Despite the cold weather we have been experiencing over the Christmas weekend, today (Tuesday 28 December 2010) turned out to be quite a bright, sunny day here in Hong Kong.
Somebody on FaceBook asked me “Does Hong Kong ever get cold?“ Well, it dipped all the way to 9 degrees Celsius recently.
For this reason, my family and I took a trip into the city (Hong Kong Island) on the Star Ferry to experience the weather from the waters of Victoria Harbour (that separates our apartment in Hung Hom from HK Island).
I took the following pictures from the Star Ferry around 3pm this afternoon:
The HK Conference & Exhibition Centre (HKCEC) is bathed in brilliant sunlight (Pic: Mike Jansen)
Here are some more pics taken from the Star Ferry:
I know that back home in Cape Town the tradition is to have a HUGE Christmas lunch followed by an afternoon nap, only to be followed by more food.
Here in Hong Kong we like to take a walk after a HUGE lunch and out on the Gold Coast, one place to walk off the huge lunch is to the Gold Coast Piazza.
My son Ethan took the following pictures:
No guessing what the Christmas theme at the Gold Coast Piazza is! (Pics: Ethan Jansen)
My family attended midnight mass at the St. John’s Anglican Cathedral in Central last night.
The service was being broadcast live on RTHK (English) which could account for the packed church.
I always overheat (despite it being winter) so I didn’t mind sitting in the garden with about another 200-odd people watching the service on a big-screen. Those who have been in that part of Central will agree that the St.John’s cathedral Garden is a magical place what with the beautifully-lit HSBC and China Bank building right next door.
Howzit-HongKong.com wishes all our readers and all South Africans in Hong Kong a Blessed Festive Season and a Prosperous New Year!
I managed to Tweet these 2 pics from the Cathedral Garden:
Few cities around the world can beat Hong Kong when it comes to it’s city-wide Christmas light-shows.
One would think that, with the world-wide focus on power-saving geared towards a greener earth, that the city-fathers would rather encourage developers and building/mall-owners to spend less on electrifying their Harbour-side properties.
Not Hong Kong!
From the heavy competition between Malls, tourist attractions such as DisneyLand, to restaurants and sky-scrapers… millions of dollars are spent over the festive season.
The DisneyLand castle’s faux snow.
IFC Mall in Central. HK’s hundreds of malls all compete for business… (Pic: Flickr)
Tsim Sha Tsui East, near my apartment in Hung Hom
I found this YouTube clip to show you the view of the skyline on either side of Victoria Harbour:
My son’s school’s Parent Teacher Association (PTA) has an annual outing that normally takes participants way out into parts of Hong Kong that foreign visitors, let alone foreign residents hardly ever see (unless you’re married to a local).
As we don’t have a car in Hong Kong, my family always go on these very enjoyable outings. Last year we went to a quaint herb farm near Fanling in the New Territories and even went strawberry-picking in the afternoon.
This year around, the PTA-outing took us to a public farm and botanical garden started by the school’s namesake, the Kadoorie family.
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The family were originally Iraqi Jews from Baghdad who later migrated to Bombay (Mumbai), India in the mid-eighteenth century.
Ellis Kadoorie arrived in Shanghai from Bombay in 1880 as an employee of the Sephardi Jewish firm David Sassoon & Sons. Within a few years he had accumulated large sums of money and had gone into business on his own account, with companies in both Shanghai and Hong Kong. Over the next two decades, the Kadoorie brothers made their fortunes, achieving success in banking, rubber plantations, electric power utilities and real estate, and gaining a major share-holding in Hong Kong Hotels Limited. (who owned the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong)
This year’s PTA outing saw us visiting a farm that was started by the Kadoorie family in the days when there was a massive population explosion in Hong Kong and a great need for fresh produce. These days the Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Gardens is essentially an educational establishment and botanical gardens. Schools and families flock to this vast property near Yuen Long in the far northern New Territories.
Of course, as this seems to be strawberry-season in the SAR, we once again found our way to yet another strawberry farm where we could pick our own fruit.
Ethan going through his strawberry harvest
You can read more about the Kadoorie Farm & Botanic Gardens here
Whenever I have to visit my son’s school in Causeway Bay (near the Hong Kong Stadium) I always want to kick myself when I pass a particular landmark in this area without a camera (my phone camera just doesn’t do it for me).
I found myself in Tung Lo Wan Road yesterday but this time I was well-equipped. The reason? There is a particular visually stunning Episcopal Church called St. Mary’s on the corner of Tung Lo Wan Road that is built in the traditional Chinese style.
It has been categorised as a Grade 3 historical building by the Hong Kong Government and was built in 1937
When you approach the red-brick structure that is built on a rise, you will be forgiven for mistaking it for a Chinese temple. Until you see the Christian cross above the main entrance.
I took a couple of pictures:
You can read more about St. Mary’s Church here and if you can read Chinese click here
One of the iconic pictures of Hong Kong is undoubtedly the sight of junk boats in Victoria Harbour.
Although the junk is an ancient Chinese seafaring vessel, it is still in use today. While the larger junks are very much part of the party-scene in the SAR with scores of weekend party-goers taking to the seas around Hong Kong on party-junks, there are still many fisher folk using smaller junks to ply their trade.
The older junks were of course fitting with massive red/maroon sails, while these days they are all diesel-powered. Some of the corporate party-junks like the one in the picture below, even have faux-sails for added effect.
Two of the city’s icons: the junk framed by the famous Hong Kong island skyline
I took the following pictures of a fisherman’s junk working the waters of Victoria Harbour near my apartment:
The new and the old. A junk bobbing in the choppy waters of Victoria Harbour with the North Point/Kowloon Bay ferry (orange) in the background (Pics: Mike Jansen)
As I wrote earlier, I used to live in Ma On Shan for the first year after my family arrived in Hong Kong.
Ma On Shan is an extension of the Sha Tin New Town along eastern coast of Tolo Harbour in the New Territories of Hong Kong. It is located by the west face of the twin peaks of Ma On Shan, which can be translated as “horse saddle mountain“. The town is built on the strip between Tolo Harbour and Ma On Shan mountain. Deep inside the slope of Ma On Shan was an iron mine. The mine was long abandoned before the more recent new town development.
I recently went back there and was very impressed with the brand-spanking new promenade along Tolo Harbour.
However, the real gem of the area for me is the Ma On Shan Park. We used to live right next to the Park and spent many afternoons enjoying the facilities or just the tranquility of this green spot in this densely populated new town.
If you look at the picture below (taken from nearby Shatin, overlooking the world-famous Shatin Racecourse) you would not imagine that there is such a green belt amongst the throngs of high-rise buildings. But it is there, right behind the low-rise building on the top-left edge of the picture (I used to live in that low-rise):
Here are some images I took on a recent visit:
The eastern corner of Ma On Shan Park with the sea in the background (Pic:wikipedia)
A fisherman trying his luck in the Tolo Harbour waters (Pic: Mike Jansen)
Ma On Shan can be reached via the MTR. Take the East Rail-line to Tai Wai MTR and change to the (dark red) Ma On Shan line.
Last year we told you about all the signs warning about what not to do in Wan Chai Park.
I recently visited the very beautiful Ma On Shan Park situated next to Tolo Harbour in the New Territories. My family used to live next to the Park in our first year in Hong Kong and while we live in the city these days, we often still visit the area because of its natural beauty as well as the tranquility and serenity of the seaside town. There’s also a wicked sea-side driving range but more about that in a later post.
Both these Parks are run by the Hong Kong Leisure and Cultural Services Department and it was no surprise to find Ma On Shan Park also plastered with signs warning about what not to do…
