Category Archives: Hong Kong

Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation exhibition @ Hong Kong Heritage Museum review

Posted on April 26, 2011 | 4 comments

Every so often, I do try and escape the confines of my nail polish packed bedroom and see the real world. Previous escapes have included seeing a waterfall, a load of beautiful qipao, a load of quirky lanterns, a silent Hitchcock film and most recently, a stunning array of Spring flowers. My latest venture – a trip to Hong Kong Heritage Museum’s special exhibition, Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation.

The Hong Kong Heritage Museum is quite a trek away, up in Sha Tin near the Shing Mun river (get off at Che Kung Temple Station on the brown KCR line for a shorter walk), so any exhibition that has me making the long slog up there had better be a good one! The last time I visited was for the Golden Age Of Couture dress exhibition, held in conjunction with London’s V&A Museum, which was utterly spectacular (and which I will get around to writing about some time, promise!). Meanwhile, the fact that I am a Disney/Pixar geek of the highest order – prone to parroting facts learnt from audio commentaries whilst my boyfriend tries to watch and breaking into Under The Sea on public transport are specialities – meant the omens seemed good.

The Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation exhibition showcases various types of conceptual and character art done by the studio’s artists for all of Pixar’s work, giving some artistic insight into the painstaking process that goes into making their much-loved CGI films. Taking in over 400 items, from early pencil sketches to storyboards, maquettes (small scale models) and exclusive specially-designed media installations, it features some never-before-seen-outside-the-studio artwork, with Hong Kong’s Heritage Museum the first stop on a global tour. A similar exhibition toured five years ago (including a stop in Singapore) but it has been refreshed and reinvigorated with the addition of new items, such as a large and extremely popular section dedicated to Toy Story 3. There’s also the amazing Toy Story Zoetrope (which you can also see at Hong Kong Disneyland), featuring rotating sculptures of characters that seem to magically come to life before your eyes.

We arrived early afternoon on a non-school holiday weekday and the queue was the biggest I have ever seen for a museum in HK. Having seen some photos taken by people who went on Easter Holiday weekend showing 300-strong queues, thank God we went when we did! Much of the artwork shown was obviously never intended to be displayed in a gallery and as such, there’s a limit on how huge a crowd can cluster around an A4 sized drawing and get much out of the experience.

Picture from Pixar artist Lou Romano’s blog, where you can also see his entire colour script for Up

There are two galleries devoted to the exhibition, the first dealing with character and the second with environment and scene-setting. The huge number of children visiting will obviously enjoy the Woody, Buzz, Sully and Mike models that greet you at the museum’s entrance, yet whether they have much appreciation for conceptual artwork of, say, Parisian landscapes in Ratatouille remains to be seen. Sure enough, the first exhibition gallery, which boasts the large Toy Story 3 section, a fairly big selection of Monsters Inc stuff (poor old Wall-E, one of my favourite Pixar films, sadly only gets about a quarter of a wall!) and lots of maquettes of characters, is the more family-friendly and consequently, much busier and noisier. Meanwhile, the second gallery is a much more tranquil and sedate experience!

As a full-blown Disney geek who exhaustively watches all the making-of features on her DVDs (or did before they started moving them to Blu-Ray only), some of the artwork was familiar to me already, especially for the earlier films, and I’m not entirely sure you garner that much more from looking at the originals rather than digital copies. Some art (particularly storyboards and colour scripts) have even been enlarged to suit the gallery experience more, in which case you’re looking at reprints anyway!

[By the way, you’re not meant to take photos inside the exhibition galleries. Not that this stops many HK folk. But I play fair, meaning the photos in this post are either taken outside or by scouring the net to find the pictures I’m referring to! (Further proof, incidentally, that lots of it may already be familiar to us geeks.)]

Pictures from Hong Kong Heritage Museum and Oakland Museum Of California

Nevertheless, the artwork itself is brilliant. What part of the exhibition you enjoy the most is strictly down to taste but my favourites were the wistful colourful designs for Up and its dreamy South American landscapes (you get to see a life-size version of the Paradise Falls mural that Ellie and Carl paint above their fireplace in the film) and the spiky dynamic work by Lou Romano for The Incredibles (the style seen in the film’s credits) – looking at the art, I could practically hear that exhilarating thrilling score pumping into my head!

