I Can’t Believe You Just did That part 1 of 3

My wife, she's a regular Lucille Ball.

My sister and niece were in town and we had taken them up to The Peak. Our girls were with us and our friend David from Chicago was in town again so he was tagging along.

I love to bring people up to The Peak in the late afternoon so that they can see the view of Victoria Harbor both by day and by night. It’s pretty awesome to see daylight give way to dusk and watch all the lights slowly come on in the city below. It’s pretty magical. And if you take a twenty minute walk west along The Peak path you will have the best possible vantage point from which to watch the city sparkle to life. The only problem is that the vegetation is so thick along the path that there are only certain areas where you can stand against the rail and enjoy a decent view.

Our motley group had found a pretty decent spot, but I thought I remembered a better spot just a few more minutes up the path. I told the others that I was going to scout ahead. The adults decided to walk ahead with me, but he girls complained that they were tired. I told them to stay put and promised I would come back to get them if we found a better viewing spot.

Sure enough, two minutes down the path, we found an even better spot. I prepared to go retrieve the kids.

Earlier that day, we had been strolling along Hollywood Road in Central. I had found a little shop that sold reproduction propaganda posters from the Chinese Cultural Revolution. They were pretty affordable and I had bought myself four of them for my classroom back in Chicago. I was pretty excited about them. So much so that I had proudly unrolled them in the middle of Starbucks to show them off shortly after I had purchased them. And then I had carefully rolled them back up.

When I offered to go back and get the girls, I set my backpack at Julie’s feet who was leaning against the railing and enjoying the view. I asked her to also hold my posters for me and handed them to her.

Boy, oh Boy

Julie took the day off of work. So while my daughters and I were at work and in school. Julie took my sister Janna and my niece Ellie out for a day in Hong Kong. After shopping in the jade market they were riding the MTR on their way to get foot massages. They found themselves in the same train car with more than a dozen western students in their high school uniforms.

Julie chatted with a few of them. At first Julie was confused when she thought she heard them say that they attended Australian International School here in Hong Kong. It took a few moments before they were able to clarify that they were actually from Australia and were in Hong Kong for a week-long exchange program.

While a couple of the students were busy trying to straighten out my wife, several of the young men had discovered my niece and were busy getting her back story. These young fellows from Down Under seemed to be quite enthralled with this young, blond, sixteen-year-old from America. They were quite enthusiastically chatting her up.

It was a very nice cross-cultural exchange; but alas, all good things must come to an end. The train pulled up to the Sha Tin Wa station and it was time for the Australians to disembark. Some of the young men were loath to leave and had to pull themselves away. After the doors of the train car closed, they attempted to prolong their conversation with Ms. Ellie just a bit longer.

One of the boys pointed to himself, pointed to Ellie, and brought his hand up to his ear indicating that he would call her -despite the fact that no phone numbers had been exchanged.

As the train started to pull away, another young man simply pointed at Ellie through the window, brought his hands up to his chest, and formed them into the shape of a heart.

Ai-yaa.

Good thing overprotective Uncle wasn’t there to help all these overheated young bucks simmer down.

I think I am developing a clearer picture of why Ellie liked Hong Kong so much. It might not have had as much to do with yummy red-bean cakes as I had previously thought.

Bunker pictures

Bunkers part 3 of 3

The tunnels were all cement-lined and easy to navigate, although sometimes the ceilings got so low, we had to walk bent over. In a couple of places, we had to get down on all four and crawl. Ever thirty feet or so, the British had built vertical shafts up to the surface which not only let in fresh air, but also provided natural light. But every so often the distance between light shafts was too great and we found ourselves inching our way forward on uneven ground in complete darkness.

The maze of tunnels and bunkers was rather complex and covered hundreds of meters. In order to prevent themselves from getting lost in the tunnels the British soldiers had named all the tunnels after streets in London. The names had been built in relief right into the walls when the cement was poured. The names were as clear and as easy to read as they were 75 years ago.

