Dragon boat racing on Cheung Chau

The group of us gathered at the ferry terminal, all freshers curious to try out the traditional, yet fiercely popular sport of dragon boat racing as part of the University society's orientation camp on Cheung Chau. After the hour-long ferry, costing only $13 (£1), we alighted still sleepy-eyed yet amused by the polar opposite of busy, urban HK island, this little island full of wandering locals on narrow, car-less paths - only bikes ringing their bells to squeeze past us. The sun was already relentless, although luckily this time I managed to avoid getting sunburnt (especially as I've only just recovered from my last sunburn).

Cheung Chau beach

As the team walked us along the promenade to the harbour, we walked past a long line of beautiful, clean white dragon boats, with their dragon heads and tails, and big ceremonial drums. Our excitement subsided as we reached the harbour and found that our boats were much less, uh, polished. 2 old wooden dragon boats with flaking paint and no dragon head nor tail nor drum sat waiting for us. As it turns out, the fancy decoration is reserved only for competitions. So there we go.

Not for us...

Our team of ten climbed into our boat and our two instructors taught us first individually to learn to paddle - a much different technique to rowing or kayaking back home, before learning to paddle together, including who we should be watching (i.e. not the person directly in front of you, but diagonally opposite), the different commands and the rhythm.

Dragon boat racing tends to have short, intense races which meant practicing for say "60 paddles" before taking a few minutes to relax and chat, and throw some banter between us and the other boat. The switching between head-down, intense racing and chill-out time with the boat made for a good laugh of a session. Our instructors, Erin and Yukiko were both fantastic and really helped us work together and improve our technique individually, as well as teaching us lots about the sport in general. Concluding with a few races, things got pretty serious quickly and despite how quickly your arms tire with such a fast pace and the intensity you paddle with, we pushed through, and won two of the three races.

The winning team!

Aside from some time in the boats, the rest of the day was spent playing beach games, and exploring the island - including a very, very narrow little cave, which legend says was used as a pirate's hiding place for his treasure.

With the DBC members showing us around, we were lucky for them to translate the street cafe menus and recommend some mid-afternoon snacks for us. We started off with mango glutinous rice dumplings, which we watched being made through the window. The mango was sweet and juicy, whilst the surrounding dough was sticky and reminded me of mochi.

Mango glutinous rice dumpling

The other, unexpected afternoon snack which I was just TOO curious not to try was 'Deep fried ice-cream balls'. A scoop of soft, purple taro ice-cream covered in hot crispy batter. Honestly, I still don't know quite what to make of it. I think it was nice, but I don't really want to admit that something as insane and unhealthy as deep-fried ice-cream could taste very nice.

Deep fried ice-cream ball

The night finished off with eating some tasty, homemade food at the family restaurant of one of the team members and a final wander through the streets to explore the shops and street cafes at night before catching the ferry home after a long day of new experiences.

Kalmaegi, the little typhoon

After several days of whispering rumours that the first typhoon of the year was coming (although September is the end of the season - particularly known for the worst typhoons), yesterday Tropical Cyclone Kalmaegi hit Hong Kong.

During the day, the Hong Kong Observatory issued a T3 (Out of 10) warning - an eminent sign of incoming bad weather. Hourly updates informed the city to the current and forecasted position of Kalmaegi, the wind speeds in Hong Kong and precautions we should start taking. For the first time in three weeks, I felt more than a mini gust of wind.

By the afternoon, what the heavy cool breezes were already telling us, the Observatory confirmed. A level 8 typhoon would be with us in the coming hours. Although the current signal warning was still at T3, people were waiting for the T8 signal to be raised. When the T8 signal is hoisted, the city becomes a ghost town with schools and workplaces are closed, doors and windows locked and everybody waiting calmly inside for the storm to pass.

And so, after an evening of wind and rain, excitement and curiosity, the level 8 signal was given at 10pm. I looked outside my window. No wind, no rain, no thunder or lightening. I could even see the lights on the other side of the bay - usually a sign of good weather. By the time I went to bed, the rain had come with occasional gusts of wind but nothing worse than earlier in the day.

I regret to say, either the weather didn't get much worse, or I'm a deep sleeper, but I heard nothing much worse than a british rainstorm that night. Although, the fog in the morning was like nothing I've seen - only a wall of white was visible outside my window.

Come the morning, the T8 warning was still active which meant 'Typhoon day!' (No snow days here in HK), but with the warning downgraded back to T3 by 11am, afternoon classes were back on and a trek to University in the rain was necessary.

However, whilst I say how anti-climatic the whole event was, the newspapers reported hundreds of delayed and cancelled flights from the airport, 128 fallen trees, flooding in some areas, and a landslide. I guess we must have been nicely sheltered, or I really am a deep sleeper.

And that was little Typhoon Kalmaegi, and she's already left without causing too much drama...

Celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival! Both in Hong Kong and across East Asia, today families are gathering together to celebrate what is comparable to Thanksgiving in the US, and is the 2nd most important Chinese festival of the year (after New Year). People will sit in the parks, eat mooncakes together and watch the children play with lanterns and flashing LED toys.

