6 April 1998
About 51 per cent of babies born are male, so boys outnumber girls through childhood and into early adulthood. But men have a tendency to organise stupid and dangerous pastimes such as wars, gang fights, beer-drinking contests and other displays of machismo (Latin for "mashed-potato-brains"). So the dumb ones die and, at the age of 25, the number of women overtakes the number of men. That imbalance stays in place from then on, growing gradually wider. Thus the total number of women in any country at any time should be larger than the amount of men. (Nury Vittachi, in the Sunday Morning Post) In Hong Kong at the beginning of the 1990s, the local population seemed to defy the statistics with a surplus of men over women of more than 100,000 spare men. This surplus started dropping until in 1996 there were only 7,000 more men. But now the latest figures show that as of 1997, there is a 37,000-person abundance in the supply of males. This is attributed to an influx of men, from the mainland and abroad, on business. The imbalance is getting even worse on the mainland side of the fence. Because of a preference for male heirs and the one-child policy in China, it is expected that by the year 2005, the People's Republic will have an excess of 41 million men over women!
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One of the traditional trades of old Hong Kong that is disappearing in the 1990s HK is that of the letter writer. These now elderly men sit at a table on the street, often near a post office, and transcribe letters for Hong Kongers who cannot read and write. The early waves of refugees who came to the colony in the 1950s were focused on survival and did not have time for schooling. And there weren't enough schools to accommodate them anyway. A large part of a whole generation grew up illiterate. Nowadays the letter writers sit and listen to what the sender wants to say and then put on paper the appropriate words and ideas.
In Hong Kong no one ever quits working. After raising their families and retiring from jobs as main bread-winner, grandparents take on responsibility for young children, escorting them to and from school, or often they find odd jobs like this elderly woman collecting cardboard for recycling. The garbage collection system in this huge city depends on these elderly men and women who push their carts along the streets collecting the rubbish left at designated points and then ferrying it to larger "refuse collection points" where it is loaded into trucks to be taken to landfills.
A recent series of articles in HK newspapers seems to signal a new interest on the part of government and at least the high-end restaurants to improve food hygiene in Hong Kong. Right now it leaves much to be desired. Here fresh baked loaves of bread sit on the sidewalk next to a busy street. Besides road dirt, they are exposed to all the people, cats, dogs, and rats that go by.
Just when Hong Kong parents hope to have distracted their kiddies away from 
They tell me it's from Japan, but whether it's from there or originated here in Hong Kong, the sports drink called Pocari Sweat certainly has an unattractive name! Probably the local people don't even realize the meaning of the name as they reach for a cold can of Sweat at the little shop on the street. I tried it once and it didn't do much for me (it's a GatorAde imitation), and I'm sure part of that was psychological!
Halloween and its traditions are relatively unknown in Hong Kong. Trick or treaters might be seen in a condo inhabited by westerners but not anywhere else. Local Chinese people, especially the youth might know that Halloween has something to do with dressing up in costumes and with witches and ghosts and goblins, but would not be aware of its origins as the celebration of All Hallow's Eve, the day before All Saints Day. Some local advertizing shows pumpkins, fall leaves, and corn shocks, but their import is lost on the local population.
Last night was the time for viewing the moon (except that it was cloudy all over Hong Kong) and today was the free day to rest up from what would normally have been a short night because of communing with the moon. One important aspect of this Mid-Autumn Festival are the mooncakes, round, heavy cakes with egg-yolks baked in the middle. History says that notice of a revolutionary uprising was secretly passed around baked into similar round cakes, and now the mooncakes are the most traditional part of the celebration. Hong Kong alone bakes 25 million of these cholesterol bombs which are made with lard and one or two yolks from either chicken or duck eggs. Most people find a portion of one mooncake is enough to last them for a year so no one is sure where the rest of them go. Maybe to relatives in Taiwan or the mainland. Or maybe they get passed around from family to family like the proverbial fruitcakes in the USA!
Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, the fifteenth day of the ninth month in the lunar calendar. It is a harvest festival for the Chinese people, focused on the full moon with some old traditional myths to add atmosphere. On this evening families will have a meal together and then go out to gaze at the moon. The problem is that it's cloudy and misty, with occasional light rain this evening so there won't be any moon sitings this year! Crowds are still expected to gather at big community organized celebrations, however. The kids love it because it's a time of the year when it's OK to play with fire. Families will go to parks and the festival areas and play with their lighted lanterns traditional ones with candles inside and new ones, in the shape of planes and tanks, with battery-operated lights. They also light dozens of candles and sit around them in the darkness--a headache for the people responsible for the parks who must clean up the candle mess in the morning.
Hong Kong people are great collectors, especially of things that are small and easy to store in their cramped flats. McDonald's is in the middle of a promotion which offers the chance to buy a different Snoopy doll each day for 28 days. The three-inch Snoopy figures are dressed to represent various countries around the world, and are only available on that one day for an extra $6.00 (US$1 = HK$ 7.8) with the purchase of any value meal. Yesterday there were long queues outside of the McDonald's outlets all over HK as customers vied to get the U.K. Snoopy, dressed as a British Beefeater with a bearskin hat. It has been by far the most popular Snoopy model offered up to now.
Hong Kong is reported to have more mobile phones per capita than any city in the world except Tokyo. Everyone has them, it seems, even in the deaf community where those without enough hearing to use a phone have one--or two--pagers. Members of our group have been after me to get a phone--and I would like to have one for safety reasons when I am hiking alone, but only then. To me they are just a mass intrustion into other people's worlds as they go off constantly on the buses and subways and wherever people are gathered. I will admit that sometimes they are a plus. E.g., when we are at a planning meeting and want to set the date for the next meeting, we can call the people not present on their mobile phones (because they all have them) and have the next meeting arranged literally in minutes instead of going home, playing telephone/fax tag, and then sending around the meeting date to everyone. But that's still not enough of an advantage for me to get one!
Not all the bad taste is in Washington, D.C. these days. Washington has Clinton, but Hong Kong has Excreman, a cartoon character that has a toilet paper scarf and a chamber pot that serves as a hat. These accessories are most appropriate because Excreman is, well....a piece of poop. The invention of a local author, Excreman is a lump of excrement that lives in the sewers. His ambition is to escape the oppression of the sewers and become fertilizer for someone's flowers, but he is worried that he may might meet his demise in a sudden torrent of water that would dissolve him. This story line is found in two children's books that have become highly popular--much to the dismay of most parents. To make matters worse, an Excreman doll is now the rage in Hong Kong, and his image is being used to sell other merchandise such as umbrellas and mouse pads.
Tomorrow, the fifteenth day of the seven month of the Chinese lunar calendar, is known as the festival of hungry ghosts. For two weeks before and two weeks after the festival, the ghosts of the deceased are supposedly turned loose upon the world and must be fed. Every night now dozens of people are out on the streets burning piles of paper money, food, paper clothes, houses, etc., to keep the spirits happy. Makes for quite a mess with smoke and ashes blowing everywhere from the fires usually built in the gutter. This photo shows two elderly men carrying piles of paper clothing meant to be burnt for deceased relatives.
The Chinese people celebrate the Year of the Rat, and rats are very much a part of the Hong Kong landscape. It is not unusual at all to see rats in doorways of buildings or just along the sidewalk. Where I live, we have to close all our windows at night to keep the rats out because there are no screens. This week I am staying at the Maryknoll center house, and tonight when I went into one of the bathrooms, a six-inch rat was on one of the toilet seats. When he saw me, he jumped into the water in the toilet bowl and up the pipe. I could see his tail sticking out a little bit so I flushed him down the rest of the way.
The numbers are down from the R&R years during the Vietnam War, but still tens of thousands of US sailors and Marines come through Hong Kong each year. Continued access to HK as a liberty port was one of the major focal points of China-US negotiations when the British left in July, 1997. They first step ashore at Fenwick Pier, at the Fleet Arcade, the home of the Servicemen's Guides Association. One of the Maryknoll priests is director of SGA and today we were there for a meeting. Because of the US bombing of Afghanistan and Sudan and the number of US Consulate personnel in the building, it is considered a potential terrorism target and extra security measures are in effect. For example, now all the lockers in the main lobby area must remain with their doors hanging open to insure no bombs are placed there. In more normal circumstances, Fenwick Pier is also known as the home of the only McDonald's in the world that serves pizza and beer for the service men and women looking for a taste of America in Asia!
