Hong Kong 2012, Part 5: Pork and Pride

Here's the link to Part 4...

(Side note: So evidently I've totally been living under the assumption that my Uncle Kan's first name is in fact Ken and his name is Ken Kan.  My family always called him Uncle Kan, so I figured they were saying Ken, a first name.  According to my mother, this is completely wrong.  Hooray for 26 years of ignorance!)

The next day we did have a very important agenda.  We planned to visit my grandfather's "grave" (and yes, the quotes are necessary) to pay our respects, so we grabbed a couple of items: water, flowers, and a wet cloth (the use of these items will become apparent later).  Of course, we had to get some food before we could make such a journey, so we met up with some friends to have lunch.  

Now I had been thinking about things I really wanted to eat while in Hong Kong, considering I hadn't been back in 12 odd years, and it wasn't like I was going to go back anytime soon.  So it was important that I made a list of all the things I wanted to eat before I departing back for the US.  One of these things was roasted suckling pig, with the skin melting with the fat of the baby pig and turning into a singular crunchy, delicious morsel. I'd had it before in Flushing in Queens many a time, but I wanted to have an authentic version from Hong Kong, because it surely had to be better (as everything else had been).

So when we arrived for lunch, and the persons ordering asked what I wanted, I jumped at the chance.  Now some of you may not be familiar, but in general at Chinese-style meals, you have one person who orders for the entire table and everyone shares each of the dishes ordered.  However, when there's someone special (like me, the gwai lo kid who doesn't speak Cantonese), usually the person ordering the food asks particularly what that person wants.  I had become accustomed to answering in generalities, saying that I would eat anything or that everything was good to me.  This was mostly true, and I generally felt that asking for things personally for me would be a little too selfish.  

However, one of my mom's adages is that when you're on vacation, you should enjoy yourself.  And I can't really disagree with my mother, can I?  So I told them that I wanted to have roasted suckling pig, or more specifically "the pig with the crispy skin."  Our friends obliged and I waited in anxious anticipation.

Of course we ordered other things, but I snapped a picture almost immediately when my pig came.

I know exactly 1 of these people

So the pig is actually the small dish in the right foreground, with the brownish reddish skin, looking like cubes of meat.  I was actually a little bit surprised, because I was used to just eating the skin, not expecting much meat on any of the pieces.  It was still infinitely delicious.  The skin was crispy and oily and amazing as usual, but the fat had actually mostly melted into the skin and meat, so the whole thing was like a crispy pork cube.  And yes, it was just as delicious as "crispy pork cube" sounds.

After lunch, we hopped into my Auntie Myna's van for the trip to my grandfather's grave.  Now I've already shown that "graveyards" in Hong Kong look like this...

However, I was a little surprised to see that my grandfather's grave looked like this:

That is a hole in a wall.  Yeap, that's it. 

Evidently, it was my job to clean the marble (water + washing cloth), and then place the flowers in the little container and add a little water.  So I climbed up the rickety little ladder they had and began to work.

Me washing marble

Me placing flowers

As I stood atop that ladder, cleaning the grave of a man I barely knew, I couldn't help but think about his perspective.  Now I'm not one to care for thinking about life after death; Whether we're dead and gone or live on in some magical plane really makes no difference to me.  But for this moment, I felt like that difference had a monumental effect on my perspective.

See, the last time my grandfather had seen me was when I was 12.  I was a half-spoiled, sheltered little child, with no direction and no ambition in my life.  I had nothing of my own, only the things my parents had pushed me to do, and all the normal mundane things of childhood.  I was a kid; Sure, I was smart, but that was expected.  He probably thought I was a nice little kid, immature even for my age at that time, but still just a kid.  That's all he knew about me.  He didn't know about all the time since then.  He wouldn't know anything about my switching to public school, he wouldn't know anything about my singing or my life in high school.  He wouldn't know about the things I did in college, or how my life has turned out now.  I'd be just a kid to him.

But in that moment, I thought about what if there was a way that we lived on, a way in which he could be aware of the things I've done.  What would he have said if he had seen me win 1st place in the state Science Olympiad competition?  What would have he thought about my choosing to go into teaching instead of business?  What would he have said if he heard I got into Cornell?  What would he have felt if he heard me sing?  Would he be happy?  Would he be proud?  These things, these legacies, seem so meaningless if I'm doing them for someone I barely knew, someone I barely met.  But if it's someone who has seen me grow up, even from afar, even from some mystery plane beyond our understanding, someone who has understood my journey and where I've been and where I've come from, I think it'd make me want to succeed even more.  

