Gong hei fat choy! This is the greeting you will hear from any Chinese person when you meet up during the Chinese New Year. The translation is “wishing you well and prosperity”. A lovely sentiment.
Quite a while ago, I thought that I would add an ongoing travel feature to this blog. This would involve me sharing pictures and thoughts from the road as we travelled. Needless to say, we haven’t been going anywhere for the last couple of years, so that has not happened.
Therefore, I have decided, because we’re all chomping at the bit to see exciting new places again, I will post some snippets from previous travel adventures. As you may have noticed, I have already done so for Singapore and Iceland. Today I’m going to share some pictures and thoughts from a couple of visits to another of my favorite cities in the world, Hong Kong. And, these are primarily from a wonderful time to visit, around the Chinese New Year.
A little Background Information
In 1898 at the end of the first opium war, Britain obtained a 99 year lease for the area known as the “New Territories.” As you probably know, the lease expired in 1997 and the whole area reverted to Chinese rule. It was done under the premise that Hong Kong would become a Special Administrative Region and that it would maintain its own economic and governing systems. This was referred to as the “one country, two systems” approach.
Hong Kong was a colony and dependent territory of the United Kingdom from 1841 to 1997. Britain obtained a 99-year lease of the New Territories in 1898. The whole territory was transferred to China in 1997. As a Special Administrative Region, Hong Kong (at least theoretically) maintains separate governing and economic systems from that of mainland China under the principle of “one country, two systems”.
The area we know as Hong Kong consists of the main bodies of Hong Kong Island, the New Territories, Lantau island, and the Kowloon Peninsula, which forms part of the mainland. It also includes over 200 other smaller islands. These areas are surrounded by the South China Sea on all sides except the north, which abuts against the city of Shenzhen in Guangdong province. They are separated by various river systems.
Most of the time when we think of Hong Kong we think of the island and what appears to be a massive city that smothers it. This is definitely not the whole reality. There are many urbanized areas that lay outside of Hong Kong Island. And a number of these are have been constructed on land that has been reclaimed from the South China Sea.
Because we typically only see pictures of the Hong Kong Island city view, most folks aren’t aware of some of the other wonderful attributes of the area. For one, approximately 40% of the land mass is given over to greenspace called Country Parks. These are wonderful places to hike and explore nature. Secondly, there are many wonderful beach areas to enjoy.
The Chinese New Year
One of the best times to travel to Hong Kong is around the Chinese New Year. The tradition in China is that people tend to want to go to their ancestral homes during this two week period. That often means that a goodly portion of Hong Kong’s population has gone off to visit family and friends in mainland China. So, there is normally no large influx of folks into the city around the new year.
You will see some of the events worth checking out as you go through my pictures, but one that is not represented here is the great shopping available at this time of year. Shops are all trying to clear out inventory with big sales before bringing in new products to kick off the new year.
So here we go, photos and comments from our two extended stays in Hong Kong in 2002 at 2013.
This map will provide you with the general lay of the land. On it, you can see Hong Kong island Lantau island, the Kowloon Peninsula and the many Country Parks that make up such a large part of the political unit. You can also see Shenzen in Guangzhou province and the dividing line between mainland China and Hong Kong. The red “locator” indicates where we stayed both times we were there, at the Chinese University of Hong Kong out in the New Territories. This map does not distinguish the difference between where the Kowloon Peninsula, close to the waterfront, and the New Territories begin and end.
You can take the subway from the Kowloon side under Victoria Harbour to Central/Hong Kong Island, but absolutely the best way to get there is on one of these magnificent old Star ferries. When we were there the second time, there had been a radical increase in the fare to cross on the ferry. I believe it jumped all the way up to about $0.25 CAD. 🙂 One Hong Kong dollar is currently worth about 16 cents Canadian, to give you an idea of the exchange rate.
