Old time Hong Kong

After just a few days in this massive modern metropolis of airconned malls and restaurants on the 9th floor of tall buildings I started to crave something old. Don't get me wrong, I am loving the designated pedestrian walkways, the abundant clean bathrooms and the efficient public transit systems. My heart, however, called out for the Hong Kong of mythology and imagination. I wanted old buildings and small businesses selling exotic goods. Yesterday, I got it. Or at least some of it. We went to the Sheung Wan neighborhood, which is described as HK's least modern area. We walked around the smaller older streets. One street, Queen Street, was the first street built in Hong Kong when the British took it over. Remember: when the British officially received Hong Kong island in the Nanjing Treaty, a minister described it as a "barren rock." That is impossible to imagine today.

We started out on "Chop Alley" where chop makers ply their trade. Then we wandered down streets filled with traditional Chinese herb and medicine sellers. We have traditional Chinese herb sellers at home in San Francisco. I have spent afternoons wandering around Chinatown smelling the pungent aromas wafting out of store fronts. It was the scale, intensity and variety of medicinal stores that set this apart from SF. We passed blocks and blocks of storefronts selling extremely exotic and aromatic ingredients. We watched men push carts through the streets to deliver antelope horn or dried creepy sea creature (technical term) to various stores.

At one point a collection of slightly creepy, very odorous creatures were drying on sheets on the street. Andrew stopped for awhile to read about the medical benefits of Deer Tail as well as to inspect pictures illuminating the best quality deer tail avaialvle. I stopped to take pictures of cardboard boxes full of snake skins and dried starfish.

A few twists and turns on small streets later and we found ourselves among "hell money" shops. These shops sell almost everything you might need for a funeral. The coffins are for sale one street over. These stores sell joss sticks and figurines. They also sell the paper stuff you burn at a Chinese funeral so that the deceased person will have it in their next life. So, for example, they sell paper money, paper food, paper mansions, paper Louie Vuiton matching purses and shoes. I tried to get an art shot of the paper sports cars, but it just felt tacky. It was at about the moment that I was inspecting the 4th or 5th paper mansion available to send to the next world that I realized just how hot and sticky I was. We both decided culture was excellent, old-school and old-world were fascinating but now it was time to re-enter the 21st century and go to an airconned movie.