Chinese New Year in Hong Kong

This comes a bit late but I figure better late than never, I suppose. Life has been busy as usual and it does take a while before I get the motivation to write on this blog. Without further ado, here are a few things that I did for Chinese New Year in Hong Kong.

CNY came as a huge surprise because of how quiet it was. Suddenly, almost everything was closed and the streets were devoid of people - a first. One place that's usually quiet but full of people, however, were the temples.


The statues at Wong Tai Sin temple were decked out in bright red ribbons.


In Macau, the Amah Temple was setting off firecrackers.


A visiting friend and I also braved the HUGE crowds in the Chinese New Year fair/flower market in Victoria Park.



Such colourful plants and flowers!


The Che Kung Temple is a popular destination for CNY. A few Chief Executive candidates went the date before I did.



What to do when you're at the Che Kung Temple during CNY: spin the wheel of fortune and bang the drums to herald the New Year!


For some reason, buying whirligigs is very common around this time. I got a little one though there were big ones as well!


There was also tons of CNY paraphernalia! So cute!


The Mandarin Oriental also heralded the new year with this centrepiece in the cake shop!

In a park of pure imagination...

So the other day, I was wandering around the Wong Tai Sin area just to explore the neighbourhood a little. I have a special connection to the place because my dad grew up there and I was greatly delighted after getting lost and finding Fung Tak Park. The park was something of a homage to the famous tale of "Journey to the West," a fictionalized account of Xuanzhang's journey to India with an interesting array of characters - mischievous Monkey, lustful Pigsy and misanthropic Friar Sand. In book form, "Journey to the West" is about a couple volumes long and hundreds and hundreds of pages but most Chinese children are familiar with some of the episodes and tales from the story just as kids in North America or Europe would be familiar with fairy tales by Charles Perrault or Hans Christian Anderson.

When you enter the park, you are greeted by these giant rocks with an artificial waterfall.



There's this interesting trail with a long dragon mosaic that leads you to the Palace of the Dragon King.




There's a set of stairs by the "palace" that goes up to the top of the artificial waterfall. When you look down, you'll see a pipe. Just randomly sitting there. You could assume that it's just part waterworks involved with the artificial falls but it's also a reference to Monkey's weapon, a staff that he stole from the Sea King's Palace. The staff shrinks so that Monkey can tuck it behind his ear when he's not using it and it can grow as big as he wants it to be!


Another section of the park contains five little monuments that stick out like fingers and are meant to be the "Buddha's Hand Mountain," where Monkey was trapped for 500 years as punishment for trying to steal peaches from the immortals in the heavens. I didn't take a picture of the little monument, so this picture was taken from this flickr page.

The park may not be extravagant or big but isn't it cool to see a childhood fairy tale come alive like this?

Goin' back to the old man's hood....

Since I came to Hong Kong, I resolved to visit my dad's birthplace: Wong Tai Sin. There's nothing there except for this really lovely temple called the Sik Sik Yuen Wong Tai Sin Temple. It's Buddhist, Taoist and Confucianist! The gods there are supposedly very apt at granting your wishes but I didn't really think of that. Colourful buildings, gorgeous and immaculate gardens, there was quite a lot to enjoy as everything and I mean EVERYTHING was picturesque there. I thought I was either in a painting or a princess walking around a palace. Since I'm rather tired, I'll let the photos do the talking for me today.