Exit through the Gift Shop

Even the Big Buddha [天壇大佛] on Ngong Ping on Lantau Island offers all believers with the possibility of purchasing the Buddhist image, statue, prayer beads or other reminder at the numerous gift shops around the monastry grounds.

The Buddha sits on a lotus in prayer with one hand in greeting and another accepting. He is 34 metres tall, weighs 250 tonnes, and was the world's tallest outdoor bronze seated Buddha prior to 2007. There are 28 pieces that were shipped from Shanghai foundry where he was cast and then reassembled here on the island. The Buddha is surrounded by six Devas offering various objects [food, boxes, pan pipe flutes] to the Buddha.

For lunch if purchased the $60 [$9 Aust] value meal and had a thin lemon grass soup, rice, stir fried vegetables with dou fu [ 豆腐 ] and a deep friend dou fu wrapper with steamed vegetables.

This first image of me on the steps leading to the Big Buddha is atop.

The Po Lin Monastry [寶蓮禪寺 literally the Precious Lotus Zen Temple] houses one small part of the six surviving pieces of the original Pali Tripitaka [written on bamboo splices]. The Pali canon was probably written about 300 to 600 years after the death of the original Buddha. It tries to formalise his original teachings and sayings and rules.

I'm sure he did not envisage several shops selling the trinkets and statues when considering his teachings and his disciples.

After the monastry, I rode the bus / train home to the Baptist University, took the bus to Tung Chung, followed by three train rides to Lai King, Prince Edward [Taizi, 太 子], Lok Fu. And not once did I get lost.

Another photo today because the one of me doesn't really count.

New knife and lustering moon

This deserves the full poem.

I’ve tried the new moon tilted in the air

Above a hazy tree-and-farmhouse cluster

As you might try a jewel in your hair.

I’ve tried it fine with little breadth of luster,

Alone, or in one ornament combining

With one first water-star almost as shining.

I put it shining anywhere I please.

By walking slowly on some evening later

I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,

And brought it over glossy water, greater,

And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,

The color run, all sorts of wonder follow. Robert Frost, The Freedom of the Moon

There was no full moon, just the humid garlicky night in Yau Ma Tei. With a 拨 菜 ［bo cai] with garlic and chilli, a 辣椒斗富 [spicy dou fu] and a Yanjing beer. The clouds and smog and smeared neon covered the tilted moon. No stars either.

Today I also observed the Hong Kong fetish for buying and purchased a No 2 cleaver from the Chan Chi Kee Cutlery Co, 316-318 Shanghai Street, Kowloon, Hong Kong, carbon steel, nicely weighted. As the ad says:

COOK KNIFE

MADE OF HIGH GRADE STEEL

WITH FINE QUALITY AND LONG

LASTING SHARP CUTTING EDGE

MADE IN HONG KONG

For $150 HK [about $21 Australia].

Tomorrow I'll begin work on the readings for New Media Cultures: Privacy/Privacy: The Despair of Cinema and Collectivity in China and Film, Convergence and New Media.

But first John Woo and Chow Yun Fat, Hong Kong idols, nearly as big as Bruce Lee. In The Replacement Killers.

Buddhists and profits

Coming off the Star Ferry to Admiralty [I love the lasting English pervasiveness of the city names and places] I was approached by an elderly Buddhist [well he had the saffron robes and sandals] with a card, Kai guang Amu let. He offered wrist beads and asked for a donation. On seeing the $50 he asked for one. I offered a $20 [about $3Aus] and left the beads.

I wonder when Siddharta Gautama [Buddha] said, You have no cause for anything but gratitude and joy, he envisaged elderly Buddhists seeking funds from tourists. Anyway the old Buddha smiled and left me lighter. So I bought two small 牛肉包子 [nuirou baozi] and an orange drink for a light lunch.

Atop are the buildings -- an old Hong Kong off Shanghai Street in Yau Tei Ma district and the shiny towers -- ICBS and Bank of China Tower on Hong Kong Island. This district is another Mecca to the mighty customer.

I see the Hong Kong Shanghai Banking Corporation posted a HK$62,827 million (about $9,105 million Aus) profit for 2009/2010. It is a hard working city / port.

Burmese jade

Last night we found the Temple Street night markets, bright, vacuous and shiny. Although the beef with glass noodles and enoki mushrooms [牛肉蘑菇] and Yanjing beer was a bargain at $48 HK dollars.

The fish, cockles, eels, and razor shells were lined up in plastic buckets, still fresh and alive and waiting to be consumed.

