Avatar Among Us

Grant teaches across the hall from me. He’s in his late twenties, married and has been living in Hong Kong for three years. He and his wife are avid Ultimate Frisbee players. They play every week on Tuesday nights. Several times a year, they and their fellow Ultimate players travel to Thailand or The Philippines to play in international tournaments.

By everyone’s account, the Ultimate Frisbee community in Hong Kong is made up of some pretty crazy individuals. Apparently, they have a penchant for costume parties. Most recently, they had a “jungle” themed costume party. In attendance, they had several Tarzan and Janes, a couple of lions, and they even had a Slash from “Guns and Roses.”

As you can see from the picture, Grant and his wife attended as Na’vi from the blockbuster movie “Avatar.”

Grant told me that it took the two of them over an hour to get made up in their apartment. I knew that Grant doesn’t have a car, so I was wondering how they got from their apartment to the party.

Turns out, they rode a bus and then they got on the Star Ferry and then they rode in a taxi and then they walked through Central.

This would have been a head-turning sight on the streets of Chicago. But this ain’t Chicago. It’s Hong Kong. According to Grant, people were whipping out their cell phones and taking pictures like crazy. Several Chinese Hong Kongers even stopped them and had their pictures taken with them.

Taken as a whole, the Chinese Hong Kongers are a little more reserved than your typical American or Brit or Aussie. I think that we could live in Hong Kong for a decade and never see a Chinese Hong Konger do something quite so audacious.

They must think that we gweilo are crazy.

But we sure know how to throw a good costume party.

-Jack

Poking Holes in Little Boxes

Our family has been the recipient of so much goodwill since we’ve been in Hong Kong that we decided it was time to reciprocate. Friday night all the middle school choirs had their final performances of the year. The concert of course took place in the Lu Kao Hwa theater which is six floors directly below our apartment. We decided to have a few families up after the concert for coffee and dessert.

Several days before, Julie whipped up some homemade baked goods. I ran down to the snack shop by the train station a bought a variety of cheap, packaged snacks. The girls ran down to Park-N-Shop and brought home some 1.5 liters (sorry, this is Hong Kong, no two liters) of pop. Oh, and of course, I bought an assortment of juice boxes.

Friday night shortly after the concert ended, our apartment started to fill up with adults and children. It was standing-room only. After I made sure people had been introduced to one another and that everyone had something to drink, I stepped back into a corner to survey the overall situation. As I did so, it occurred to me that I was seeing something distinctively Hong Kong. Across the room, I could see three adults standing in a cluster and chatting; all three of them were holding juice boxes.

On the sofa, two ladies were making small talk. Each of them was sipping from a juice box.

I have always thought of juice boxes as more appropriate for the back of the minivan after the kids’ Saturday-morning soccer game. But here in Hong Kong, juice boxes are completely acceptable for all occasions and for all ages.

Our school has hosted some fairly formal affairs such as the high school honors art class gallery exhibit. For these occasions, the school puts out some light snacks and a table full of assorted juice boxes including lemon tea, soy milk, and black currant juice.

My theory is that juice boxes are popular in part because of the way they store. In Hong Kong space is at a premium. When you stack cans, you always have that little bit of wasted space in between each can. When you stack juice boxes for shipping or display, no wasted space.

Besides, who doesn't enjoy the challenge of trying to pucture a hole with that little pointed plastic straw?

I’ve had more juices boxes in the last nine months than I have had in the previous 43 years.

Drinking from a juice box makes me feel like I am seven. It makes me want to put on shorts, knee-high socks, and go play soccer. I’ll be done in two hours. Could somebody come pick me up in their minivan?

-Jack

Growing up Gweilo

As I scroll back through our blog, I realize that there are major gaps in our accounting of our adventures and misadventures in Hong Kong. There are things I should have filled you in on long ago. One of those basic things that I learned about the first week I was here but that I never posted about is the term gweilo.

From gringo (Mexico) to giajin (Japan), almost everywhere you go in the world, the locals are going to have a term for you, you tall white foreign devil. Hong Kong is no exception.

Gweilo literally means ghost man. Historically it has not been a nice term, on par with some of the more egregious racial epithets that come to mind. But over the years, gweilo has lost much of its derogatory meaning. In fact, there are large segments of the mostly younger generation of non-Chinese Hong Kongers who have embraced the term.

I have never had a Chinese person refer to me as gweilo to my face and I have never overheard the word used in my presence. But the word is freely used in the ex-pat community –at least in the circles we run in. In fact, there is a book out there written years ago by a Hong Konger of European decent called “Growing Up Gweilo” that chronicles his youth in Hong Kong in the 1960s.

The four of us? We’ve embraced the term. We try to be a little discrete in public, because we don’t want to appear to be a family of uncouth . . . well, gweilo. But in our household, we use it self-referentially all the time –usually when commenting on our ignorance or one of our recent blunders.

But apparently, the term gweilo hasn’t totally lost its edge, because the few times that I have used it in front of my students, it has raised a few eyebrows.

I’m going to have to be more culturally sensitive.

