter of Taste

As a child I was quite a fussy eater, I think we all go through that stage. I remember being young and Mum making the best meals ever. Whenever I went to have a meal at a friend’s house there was always that dread of what was going to be served up and would they be offended if I didn’t eat that huge pile of steamed pumpkin or rehydrated peas. Mum had millions of ways to make mince, chops and sausages taste like gourmet meals. Chicken cost too much and anything Asian, Indian, Italian wasn’t even on the radar.

Going to boarding school encouraged me to be a bit more adventurous. Only because we had to. Every meal we had to line up, say grace, get served something (usually dreadful), sit down at our allotted seat and eat. We were not allowed to talk until the duty master rang a little bell and then we could talk. Like Pavlov’s dog I still eat my meal and then talk—none of this European taking a bite, chewing, swallowing and then speaking. If you are Italian you cannot hold on to your fork and speak because you might stab someone in the eye when you gesticulate. I also think that eating in silence has made me a fast eater as there is nothing else you can do. However, we still had to eat everything on the plate, and I mean everything and we weren’t allowed to leave the table until we did. Masters watched us for any sign of trying to drop our food on the floor or putting it into our pockets. On one occasion prefects were assigned to feed the reluctant ones, those with food phobias—one boy could not eat anything pink, otherwise he would be sick. Another it was cabbage. Anyway, I remember the prefects feeding these guys like babies and one was sick back into his bowl, whereby the prefect just stirred back into the food and fed it back to him. Barbaric times. Particular horrors from those days for me were boiled leeks in a thin insipid white sauce and prunes in an equally distasteful ‘custard’ sauce. Funnily enough, I did develop a taste for lambs fry and bacon during my time there.

At a different boarding school in secondary school I remember them serving ‘sweetbreads’, which is either the throat or pancreas. This was served in a white sauce as I remember too. Luckily we didn’t have to eat everything at this particular institution.

A major influence on me was my step-father Sham, a Malaysian, who introduced me to The Curry and many other Asian delights. Although still traumatised by institutional food it encouraged me to be adventurous. So today, I like spicy (but not too hot as to kill the flavour) foods with interesting textures and colours. My wife’s family also introduced me to authentic Chinese cooking and its many varieties, especially the more northern cuisine.

Coming to Hong Kong has meant the real deal. This is the place where the Western concept of Chinese food has come from. Most Chinese who left and started Chinese restaurants are from this area. The old fashioned term is Cantonese cooking. The Cantonese or Guangdong people introduced the world to the word dim sum. They almost solely use rice and noodles (often rice based) as their staples and love their seafood, pork and chicken. BBQ meat is a speciality and you will see pork flaps, ducks with their heads attached and the humble chook displayed prominently in restaurant windows, shining with their glossy red glaze. Chickens are often poached in a broth and are much lighter in colour. There are always plenty of vegetables, steamed or flash-fried in all sorts of delicious sauces. The range of mushrooms is staggering too.

They are obsessed with food here, it tends to dominate everything. A common greeting is ‘have you eaten (rice)?’. This is a question just like our ‘how are you?’ is not replied with the detail of our lives. It’s just being polite. At my work they were all very concerned about me and what I ate. They told me which restaurants to steer clear of and questioned whether the bread bun I had bought at the 7/11 was going to be sufficient. One of my colleagues went to a local that regularly delivered food (everyone delivers here—even McDonalds) to the staffroom and photocopied an English version of their menu for me. A popular choice is ‘the lunchbox’ which is any container full to the brim with a rice or noodle based dish. This can cost about 20 HK dollars (about 4 NZ) and it will fill you up. Trust me.

My colleagues in the English Department were very relieved to hear that I was not a vegetarian—there was a collective sigh of relief from them as the last 2 NETs were vegetarians. It makes it quite difficult to fit in because food is such an integral part of social discourse. They are absolutely fascinated about what I bring to work and it will become a point of conversation. If I haven’t eaten anything during the lunch break they will all fuss over me.

On my second week I was invited to the regular yum cha group. Yum cha literally means to take tea but it also means to eat as well, usually dim sum---small bites of food. Steamed in bamboo trays or deep-fried. It’s best to have an ‘eat first, as questions later’ attitude as some things just look—to Western eyes—a little odd. Take chicken feet for example. We usually cut that bit off or we don’t even see it. Here it’s cooked with the bird, as well as its head. In dim sum it’s marinated in a sauce, fried and then steamed. Back home I steered clear of these but here I thought that I should be like the locals and eat them. They actually taste quite nice. There’s no actual meet, just skin and bones. Most people like the feel of rolling the bones around in their mouth. I have also tried deep fried chicken cartilage (nice—like KFC) and fish buoyancy bladder (spongy and a slightly fishy flavour). I’m still working myself up for the tripe. The memory of sweetbreads is indelibly printed on my mind.