A few interesting titbits to note: some character studies are annotated with comprehensive notes seemingly from John Lasseter himself (‘Dot is not so cute with 4 arms!’, ‘No antenna here’), with some Finding Nemo sketches stamped with a fish bearing John Lasseter’s head saying ‘I guess it’s alright’, whilst others are marked as checked by the man himself with a doodle-like representation of Lasseter’s face!

I’m also in awe of the fact that so much life comes out of these pencil sketches alone. Just a few lines manage to create a sense of motion and vitality even before the mammoth digitalisation process begins. I love this one of Russell, above, which totally captures his bustling sense of movement – Disney geek-dom ahoy, the character’s original name was changed to the onomatopoeic Russell to reflect his inquisitive nature. There’s also two maquettes of Russell where each and every Explorer Badge has been sculpted, with different designs on every single one!

The Up storyboards and colour scripts are also fascinating. There’s one storyboard just of that first 10-minute dialogue-free segment ‘Married Life’ and, in just a few small still-life pictures, it still managed to make me well up! Truly powerful stuff.

The second ‘environment’ gallery feels a lot more abstract in comparison to the ‘character’ one. You enter a room where the walls are covered with animations of the doors from Monsters Inc and the effect is quite hypnotic. I really loved some of the (at times, surprisingly dark) concept art for the settings of Monsters Inc, whilst all the pictures involving those huge cascades of doors are just wildly imaginative and wonderful. This gallery also contains, for me, the absolute highlight: Artscape.

Artscape is a highly-immersive, richly-detailed wide-screen projection that takes you inside the artists’ sketchbooks and experience environments from all the films in first-person. Frankly, it’s more 3D than most 3D movies. It’s indescribable and something you just have to experience for yourself. You feel like you’re swooping through the jungle and dashing across water in the chase sequence from The Incredibles, that you’re ant-size amongst the blades of grass, leaves and army of workers in A Bug’s Life or that you’re hurtling through the galaxies in Wall-E (oh ok, that one did feel a little like a Windows 95 screensaver!). I particularly fell for the Parisian scenes from Ratatouille – one of my least favourite Pixars – which felt like you were flying above the rooftops, looking down and around the city in all its romantic glory. This is all done by some trademark Pixar magic that manages to turn 2D drawings and paintings into a 3D visceral experience. Stunning.

Pictures from The Art Of Ratatouille book, featured on Pixar Talk

Despite the cutesy Pixar characters, Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation was definitely not designed with small children, nor I suspect the HK hoards, in mind (for example, there are kiosks where you can watch interviews with animators that can only be used one person at a time, whilst I struggled to see the small screens showing early Pixar shorts in just the small crowd that day). Whilst I enjoyed it, if I’d have seen queues of hundreds, I’d have definitely turned back round – I just don’t think you can give the artwork the attention it deserves if you’re having to elbow your way in or become absorbed in the detail if you can barely hear yourself think.

Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation is a largely captivating exhibition, although one which requires you to appreciate the animators’ work as art rather than pure entertainment. It makes you recognise the scale of Pixar’s achievements and value the dedication and talent of their artists even more. This is stuff that deserves to be on walls rather than hidden away in dusty backrooms and I would love to see a similar exhibition for Disney films (some of the concept art for their older films, as seen on DVDs, is just stunning). So, yes, worth the trek to Sha Tin. Make it on a week day, though!

Check out some more fun Pixar artwork here

Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation, 28 March-11 July 2011, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 1 Man Lam Road, Sha Tin, 2180 8188

$20 admission, $10 on Weds, including free memo gift pad containing money-off vouchers. Opening hours: 10am-6pm, 7pm on Sunday and public holidays. Closed Tuesdays.

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Simplylife Bakery Café restaurant review – a tea set down to a tee

Posted on April 13, 2011 | 2 comments

I’m sure you must be sick of posts starting with ‘another thing I love about Hong Kong’ but ANOTHER thing I love about Hong Kong is the humble tea set. Usually served between 2.30-6pm at upscale restaurants and chan chaan dengs alike, they generally consist of a drink and snack-type main that’s a little lighter than the ones available at lunch – and at around half the price! Obviously, this is because most normal people are beavering away at work but for layabouts like me, living the life of leisure and not seeing daylight before 12pm anyway, it’s a perfect brunch-style compromise! And the tea set at Simplylife Bakery Café is one of the best around.