NB - Hong Kong has got the holidays right. Mid-Autumn festival itself isn't a public holiday but the day after is...no need to worry about going to bed with the full moon still high in the sky.

Mooncakes

Mooncakes are a vital part of the celebrations. They look almost like pies - flaky pastry traditionally filled with lotus root paste, a nutty paste, or red bean paste, and some also have salted duck egg yolks inside.

Every event I go to, from first lectures, to our first floor-meeting, the past week has involved sharing lots of mooncakes. I've had lots of flavours from a modern fruity tea flavour to a traditional nutty one that reminded me of a smooth, dense peanut butter although the egg yolk is a bit... too strange for my liking (I've been told it's a marmite thing).

I'm looking forward to tomorrow when they all go on sale, like an xmas sale and I can try some more flavours, such as the 'snowy white mooncake' and Haagen-Daas ice-cream mooncake.

I didn't have any good photos of the inside...so credit to Flickr
(https://flic.kr/p/pdH7d)

Thanksgiving
My celebrations started last weekend, where I got involved in a project with my University to visit the elderly and give them a Mid-Autumn mooncake gift. Hong Kong is a busy, fast-paced modern city and unfortunately this has left a lot of elderly residents feeling lonely and isolated as their children move far away or have little time to visit them. The aim of this project was to give the elderly a chance to talk with someone, to meet some of the university's students and to let them 'celebrate' Mid-Autumn festival with somebody.

Last weekend, I was paired with two local, cantonese-speaking students (most of the elderly speak little, if any, english) to visit the homes of four older people in Hong Kong. Although I couldn't talk to them directly, the power of translation helped me learn that the elderly of Hong Kong are a diverse, vibrant bunch who will always work hard and keep a smile on their face.

My favourite visit was to an 81 year old lady who told me her favourite thing to do in Hong Kong is visit Disneyland, but she also quite likes the rollercoasters in Ocean Park. Then she explained she sings in a choir and I was lucky enough for her to sing her favourite cantonese songs to us....until she wanted to hear the three of us to sing. My fellow students sang beautifully, but the only song I managed to join in with was Jingle bells, where the cantonese version sings 'Ding dong ding' instead of 'Jingle bells, jingle bells'. What can I say, I tried.

After a long day of walking around Kennedy Town between flats, we were lucky enough that the last lady we visited treated us to a cup of chinese tea and a bowl of fresh slices of orange. It was a lovely end to the day, where I hope we were able to put a smile on a few faces, and I got the chance to have a glimpse into everyday life of Hong Kong.

Happy Mid-Autumn Festival

Tai Hang Fire Dragon
Yesterday, a group of us began the real celebrations and visited the Tai Hang neighbourhood to see the traditional fire dragon dance. A 220ft long dragon made of straw, covered in incense giving it a fiery sparkler-like appearance danced through the streets carried high and mighty by young adults to celebrate Mid-Autumn Festival.

Tai Hang Fire Dragon

After getting extensively lost and fearing we missed it, we eventually found our way to where we could hear the dragon's drums and see the crowds trying to get a glimpse. Worried we would never get close enough as we stood on a half-empty side street, a local near us explained that the dragon has to be carried along every street in the area, and their long windy route takes a long time but will come right up next to us.

Soon enough the procession began down our narrow street, and we were greeted with a drummer that stopped beside us, playing the rhythmic beat for the dragon. Whilst we could not yet see the dragon, we certainly noticed a wave of foggy smoke and the strong smell of incense drifting in the air above us.

Drum-roll....

After a minute of getting the beat, the drummer was pushed down the street on his float and what felt like hundreds of young men began to blaze past us, holding the dragon high in the air as it raced down the road. From the large, fiery dragon head which swirled and circled up and down and left and right across the street, to the long thin body in which we could feel the glowing heat of the incense warm our cheeks, running straight down the street.

The Dragon's head

The Dragon's body

The best part came at the end, where the tail reached where we were. It suddenly swerved from the centre of the line to smash itself against a little shop sign before swooping low over a group of ducking police officers on the side of the road - from what the local told us earlier, I have no doubt somebody was unlucky enough to have a little hot ash fall on their heads.

Victoria Park Lantern Festival

We were also lucky enough to have a wander through the nearby lantern festival (a day before the massive crowds thankfully). Only hours before, we had a short but heavy rain that resulted in some beautiful reflections on the soccer pitch of the lights and lanterns above. Walking past these, you get to see some beautiful shaped lanterns and glowing lights - everything from the traditional lanterns to a neon castle and space guns and gameboys. It's a real reflection of Hong Kong's love for ancient traditions integrated into a high-tech westernised world.

7 things I've learned from 7 days in Hong Kong

Moving to Hong Kong is like entering the jungle for the first time. It's overwhelming - the deafening roar of traffic in the centre, or of freshmen shouting their hall cheers at the Uni, the sound of the summer thunderstorms unlike anything in the UK, and the feel of the heat on your skin and the humidity in your lungs, with something to see in every corner, from looking up to the blinding neon Chinese signs, and further to the tip of the skyscrapers, to down the steep hills, and across to the busy roads, the shops and the people walking around.