I've always been content with the things I've done.  I've always made decisions about my life for myself.  I've rarely considered how others would view my life decisions; I wanted to be successful for me, never for anyone else.  But in that small moment, I really wanted to know if he was proud of me.  I really wanted to know if the things that I've done, if the choicest I've made, have been good enough.  I'd like to think he agrees with me.  I'd like to think he's proud.  I'd like to think that.

Hong Kong 2012, Part 4: Bet You've Never Had a Bathroom Affect You Like This.

Here's the link to Part 3...



So the following day, we actually had an agenda.  One thing that I had expressed interest in (hat-tip to my friend Rob for the suggestion) was to get a custom-tailored suit in Hong Kong.  My parents were at first very apprehensive about buying me a suit ("When are you ever going to wear it?") but then they came to their senses, realizing that it's not about when you're going to wear a kickass suit, but instead it's about having a kickass suit.  We laughed heartily at this apprehension later, but that's another story for another time.

Of course, we needed food first, so my Auntie Myna decided to take us to City Hall.  Uhhh, yeah, it made no sense to me either.  However, you won't guess what was inside City Hall...

Yeap, that says Maxim's Cafe

... but another restaurant owned by our family!  This one happened to be a Western-style restaurant, so we ordered things like pan-seared fish and baked chicken with soup and bread.  

Now I must lament that I do not actually have a picture of my kickass suit.  I do however, have a picture of the street outside of the tailor, so there's that...

In case you didn't believe I was in Hong Kong...

The tailor was an old man who thoroughly enjoyed laughing at my non-Cantonese-speaking-ness, so at least he had a great time taking my measurements while I stood there awkwardly attempting to laugh at his jokes (I'm hoping they were jokes).  After he had his fun, he told us to come back for re-fitting in a couple of days, after which he would fully prepare the suit and have it prepared a couple weeks after.

At the time, I was with my dad and my Uncle Ken (Auntie Annie's husband, for those who want some sort of connective family tree representation), and we had to kill some time waiting for my Auntie's Myna and Annie and my mom.  Thus, we decided to go sit down at a local eatery and get some coffee. 

One must steathily take creeper photos, lest one be discovered

I don't particularly care for coffee, so I was expecting another long session of sitting and awkwardly listening to Cantonese conversation.  My eyes lit up with joy, however, when my father suggested I order this...

That first bite was like a bomb of deliciousness went off in my mouth, killing everyone.

... a curry beef bun!!!!

I love curry beef buns.  Even when I'm Stateside in a Chinatown in any city anywhere, I look for curry beef buns as my snack of choice.  This curry beef bun, however, was sooooooo much better than all the ones I've ever had in the US.  I don't know what it was, but it was just 100x spicier and 100x tastier than the bland ones we usually get.  I swear I ate the whole thing in less than 4 bites, and I probably could've done it in 3.

As you can see in the picture above, the place we were in was quite packed, with many tables housing multiple parties.  This is pretty commonplace in Hong Kong, where you'll go eat in a little place like this and have a stranger join you at your table, simply because there is no other space.  However, it gives you an idea as to the size of the place, and thus slightly informs the state of condition of the rest of the establishment, particularly the bathroom.

Now a lot of the bathrooms in Hong Kong are dirty.  They almost always smell, and the level of cleanliness would almost be considered "unacceptable" by US standards.  It's just something you learn to deal with when you're traveling, and I've been abroad often enough that I can handle some pretty filthy conditions.  This level of dirt in this bathroom, however, can only be described by one word that I have never used to describe a bathroom before:

Petrifying

The bathroom was petrifyingly dirty.  Now, you're probably wondering, "Well that's an interesting word, I wonder why he chose petrifying?"  Let me inform you.  

When I opened the door to the bathroom and stepped in, I stopped.  It's not like I just hesitated from the level of filth, I actually stopped.  I wasn't even thinking about just not using the bathroom, walking out, pretending like it never happened, and praying to Jesus that I could hold for the next hour or so.  I actually just couldn't move.  The choice of peeing and not peeing left my mind, and my options became stand in this spot forever or call for help.  And I was super tempted to call for help.

After being fully overwhelmed, I decided to put a positive spin on it, thinking "Hey, at least I don't have to take a dump, that would be a day-ruiner right there."  Thinking of it that way, things really didn't seem so bad, and that change in attitude went a long way to me getting over the level of dirtiness.

And with that, I think I'll end this part.  Much as I'd like to continue, the next part involves visiting my grandfather's grave, and it doesn't really feel right writing about that with three paragraphs about the filthiest bathroom of all-time preceding it.

Hong Kong 2012, Part 3: Swanky Lofts and Simple Food

Here's link to Part 2...

