Sai Kung

Sai Kung is a fishing village in the New Territories thirty minutes from our apartment. Saturday afternoon after I finished with parent-teacher conferences, Julie and I spent half a day meandering the village of Sai Kung. The girls had been playing with the neighbor boys across the hall when we told them it was time to head out. We got as far as the first street corner when Julie’s phone rang. It was the boys’ mom asking if the girls wanted to stay behind. She would keep an eye on them and feed them dinner. When Julie repeated the offer to them, the girls didn’t even bother to give us a verbal response. They turned and sprinted back to our apartment.

I guess they’ve met their quota for the month. Ah, you’ve seen one quaint Chinese fishing village, you’ve seen them all.

The most noteworthy aspect of Sai Kung is that down by the water front, the land is fifteen feet above the water. The fishermen and women, pull their small fishing boats right up to the embankment to ply their goods. Because they are looking straight down into the boats, the buyers get a good look at the live seafood being offered. When it comes time for the transaction, the fisherman or women puts the seafood into a net attached to a ten-foot pole and lifts it up to the customer. The customer takes out the seefood and puts in the money she owes.

It was really fun to watch. Julie and I strolled and watched for well over an hour. Allegedly, you can take your recently-purchased seafood to a local restaurant and they will cook it for you.

In order to keep all the fish and sundry seafood fresh until it was purchased, the fishermen and women rig up plastic tubs in the bottom of their boats. The tubs are continuously fed fresh salt water through a rudimentary series of hoses and pipes. Sometimes, the solution was as simple as drilling a hole in a taller tub to allow the water to pour out into a shorter tub. Simple, but effective.

When we got back home I good-naturedly tried to make the girls feel bad about the cool stuff they missed out on by showing them my pictures. They could not have been more flat or dry with their “Yea, that’s great Dad.”

Young women uninterested in adaptive commerce and home-made hydration systems. Tsk. Tsk. What is the world coming to?

-Jack