In fact, I’d go as far as to say it’s nicer than both their lunch and dinner menus! I’ve eaten at Simplylife many times and enjoy their laidback casual café style but, despite an emphasis on quality ingredients, generous portion sizes and decent value, the meals themselves tend to be a bit hit-and-miss. Their European-based cuisine sounds great on paper, with healthy-sounding salads and pastas and hearty but modern meat and veg combinations dominating, yet all too often the food itself is slightly bland and underwhelming. However, their tea set is the tops.

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The Globe pub review – out of this world!

Posted on April 10, 2011 | Leave a comment

I don’t miss many things about England, but Sunday Roast is definitely one thing I do!

Whether our small microwave/oven has the capacity to cook a proper joint of meat in anything less than 24 hours, never mind fitting in all the trimmings, remains to be seen – and that’s before we’ve covered trekking to City Super or Oliver’s to get a good quality cut of beef, paying through the nose for it and trying to polish off the whole meal on my own as I’m the only one in my house that eats beef. Basically, that’s a whole lot of issues for a humble roast and too many for me to worry my little head about. Especially since I’ve discovered that The Globe does a top-notch, home quality Sunday Roast all of its own.

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Return to sender: why food delivery in Hong Kong sucks

Posted on April 2, 2011 | 5 comments

Probably better than Hong Kong food delivery

One of the many reasons I love living in Hong Kong is the food. Eating out can often work out cheaper (and a hell of a lot easier) than cooking for yourself and Hong Kong offers such a wealth of dining destinations, for all types of cuisines and price ranges, that you really are spoilt for choice – as I hope the food reviews on my blog show! However, one of the very few areas where HK gets it so so wrong is delivery.

Delivery is, of course, one of the very few areas in which the UK gets it so so right. Cheaper, quicker and more convenient than eating out – especially if you’re nowhere near a major town – you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone in Blighty that hasn’t had pizzas delivered (oh Dominoes, how I miss thee) or enjoyed a Chinese or Indian takeaway in their time.

In Hong Kong, the main decent delivery service is that of ‘man on foot from your local chaa chaan teng’. If you’re near enough for a waiter to hoof it round yours, most local places will offer delivery to your front door quickly, cheaply, efficiently and generally without a service charge. Similarly, one of Hong Kong’s defining sights is seeing McDonalds couriers zipping through the streets (or sitting with their bags on the MTR!) – like rats, you’re probably never more than six feet away from the Golden Arches in this city – so their delivery is speedy and the food is still hot when it arrives. Aside from these honourable exceptions though, be prepared for a disastrous experience nearly everywhere else.

Pizzas are a takeaway staple, especially if you’ve got friends round – with the size of most HK kitchens, you’d be lucky to have an oven at all, never mind one that you can fit family-sized pizzas into. Frankly, I wouldn’t touch Pizza Hut here in a restaurant, let alone outside of one (here’s why) so that leaves Pizza Box – HK’s premiere pizza delivery service. If Dominoes made you wait an hour only to deliver lukewarm food, they’d be out if business in the UK; in HK, Pizza Box is actually one of the better services.

Most restaurants sub-contract out their delivery division to specialised firms, like Dial-A-Dinner and Cuisine Courier. The term specialist implies some sort of expertise. I’m lucky to live practically in the middle of the MTR HK Island line, meaning I shouldn’t really ever be more than 30 minutes away from most other Island destinations on the MTR, let alone if you’ve got the luxury of a motorcycle. And yet somehow delivery men regularly contrive waiting times of 90 minutes! Once when we were eating at a restaurant, we saw a courier arrive only to have a ten-minute natter with waiters whilst a pizza rapidly cooled on the counter. Perhaps that explains things.

When it does show up, it’s delivered by drivers who seem to display no sense of urgency whatsoever – watching from my balcony, we’ve seen them meander up my road being overtaken by passing snails. The food arrives, it’s stone cold (half the time, it doesn’t seem to have had any contact with the insulated delivery bags designed especially for this purpose) and the delivery guy hangs round by your door, shooting surly looks because you’ve not deigned to offer a tip for this amazing experience, although you’ve already paid a 10% delivery charge for the pleasure. Frequently, they’ll claim they don’t have any change; if this is the case, the delivery firm should explicitly state this – I remember Dominoes drivers in the UK actually used to telephone to say they didn’t carry more than £20 in change. I was once delivered pasta in a box without a lid.