I was surprised by the good condition the tunnels and bunkers were in. They looked as if they were built a few months ago, not three-quarters of a century ago. Also noteworthy was the conspicuous lack of graffiti or vandalism. All these years, they have been sitting here with hundreds of hikers passing by every week and nobody had messed with them. Refreshing.

We weren't the only intrepid explorers this particular day; we encountered a few other people exploring the tunnels as well. Apparently, the local authorities knew that we wouldn’t be taking their “Do not enter” notices too seriously. Throughout the tunnels and bunkers paper signs described what we were looking at: a latrine, a field kitchen, a munitions store room.

It was time to finish our hike and we all reluctantly left our underground confines and found our way out to the path and continued on our way.

It had been a blast. My sister and my wife had enjoyed themselves. My daughters had had a ton of fun. And my niece Ellie had loved it.

See girls, stick with me. I may lead you astray, but it will always be an adventure.

And just remember in life that “Do not enter” is really more of a suggestion.

-Jack

In the late 1930s as the Japanese continued their invasion south through China, many people said there was no way the Japanese would dare invade the British colony of Hong Kong. But just to be sure, British and Chinese Hong Kongers built these strategically placed bunkers on this mountain top so they could rebuff any Japanese advances.

On December 8, 1941, the day after they bombed Pearl Harbor, the Japanese army rolled into Hong Kong. Less than a month later on Christmas day, the British surrendered Hong Kong to the Japanese. The bunkers had not served their purpose. Hong Kong remained under Japanese control until the end of World War II.

The day after our hike, I asked my students if they knew anything about the World War II bunkers up in the hills near Kowloon Reservoir. None of them had. That night, I flipped through my half dozen guide books back in the apartment to see if any of them made mention of the World War II bunkers. None of them did.

Bunkers part 2 of 3

The bunker was right there off the path. If fact, it was so close that a person could have reached out and dragged his hand across the rough cement surface as he walked past.

Once again, I found myself ahead of the group by a few minutes. (What are they doing back there? You know you could hike a whole lot faster if you wouldn’t talk to each other so much.)

But that was okay, it gave me just enough time to scope out the bunker. It was built into the peak of the mountain so that an occupant of the bunker could have an almost 360 degree view of the surrounding valley and any invading Japanese armies. Several posted notices said “Do not enter,” but I figured those were really more suggestions than hard and fast rules.

It wasn’t just a simple bunker. It was a small network of rooms that looked pretty much the way they must have looked seventy-five years ago. Coolest of all was that a tunnel lead from the bunker down the hill-side for forty meters until it terminated in a second bunker that was on the side of the mountain fifty feet lower than the first bunker. I snooped around a little and then hustle back up just in time to see my wife, sister, and the three girls walking up the path.

“Come, come,” I called to them. They are going to love this, I thought. I waved them over and showed them where to climb down into the bunker. Once they were in the bunker, I turned to the girls and said “Okay, go!” I didn’t tell them what to expect. I wanted them to have the joy of discovering it for themselves. Ten minutes later, they popped their heads out of the bunker. I made them tell me about everything they had seen. They were pretty excited.

We quickly discovered that there was a second tunnel headed in the opposite direction. We followed it. For the next hour and a half, we followed one tunnel after another and explored one underground bunker after another. The girls kept finding more passage ways and running down them.

Bunkers part 1 of 3

Whenever we have people in town, I am always torn between going places with them that I have already been or doing things that are new to me. If we go places that I am familiar with, it's more likely that we're going to have a smooth, low-stress experience. But that means I end up doing some Hong Kong activities multiple times.

I figured that my sister and my niece would extend me some grace if they had to stand around for ten minutes while I figured out which mini-bus would get us home. So I made plans for us to hike from the Shing Mun reservoir to the Kowloon reservoir even though I had never been on this particular hike before.

I had promised Ellie that we would encounter monkeys on our hike. But I must confess that I had an ulterior motives for wanting to go on this particular hike. I had heard rumors that a person could see World War II bunkers built into the mountainside on this hike. I also have to admit that I didn’t mention this particular fact to the rest of the group before we left. In my opinion, World War II bunkers are cool; but probably not to a sixteen-year-old girl.