Selling Jade and bracelets in the 31 degree heat wouldn't be hard to take, but sitting behind the plastic would make the humidity much better. They are industrious Hong Kong people. But the shopping strips and malls are a haven for all. Almost more worship than the Tin Hau Buddhist temple. The other God is gambling.

This is from Walt Whitman's Song of Myself:

Houses and rooms are full of perfumes, the shelves are crowded with perfumes,
I breathe the fragrance myself and know it and like it,
The distillation would intoxicate me also, but I shall not let it.

The scents of the night markets and Nathan Road are a paean to life in a crowded, fetid, and humid city.

Russian Caravan Tea and Chocolate wafers

The Temple Street in Tsim Sha Tsui night markets are full of gaudy trinkets, pieces of flotsam that you need in your life to enhance and ensure your luck and standing in the world. I actually went there to see the Hong Kong Museum of Art. And found out it's closed on Thursdays. Wandering back through a weary humid evening onset, I thought the night markets would be a good sight rather than cultural artefacts and ceramics from 2,000 years. the night markets ar not inspiring. On the other side of Woosung Street is the wonderful old restaurants selling fresh shrimp, fresh fish, fish heads in garlic sauce, goose intestines, and oysters with omelette. Young Hong Kong girls in their red Carlsberg Beer outfits. I ventured for the bo xin niu rou [菜 心 牛肉] beef with Chinese water spinach, with garlic. And a Hanjing Chinese beer. Garlicky and fresh. I'm loving the fresh vegetables cooked in garlic and a short beef stock. Back into Nathan Street and onto a packed bus up Nathan and Waterloo Streets to the university. I'm now going to get a Russian Caravan tea with Chocolate wafers.

Sand and oysters

Yesterday I travelled down Nathan Street in the old double decker bus to Hong Kong bay. A majestic although somewhat daunting view of the metropolis on Hong Kong island. The bay is a weary green with small boats plucking old plastic and a large dredge taking stinky sludge-mud from the bottom.

I travelled with Sam and Liam, two young guys from Ohio and Missouri. We also walked back fromthe harbour to the uni, wending our way through the old streets full of 1950s style buildings that are decaying. The old man selling his newly butchering pork allowed a quick photo, while the young butcher over the road boned the leg or pork with his unfiltered cigarette dangling from the lips, his ash growing longer. The streets shiver with sweaty life and its scent will cling to you, cling to your knife [that's from a Carol Anne Duffy poem].

An old woman drags garbage out of one of the streets under the air conditioners that weep rust, while we try and find our way back to the main road. No dogs or cats around that I see. maybe they live inthe better apartments across the bay.

The temperature is about 30 and the humidity is about 80 per cent. Good for the sweat.

Right now I'm going back tot he room to watch Wong Kar-Wai's Fallen Angels. I'll leave you with another piece. this is from Robert Friost:

I put it [the new moon] shining anywhere I please.

By walking slowly on some evening later

I’ve pulled it from a crate of crooked trees,

And brought it over glossy water, greater,

And dropped it in, and seen the image wallow,

The color run, all sorts of wonder follow.

I'll walk back now. Through a thick steamy night. Creative irritants are what we find here.
[Sam and Liam buying fruit off Nathan Street, Hong Kong.]

What was I thinking

I'm about to begin a 106-day stay in Hong Kong. At a Christian university, studying Mandarin, China and its politics, the social life of the Chinese, and understanding mainland China and it relationship with Hong Kong.

I'll be doing the easy stuff, learning Mandarin in the heartland of the Cantonese speaking world. It'll be easy, as I've no Cantonese to speak of and a tiny smattering of Mandarin. I'll be studying politics, and sociology through a Baptist university. Did I mention that I'm not a Baptist. It'll be easy.
Most of the students at the university will be at least 30 years younger than me.
Also I've never been outside of Australia by myself. [Thanks, Jenne + Greer, for being the direction finders in Osaka. If not, I'd still be wondering around the copse of shops in the underground shopping malls.]
Travelling with one camera [my old shaky Panasonic], no phone, and a little blog. This one.
I'm thinking that a picture a day will keep people up to date.
Did I mention that I've never been to Hong Kong before?
Anyway five sleeps to go before the hejira from Wollongong begins.
And William Shakespear said, absence from those we love is self from self, a deadly banishment. I'm banished to an isle, with only Prospero and Miranda [and the God of Shopping] to guide me.