However, the straw that broke the diner’s back was my recent experience with Subway. Subway used to be one of the better places to order from – they seemed to have their own delivery staff and as such, you got through to someone who knew Subway’s menu inside out rather than someone who has about fifty restaurants on their books and thus know practically nothing about any of them. Food would arrive within an hour and was edible. That’s about all you can hope for with delivery here. Alas, it seems they’ve gone the way of the dark side and employed Cuisine Courier. Big mistake.

[It seem there are two websites and delivery hotlines for Subway. One at http://www.sandwiches.hk, which is presumbly what we used in the past, and one at http://www.subway.hk, which we mistakenly stumbled upon this time.]

When we ordered, we hadn’t realised this, so admittedly did not have order codes (although this hasn’t posed a problem in ordering before). My boyfriend detailed first his sandwich and asked to make it a meal with chips and a coke. Telephone lady confirmed. Then my sub, asking to make this a meal as well, with cookies and a Snapple. Telephone lady confirmed again but couldn’t find Snapple so hung up to find it, then called us back. All seemed well.

Around 80 minutes later and still no sign of the food, my boyfriend gave them a call. ‘Are you Mr George?’ ‘No.’ ‘We’ve been trying to get hold of him but we can’t get through.’ ‘But that’s not me.’ ‘Is it about a Subway order?’ ‘Yes, but I’m not Mr George.’ ‘Well, we’ve been trying to contact him…’ ‘Yeah but that’s NOT me!’ Bizarre. But to her credit, she quickly called our driver, who claimed he was 3 minutes away. This was correct – and it’s pretty much the last time they’ll be correct about anything in this story.

The food came to $235. As regular Subway customers, this seemed way off but I saw little point questioning the driver – there’s not much he can do about it from this end, and after approximately 90 minutes, hunger got the best of me. So I paid up (with exact change = driver stink eye)… where to begin?

Firstly, the sandwiches were not just cold but soaking wet, as if the delivery guy had actively offered our food to the rain gods (there was a light drizzle). As such, although cold sandwiches are fine, soggy ones really aren’t so I stuck them in the toaster, adding a further wait time (after an hour and a half, what’s an extra 15 minutes, eh? And yes, they were that wet, they needed 15 minutes)

The invoice stated a delivery time of 15:54 (30 minutes after ‘Pick Up Time’ despite being from somewhere on the Island) yet our friend managed to arrive at about 16:39, a full HOUR after being picked up. Guys, I can get to the New Territories in under an hour! A carrier pigeon would have probably done the job better and quicker and at least they wouldn’t shoot daggers when you don’t tip. This is made all the more laughable by the fact that a few weeks ago, we accidentally ordered a takeaway from Olympic – that’s across the seas and through a tunnel in Kowloon – that arrived quicker and hotter.

Chips? Nowhere to be found. Cookies? Them neither. Instead, there was a tub of Haagen Daaz ice-cream. I checked the invoice, where neither of our subs had been made into meals, hence meaning we had been overcharged to the tune of roughly $70, and that’s without all the components of the meal actually showing up. If telephone lady had not understood the repeated ‘make it into a meal’ instruction (we later checked Subway’s menu online and it’s clearly there as an order code), why had she kept on agreeing with my boyfriend saying ‘Can we make that a meal? It’s a meal right?’ about three times? Did she think this was a strange sort of vocal tic or something?

I’d also been charged an extra $15 for making my sub ‘Double Meat’ (I don’t even know what that is). Rather than giving us Coke and Snapple from the Subway menu (costing $8 and $18 respectively), they had sent us some ***From Cuisine Courier***, hence costing an extra sixteen bucks ($14 and $28). Meanwhile, the invoice reckoned that the unwanted $35 tub of Haagen Daaz (also ***From Cuisine Courier***) was Cookies & Chocolate flavour (hence explaining the absence of the cookies I suppose), yet we were sitting with Belgian Chocolate instead. I think this sums up the entire experience.

Yes, getting food delivered is a bit lazy but there were valid reasons behind it and, for being a little bit lazy, do we really deserve to be overcharged for soppy food which isn’t even the food we ordered? So order for delivery in HK at your peril… and it won’t be Subway on the menu at ours for a very long time.

EDIT: I actually complained directly to Subway about this, including the above pictures and receipts as proof plus a photo of our sandwiches in a soaking wet bag. After checking my claims, they confirmed we had been overcharged and offered us some money off our next order… if we ordered through Cuisine Courier. Needless to say, we have not taken them up on this offer.]

