Celebrating the Year of the Horse

I love that there's never a dull weekend in Hong Kong. It seems like we're always celebrating something. This weekend was no different, especially with Chinese New Year coming up on Friday. Today, I ended up at Cityplaza at Taikoo Station. This was one of the more elaborate displays I've seen so far...

This year will be the Year of the Horse according to the lunar calendar, and celebrations leading up to the Chinese New Year have focused around this theme.

The lovely CNY display at Cityplaza at Taikoo MTR station. (Photo: CathC)

Here you can see different wheel barrels holding goods and symbols that are part of the traditional celebrations. Like clementines that represent luck, gold for fortune, and rice sacks written with the phrase "never empty" to represent the plentiful food. But I'm not entirely sure how the horse and carriage relates to traditional Chinese New Year celebrations, but it was a pretty display.

I was also at the mall just at the right time to catch the Jinan Acrobatic Performance. It was a fun show with talented acrobats and contortionists. I was pretty impressed by their talents. They were doing back flips so quickly and so high that it almost seemed like the stage was spring loaded!

The troup getting the crowd excited for the show(Photo: CathC)

Watching the troupe perform their hat toss routine during the dress rehearsal. (Photo:CathC)

What a nice way to spend a Sunday afternoon.

Getting ready for another New Year

Chinese New Year is coming up in a few weeks, and people across the city are getting ready to celebrate the biggest holiday in the lunar calendar.

The holiday is focused on family gatherings and bringing good fortune for the New Year, so much of the customs centers around buying food, flowers, and other gifts to celebrate the holiday with. I was impressed by the size of the flower festival even at the local mall downstairs. There were rows of different orchids, lilies, and other plants (like beets!). Also conveniently located next to the flower stalls were traditional gifts to bring to relatives when you visit them over the holidays like candies, cakes, and dried seafood.

My favourite New Year treat is the Chinese New Year's Cake (年糕), a sticky sweet, cake made of glutinous rice. Typically these cakes are sold in pie tins and meant to be shared by families. So I was surprised to find individual sized cakes being sold in plastic cups.

But aside from some citrus fruit that I don't normally see, most of the goods being sold can be found in the supermarket during the rest of the year. But I think the convenience of having such a large variety of goods together is something you only get in HK.

These swans that are part of East Point City`s Chinese New Year Display are made of artificial flowers (Photo: CathC)

I'm looking forward to the celebrations over the next couple of weeks: seeing relatives, snacking of treats, and watching the fireworks, and parades.

Homestyle Korean cooking

I've been craving for some Korean food this week and figured Kimberly Street in Tsim Sha Tsui would be a place for dinner. This area seems like "Little Korea" to me. There are a variety of cuisines from Korean bbq to homestyle cooking and snacks.

After seeing Gamjatang (Korean Pork Bone Soup) on the menu for the Azumma Korean Restaurant, I decided to give this one a try. For some reason, I can't seem to find this dish in most of the Korean restaurants I've come across in HK... 

The wait for Azumma is a bit confusing to figure out at first because it's actually two adjacent restaurant that are jointly run. You get your ticket on one side (with the open kitchen facing the street), and typically get seated in the larger room next door. Watching the chef grill LA Kalbi on the stovetop while I waited for a seat made me even hungrier than ever!

After I sat down, I was disappointed to find the pork bone soup was sold out for the evening (guess I need to come before 8pm next time!). So I ended up ordering the bulgogi and seafood pancake instead. The pancake had large pieces of squid in it and was delicious as well.

Still wanting to have some pork bone soup for later in the week, I went into one of the few Korean grocery stores in the area to pick up some pepper and soybean paste. Aside from the pork, these seem to be the key flavoring ingredients for the soup according to this recipe.

I also love drinking barely tea and picked up some while I was in the store. This solomon seal's tea seemed to work well for me for soothing coughs and/or after eating an oily meal.

I love watching all the different boats and cargo ships sail across Victoria Harbour so I stopped by before dinner. The breezy evening and beautiful sunset made it worth being late to dinner...

Developing sustainably

For a city that is known for it's continuous development and construction projects, sustainable and eco-friendly living isn't something I would first associate with Hong Kong. So I was very curious when I first came across this Zero Carbon Building and the surrounding urban woodland in Kowloon Bay.

Quiet parks with benches are something I miss here, which is what drew my attention to this space when I first walked by on my way to MegaBox. The park is situated in the middle of Kowloon Bay's industrial area and to my surprise it's also meant to showcase green building designs and raise awareness of sustainable living.
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A view of the Zero Carbon Building and the surrounding Urban Native Woodland from MegaBox (Photo: CathC)

According to the sign in the park, it doesn't seem as if the building is currently reaching it's zero carbon emissions target. The number on the left side represents the energy generation (in kWh) on-site by renewable energy from photovoltaic panels and a tri-generation system using biofuel made of waste cooking oil (energy sources described on official website). The number on the right side represents the energy consumption (in kWh). The two numbers don't balance, but the website does mention the target is to have zero net carbon emissions on an annual basis. So maybe these numbers will balance out later in the year...

The energy consumption of the building on April 21st 2013 (Photo: CathC)

The same sign on Jan 4th 2014 (Photo: CathC)

One potential problem I noticed is that the park is very well lit at night and the lights turn on early in the evening (~5 pm). The lights all use LED bulbs, but it seems a little excessive to line all of the steps leading up from the park to the building with lights (think movie theatre steps). Maybe it's a difficult to capture enough solar energy during the day (between the cloud days and film of dirt that accumulated on the panels) to really sustain all the lights in the park and other electrical demands of the building?

But there are some aspects of the park's design that seem like good ideas- like this building that's designed following a tree structure which mimics a tree's ability to provide shade and cool the surrounding areas. It's also suppose to be a framework for climbing plants. The roof of the building is lined with a thin film photovoltaic to power the fans that operate on the ceiling.

This cafe wasn't open yet back in April 2013, but was open for business when I came back in Jan 2014 (Photo:CathC)

 

Another is promote sustainable living in terms of buy local foods. This would be quite a shift in culture since there's a lot of imported groceries (like Danish eggs or Brazil Chicken) in the supermarkets and wet markets (surprising Brazil chicken can be found at wet markets).

I had fun wandering around in the park to learn about Hong Kong's take on sustainable living and green building designs.

The figures of engineers and technicians holding different tools were too cute not to photograph (Photo: CathC)