 I guess I never really finished that day we went to visit my grandmother's resting place.  Probably because that evening we went to one of the many eateries owned by Maxim, which is a food and restaurant company based in Hong Kong (not the near-porno magazine), which happens to be run by my cousin.  I forget the exact name, but it was similar to many of the other Maxim-owned eateries, serving the equivalent of Cantonese "fast food." 

The fermented egg was saltier than all the meat combined

Mine was a delicious roast pork and chicken combination with white rice and vegetable (shown above).  While certainly not as good as what you could get in a restaurant, it was fast, cheap, and as close to authentic as you could expect for a dish assembled in under 5 minutes.

The next day, we stuck to our routine (wake up, eat cereal, watch a hundred billion episodes of TBBT, go to lunch), going to a little noodle shop in Happy Valley.  Now this place was a tiny little hole in a wall, literally being built into the hill with an apartment complex on top of it.  The owner was an older lady, whom my aunt told me was famous for being rude to customers.  Evidently, she had mellowed with age, but my aunt claimed she would literally yell at patrons for wasting any bit of food.  

Such a thing, however, was absolutely no problem for me.  I ordered a noodle bowl with beef brisket, and it was delicious.  

If there is a heaven, it serves this nonstop

Now I know I said my first meal in HK was probably the best meal of my life (and it was), but this noodle bowl was so incredibly delicious that I wanted another bowl after I was done, despite being completely full.  The meat was melt-in-your-mouth tender, falling apart whenever I tried to pick up too large a piece.  The noodles were perfectly cooked, not too firm, not too mushy, and the juice from the meat had melted into the soup.  Oh my goodness the soup.  It was an exquisitely rich broth with a slight creamy taste from the beef fat, salty but not overpowering.  Words almost cannot do it justice.

We went shopping for a little while before heading to dinner, eating a Korean BBQ restaurant (yes, in Hong Kong).

 

In case you didn't believe me, proof ^^

The next day was pretty uneventful.  We probably went to the CC Club again, maybe did some random shenanigans around Hong Kong until dinner time when we went to my Uncle Larry's apartment.  Now my Uncle Larry is not related by blood, at all.  He went to college with my mother at the University of Buffalo, and they and a bunch of other friends from UB have stayed in touch now that they're rich and successful and living in Hong Kong.  Uncle Larry is a director and owns a commercial studio, whereby he produces commercials for Hong Kong and mainland China.  So how opulent of a home does such a person possess?  Well you can be the judge.

Living area featuring Mom and Dad

Dining area, seating for 12!

View, in the rain

Crazy hippy artwork.  Yes, that is a mish-mash of DC heroes in pin-up poses.

Keep in mind, this is on top of a 4 story apartment complex overlooking Repulse Bay.  So yeah, expensive.

Now the meal was excellent, but I was so busy eating and trying to appear interested in the conversation (more on this in a bit) that I forgot to snap pictures of the food.  It was good, mostly Filipino cuisine prepared by Uncle Larry's two maids.  However, the highlight of the visit, for me at least was...

OMG SO CUTE

 ...Uncle Larry's dog, Coffee!  Now Coffee was super skittish, much like my beloved Gizmo.  Which is a good excuse to share a picture of him.

Such a silly baby

One thing that Coffee did learn from us was how to beg for food, courtesy of my father's complete and utter inability to resist giving human food to dogs.

"Give it to me!"

My Uncle Larry is also quite the character.  He was very cheerful and upbeat, but he was also quite sick, since he had just landed from a flight back from China filming a commercial.  Thus, as the host, he felt compelled to attempt to prevent the spread of his germs by...

Yes, those are indeed orange pastel slacks.

... sitting 5 feet back from the dinner table and half-heartedly wearing a mask.

As you can see, there is a dining table full of Asian people, all of whom are either a.) eating, b.) conversing in Cantonese, or c.) both.  So I'm sitting at a dinner table, attempting to stay interested in a conversation that I cannot understand.  As a gwai lo, this is something I'm fairly used to.  When my parents go to visit friends in Queens, we always go out to eat, and they always converse in Cantonese.  So I'm used to sitting there, responding when I'm spoken to, and otherwise just twiddling my thumbs and losing myself in my thoughts.  Do I wish I could take part in the conversation?  Maybe not, but I'd like the option.  I've been at enough dinner parties with my parents older friends to know that it doesn't take a foreign language to feel as though you can't or shouldn't contribute to a conversation.  