[Banner photo from hellothomas’ Flickr]

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Hong Kong Flower Show 2011: It’s all coming up roses (and tulips… and orchids…)

Posted on March 31, 2011 | 7 comments

Forget the Botanical Gardens. Forget the overpriced, increasingly tat-filled Chinese New Year Flower Market. Forget the Chelsea Flower Show. Because for technicolour horticultural goodness, the Hong Kong Flower Show 2011 beats them all. (Well, it beats watching Chelsea on television anyhow).

The Hong Kong Flower Show is apparently an annual event held in Victoria Park that my auntie only piped up about this year, my third in HK. Thanks a lot! Oh well, at least she piped up eventually, as this was a sight I’m definitely glad I didn’t miss out on.

I love flowers – I love them even more when I don’t have to put in the hard work of maintaining them – so the Flower Show was absolutely perfect for those who want to feast on the visual delights of plants in all colours, shapes and sizes without getting your green fingers dirty! As someone who quite often misses her garden in the UK, this happily quelled any longings in some serious style!

For just $14 entry, you can wander around the countless show gardens, exhibits, displays and gardening stalls that take over the entire grounds to your heart’s content. It’s also free for the over 60s on weekdays; my auntie wasn’t sure whether she should be happy she saved money or upset that she looked old enough for no-one to check her ID!

This year’s theme was Symphony of Spring Flowers, hence all the floral pianos, harps and music notes you see scattered around – a bit cheesy in places, but generally too beautiful and immaculately-executed for you to care. There were also special displays by some of HK’s botanical societies (the orchid ones are always amazing enough to warrant a gander) whilst there were also some more modern, edgy and striking displays to cut through the cutesiness of the giant instrument-playing animals (oh who am I kidding, they were my favourite part!).

I also loved the numerous stalls selling plants and gardening supplies; if you can get past the crowds who mill around treating these as further photo opportunities, there are some really reasonable deals to be had on stuff that can be more difficult to unearth in HK. I bought a fuchsia for $30 and two violas for $10 each (and would have bought many more if I didn’t have to think about carrying it all home), whilst many orchids were only around $100. Basically, screw you CNY Flower Market, I’ll never be buying your overpriced tat again!

Anyway, enough of my rambling, I think the photos are gorgeous enough to speak for themselves. So fire up your monitor, click for enlargements so huge you can practically smell them and enjoy!

My favourite photo, taken at one of the show displays

How cute are the baby chicks?!

Ocean Park Garden

Love the creativity of these two, designed to look like music staves

Some of the more contemporary displays

Macau Garden

I think these ghostly pianos look like they were made from a skeleton’s bones!

Just can’t resist me some orchids!

Some of the more structural displays – note the number of OAPS enjoying a sit-down in the branch dome!

Mini gardens! Love the hydrangea tree and the cute little chicks and bunnies made from flowers!

After all that, I think we need a rest…

Hong Kong Flower Show 2011, Victoria Park, Causeway Bay, 11-20 March 2011. $14 entry fee, free for over-60s on weekdays ($7 on weekends). See their website for further details.


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Flakies FTW – a trip to the vats of Sasa

Posted on March 30, 2011 | Leave a comment

Back when I first started writing nail varnish reviews, I promised myself that I would never start using the polish jargon so beloved by many beauty blogs. Holographic this, duochrome that… and what’s the difference between a crème and a jelly anyway? After all, it’s nail polish, not quantum physics! I describe it as I see it, and if that means I’m calling something a glitter when it’s a foil or a shimmer when it’s a glass fleck then so be it!

However, one mystery elixir continued to tantalise me – the flakie. Flakies, or as I know them ‘amazing shreds of rainbow awesomeness’, are probably one of the most lusted-after types of polishes in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, I couldn’t locate many of polishes that blogs frequently mentioned (Gosh Rainbow, Sally Hansen Hidden Treasure, Andrea Fulerton Gemstone, Nubar 2010) in Hong Kong, whilst although the brand most famous for them (Nfu-Oh) boasts Ebay sellers seemingly exclusively from HK, I’ve so far had more luck finding The Holy Grail than their lacquers in a real-life shop here. I began to doubt that I knew what flakies really looked like – basically, they’re confetti-esque shreds of iridescence, with rainbow reflections similar to the flashes in an opal gemstone; had I been passing by flakies all the while, mistakenly thinking they were mere glitters or shimmers?

But thankfully, my quest for flakies – and as you know, my make-up quests can get a bit obsessive – has a vaguely happy ending! All thanks to Sasatinnie, the own-brand sold by cosmetics behemoth Sasa.

