Hong Kong

The skyscrapers in Hong Kong are lit up both day and night, with corporate names and logos on the tops and sides of buildings. At night many of the buildings have creative patterns of lights that swirl and dance around or run up and down the side of the buildings.
Having a full free day ahead of us in Hong Kong, we were slow to get down to breakfast. They have such an amazing assortment of all kinds of food. About the only thing Don had this morning that he hadn’t had before, were little, spotted, hard boiled quail eggs. They tasted like regular hard-boiled eggs, but they are so small, it took more energy to peel them than you got back from eating them.
Following Lee’s extensive research, we set out on foot along the boardwalk towards the Hong Kong Museum of Art. It was extremely busy on the boardwalk. Everywhere in Hong Kong and Japan it is quite common to see women taking selfies or having their picture taken by friends, posturing as though they were being taken for the cover of Vogue magazine.
Along what is referred to as "The Walk of Public Sculptures", we saw a statue of Bruce Lee (The Karate Kid). After that, there was a statue of "The Daughter of Hong Kong", Anita Mui ( 1963-2003). Anita Mui Yim-fong was a Hong Kong singer who made major contributions to the Cantopop music scene and received numerous awards and honours. She remained an idol throughout her career, and is regarded as a Cantopop diva. Cantopop is a genre of pop music sung in Cantonese. She died as a result of cervical cancer at the age of 40.
There was another interesting statue of a girl wrapped in movie film, holding a giant pearl. The statue honours the annual Hong Kong Film Festivals which started in 1982.
We continued on to the museum, which was free of charge. It had vast open rooms organized by themes. There was a particularly interesting exhibit of snuff bottles, some 270 of which were given to the museum by a private collector. We also saw ceramic vases and bowls, and one particularly colourful exhibit of Chinese fans.
Another exhibit called Shopping in Canton, was a depiction of what a street would have looked like in the city of Canton in 1819 (now called Guangzhou). On the end wall, there was a mural sized picture of what the street would have looked like with shops lining both sides of the street. Along the 2 sides of the room, there were animated, 8' high panels depicting each of the various kinds of shops. When you stood in front of a panel, the picture changed to the vendor saying things like “Good morning sir how can I help you?” or “We have many fine products, please step in and see.”
For lunch we sat outside the museum and had our smoked salmon sandwich made from our breakfast buffet at the hotel, and then headed to The Hong Kong Cultural Centre. On the way, we passed the world famous Peninsula Hotel, and tucked in to see the lobby. The Peninsula. known as the ‘Grande Dame of the Far East’, prides itself on being Hong Kong’s oldest hotel – it’s been around for nearly a century. Accentuating the beauty of coexisting Eastern and Western influences while preserving its heritage, the hotel offers 300 luxurious rooms. The luxe amenities start at the fleet of Rolls-Royces on offer, and span to the hotel’s own helipad on the roof. More impressive for me than the lobby was the Bentley and Lamborghini parked at the entrance.
Then on towards the Cultural Centre. When we went into the hall, there was a group of men from Kuwait all dressed in their white Arabian garb and headgear. Thankfully, their musical presentation didn’t last very long. It consisted of a lot of chant like songs (if you could call them that), squeaky violins and banging of drums. On the way out, there was a colourful display of mannequins wearing traditional clothes from a variety of central Asian countries; Pakistan, Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Kazakhstan and a few more of the “…..khstan” countries. When we got outside, we saw a cordoned off section of booths from other Asian countries that were getting organized to do their own presentations inside. It then made more sense of the exhibit of mannequins we saw. Also nearby, we saw Flying Frenchman Monument or what is also referred to as "The Freedom Fighter". The Flying Frenchman is a bronze sculpture by César Baldaccini. The sculpture was gifted to Hong Kong by the Cartier Foundation in 1992. The name "Freedom Fighter" was rejected by Hong Kong's government, causing the artist not to attend the unveiling ceremony in 1993.
On our way to the museum, we saw a red brick clock tower that looked quite out of place. It turns out that it was part of the former Kowloon-Canton railway terminus, but when that was demolished in 1978, the tower, being quite an icon, was left standing.
We then set off along Hong Kong’s longest and busiest street, Nathan Road, for the Chinese Museum of History. It was quite a hike and extremely busy, but great fun to see all the mixture of people.
Once inside the Museum, there were many different sections, but we only had time to visit 2 of them. The first one we saw was called "The Glorious Voyage" which the sign at the entrance described as an exhibit of “Splendid Achievements of the Peoples Republic of China in it’s 75 Years". It described the economic, cultural and social progress that the Chinese government had accomplished for the people over the last 75 years. The next section consisted of large posters of photographs dating back to as early as 1850 depicting important moments in Chinese history, such as the construction of buildings, wars, floods, fires etc. Below each picture was a brief write up about the picture. It was hugely impressive, but there were far too many for us to take in, in the short amount of time we had, so after only about halfway through, we decided to leave.
The walk back to the hotel was not quite as far as we had already walked, but having completed about 12,000 steps by the time we got back to the hotel, we rested up a bit, had a glass of wine, and headed out to Ruen restaurant, where we had dinner on the street the first night. We met up with the couple from north of Brisbane ( Palm Lake Resort). Roger and Maria Doolan, who we met on our Lantau tour, they were just finishing their dinner so came and sat with us until they settled their bill. We had another very enjoyable food experience. Before returning to our room, we walked out to the boardwalk through the covered bridge attached to our hotel and walked a few blocks admiring the lights and the crowd and headed back to the room. We did some last minute packing in preparation for tomorrow's flight back to Toronto.もっと詳しく