Fishing and Commerce in Sai Kung

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

Watch This

This is probably a sad commentary on what a shallow person I am, but I almost miss my Netflix movie subscription as much as I miss family and friends. Go on-line, click on the movie you want, two days later it’s in your mail box. What’s not to love?

And yes, I already checked. Netflix does not ship overseas. Drat.

Since I teach American history, I’m anxious to find a place where I can rent or buy videos so I can show selected clips to my students.

Last Friday, I finally had time to duck into a local video store. I was pleasantly surprised at the selection. They had all the new released and a lot of the classics. They even had the World War II movie “Tora! Tora! Tora!”

I did the money conversion. Movies were only US$3 to US$4. Instantly, I had visions of building up my movie library on the cheap. I was going to be so well prepared for teaching American history. This was awesome.

The movies were clustered together into labeled sections but I wasn’t paying too much attention. I was too busy grabbing movies.

I narrowed it down to two movies: one chick-flick for Julie and one action movie for me. The movies for the classroom would have to wait until next time.

I was so excited that I opened both of the movies on the train. That’s interesting, each movie has two discs. Just four bucks each and you get the bonus features on a second disc? Nice.

At home, I popped one of the movies into our DVD player. It worked, but it wasn’t the best quality. Oh well, good enough.

But then, halfway through, the movie abruptly stopped. What was going on here?

Then it occurred to me, that second disc wasn’t filled with bonus materials, it was the second half of the movie. Argh.

This was going to be a real problem.

Later in the week I ducked back into the video store to confirm my fears. Sure enough, in Hong Kong they sell BluRay discs, DVDs, and something called VCD. While legal (I think), they are low quality and split the movie between two CDs.

I’d been duped. VCD are the poor man’s DVD.

While in the store, I found the DVD section. Sure enough, a DVD will run US$15 - $18. Right back where I started. So much for the rapidly expanding movie library.

What’s that mom? Yeah, yeah. I know. “If it too good to be true, it probably is.”

My students will just have to live with Mr. VanNoord’s flannel-board rendition of the bombing of Pearl Harbor.

Oh Netflix, my Netflix,why won’t you ship overseas?

-Jack

Leaving Comments on Blog

I have changed a couple of settings. You should now be able to post comments.

My apologies to those of you who have been trying and were unable.

Thanks,

-Jack

All I want for My Birthday is . . .

Julie, being the wise money manager that she is, has started to drip dry our clothes. We have a dryer available to us on our floor but it costs a couple of bucks per load. So she bought a rack (once again, thank you Ikea) and has been drip drying ever since.

Besides, air drying your laundry is definitely the Hong Kong way. (The really Hong Kong way would be to hang the clothes out our window, but we’re not quite ready to go that far, yet.)

The clothes get dry but they have a decidedly different feel and smell to them. Not better; not worse. Just different. A little stiffer and lacking that Bounty–fabric-softener smell.

Annika has a birthday coming up after the first of theyear and we asked her what she wanted for her birthday: games, party, DVDs, clothes, music. . . . After thinking about it for a minute, she said the thing she wants the most is to have all her clothes washed and then dried in the dryer.

. . . with fabric softener.

Yesterday, Annika found at the bottom of her dresser drawer a shirt that she hadn’t worn yet here in Hong Kong and therefore has not been washed since we’ve been here. It still had the softness and smell from the last time it was washed at Grandma Oskarson’s. Annika refuses to wear it or allow Julie to wash it.

Every so often she goes into her drawer, holds the shirt up to her face to feel and smell it.

Then she puts it back into the bottom of her drawer.

-Jack

Man in hat in Sai Kung fishing village

I Couldn’t Have Said it Better Myself

This summer as I was anticipating what life was going to be like in the eighth-grade classroom, the biggest variable that made planning hard was that I didn’t know what my students’ English language proficiency was going to be.

I need not have worried. Almost without exception, my students speak beautiful, idiomatic English. In fact, when writing, some of them have a downright prodigious vocabulary.

We’ve been doing a lot of writing lately. The kids write well. But, once in a while some non-standard English does slip into their writing. I suspect this is a result of doing a more-or-less, direct translation from Cantonese. Or it could just be the result of a fourteen-year-old trying to express him or herself. Following are three of my favorite gems from some recent personal narratives.