One day at the markets we went to a noodle place. Many places that have the ducks in the window also have pig’s intestines there—looking like a length of untwisted sausage, I’ve even seen them on sticks like kebabs. This particular place had a pot of them boiling on the stove near the entrance. We asked for an English version of the menu and ordered deep fried pork chop on noodles and dry fried noodles. Yes, we got the pork chop but it was in a noodle soup and the dry fried noodle was a noodle soup which had something that looked like onion rings in it. We ate them, pronounced them OK and then soon realised it was pig’s intestines—deep fried and then put into a noodle soup. I’m not sure if this is what we actually ordered or they just wanted to see what the gweilos would eat. Probably not the latter because all this is ordinary here. They also think that westerners only like western food, especially McDonalds. We just feed to Poppy, thought it would make a good 21st story.

Another great thing about here is that food costs very little. Most people will eat out 3 to 4 times a week because their living space is so small. Instead of inviting people to their flat for dinner, they go out. I asked one of my lunch partners if the yum cha we were having was considered good and he said it was fair considering the price. I then asked where I could go to get the best, and I was told any one of the 5 star hotels but, ‘very expensive, one time they brought out hot steaming crap, one hundred dollars for one crap!’ I nodded and agreed that one hundred dollars was a lot for a crap. Food is always very fresh and lots of flavour is to be appreciated, especially with the vegetables. I think my most favourite aspect is that you can be a pig at the table. You can slurp, bring your bowl to your mouth and chew noisily. And it’s perfectly acceptable to leave the bones and scraps on the table. My kind of town.

Happy Typhoon Holiday

Sunday 13 September
Tropical Storm Koppu forms over the Philippines. Warning Signal number 1 in force. Beware of strong winds and take precautions by tying down loose materials, says the Hong Kong Observatory site.

Monday 14 September
8.00 am. Hong Kong Observatory upgrades to Storm Warning 3 and Koppu is now a severe tropical storm. It is moving toward Southern China at 16km an hour. All in the staffroom are excited and many come past my desk to tell me that if it goes to 8 (there are only 3 numbers 1, 3 and 8) then we can go home. They also tell me that if the rain signal is red or black in the morning then I don’t have to go to work that day. Watch the TV for announcements.
12 pm. On way to yum cha another group of teachers repeat the same information. I try to explain the idiom “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch”. On the way back from lunch I get soaked despite the use of an umbrella. The rain seems to be falling up from the pavement. I consider rushing into the staffroom shouting, “I have wet my pants!” but decide that my sense of humour will lose something in the translation. The wind picks up and turns my umbrella inside out. My pants are getting wetter.
2 pm. Many more colleagues file past my desk and tell me about black, red and the number 8. I wonder if they had watched the Ranfurly Shield game, but soon realise they are talking about a possible day off work.
4pm. The Hong Kong Observatory issues number 8. Government employees are let off work and those with long or difficult journeys are encouraged to go home. I look around. Nobody moves.
4.10 pm. Announcement from the principal in Cantonese. I don’t move. My neighbour in the workroom translates for me that we are told to go home. I look around. Nobody moves.
4.15 pm. I am the first to move. I leave work and walk to the bus stop, ducking and diving under bridges and shop fronts.
4.20. I reach my bus stop. I see one of the buses I could take, the 269M. I usually leave this one as it is always fuller than the 265M. I don’t move.
4.25. The 265M passes by the bus stop. Too full to stop.
4.40 Another 265M passes by the stop.
4.52. Yet another 265M. Gone.
5.00 pm. A 95% full bus stops. 20 or so try and squeeze on. Standing like sardines we travel home.
Tuesday 15 September.
6am. Try to turn TV onto see if Number 8 signal is in force. Nothing. Just a blank Screen. We don’t have a radio or the Internet. Look out the window. Nobody about. Lots of storm damage on buildings and trees. Think of the film 28 Days Later. Gulp and begin to sweat. I go down to lobby and feel relieved that there are people are about and they are not running after each other and eating each other. Girls at front desk tell me TV doesn’t go in a Number 8 wind. This means no school. Result.

A great picture of lightning from the night of the typhoon. Go here:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/msiward/3914838185/

Kam Tin anyone?

Most people in Hong Kong seem to live in high rise apartments. Half the population live in public housing, up to 30-50 storeys high. Most of those who own property also live in high-rises but with lots of amenities like pools and gyms. We will probably look at an apartment when our short-term lease runs out at the hotel. They have 24 hour security and the kids can run around quite safely. There are some who live in villages.

Not far from Tin Shui Wai, where we are staying, there is a village called Kam Tim. We visited it last Sunday. To get there we had to take the ultra-modern West Rail train, all in air-conditioned comfort. Out of the station we walked over a bridge that spanned a very wide storm water canal and into a village. Most villages are on land owned by some of the original peoples of Hong Kong. The Hakka (meaning ‘guest people’, who migrated from the North in the 1600s) are distinguishable by their circular hats with a whole in the centre and a black cloth between the hat and the head. The Hakka women are most often seen sweeping roads and parks, usually elderly. Kam Tin is a Punti village, from a clan called the Tangs who have lived in the area since 940 AD.
Modern villages are built on clan land and can’t be sold and there seems to be a law prohibiting high-rise buildings. The limit seems to be three stories. It was quite nice to be somewhere you could mountains of green instead of mountains of concrete. The village had buildings of a range of ages, from brightly coloured new builds to obviously ancient ones, hundreds of years old with tiny doors.

