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.

In the Shadow of Big Business

On the east side of the island of Hong Kong is this place:

As I mentioned in one of my previous posts, Tai Koo (太古) is a common name to come across in this city, as it is the local name for the Swire Group, a British corporation founded in Liverpool, 1862 by a man named John Swire.  As he wanted to create an import-export company, it was natural for him to set up a base in Hong Kong, the most important British possession in the Far East.

As far as I can tell, there is no etymology behind the Chinese name Tai Koo, which roughly translates to "great ancient".  The Swire Group was one of the original Hongs (行) in the city, businesses that drove its early economic growth.  It remains one of the most powerful corporations in Hong Kong today, owning several desirable swaths of land, multiple businesses (including Hong Kong's flag carrier airline, Cathay Pacific [國泰航空]), and other holdings across the world.

So why would this MTR station be named Tai Koo?  Originally, this area was entirely owned by various Swire organizations, and when it was redeveloped for residential purposes, it was mostly planned and developed by Swire, called Island East (港島東).  It's a basically self-contained town, with a huge shopping complex in the middle and various office towers surrounded by residential units.

Immediately to the north of Island East is Kornhill, another basically self-contained development named after the hill on which the manager of Swire's old sugar operations, Ferdinand Korn, lived.  It was developed by another familiar corporation:

  

Yep.  The MTR, in addition to running the rapid transit system in the city, also develops property.  Originally, this was due to the huge swaths of land that it owned (in the form of railway yards) that could be built on.  Over time, the MTR became more and more involved in property, and it became a larger and larger part of its portfolio.  Today, the main source of income for the corporation is property, a large part of the reason why it is profitable.  (Take note: unless you start building apartments on top of huge railway yards, a private rapid transit company is not going to be profitable, even in a place like Hong Kong!)

Oh, and they're insane about their hygiene here.  Signs like this one above are everywhere in the city, and once every four hours is considered very little - many places, especially malls, clean their elevators once every hour or so.

We had a friend on the 20th floor of one of the Kornhill apartments:

And on the walk down to lunch, we passed a large chunk of the development:

complete with its own schools:

One Island East in the distance, at 298m still taller than First Canadian Place.

Recreation complexes:

And not pictured, but its own mall.

The shopping centre at the centre of Island East is !Cityplaza (as stylized).

In most public areas, pertinent weather announcements such as typhoon signals or rainstorm warnings are posted:

You can see the Swire logo at the bottom!

And it turned out that it was raining quite heavily...

There are three levels of rainstorm warnings: Amber, Red, and Black, each signifying an increased severity in the downpour.  It's been raining nonstop since the typhoon hit!

We ate at another place owned by a huge conglomerate:

Maxim's Palace (美心皇宮), a Chinese restaurant chain owned by Maxim's Catering, a restaurant group that also includes Maxim's MX fast food, Maxim's Cakes, Maxim's..., Maxim's...

...oh, they also own all the local Starbucks, of which there are well over a hundred.

Maxim's Catering is in turn owned by the conglomerate Dairy Farm (牛奶公司, lit. "milk company"), which also owns the local 7-Elevens, Ikea, the supermarket chain Wellcome...

You get the point.

Maxim's Palace is an upscale, posh version of the traditional "serious" Chinese restaurant, and as such, serves (overpriced) dim sum at breakfast and lunch hours.  (At least they still use the old carts filled with stacks of bamboo baskets to sell their dim sum!)

Something I had never seen before:

Pickled garlic.  Apparently an appetizer.

Now, most of these dishes I couldn't even name when I was eating them, so here are the pics:

Tripe!

This one was memorably unnecessary, however:

Siu mai (without wrappers!) topped with scallops, oysters, and shittake.  "High Class", and not even that tasty (although I have been spoiled by Tim Ho Wan)

The dessert was sesame filled steamed buns:

A Singular Purpose

Remember these stickers?

 There's another, much more famous dim sum place that has received a Michelin Star.

