The China Visit - Part 7
I’m posting this part of my trip on Monday August 29th. I’m back in LA and recovering from the much lag. I’m working on the images now and will post the rest of my journal entries over the course of this week. I’ve still got some writing to do.
It’s Saturday morning, August 27th, as I write this. I’m on the plane from Beijing back to Hong Kong. Beijing was a real adventure, but more about that later. That’s jumping ahead and that’s not allowed. That would be cheating.
Tuesday was going to be a bit of an unusual day. Before I came to China I had asked around in the comics community about the Hong Kong comics scene. I was referred to Erik Ko or Udon Comics. He knows quite a bit about the Hong Kong comics scene and hooked me up with Alan Wan, the Deputy Chariman of Jade Dynasty, the largest comics publisher in Hong Kong. Alan and I discussed things over e-mail before I left for China and we had arranged to have lunch on Tuesday, followed by a trip to his office and an interview.
My day would start a bit later than usual, which was fine by me as I really needed the extra sleep to take care of my cold. I spoke with Adeline Ho that morning, the licensing manager for Jade Dynasty as well as Alan’s assistant, who asked me to meet them at the Hang Fa Chuen subway station, well on a side of the Island I’ve not visited before. No problem, let’s have an adventure. While I did my interview thing, Sharon met Carrie in town to do some shopping.
Around Noon, Jimmy and I took a cab down to the Causeway Bay station and hopped on the Subway. He left me two stops later when he went to drop his passport off at the Chinese consulate so that he could get a visa to visit the mainland a week later (he was going to Shanghai and then Xian to see the Terra Cotta Soldiers ). I continued on down the line, got off at Hang Fa Chuen about 10 minutes early, went to the Circle K market to get some water. Adeline met me at the market only moments later.
She walked me a short ways to a dim sum restaurant next door where we waited a couple of minutes while Alan parked his car. Adeline asked about my trip and what I had been doing. I told her about my visit to Hong Kong Disneyland the previous Sunday and she said she’d be going the following Saturday and was really looking forward to it. When I went to Disneyland only 5,000 people were in the park. When she was going there’d be 25,000+. I hope the fighting of the crowds wasn’t too crazy for her..
Alan arrived shortly thereafter and we sat down for what was probably the best Dim Sum meal I’ve ever had. Alan told me that in China if a Dim Sum restaurant is very noisy and active, it’s almost always good. If it’s quiet, you should leave immediately as it’s probably pretty bad. Without a doubt this was a very noisy, very active restaurant and I’m pretty sure I was the only white guy in the restaurant. I like those odds!
Lunch consisted of a lot of talk about comics, both American and Hong Kong. I won’t bore you with the details here, especially as it will eventually end up as part of a feature article over at Comic Book Resources in a couple of weeks. Suffice it to say it was a fascinating and delicious lunch and talking with Alan and Adeline gave me another view of Hong Kong that I would otherwise not have. Alan often apologized for his English skills, which I never found lacking. In fact, I found his English to be perfectly fine. Certainly a lot better than my Cantonese.
The food itself was similar to the dim sum I’ve had in Los Angeles, with a bit more flavor and variety. Alan had asked if I wanted more American style or Hong Kong and I told him to bring on the Hong Kong. Unlike Dim Sum in Los Angeles where they bring the food around on a cart and you pick and choose what you want, in Hong Kong you order your food ahead of time and they bring it direct from the kitchen. Probably means it’s a bit fresher. My favorite dim sum dish is paper noodles and they were the best ever here. Tasty!
Lunch lasted about an hour and a half, at which point Alan, Adeline and I drove to the offices of Jade Dynasty where I interviewed Alan for about 40 minutes. He had to leave at that point for a meeting, so Adeline gave me a tour of their offices which was fascinating. Once again the full report will eventually end up on CBR for those of you who are interested in how comics are put together in Hong Kong, which is very different than in the United States.
Around 3:30 that afternoon Adeline saw me off and I took a cab back to Parkview to meet up with Jimmy. It seems the way I got to see Hong Kong was through a series of cab rides. This day was one of my longest cab rides, about $12 US. I got stuck in a little bit of Hong Kong traffic, which was kinda fun. The freeways are littered on either side with massive apartment buildings, sometime butting right up to the freeway. It was odd to think that some of these apartment buildings, which saw the third floor up against the freeway, would have apartments underneath the freeway. Did that make sense? Basically floors one and maybe two would have a view beneath the freeway, while floor three would have a direct view of traffic. I guess that’s true for some places in New York and Chicago as well. Not the kind of living I’d want to do.
While I was off doing my interview, Jimmy was at the Chinese consulate getting his passport visa taken care of. Unfortunately for Jimmy, it took a lot longer than it should have. See, he arrived, took his number and waited for it to be called. He got a number like 189, but at the time they were serving number 150 and the numbers weren’t moving very quickly. OK, no problem, just sit there and do some reading or cross words, right? Except when Jimmy next looked up they had called 190. Shit! Missed his number. So he got up, told the guy at the counter that he missed his number by one, at which point the guy pulled a new number for Jimmy and sent him back to his seat. He wasn’t rude or anything, but clearly there was a system they had in place and they were sticking to it. Jimmy had another hour long wait, so he went next door to the adjacent convention center and poked around in there. Turns out it was a convention of forensic scientists (Chinese CSI?). Jimmy was tried to pop into a lecture or two, but at outside every room was a guard checking credentials, so no chance for Jimmy to check out some dead dudes or mutilated corpses. Oh well.
After I arrived, Jimmy and I hung out at the apartment for a while, as Sharon and Carrie finished up their shopping. Later that night we all met up at Taco Loco in the Midlevels. Sharon wanted to see what Mexican food was like in Hong Kong. Why not? Los Angeles has some absolutely amazing Mexican food and pretty much everywhere I’ve tried Mexican food that wasn’t in the American South West, it’s been a disappointment. Now while it wasn’t awful food by any stretch, Taco Loco would classify as barely average Mexican food by Los Angeles standards. It was a tiny little restaurant, as most of them are in Soho, run by Indians, which was odd. Almost all of the diners were expats, except for one Asian couple that came in as we left. A lot of people had come in to order take away. Guess it’s the place for expats to get a taste of home.
Following Taco Loco we headed down back to what became our regular stop, Dublin Jacks, where we enjoyed some drinks. Jimmy his usual Carlsberg, Carrie her usual Vodka Tonic, while Sharon and I enjoyed Tsing Tao beer, which I think tastes similar to Rolling Rock, but for some reason it gets me drunk much faster. I bought a Dublin Jack’s Hong Kong Cup Rugby jersey while I was there. It’s my first and only jersey I’ve ever bought. I’m not a big fan of jesey’s, but this one’s rather unique so why not?
We left Dublin Jacks about an hour later and made our way over to Loft 9, a popular expat bar in Soho. There we enjoyed a few more drinks (I switched to Diet Coke, or Coke Light as it’s called here, because Jonah doesn’t do the much drunkenness) and met with Carrie’s friends Brenda and David. The bar was another pretty hip joint, frequently by almost entirely expats while we were there. Sharon and I were both pretty tired, so we spent about 45 minutes there, then hopped in a cab back to the apartment and called the night early. That, ladies and gentlemen, was Tuesday.
