25 May 2012

Hong Kong: New Territories

Thursday was New Territories day. We ate some new exciting fruit and Cass was able to show me Fanling, his first area on his mission. We also went out to look at the border from Hong Kong to Shenzen in mainland China. And the best part of Fanling? The super delicious street waffles!


Shenzen, across the mainland border
Delicious!
That afternoon we walked up to the to 1000 Buddhas. When we started up on the trail, this man dressed as a monk approached us. He rubbed a small circle on Cass's forehead three times and tapped it, put a bracelet on his wrist, and gave him like a little hug, again with the three pats. He repeated the process on me and then held out a wooden bowl with money in it. Cass pulled out 20HK (about $2 or $3) and started to say that that was all we had. Then the man was all, "No, 100" and then pointed at me, "100 for her." Cass handed him the money and we walked away. I was like, "What just happened??" Cass shook his head. "I don't even know." A few minutes up the grueling trail we saw a sign: "Real Monks will not ask you for food or money. Please report begging behavior."  Oops! Ripped off! 


After 1000 Buddhas, we headed over to the Hong Kong Heritage Museum. They had a Picasso exhibit, but I guess something big was happening that night and we weren't allowed to see all of the museum.  We did get to see some really cool exhibits on Cantonese Opera and New Territories Heritage with some great stuff on Costal Defense, Fisherman's Life, Village Life, and British Rule. They also had an exhibit on Roman Tam, Hong Kong Cantonpop Singer who was inspired by the Beatles. Some of  his costumes were reminiscent of Michael Jackson or Elvis. We had a great day!

Hong Kong Heritage Museum
what I would look like as a Cantonese Opera Singer
just singin with Roman Tam

2 comments:

Tenika Dennis said...

I hope it was a super pretty bracelet! Bummer that they didn't have the sign before you saw the "monk" :(

Jayme said...

I wish I wore bracelets! haha

Cass was like, "Well, I guess we can support the Buddhists since we've been to so many of their temples!" So we'll just think of it as a charitable donation :)