The view from “the Peak” on Hong Kong Island. Apparently, it is a lovely view from up there. The Love-goddess took this picture… I don’t do Heights. LOL! I did Photoshop myself into one such picture but it has disappeared somehow. That is Kowloon on the other side of the harbour.
View of one of the many country parks. This one is on the backside of Hong Kong Island overlooking the town of Stanley.
Just one of the many beaches we visited throughout the island system.
And the Chinese New Year begins. I took this photo just before we got on the ferry to cross over to Central to enjoy some of the related New Year’s festivities. As you can see, the buildings are all decorated up for the Year of the Horse. Throughout the year, many of these buildings participate in a large nightly light show that can be watched from the Kowloon side.
One “must do” activity on the New Year’s Eve is to go to a flower market and load up on all kinds of wonderful arrangements for the home.
We visited the enormous flower market that was set up in Victoria Park just for the new year. As you can see the nightly crowd is enormous – so enormous that they had to make all of the passages between the vendors into one-way streets.
On our way out of the market, the shot gives you an overall view of about a third of the market – much too big to fit in the one photo. A great experience.
Lots of light displays around town as you walk around.
An old undergraduate friend, who was teaching at another university in Hong Kong in their Hotel and Tourism Management program, told us that we needed to take in the annual New Year’s parade. To paraphrase his description “it is corporate and cheesy”. He was right. I am not really sure what the San Francisco 49ers cheerleaders and McDonald’s have to do with the Chinese New Year. LOL!
Nor am I sure I how these cowpokes all managed to wrangle a free trip to Hong Kong for the Calgary Stampede to participate in the parade.
At least there were some authentic Chinese aspects to the parade.
We bought these decorative firecrackers to hang in our little apartment during the holiday.
And, we have continued to hang them in our home every year since. Can’t believe we actually paid to ship these things home. 🙂
This is a more recent photo of the Hong Kong skyline, not taken by us. As you can see when you compare it to the older picture, much development has taken place.
Each time we have been in Hong Kong, we have stayed on the beautiful campus of the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The Love-goddess was there doing some work each time… I was undertaking the tough job of enjoying myself. 🙂 The shot is from one of the highest vantage points on the campus. All the buildings you can see, except for the ones off in the far distance on the left, form part of the campus. The campus extends right down to water level, which you can see squeezed in there on the left. Another Country Park off in the distance.
This is the view from the apartment they provided for us the first time we were there. As you can see, they are reclaiming land. During our second visit, we would often go down to hang out or have lunch on the beautiful waterfront science park that was developed on the reclaimed area. If you were to visit Hong Kong you could easily ride the subway out to the University, and stop and tour the campus. Best done by taking the shuttle bus right up to the top and walking down. 🙂
There are lots of wonderful small towns to visit in the Hong Kong area. This is one of our favourites, the village of Sai Kung.Tai O is another delightful small village that you should go and check out if you get there.
Sai Kung is a fishing village. You can walk out on the wharf and buy fresh, just caught seafood from local fisherman right off their boats.
Better still, you can go to one of the many waterfront seafood restaurants and just point at what you want for lunch on display in these holding tanks. You point, they cook. It does not get any fresher than that.
The Love-goddess on an outing to Shenzhen with some local friends. I believe some shopping was involved; hence the bags for hauling stuff home. 🙂 At the time, you still needed to have a China visa to cross over the border from Hong Kong. I don’t know if that is still in effect. We had visas because we went to Shanghai before we ended up in Hong Kong the second time.
The final word goes to Comrade Love-goddess.
Once the dust from the pandemic has settled and things have calmed down in Hong Kong you should definitely consider going there for a visit… along with all sorts of other wonderful places when you’re over there. Here is a link to the Hong Kong tourism board’s Discover Hong Kong website. It will provide you with some insights to what Hong Kong is all about and the kinds of things that are going on there during the Chinese New Year. You might also want to check out their section specific to what Chinese folks are doing during the fifteen days of the event. All these things should be back in full swing when you get there.