Kam Tin was not very bustling which, was part of its charm but town elders or somebody must have thought it needed a bit of revitalisation, so in the middle there is a covered modern market. Imagine the Christchurch Art Centre with a roof. This was a bit too manufactured for my taste, but a walk down the main drag quickly transported me back to more unplanned style. We had lunch at a Nepalese restaurant which was very pleasant and the proprietors equally as pleasant. As the heat was killing us, we thought we should head back home and get back to the air-con. Outside the train station a modern market was in operation. Think Christchurch Art Centre again.

It wasn’t until I did some research that Kam Tin actually has a walled village inside it that we completely missed that dates back 400 years with a moat and really thick walls. The walls were built to keep out bandits and wild tigers back in the day, with big iron gates protecting the only entrance. Apparently the British stormed the village in the 1800s and sent the gates back to England for some lord’s private estate. They were returned but mixed up with some other village’s, so now they have a mismatched pair of gates.
I feel this village requires some further investigation and I’m sure there will be somewhere very pleasant, under the shade of a tree, where one can purchase a nice cold beer.

One Night in Wanchai

It was my first night out in town and I didn’t know what to expect. The shuttle bus from the hotel took me into town, down the freeway, passing New Territory towns like Yueng Long, Tsuen Mun, Tsuen Wan, over fantastic suspension bridges crossing islands and harbours. It only took 30 minutes to hit Kowloon. Once there the traffic reached a standstill. Taxis, buses and a plethora of German-made vehicles clogged the road. The minibus inched ever so slowly toward my destination, past the front of the very grand Peninsula hotel. The Peninsula was built in 1928 to be THE luxury hotel in Hong Kong to cater for the luxury steamers from Europe and the trans-Siberian railroad. They added a 30 storey tower in 1994 with a helicopter pad. I was lucky enough to land on that in 2005 in a trip arranged by a friend of my mother-in-law. Down on the road, I could only imagine it there, high above the crowds gathering in Tsim Sha Tsui. Reaching a snail’s pace and turning the corner I could see the full glory of Nathan Road, a neon jungle advertising everything known to humanity. Finally half an hour at arriving in town I alighted from the bus amongst a throng of people. I managed to meet up with the others—my brother –in-law and some of his work mates from his international school. We were booked into an Indian restaurant in Hankow road somewhere. Typically Hong Kong, the restaurant was hidden up a few flights of stairs—turn left and it was an Indian foot massage clinic, right an Indian food place. It was a great meal, buffet style with jugs and jugs of Carlsberg thrown in for free. Amazingly, every time my glass was empty, it was refilled! After dinner it was time to explore Wanchai over the harbour on Hong Kong Island. By day, Wanchai is a shopper’s delight, by night a barfly’s fantasy. Again bright neon lights beckon the clubbers like flies to the flame. Be careful though, a round of drinks will end up costing you an arm and a leg. By 4.30 am I was totally legless and stumbled along Hennessey road (isn’t that a Cognac?) to find my bus back home. I lurched myself onto the bus, the closest seat I could find to the door. Fighting back the nausea I fell into a stupor…An hour later I managed to find my hotel and my room.

Finally, I am in the classroom. Released from being chained to my desk. Today I got to see the whites of their eyes. I met my 6th form class, which I share with two other teachers. We'll be broken up into smaller, more intensive groups. They are very shy about asking questions--I can only suppose it's for fear of making a mistake. They were very pleasant and polite (sounds like a my stock reporting comment--but it's true!). The 7th formers were very quiet as this is the year they have the BIG exam that allows them into university and ultimately decides their fate. It is very big deal here. Everything is about the exam. It's very much like me when we had the Bursary exam but I think it's much more important here.

The staff here have been very nice to me and my Cantonese has not improved at all. I can only say good morning in their language. I feel like such an idiot when these kids can speak English to me. They are very humble about their abilities, but they speak well. The exams are actually quite gruelling, much more difficult than the English exam in New Zealand. Their focus is much more on the language itself, not literature. They will do that in their Chinese class.

Tonight I have my first social outing with some of my brother-in-law's work mates from his international school. It's a curry and lager boys' night out in Tsim Sha Tsui. Should be fun, especially when I don't have to worry about driving home!

I'm feeling quite happy today: I got paid! This means we can start assimilating into Hong Kong life. Shopping is a serious pasttime here, consumption is king. My favoutite type of shopping so far is food. Restaurants are everywhere, they are also very cheap as most people live in small aprtments and have very busy lives. You can have expensive meals but my favourites are the local eateries. The owners fall over backwards to help you and you can feed your family for the price of a Big Mac combo back home. Speaking of McDs, it is my challenge to avoid any Western fastfood outlet. I have been here for nearly 3 weeks and I'm still holding out.