Shopping at Ladies Market, Mong Kok

Settling in this week has taken me everywhere from the large shiny shopping malls brimmed with top European and American designers (with western prices too) to the old streets and markets where only cantonese is spoken and I have had to overcome my timid British politeness to learn to haggle hard and ruthlessly. It feels like I've only seen a corner of Hong Kong as I've begun to explore this wonderful city with new friends from across the world, and I absolutely love it here already - I'm so excited for the coming year.

But for now, I present seven things I've learned from my first seven days in HK:


1. Air-con is my new best friend. As I was checking into my room on Sunday, another exchange student came to reception to ask for an air-con smartcard and how to top it up. Then the receptionist said the words no Hong Konger ever wants to hear, let alone two Europeans who believe 17c in the definition of summer, "You can only buy air-con from the office. Office open on Monday". We both exchanged looks of horror as we realised the impeding trauma. 90%+ humidity at night, 30c, no air-con. It is as bad as it sounds. I felt like a lobster (and was as red as one too) in a saucepan of boiling water. TIL: air-con is even more important than WiFi.

2. 'Everyone speaks English in HK' is wrong. Especially when you need it most, like in taxis or on buses (and don't think that street names are the same in English and Cantonese either!). On my first afternoon in HK, I made the mistake of catching a little green minibus to go shopping. Only after I was on the bus did I realise it doesn't have stop buttons.....you have to shout at the driver....in Cantonese.
I sat petrified as I tried to decode what the locals were saying at each stop, and panicking over getting the tones wrong and saying something silly instead of "Stop here", I was lucky enough that my bus terminated where I was going. Now I've found where the regular buses go and I'm going to stick with them for a while...

Not until I've mastered Cantonese...

3. 2D maps are useless. Take my first visit to campus, for instance. Trying to get to the other end of campus, the map showed a simple journey - straight, left at this building, right then straight ahead. That would be fine, if the paths I was following weren't on different layers of the campus. I walked until I hit a dead end. Then realised I needed to climb several flights of stairs to carry on walking the "same" path on the map.
As confusing as this layered city is for foreign little me to navigate, it's incredibly efficient and useful. Traffic on the roads rarely stop for pedestrian crossings helping ease the number of cars driving around this small dense city, and bridges and elevated walkways allow pedestrians to have plenty of space, freely cross the roads and be free from the noise and heat of the traffic.

"Lower University Street" - which is not so low after all

4. Hall spirit is taken seriously. Kudos to the local students at my hall - you either go hard or go home. This week they have been having their orientation, which involves several early morning wake-up songs played over the PA system (very much to my frustration), shouting the hall cheers for hours out in the heat, and doing group activities until 5am! Their orientation has finished now, and I'm beginning to see more of my floormates (or "Villagers") but they must be pretty busy - our first floor meeting has been arranged for 11pm so everyone can make it.

5. The views are incredible. Never have I visited a city in which skyscrapers seem to grow from dense. It seems that wherever you are in Hong Kong, you will never have a view without the green mountains or the blue sea. The view from my 14th floor bedroom overlooks Pok Fu Lam cemetery but I still have beautiful mountains towering beside us, and I can see Belcher Bay (on the edge of Victoria Harbour) and the boats sailing through in the distance. I'm still jealous of those on the sea-view side of the building though.
Of course, the best part is the rooftops parties we've had in the evenings. It's the only place in the halls where you're allowed to drink alcohol and with the humidity increasing as the evening wears on, it's the perfect place to get a bit of sea breeze and cool down and relax. And the nighttime view of Hong Kong's firefly-like army of lights in just as beautiful as the daytime.

Room with a view

6. Being a vegetarian is difficult. For my first authentic meal (Shamefully, I gave in and got pizza at IKEA on my first night), I headed to our accommodation's on-site restaurant, 'Bayview'. I ordered a veggie sounding dish only to find when I got it that it had mince mixed into it, and the soup also had lumps of meat. So my excitement dimmed as I ate my bowl of plain boiled rice and the reality that I shouldn't be so surprised it's difficult being a vegetarian in China sunk in. Go ahead, roll your eyes at me.

Not as veggie as it sounded...

7. Nights out are very expensive or very cheap (but only if you're a lady). First night out we headed to a Karaoke bar in Kowloon. But with the cheapest beer at $52 (£4) we quickly headed over to infamous Lan Kwai Fong to an awesome little Brew House, where beer was only slightly cheaper.
Yet only a few days later I discovered a much cheaper way to go out - "Ladies Night". Somehow, for some reason, this means free drinks all night for the ladies. A large group from the Sassoon Road residences all headed out together and we had an awesome night of free drinks, meeting new people and dancing.

Very thankful the microphone wasn't passed to me!

Some risks aren't worth taking. Including Chocolate beer. 

And so that concludes my thoughts on surviving my first week on the other side of the world. Classes start this week and so I am sure there is more fun to be had (minus the classes), especially as we have Mid-Autumn Festival this weekend.