However, it all comes as a stark reminder that I am still an outsider.  I sat there, mostly in silence, whispering to my mom occasionally, even leaving the table and sitting on the couch after a couple hours.  Maybe it was disrespectful, but feeling un-included has a way of making you not really care whether your decisions are respectful or not.  Not that it was their fault; if anything, it is my own fault for never attempting to learn the language of my ancestors.  Several of them even commented about how it was great for me to spend time with my parents and their friends instead of going out on my own.  This brought a laugh out of my parents, saying that if I could go off by myself, I probably would have.  Indeed, I probably would have.  

That sort of dependence, that sort of loneliness isn't something that's necessarily sorrowful.  But it still makes me sad; That even if I wanted to venture out on my own, being a foreigner in a place where I don't appear to be a foreigner, I could feel so alone in a crowd.

Hong Kong 2012, Part 2: Old Memories, Old Feelings

If you wish to read Part 1...

For the next few days, our routine would be pretty much the same; We would wake early in the morning (generally somewhere between 4:30am and 6:30am), eat some low-key breakfast (cereal for me, oatmeal for Mom, nothing for Dad), then wait around for my Auntie Myna to wake up so we could go in to town with her and eat some awesome food, see some sights, eat some more food, and return home.  

Naturally, this meant I had a lot of free time between waking (4:30am!) and leaving for lunch (around 11:30-12).  Now even though my aunt is exorbitantly rich, she really never saw a need to have a TV outside of her bedroom, so my parents were, how shall I say... low on morning entertainment.  My dad probably did one hundred thousand billion Sudoku puzzles, while my mom tried to do the same and also read some books.  I, in my infinite wisdom, brought my laptop along with me for just such times, and thus I had my entire collection of nefariously collected episodes of "How I Met Your Mother," "The Big Bang Theory," and "Game of Thrones" to watch over, and over, and over again.  And I did, over, and over, and over again.  I even got my mom hooked on TBBT, so now she can understand a bit about what my life is like on a daily basis.

When my aunt awoke on the 2nd day, we went into the city, did some crazy electro-therapy acupuncture thingy (yea don't ask), and then went to lunch at the Craigengower Cricket Club.  Yes, that is some crazy alliteration.  Now the CC Club looks something like this...

Yes, those old men are lawn bowling, and as my father told me, they probably play for about $10,000 per ball.  Which made me barf a little in my mouth at first, but considering the membership fees are probably ten times that, most people who are members at this club are not exactly lacking in funds.

The awesome thing about the CC Club is that it is huge part of my old memories of Hong Kong.  When my grandfather was still alive, he was one of the oldest living members of the club, possessing an extraordinarily rare lifetime membership.  Most of my memories of my grandfather as very vague and fleeting, but perhaps my most vivid one is us walking to the CC Club, perhaps because we did it so often.  So every single trip back to Hong Kong was riddled with visits to the CC Club for fun things, like playing tennis, bowling (real bowling, with lanes), and swimming.  As expected, this also included large amounts of eating, and we ate at a luncheon area right next to the lawn bowling... lawn.  

My parents did point out one thing that I did not notice at first, and that is...

... this very humble building right behind the CC Club, that just so happens to be the place my grandfather and grandmother lived before they passed away (more on the apartment later).

From there, we went to pay respects to my grandmother's "resting place."  

Now, I can't really call it a grave, because it's not.  Note, most "graveyards" in Hong Kong tend to look like this...

...a literal mountain of graves.  This means that "real estate" for the dead is in extremely high demand.  When you are recently deceased (my grandmother having died a couple years earlier), you have to wait your turn before you can be buried in the cemetery.  Thus, my grandmother's "resting place" looks like this...

Indeed, that is a literal hole in the wall, in the attic of a crowded building, next to a bunch of other recently deceased persons.  

Now I'm not big on rituals, especially spiritual ones involving the dead.  I believe that when we pass on, we're gone, totally and completely disconnected from this living plane.  But perhaps it didn't really hit me that the reason we perform such rituals isn't necessarily for the person being honored.  In many ways, this was more about my living family and me.  So when my mom handed me the candles, told me to stand in line next to them as they spoke to my grandmother, I made no argument, and bowed my three times when told to do so.  I was filled with a deep sense of regret, mixed with shame;  Here I was, someone expected to honor this woman, someone whom by all accounts I barely knew, and who also barely knew me.  And those facts bring me incredible shame.  

I didn't know her at all.  I knew some stories, some things my mom had told me, but I was never able to connect with her, not on my own, not by myself.  Someone who had profound effects on my mother, who had and still has profound effects on me, was someone that I probably couldn't name three things about.  It makes me incredibly jealous of those of my friends who have deep relationships with their grandfathers, grandmothers, great grandfathers, great grandmothers.  I would give anything to go back and talk to her more, to go back and be a part of her life.  Perhaps it's because I grew up as an Asian in a small town full of white people, but I've never felt like I really "belonged" anywhere.  

