Hong Kong Travels – Sporting Road

For the best jewelry shopping in Hong Kong http://www.chowtaifook.com/en/ and jade shopping. Gold is never cheap anywhere. And most gold are sold at market price around the world, but that is especially true in HK, where they fashion the piece of jewelry and then sell it to you at current market price, plus something like 10% or $50 for the manufacturing fee. This part is negotiable. Gold is relatively cheaper in HK when it is turn into jewelry, especially as compared to China mainland, Europe or US. Also it is more difficult to buy pure gold outside of HK (.999 or .9999 percent gold). So, it is very common for visitors to buy gold in HK. As they are more pure, handcraft is world famous, and relatively cheaper. But it is also softer and more delicate to take care of these almost pure gold pieces compared to 14K, which is composed of 58.3% gold and 41.7% alloy.

Experience a Chinese Tea Ceremony Yixing with Wuyi Oolong. Or try Hong Kong-style milk tea, which is completely different from other Asian teas. An earthy blend of black tea (often English breakfast tea) and evaporated milk, some even strained through silk stockings for the silkiest mouthfeel, Hong Kong-style milk tea is the epitome of the city’s East-meets-West culture. Also try yin yang– milk tea with coffee added in for that extra kick of caffeine to begin your morning.

Hong Kong noodles

If you can’t make it to Hong Kong, here are some recipes to try at home:

Hong Kong French Toast and lots of other HK recipes from KwokSpots. Hong Kong-style french toast is the devil on a plate. Peanut butter sandwiched between two slices of bread, dunked in egg and deep fried, this snack is an addictive, carby square of evil goodness. If that’s not good (or bad?) enough for you, it’s usually served with butter and drenched in syrup. It’s the same as an abusive boyfriend who is good in bed– obviously terrible for you, but keeps you craving for more at the same time.

or try other HK recipes from Lucas Sin

or try other HK recipes from Made with Lau

Or links to Hong Kong style restaurants in Denver. Including this one for award winning szechuan chicken. We like Hong Kong Station as well.

Or break out the mah jong set for a game while eating at home.

From one writer on quora on the difference between Hong Kong and Mainland China:

One word: cha chaan teng. Hong Kong is Canto-Western fusion.

Hong Kong uses Cantonese and Traditional Chinese as the administrative Chinese language, Mainland China uses Mandarin and Simplified. Administrative language sets the baseline attributes of culture.

Hong Kong is also an English speaking society (experience may vary depending on district) and thus much more expat friendly. In certain areas of Hong Kong, English gets you much further than Cantonese or Mandarin. If China took over Britain, it might look like Hong Kong. Especially the Tube. Except for cosmopolitan districts of big cities, finding a fluent English speaker on the street in Mainland is like winning the lottery.

Hong Kong is fully integrated with the rest of the world, from an unaltered Internet online to access to (genuine) global brands offline. China is a parallel universe with Chinese characteristics. This is where the stereotypes of the country bumpkin Mainlanders vs cosmopolitan Hong Kongers come from. A larger proportion of Mainlanders are country bumpkins because they never left the country, couldn’t before (thanks to visa restrictions) and now don’t want to. A larger proportion of Hong Kong are cosmopolitan because many are foreign passport holders and have overseas education and/or employment experience.

Hong Kong pop culture has been exported worldwide for a long time while Mainland pop culture is still mostly for domestic consumption and beginning to make moves to the rest of the world. Mainlanders also love consuming Taiwan and HK pop culture, which has pivoted from worldwide export to Mainland focus.

Hong Kong is openly Japan friendly. Mainlanders love Japanese culture and products too, but political rivalry makes it awkward for them express their love.

Hong Kong holidays include Western holidays, but Mainland does not. The more cultures you embrace, the more parties you go to, but the economy still needs to run, people need to work. So HK bank holidays are more common but shorter, and Mainland ones are fewer but longer. The biggest holidays in Hong Kong are Xmas/New Years and Chinese New Year. The biggest holidays in Mainland are Chinese New Year (but significantly longer holiday), Labour Day (May 1st) and China Day (October 1st).

Hong Kongers are passive aggressive and Mainlanders are very in your face, kind of like British and American stereotypes. Related point: Hong Kongers are much more subtle or negotiable when breaking or bending the rules, whereas Mainlanders are very blatant unless the stakes are high, in which case their sophistication exceeds Hong Kongers.

Patriotism also mirrors the subtle Brits and proud Americans. Mainlanders are usually proud to be Chinese, but rarely you have a flag waving Hong Konger who’s proud to be Hong Konger or Chinese, unless they are compared with a Mainlander, which usually elicits a distinction ranging from “yes Chinese but of Hong Kong” or “I’m not Chinese, I’m Hong Konger”.

Hong Kong drives on the wrong side of the road, like the Brits and their former colonies. Mainland China occasionally drives on both sides, but officially on the right side like 66% of the world. Thankfully, both use SI aka the Metric System.

Chinese Character for Love

The Chinese character for the word love didn’t exist until it was invented in the 1920s. Ancient Chinese literature is laden with tales of electrifying love at first sight and erotic bliss,” explains Stanford scholar of Chinese classics Haiyan Lee. But most Chinese love stories carry a similar moral: if one abides by the codes and prescriptions of the marriage process and doesn’t deviate from the structures of the familial network, the system will guarantee safe passage to happiness. But push the limits of passion a bit too far, Lee says, and one is bound to find oneself married to a rapturous but cataclysmically evil fox spirit. Confucian ideals long discouraged romance between spouses by privileging relationships between men instead. As noted by the late scholar Francis Hsu in his book Under the Ancestors’ Shadow (Columbia University Press, 1948), Chinese families under Confucianism were gender hierarchies that subjugated women. The two strongest family relationships were between father and son and elder and younger brothers. The strength and order of a family was synonymous with the strength and order of the state. Any man who deviated from the system and appeared openly affectionate with his wife was seen as someone of weak character.

The Chinese character for “love” or “to love” is “愛” in traditional Chinese, but it can also be written as “爱” in simplified Chinese. The simplified version of Chinese love lacks the component “心”, which symbolizes “heart” in Chinese. The traditional Chinese character is more commonly used in Taiwan and Hong Kong, whereas simplified Chinese is used in mainland China.