Besieged Ducks, and other adventures

Here I am in Hong Kong, watching my kids play games while we're stuck waiting out the "black warning" on the typhoon-ometer. Sounds scary--but apparently during high-level typhoon warnings, people in Hong Kong go to the movies.



It's been a very busy few weeks, and my busyness is inversely proportional to the quantity and thoroughness of my blog posts, as is probably self-evident. I can't do the last few weeks chronologically, so here are some impressions:

1. We visited a Buddhist temple. It was very interesting--as far as I understood it, people ask a question while shaking this box of sticks, until one stick falls out. This is engraved with a cryptic prediction, which you need an interpreter to explain. (I may be off on the exact mechanics of this process.)

The practice is far more dependent on objects than I had expected; I had always associated Buddhism with the natural world more than the manmade one, and these kinds of "worship articles" felt more like a Catholic thing to me. It was also fascinating to see an older style of worship sandwiched between modern skyscrapers.





2. THE MEAT MARKET. I cannot adequately describe this experience. Just imagine: you are a peaceful, quasi-vegetarian without any real taste for or interest in meat. You feel a distant but definite kinship with the animal world. You enter a market in Hong Kong, and PEOPLE ARE SNAPPING CHICKENS' NECKS one by one out of a tank in front of you. These unlucky creatures are sliced, skinned, deplumed, chopped, and hung up before us to...dry? Die? Rigor mortize? Terrorize?



We were supposed to do a scavenger hunt through this blood market, but my British friend Josh and I proved our Western weakness and opted out. Instead, we turned from the chickens and walked through the fish and vegetables, which offered a short-lived sense of security. All too soon, we were watching halved eels slithering around their bloody ice tombs, still-living fish breathing their last out in the open, caged frogs hopping on top of each other by our feet, and--most gruesomely of all--an upside-down fish in a tank slowly having its gills shaved off by a rotating wheel.



The house of horrors did not end here. Retreating to the vegetable area, where I welcomed the giant zucchinis whose removal from the ground did not induce physical pain, we passed a stray cat and wandered to a fruit stand beside the fish. Its well-meaning but ungloved owner offered us unwashed cherries--and Josh ate one, then looked at me with such accusatory, culturally sensitive eyes that I ate one too. Not typically the type to be sensitive about washing my food, I was convinced for at least two days that I would die of bacterial infection.

So no, I was not able to push past my sheltered supermarket upbringing in order to appreciate the Hong Kong market.



3. I saw Toy Story 3 at a theater here, where you sit in love seats with retractable arms between the two seats. They are essentially couches for couples, just so no one in an uneven group can ever have any illusions about who is the third wheel. The theaters also have both sweet and salty popcorn as the standard fare, yummy.

4. Went up the the Peak, the supertouristy Disneyworld-esque highest point in Hong Kong. We took a tram up the mountain, at a bizarrely steep angle that made all the buildings appear sideways. The top was basically a big mall (shocker), but the very top open-air area had a gorgeous view of the city at night. The lights here are lovely--many are rainbow-colored rather than just white, an oddly rare thing in the States. HK supposedly has the greatest number of skyscrapers of any city in the world, and it was amazing to see these lights and buildings nestled in a mountain beside a harbor and imagine all the people who populate them. Or to imagine the city I've come to think of as "mine," for better for for worse--New York City--with all of its skyscrapers beside its own water on the opposite end of the world.



5. Shopped at the Mong Kok Ladies Market. NYC's Chinatown very closely replicates the types of things they sold: stall after stall of fake designer handbags, wallets, watches, etc. I bought a watch for HK$16--roughly 2USD--and it's lasted almost a week so far!

6. Finished rereading To Kill a Mockingbird for the first time since 9th grade. Totally enamored/bowled over/obsessed for now, have forced my friends here to watch the 1962 movie with me once already. Such a beautiful book with incredibly alive characters, and one that reminds me that books don't need to be "about" something per se--this one is simply the slow story of three years' worth of growing up.

7. Drank a whole lot of milk tea bubble tea, a Hong Kong specialty. Love it.



8. Ate at a place called Modern Toilet. Gimmick: sit on a toilet seat instead of a chair! Irony: the actual toilets were fairly run-down.



In other culinary news, my class took me on a field trip to a Cantonese restaurant, ostensibly to compare cross-cultural food habits. This quickly turned into a game called, "Make Courtney Eat as Much Weird Stuff as Possible." I ate jellyfish and chicken feet. Please, picture a chicken foot. Picture how much meat is on a chicken foot. Now picture how many bones are in a chicken foot. And this was AFTER my meat market experience.



With Jessica, my co-fellow and generous liaison to Hong Kong.


9. Two more days left as a teacher in Hong Kong. The experience has been very mixed. I've enjoyed teaching my own course, but find that different students react completely differently to my lessons: some love building up plot structure on their own to understand why plot functions the way it does, while some say they've already learned the terms; some like free-writing in class, some can't stand it; some find literary examples valuable, others get bored and tune out. You can't please everyone, and I teach to the type of student I used to be and the type of teacher I always wished I had--but that leaves some students dissatisfied. It's hard for me to be unable to reach everyone, and to move on after a student expresses distaste for the lesson.

I am still interested in education policy, psychology, content, maybe a certain type of teaching as well--but maybe not middle or high school like this.



10. Miscellaneous photographic moments:

Bamboo scaffolding- apparently as strong as steel.


In the States, we sell cheap bracelets in 25-cent machines. In Hong Kong, it seems, they offer besieged ducks.


Loved this.