I've long since learned to deal with this lack of belonging.  As an ABC (American Born Chinese), you have to deal with it.  Perhaps it's why I'm so willing to embrace anyone as a friend or ally, because I don't have a "group" to belong to, to hold me to any stereotype.  But in that moment, when I was bowing in front of the grave of a grandmother I barely knew, I felt it all again.  Like here's where I could have belonged.  Here's where I could have been.

Hong Kong 2012, Part 1: A Little About Me, A Little About Family, Mostly About Food

There's an old adage, "Every picture is worth a 1000 words."  On my recent trip to Hong Kong, I took somewhere close to 200 pictures, and while not every one of them is worth 1000 words, some of them are pretty darn close.  As most of the pictures feature imagery without context nor explanation, I feel the best way to present my trip is resurrect this old blog, sharing a photo journal of sorts.  I hope you enjoy as I recollect this journey through my parent's heritage.

First, a little bit of background information.  My parents both grew up in Hong Kong, although in separate parts, and did not meet until they were both in the States.  I have been to Hong Kong a couple of times, but I was 12 the last time, and as anyone would tell you, Hong Kong has changed completely since then.  Needless to say, I was anxious to see how much my being adult would change my experience in Hong Kong.  I don't think I could have foreseen how profoundly it would affect my views.

Naturally, this trip begins with a plane ride.  15 hours nonstop from JFK to Hong Kong Airport is a flight that almost screams "get ready to watch 5 movies!"  It was made even more enjoyable (if enjoyable were a synonym for HORRIBLE), by my having mild gastroenteritis, commonly known as the stomach flu.  Now I will spare you the details of said stomach flu, just know that I and the airplane toilet were heavily acquainted by the end of the flight.  Despite such inconveniences, the flight was relatively smooth, as I enjoyed "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," "Sherlock Holmes: Game of Shadows," "Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close," and some random Jet Li movie.  Before long, we touched down in Hong Kong, took the train to Hong Kong Island, were picked up by my Auntie Myna's driver (yes, she has a driver), and quickly went to bed as it was 8pm and we were extremely jet-lagged.

By now some of you may be thinking, "Get on with it, you turd, I wanna see pictures!!!"  All right fine, I'll hit you with one.

"What's that?" you say?  That is the meal we had for lunch the next day.  More on why this may have been the most satisfying meal of my life in a bit.

So the next morning, we woke up at 4:30am (Hooray jet-lag!) ate some toast for breakfast (crusts cut off, because that's how Hong Kong people do it), and waited until lunchtime to go eat at...

For those who can't read Chinese nor the script English below it, the name of the restaurant is "8 Happiness."  Why?  I have no idea, although I'm sure my mom told me and I've simply forgotten.  Now the day was Monday at 1pm, so you'd expect to see some lunch crowd, but being a weekday, I thought it would be only moderately full...

Now that's my Auntie Annie and my dad in the foreground, but in the background, you can see that the place is fairly packed.  Now as a gwai lo, or foreigner, this seemed weird to me, but my mom assured me that it's perfectly normal, as most people in Hong Kong go out to eat for the vast majority of their meals.  Which is pretty good for my Aunt and her family, considering they own the establishment, and many, many others.  Now you know why she has a driver.  Note that if you click on that wikipedia link and go down to 2000s, you'll see "Michael Wu" who is my Auntie Myna's son and my cousin. 

But I digress, and back to this image...

So I said before that this was arguably the most satisfying meal of my life.  This would, however, be much more about the circumstances than the actual food.   The meal itself was pretty simple: you can see congee in the left foreground, my enormous beef noodle bowl in the right foreground, and assorted other mostly eaten Chinese food in the background.  The food is mostly eaten 1.) because I forgot I was on vacation and was supposed to take pictures, and 2.) I prefer to wait until I actually know that I like particular food before I snap a photo of it.  

Why was this meal so satisfying?  Well, when you've had gastroenteritis for 3 days, during which you've managed to eat perhaps food equivalent of 1 meal over that span, as well as basically ejecting most matter which enters your gastrointestinal system, you relish the day when your appetite returns (and your body "re-regulates," if you know what I mean).  This day happened to be the first time I felt like I could actually eat a full meal after the stomach flu, and oh my goodness did it taste amazing.  Not only was it fresh, completely authentic, well-made Chinese food, but it also was my first taste of re-learning what it was like to be in Hong Kong before.  Perhaps most of all, it will be that first taste, that first remembrance, that I will recall years from now.  And maybe, just maybe, it would be the start of a journey that would open my eyes in so many ways.

-JJK