“We went down the lift and were about to ride the bus while my sister was carrying an angry heart because of what I’d said.” From another student “She just said that she understood me, and now she goes wrongly with the facts.” And from one of the boys: “A few days later the Principal came looking very serious. He said to me ‘Come to my office and we’ll have a talk.’ It was silent in my head after that.”

Wow. I love that.

“Carrying an angry heart”

“Now she goes wrongly with the facts.

“It was silent in my head.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself

-Jack

Tai Chi

Tai chi is an ancient form of Chinese exercise. It is one part stretching, one part balance, and one part meditation. It requires concentration and grace. I suspect there is a large overlap among the practitioners of tai chi and consumers of traditional Chinese medicine. Because it is low impact, tai chi is popular with the older folks. It’s typically performed in the morning and out of doors.

Whenever I’ve seen tai chi on the Discovery channel, I’ve always seen Chinese people performing it in unison in large groups.

I have yet to see that here in Hong Kong.

What I have seen are people performing individual, do-it-yourself tai chi.

One day, I saw a woman walking briskly while at the same time gracefully swaying her arms from left to right. It didn’t really resemble the tai chi I’ve seen on t.v. It had a certain home-made-ness to it.

Another woman (pictured) was slowly raising her left arm above her head and then bringing her right arm around front and giving herself three, slow thwacks on her left side. Then she switched sides. Then she did the whole thing over again. If nothing else, I guess that stimulates the circulation.

I saw an older gentleman walking backwards. He would clap twice in front of himself and then he would clap twice in back. All that clapping must be helping to get his chi centered for the day.

I’ve seen a lot of folks here doing tai chi in the park and I have yet to see two practitioners who do it the same way. Do they study with different masters? Is it passed down through families? Is it regional? Maybe they come from different parts of China and Hong Kong? Or are they making up their own rituals? I honestly don’t know.

It must work though. People –especially the older folks- seem limber and fit. Who am I to second-guess?

The group mindset and the go-along mentality is one of the oft-mentioned aspects of East Asian cultures. But I’ve got to tell you, I’m seeing all this individual expression everywhere I go and I'm kind of liking it.

Makes me feel that a guy like me might actually fit in around here.

-Jack

dusk at To Tau village

Night Shopping on Temple Street in Jordan

Jordan

Friday night after work and school, we went to the Jordan neighborhood and strolled through the celebrated Temple Street night markets. One block after another, merchants had set up tightly-packed, makeshift booths. They were set up in the street with the backs of the booths against the curb. Shoppers had their choice of walking down either sidewalk or down the center of the streets which was only six feet wide due to all the booths.

Merchants were selling everything from t-shirts to jewelry to reproduction artwork to Bruce Lee bobble heads (I was tempted). The place was packed with people -half of whom were non-Chinese. The Temple Street night market is a destination for locals and tourists alike. The street corners tended to be dominated by restaurants whose tables spilled out into the intersections.

We jostled with the crowds and slowly shopped our way down Temple Street. The girls and Julie found a piece of jewelry to give as a birthday gift to the teacher with whom I share a classroom. Both Julie and Annika needed watches. They ended up buying five watches for US$13.00. I circled back around and gave those Bruce Lee bobble heads a second look; but I was also giving serious thought to that “Bruce Lee is my Homeboy” t-shirt.

A couple of times we had to hustle the girls past a booth or two. Nothing horrible, just not exactly -shall we say- family fare.

We only made it halfway up Temple Street and down one side street. There is plenty more to explore, but that will have to wait for another evening.

-Jack

About the Picture: Kobe Bryant and Mao playing cards. Mao has been co-opted by the capitalist system here in Hong Kong. While the merchants of Hong Kong may not be into Maoist theory, they will never pass up an opportunity to make a buck. And there is a niche market here for The Chairman. A few weeks ago, I saw a picture window in the front of the store with mannequins and other decorations that could have been from Any Street, U.S.A. except for right smack dab in the center was a big poster of Mao. Mao Zedong hawking sneakers. He must be rolling over in his anti-capitalist coffin.