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| View from 7th floor of people chanting with bullhorns at 8 am. Note: my room is on the other side of the building from this and I could STILL hear them loud and clear.... |
Sunday evening Trace and I went to Yuen Long to satisfy a pizza craving and buy a few necessities. We stopped at a tea shop and Trace got some tea that I don't know the English name of. Here is a picture of it:
As you can see, it does not really resemble tea. It was more like jello. I tasted it and it was very sweet and herbal. Reminded me a lot of some Chinese medicine I had last summer. It didn't taste bad, but there was no way I could drink/eat a whole cup of it.
Trace told me it was weird to see a foreigner in a tea shop like the one in Yuen Long and that was why people kept staring at us as they walked by on the sidewalk.
I got to watch a woman make a bamboo drink. They used a giant knife to chop the bamboo in to pieces/slices and then they put it in a machine that flattened it and took the juice or pulp or whatever you want to call it and spat out the flatten outside of the bamboo. I didn't try the drink because Trace said it was super sweet, almost like pure sugar, which doesn't really appeal to me.
We shopped around a bit and then ate dinner at pizza hut. We splurged on cheese filled crust. It was sooooooooooo good.
I never thought I'd say this but I miss the food at WAC. It is not that bad in my opinion. Megan and I have agreed that we will have a giant feast on bagels, homemade cookies, mac and cheese, grilled cheese, cereal, fruit salad, spaghetti with alfredo sauce and parmesan, mozzarella sticks, banana bread, and soft serve ice cream with lots of toppings on it when we get back. We also agreed that we'd go start going to the gym in addition to our dance classes.... haha.
My grandmother has pointed out that I talk a lot about food in my blog. Food has never been something I got excited incredibly excited about, especially as a picky eater. But I have found that food is a very important part of this culture and I happen to not really enjoy most of the food, so that leads to me thinking about the food I miss at home. I also find some of the food eaten here very different and pretty interesting. I guess I have developed an interest in talking about food, but not trying a huge variety of food.
Today in Hong Kong's Heritage class, we listened to a bunch of Southern Chinese folksongs. They were pretty neat, but to someone who can't understand anything being said, they all sounded the same to me. Especially since almost all but one type of the folksongs (that we talked about) are sung to the same few tunes with no musical instruments accompanying the singers. This was because the words were considered to be much more important than the music and also because musical instruments were thought to be low class because only the blind beggar singing groups used them. When a child was born blind, he was thrown out on the street and picked up by the blind beggars. The blind beggars sang novels accompanied by a "moon guitar." The village people loved to listen to these novels being sung for hours, especially during the agricultural down times.
We also learned about the type of folk song called Mountain Songs, 山歌, (otherwise known as Teasing Songs). These songs/poems were composed in the head on the spur of the moment. They were supposed to be sung by two singers (usually a man and woman) who switched off verse by verse. These songs were predominantly about the relations between the sexes. They were usually teasing and involved some sort of innuendo and humor. The goal of these singers was to get their audience or the other singer to collapse from laughter. These songs would often turn into competitions between the two singers. It was said that the girls were much better at these Mountain Songs. No married person ever participated in these songs because it was considered improper. Women who were good at these Mountain Songs gained the reputation of being very intelligent (women were illiterate so literacy could not be used as a judge of intelligence) and hence had a better chance of marrying well because men wanted to marry clever women.
Here is an example of a Mountain Song 山歌 from Kap Pin Long in Sai Kung. This one is only two verses because the girl defeated the boy right away.
(Boy)
From far off I look at the girl coming down from the pass
Neither tall nor short, she is just right.
Such perfection fills my thoughts
I shall borrow money at interest and go and marry her.
(Girl)
Your fate stinks, your fate is crooked:
Your fate is like that, and you dare make yourself my equal?
I am the daughter of the Emperor in Peking:
When he leaves the palace, your head will fall to the ground.
Love to everyone at home! I heard it is getting pretty cool there. The past two days have actually been sort of cold and overcast here. Well I shouldn't say cold. I should say chillier than normal. It's actually pretty nice. It would be perfect if it were this temperature but sunny. Guess I'll have to be patient for that weather.
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| Miss this type of scenery. Can't wait to get out of the city in 80 days! |
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