Hong Kong – History Museum, Avenue of Stars Light Show

We slept in late and popped over to the HK history museum. Unlike the HK art museum, this was quite big, and we spent the better part of the day there. When they say history, they mean the whole thing, starting with geologic formation of the Chinese coast, and terminating with the British/Chinese handoff of Hong Kong and the associated territories in 1997. The first half focused on geologic, prehistoric, and pre-British HK, much of which isn't that different from many other exhibits the world over. However, Mary was fascinated with the salt-making description, which involved evaporation the seawater until it had a very high salt concentration, then adding a little dry salt to get the super-saturated salt to precipitate out. Previously thought you had to boil off all the water to get salt, but I imagine this “wet pan” method results in less other sea crap in your salt. I know at least one person reading my blog makes her own sea salt, is this the method you use?

The second half showed a lot more about the city post-British and talked a little about the war; Britain acquired HK in the first Opium War. Britain wanted Chinese goods, but the Chinese required that the British pay in gold or silver, and didn't seem to want any of the British goods themselves. (Sound familiar?) So the British sold opium illegally in China, which they manufactured in India somewhere. The Chinese took offense at this, and attacked some British ships, which sent in the British troops. Britain got HK and opened up a lot of Chinese ports. Eventually, tea seeds and silk worms were smuggled out of the country. While China didn't want or need British goods, the British must have had something of value that allowed them to dominate China militarily. Mary, who has been reading American Theocracy, thinks this is coal.

Another section of the museum discussed the Japanese occupation. The Japanese relocated 1m out of 1.6m citizens of HK into Mainland China for lack of food. Over the several years that they held HK, they tried to indoctrinate the citizens in Japanese culture. The Japanese were trying to create a “Greater East-Asia Co-prosperity Sphere.” That's great, but doing it by force is tacky.

The hand-off from Britain to China is presented in an entirely positive light. For China, it was probably a very important diplomatic victory. We'll see what happens in HK in 2047 when it no longer has to be economically free.

Well, the history museum took a lot longer than we thought, so we decided not to go out to Lamma, the car-less island (aside: most of HK is actually green space). It would have been nice, but we didn't want to push our schedule. We went to dinner unsuccessfully, and then picked up some groceries to picnic on. Then we went to the “Avenue of the Stars” (a Hollywood walk of fame for HK movie stars) from which is a good place to see the light show that goes on between HK and Kowloon (mainland stretch of land near HK). We were a tad late and it was short, but we did see some of it, and the city lights were nice too. Then we walked for an hour and chatted over topics such as prostitution, laptops, dating, and whatever else came to mind.

From Hong Kong

Hong Kong – Art Museum, Victoria Peak

Started the morning trying to purchase onward train tickets to Yichang. After visiting several ticket agents and the train station, we established that there seemed to be only one ticket agent who could sell us the ticket we needed (no direct train from Hong Kong, need to cross the border into Mainland China first), and at the prices they were asking for the ticket, we figured we could buy a Soft Sleeper ticket day-of at the station if they sold out of the cheaper Hard Sleeper tickets. Nevertheless, this killed the whole morning.

After lunch (uninspired chicken curry and beef with squash at the Cultural Center), we went to the Art Museum. Of the four large exhibits, two were modern (one dreadful, the other just bad), one was a collection of very nice ink on scroll drawings of various landscapes that made Mary sad that we had to cut the Southern China portion of the trip, and the last was a fantastic pottery exhibit showing like 4 millennium of Chinese pottery.

From Hong Kong

After the museum, we took the Star Ferry over to Hong Kong Island and wondered up to the Peak Tram station. While the walk was about a kilometer or so, we did it almost without crossing any streets. How did we manage that in the middle of a big city? By using the extensive elevated “sidewalks” (think pedestrian overpasses, only you don't have to return to street level between crossings). We were incredibly impressed! What an incredibly walkable city! Again, this totally reminded Mary of Coruscant.

From Hong Kong

Along the way we passed through a court building with nice stained glass windows, and past the court of last appeal, which amused us.

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

Once we finally did run out of elevated sidewalk, we explored the European cathedral and a nearby little park with a great fake-waterfall fountain.

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

The Peak Tram was much more crowded and touristy than we'd anticipate, making us wish we'd come first thing in the morning. But it was worth it. It is a cable car, not unlike those in San Francisco... except it seemed steeper than any we've been on, it was really long, and gave amazing views of the city.

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

From the top of the tram line, we hiked a short but grueling way up to the actual peak, which gave great views over the back of Hong Kong Island, but pretty much no views at all of downtown.

From Hong Kong

Then we hiked all the way back down to the Star Ferry, which was grueling in a different way: mostly on the knees. At first we wondered about the strange texture of the rock of the mountain, but part way down we found graffiti requesting that the concrete be removed from Victoria Peak. And on closer inspection we saw that we were in fact looking at concrete, covered in moss, and with holes were it was put around existing trees. This must be for erosion control, which must be a huge concern with such a steep peak practically in downtown Hong Kong, but it is presumably just awful for the local eco-system.

From Hong Kong

Josh liked the graffiti. Apparently the symbol is from Half Life 2, a computer game he plays.

From Hong Kong

After, we tried to get Dim Sum from two different places recommended by Lonely Planet. The first only serves Dim Sum at lunch, and since there was an event going on we couldn't eat there without a reservation anyway. At the second we waited almost an hour for a table before giving up and going to the grocery store instead.

Did see some pretty buildings while we were at it though.

From Hong Kong

Hong Kong - Arrival, Chung King Mansion

Uneventful flight to Hong Kong. We chatted with a British couple on the bus to our guesthouse in Chung King Mansion. They were a week late returning home from their 2 week Hong Kong vacation due to the volcano, and had been at the airport trying to figure out when they could go home.

From Hong Kong

When we arrived at Chung King Mansion, Mary felt like she'd arrived on Coruscant. For those of you not up on your Star Wars, Coruscant is the capital of the galaxy and the whole planet is one big city of buildings built on top on each other so deep that no one knows quite how far down the ground is. It was the big city planet featured in the prequels, but it is also featured extensively in the books that Mary was always reading in high school, and Coruscant was a bit of an obsession
of hers.

Chung King Mansion is a large run-down high rise that has been subdivided into many independent guesthouses and other businesses catering to tourists. It's not in the backpacker district, it is the backpacker district. It's a whole little multilevel indoor city! It gets a bit of a bad rap on WikiTravel, some saying it is a badge of honor to stay, and others saying it is a horrible memory.
The consensus was that it was funky and the touts were bad. So we were prepared for the worst and pleasantly surprised. The great thing about traveling to India is that everywhere else just seems so nice and up scale in comparison.

For comparison, here's a drawing of Coruscant, compared with Chung King.

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong

From Hong Kong