We hiked for over two hours and -as promised- we saw lots of monkeys, but there was no sign of those bunkers. When the rest of the group had fallen a few minutes behind me, I used the opportunity to ask a local man I encountered on the path. He confirmed that if we took a smaller path on our right, the bunkers were just a fifteen-minute walk away.

The rest of my crew caught up with me. When I told them that I wanted to take a detour on a smaller path, I had to fess up about the World War II bunkers. “Really, Dad? World War II bunkers?”

“This was part of your plan all along wasn’t it?” my wife accused.

“No…well…maybe…kind of. Come on, it’s just a few minutes up this path here. It’ll be fun.”

So off we went.

I was concerned that we wouldn't be able to find the bunkers, but I needn’t have worried.

Ellie Enchanted part 3 of 3

We had an awesome ten days together. It was great to have my baby sister come see the place my family and I currently call home. For some reason, it brought me a great sense of satisfaction and well-being to know that my sister had seen the little table where my family and I eat our dinner every night, the desk where I sit to grade papers, and the balcony we sit on to look out over the mountains.

We visited Lamma Island and ate at the Deli Lamma (get it? Deli Lamma), hit the shopping malls and the night markets, and visited a sea-side village built on stilts.

And somewhere along the way, between rummaging for bargain clothes on Fa Yuen Street, seeing monkeys on our mountain hike, and checking out all the Hong Kong street fashion, Hong Kong wormed its way into my niece’s heart.

To be honest, it was probably in spite of my best efforts, not because of them.

Before they left, my sister confided in me that Ellie had shared with her that she “Absolutely loves Hong Kong. She doesn’t want to leave.”

Mission accomplished.

Few things in life are better than having the people you love, love the things you love.

Ellie Enchanted Part 2 of 3

A few years ago, Janna and Ellie saved their pennies and took a mother-daughter trip to Italy and France. It was a dream come true for Ellie. Rome, Florence, Paris. She loved southern Europe. That’s a pretty tough act to follow. But Hong Kong is a world-class city and can hold her own against any other major metropolitan area.

Okay, let’s do this. Bring it on.

We started off with a waterfall hike. The mountains and greenery usually catches people off guard -not what they expect to see in Hong Kong. We followed that with a visit to the village of Sai Kung with all of its fish tanks full of live seafood. Over the next ten days, we went from sun-up to sun-down doing everything on Hong Kong’s A-list, most things on the B-list, and a few things that aren’t on anybody’s Hong Kong to-do list but mine.

My philosophy was to throw as much of Hong Kong up against the wall and hope that something stuck. We rode the Star Ferry, visited the Peak, saw the Big Buddha, and walked along the Avenue of Stars.

I tried not to be too earnest. Nothing turns off a teenager quicker than an overly-earnest adult. But, occasionally, I would toss out what I thought were interesting little tidbits in an attempt to engage her imagination. “See how this temple has a big, free-standing furnace out front? That’s so the faithful can burn paper food, clothing, and money to send to their ancestors in the afterlife.” Then I would casually saunter off and stealthily glance back to see whether or not she was engaged.

More often than not she was horsing around with her cousins. Wherever we were, the three girls kept taking pictures of each other jumping off of stuff. They would find a bench, a boulder, a curb and then two of them would jump off, tuck their legs up underneath themselves, and raise their arms while the third one took the picture.

“Hey Ellie, see the damage here on this bronze lion? That’s from World War II when the Japanese . . .” Oops, never mind, you’re busy jumping off of a retaining wall.

Undeterred, I just kept trying.

Being a guy, I thought maybe the way for Hong Kong to win her heart was through her stomach –after all, it’s how my wife one me over. Throughout the week, I kept stuffing little morsels of goodness into Ellie’s mouth. The sweet, red-bean cakes seemed to have worked their magic; the fish balls not so much.