Tim Ho Wan (添好運) who brand themselves as "The Dim Sum Specialists", has a local reputation for being the cheapest One-star restaurant around.  While that may not be true anymore (over the last couple of years the prices have risen dramatically, and One Dim Sum yesterday was cheaper), and despite various anecdotes of the quality dropping since they received the star a few years ago, I decided to try it anyway.

I arrived with my family at the restaurant, on the outskirts of Mong Kok, at 11:30.  We went and got a number-cum-order form, and the maitre d' (if you can call some random guy who is occasionally at the front door that) told us that it would be at least a couple of hours before we could get in.  We had expected this, and decided to go around Mong Kok (again!) for a while.

Just another fruit market on the street.

 When we came back at 1:15ish, the restaurant still wasn't ready for us.  So we waited....

Until 2:20, when we went in.  So about a three hour wait.  Apparently, that's completely normal for this place.

Part of Tim Ho Wan's claim to fame is that the dim sum is always steamed fresh to order.  That, coupled with the insanely small shop, means that the restaurant can only accommodate a very limited number of people over the course of a day.  Indeed, midway through our wait, at about 1:45, a sign was posted telling people who had just came to leave and come back after 3:30 to get a number.

So this had better be some fine dim sum!

The first thing that arrived was har cheung (蝦腸):

Really, nothing special here.  Although the rice noodle roll was just a bit more aromatic than usual.

The house specialty was the flaky crust char siu bao (酥皮叉燒包), kind of like a cross between a pineapple bun and a char siu bao (roast pork bun).

Very interesting and novel.

They had shrimp spring rolls (鮮蝦春捲), which you're supposed to dip in worchestershire sauce (don't ask why, they really like worchestershire sauce here!)

Crispy, not oily, and the filling was quite delicious.  It was shrimp with some cabbage and pickled cabbage (酸菜, lit. sour vegetable), and the flavours matched each other very well. 

Some dim sum standards:

 har gow (蝦餃)

siu mai (燒賣)

It was with these two that I noticed Tim Ho Wan uses a lot less flavouring ingredients (excess salt, sugar, MSG, etc.) than usual dim sum places (like One Dim Sum yesterday), letting the basic flavours of the shrimp and pork in these dumplings speak better.  The siu mai was pretty meh beyond that, but the har gow, because of that simple little fact, and the fact that the wrappers were just the right consistency, were great.

Phoenix talon and sparerib rice (for my brother):

 There's no way to do this one wrong!

Turnip cake:

Again, the natural flavours of the daikon radish and Chinese sausage came through better than usual, with there being a slight sweet tinge to the daikon - other places usually make up for the slight natural sweetness by putting in sugar and MSG, but it tastes completely different.

Beef meatballs (牛肉球):

Chinese meatballs are made by pulverizing the meat instead of grinding it, giving it a completely different texture from western meatballs.  In addition, the large kind served as dim sum is mixed with fillers and tenderizing agents to give it an almost mushy quality.  And then it's dipped in worchestershire sauce.

Tim Ho Wan advertises its use of chenpi (陳皮), dried tangerine skins, in its meatballs, but I didn't taste any.

The unexpected star of the meal was this lo mai gai:

Everything about it was just perfect.  Every single bite gave you some sticky rice that wasn't mushy and had the aroma of the lotus leaf surrounding it and the taste of the chicken and Chinese sausage inside.  In the middle were large slices of chicken (most places use minced mystery meat), whole shittake mushrooms, and chunks of Chinese sausage.  I have honestly never had lo mai gai this good before.

Dessert was another specialty of the place, wolfberry osmanthus jelly (杞子桂花糕):

The wolfberry is a fruit which has in recent years been hailed (as "goji") as a great restorative agent by the homeopathic movement and commercial interests which have capitalized on that.  Meh.  The osmanthus is a fragrant flower native to Asia.  Put them together in a jelly, and you get a sublime dessert.  Not overly sweet, wonderfully fragrant, and it feels like nothing going down.

Overall, it was a great meal, and at a great price, but the crowds make it just not worth it.  Three hours.  On a rainy Thursday.  Wow.