The peaks and ridges around Hong Kong are constantly being quarried for stone for the continuous building and development. Besides being aesthetically ugly, a recent cut into a Kowloon ridge will damage HK's fung shui (wind and water balance), declared a local fung shui master. In the picture to the right, you can see a ten-meter deep notch (circle) that was cut into Tai Sheung Tok peak. The fung shui master said the peak was part of the dragon arm that keeps energy and prosperity in the western harbor area. Now the cut will allow the energy to leak out; and since the dragon arm is associated with men, its shrinking will lead to a strengthening of the position of women.
The cut in the peak, here seen close-up, is now ten meters deep but will eventually be 40 meters. When the mountaintop has been removed, engineers will make the slope more gradual and plant it with vegetation. A prominent local politician said she couldn't comment on the fung shui, but anything that strengthens the position of women would be good! [Photos from the South China Morning Post.]
A common scene throughout the less urban areas of Hong Kong are these earthenware pots containing human bones. I pass them frequently when hiking in the hills. The large bottom pot is set in the ground, usually buried to about one third of its depth, and then a smaller pot is placed upside down over the larger one, as a lid. Usually cement is used to seal the top to the bottom. The locations of the pots are determined by fung shui, the interaction of the wind and water and forces of nature as determined by a geomancer. These pot burials sometimes occur on an open hillside but more often are next to sacred rocks or trees or other natural features. These pot graves seem to reflect the poverty and simplicity of a now-disappearing lifestyle. Most rural graves today would be the more modern 
16 June 1998
10 June 1998
9 June 1998
Geckos are lizards that are part of life in Hong Kong. They are in most houses, usually on the ceiling or high up on the walls. Sometimes you catch a glimpse of one as it skitters across the wall. Or it just sits in place, waiting for an insect to come into range. Basically they are helpful because they eat a tremendous amount of insects, but they can often be a nuisance when they poop on any papers you leave uncovered on the desk overnight. They also have a bad habit, in my room, of chirping in the middle of the night from the bookcase and awakening me. And recently I rather putrid smell has been coming from my computer when I turn it on, and I suspect a gecko met his end inside. Last year a gecko hopped on a piece of paper feeding into my fax machine and took a ride--his last ride--through the rollers. In the picture is a gecko that has taken to enjoying the warmth of the radio during cold weather.
Hong Kong takes its wealth very seriously. The accumulation of money is a primary value in Chinese culture, and just having it is not enough. You have to show you have it, so we have pink Rolls Royces and Ferrari race cars in a town where the highest speed limit is 45 MPH. And we have marble and polished granite buildings. And steps. And walls. And everything. Everything is made of stone in HK--the wood was used up hundreds of years ago--and it has to have a mirror shine. The problem is that marble and polished granite is extremely slippery, especially when wet. So all the marble walkways have warning signs put on them each time it rains, alerting pedestrians to the danger. In the US, either OSHA or a hundred lawsuits would keep architects from using slippery floor surfaces, but not here. In this picture note the yellow "Wet Floor" warning sign put on marble courtyard area after a morning rain shower.
6 April 1998
This family came prepared with shovel and broom to tidy up an ancestor's grave. Many families bring food offerings, and after their prayers, they will then have a picnic with the offerings. More and more families are bringing flowers to graves now, though, as western influences continue to spread throughout Hong Kong society. Note the steep hillside, too steep for building, which has been terraced to make a cemetery.
5 January 1998
Buddhists here today held a special ceremony to "pacify the souls of the dead chickens" killed by the government's decree. The ceremony included a ritual feeding of the dead birds and a show of reverence for life by releasing the entire catch of one fishing boat (photo, right). Further ceremonies will continue for the next week.