Bad, gweilo.

-Jack

Update on Julie’s Dad

Last week Tuesday, Julie’s 84-year-old father suffered a heart attack. Fortunately, it happened in the morning while he was still in bed. The doctors found that Paul had 90% blockage and 100% blockage in two of his arteries. In two separate procedures, the doctors cleared the blockage and inserted stints. He returned home from the hospital yesterday.

We are also thankful that one of Julie’s sisters was visiting from Florida at the time. She extended her stay. Julie’s other sister was able to come down from Wisconsin and has been helping out as well. Julie’s mom is 76 and does not drive.

Julie’s brother-in-law Mark retired as the West Dundee fire chief this past winter and it has been a blessing that he has given of his time so freely to help.

Paul and Joan attended the same Baptist church for four decades. (Joan actually attended for over fifty years.) Last summer that church closed. Before leaving, we were able to help them transition to our church. Paul and Joan were already well known around our church since they have been attending various church services and assorted Sunday school performances. The members of the church have been very generous in their offers to help. For example, our friends Don and Sara and their two boys came over and spread wood chips for Paul and Joan.

As a nurse, daughter, and (until recently) next-door neighbor, it has been difficult for Julie to be away from her parents in their hour of need. She has talked with them at least once a day for the past week. Currently she is planning to fly back in the next few weeks in order to be home for a month to help out and to be an encouragement.

Please continue to pray for Paul and Joan. Please pray for Julie.

-Jack

images of 10,000 Buddhas Temple

10,000 Buddhas Temple part 2 of 2

Then a two-minute walk and you'll be at the Starock Bookstore. Okay, it's not really a bookstore. It's a dude's house. He's in his sixties, retired, and thin with disheveled hair. He has never married and has no children. He has lived in this hillside house for thirty years.

The only books he sells are book he has written and self-published.

The house is pretty spartan. White walls, few furnishings. You will enter by the back door and he will lead you to the front room in the house where he will show you his original watercolors. They are small, but they are beautiful. Each one is done on a standard piece of computer paper. They are all cheaply framed. Each piece has a lot of white space left on the page and the watercolors bring to mind stars and planets and comets. Each painting looks as if it came to him in a dream. They are not for sale.

He'll finish his tour and his story sitting at a small, two-person table in the kitchen area near the back door where you originally came in. Across the room will be a modest size bookshelf that holds multiple copies of each of his books which he's written and published in both Chinese and English. His paintings have provided the cover art for each of his books.

His books have something to do with the stars and the galaxies and a star traveler. It all made sense to me when he explained it to me on Saturday, but it all seems a little fuzzy now. Just when he has you intrigued and ready to hand over a few bucks for one of his book, only then will he let you know that he is all out of the English language versions and doesn't know when or if he will be printing more copies.

It is then that you will realize that the last twenty minutes hasn't been one long, protracted sales pitch. It has been one man sincerely sharing his life's passion with you. So now relax, settle into the cheap, plastic dinette chair and allow the conversation to flow. The next forty minutes will fly by, I promise.

He will ask you where you are from and when he finds out that you have come a very long distance to visit him, he will give you a hand-written scroll with Chinese calligraphy on it. He will refuse to take any money. It is his gift to you weary world traveler.

Life Lesson: pick a destintion out of the tour book. Follow the directions carefully and then just before you get there, hang a sharp left.

-Jack

10,000 Buddhas Temple part 1 of 2

Next time you are in the Shatin area of The New Territories, the guide books will probably recommend you that you go to the 10,000 Buddha Temple. Go if you want to. When you walk out of the MTR station, follow the signs toward IKEA, but when you get to the bottom of the long pedestrian ramp, turn left toward the low mountains. You are going to have to climb some steps. (It should have been called the 10,000 Steps Temple). The temple does actually have 10,000 Buddha statues. They are everywhere. There are a few big ones, many medium-sized ones, and lots and lots of small one.

Me? I think that I am pretty much done visiting temples in Hong Kong. They are all starting to look the same to me. And they are all really new-ish. A thousand-year-old Buddhist temple? That’s cool. A forty-year-old temple? Not so much.

The minute you start your ascent, you will start seeing hand-lettered signs for two alternative destinations that you will never see listed in any guide books. I recommend you blow-off the 10,000 Buddha Temple and instead stop half way up the hill at the Wing Wo Bee Farm and the Starock Book Store.

Okay, the Bee Farm isn’t really a farm. It’s a house. Knock on the front door and the wife will answer. After welcoming you, she will lead you through their house and out the back door. There in the back yard that is little bigger than a volleyball court, the husband has built three or four dozen bee hive boxes from scrap wood. With bees swarming everywhere, he will give you a little demonstration. He will lift off the lid to one of the boxes and then slowly lift out one of the inserts so that you can see the honey comb. Take as many pictures as you want.

Back inside the house/shop, the wife will lead you to the display of jars of honey. Don’t be like the three-some who left just ahead of me who took up fifteen minutes of the couple’s time, took tons of pictures, and then left empty handed. Buy a little something.