The Other Side of Life

We went to the cemetery in Tsuen Wan where a couple of my relatives lay.

Now, it's bad form to take photos of the actual cemetery, so here's the scenery around it.  You can see the IFC and ICC in the distance above, and the Nina Tower in Tsuen Wan below.

 The lack of space and Chinese tradition came together very well in the cemeteries of Hong Kong.  The smaller hills around the city, unusable for skyscrapers but not to hard to walk up and down, were gradually filled up with graves, as putting your ancestors on a high spot is a traditionally good thing to do.

Tsing Yi, across Rambler Channel.

 This being Hong Kong, though, the cemeteries filled up very quickly.  Today, you literally have to walk over several other people's graves to get to the site you're looking for, which is quite unfortunate.  That also means that actual burials are out of financial reach for most people in the city, and cremation is the only way to go.

A train on the Tung Chung line crossing into Tsing Yi.

It turned out that the two we were looking for were actually in seperate sites, one being the top of the Tsuen Wan cemetery, and another in a building attached to a crematorium at the foot of the hill, in Kwai Chung (葵涌).  When we left that crematorium, we were completely lost in the sea of industry that is that district, located between Tsuen Wan and Kowloon.

 No pedestrians, buses, or taxis anywhere.

 It turns out that Vicente was quite a powerful storm.  Even sheltered by all the surrounding industrial highrises, a lot of trees have been damaged.  Many trees that have snapped, fallen over, or otherwise have been damaged are still in the midst of being removed:

Eventually, we caught a taxi back to Tsuen Wan, where we ate at this place:

 Tsui Wah, which started out as a small cha chaan teng like the hundreds of others in the city, somehow grew into a chain, and has expanded regionally and become a publicly traded company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

I wonder what they're doing so well?

 It wasn't this iced lemon tea.

Nor was it this satay beef stir-fried rice noodles (沙嗲牛肉炒河).

Their apparently signature pork chop bun (豬扒包) tasted vaguely like a McDonald's burger...

And this was some dumpling and pork-something in soup with thick rice noodles (米線, not the flat ones)

There was also wonton noodles, but it was so limp, soggy, and bland, I did not take a picture.

Chains.  Not good.

...oh, and it catered to tourists too.  There was a waitress with a sash that read, in simplified Chinese, "Mandarin Service", and the menus were written in Japanese as well as Chinese and English.

Two important lessons about food here.