My first post about nail polish already told you the state of Sasa – namely, huge tubs of bottles, piled high and haphazardly with little rhyme or reason (the picture below is from Bonjour but the effect is the same!). Consequently, I took refuge in the calm of Cher2, with its well-ordered selection of premium brands, and have been a bit snobby about the drugstore stuff ever since. Yet my quest for flakies meant I (and my reluctant boyfriend, who received a crash course on what to look for prior to the search) finally dove fist-first into a Sasa vat… and came up trumps!

For just $24 a bottle (or $40 for two), these three flakie polishes come from Sasatinnie’s Super Dolly Fantasy Quick Dry Collection. They weren’t quite what I was looking for, as they all have coloured bases rather than clear ones so I can’t layer them over just any colour to get the full flakie effect, but they’ll definitely do for now. Unlike many of the big brands, they’re probably not ‘3 Free’ (see here for details of what chemical nasties are probably lurking under that awesome flakie finish, especially if the more pungent-than-usual smell is anything to go by) but I was actually surprised with how well these applied – despite seeming pretty thin and watery, they all became opaque in a standard two to three coats and stayed chip-free for a positive aeon.

I’ll be treating each polish to their own review fairly soon but suffice to say, I can’t get enough of these amazing shreds of rainbow awesomeness. So if anyone has any tips for getting my mitts on more flakie fabulousness in Hong Kong, do let me know in the comments below. In the meantime, my lesson has been learnt – no more Sasa snobbiness! And I’ll be the one jumping headlong into the tub of nail varnish on your next visit.

[Incidentally, if you do want to swot up on nail varnish jargon, check out Lacquerized’s fantastic post here].

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Life Café restaurant review – the perfect place to veg out

Posted on March 23, 2011 | 3 comments

UPDATE: Life Café is now closed.

Having just had another one of my increasingly-frequent 1 AM bacon fry-ups, I feel the need to make it up to my cholesterol-addled arteries. So here’s a write-up on what may be the healthiest place I’ve ever eaten at – Life Café Organic Restaurant & Bar.

Given that one of my childhood nicknames was ‘Red Beef Girl’, you can probably work out that a vegetarian and vegan joint would not be my first port of call. However, one of my friends (Ka Ming, known to me as Bob or Yeh Yeh for reasons too long to detail!) has recently converted, hence how I found myself chowing down on a meat-free meal at Life.  And, far from being the joyless experience I might have imagined, it was actually very lovely indeed.

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You’re history! (Like a beat-up car!): Hong Kong Museum Of History review

Posted on February 24, 2011 | Leave a comment

‘The History Museum perpetuates the myth that Hong Kong has no culture by providing a sterile and clinical retelling of Hong Kong’s rich past.’

History geek boyfriend (shown above) on Hong Kong’s History Museum

This review of Hong Kong’s Museum Of History was a long time coming. You may have seen my review of their special exhibition The Evergreen Classic: Transformation Of The Qipao but I actually managed to check out their main exhibition, The Hong Kong Story, twice in the space of two weeks. Not through scholarly enthusiasm but on a trip with my kindergarten class and again, when my boyfriend and I showed up a month early for aforementioned qipao exhibition – and I’m afraid that I wasn’t too impressed.

The Hong Kong Story contains a lot of what I brand ‘fake history’ – lots of replicas and not many authentic artefacts. It traces Hong Kong from its beginnings as a barely-populated jungle filled with tigers (apparently) through its time as a British colony via displays about traditional Chinese folk culture before reaching modern-day HK. But given it opts for building replicas of trams, boats, fishermen, puppets, a tower of buns, schools, banks and practically everything else you can think of, the true authentic visceral sense of history is forsaken. Most of your information is gleaned from reading the placards beside each replica (or listening to your audio guide!) and looking at blown-up reprinted old photographs, meaning that you’re not really getting that much of a different experience from reading a history textbook, except you’re getting to stretch your legs and battle snap-happy visitors in the process.

In my opinion, the most riveting part of Hong Kong’s history is wartime and the Japanese occupation – parts which are dealt with much more effectively and movingly in the Museum Of Coastal Defence, which at least has some genuine bullet-strewn walls, cannons, caponniers and torpedoes to make for a more well-rounded experience (plus there’s currently the amazing Escape To Wai Chow exhibition – check out the full review here).

Elsewhere, it’s only interesting to those who have absolutely no working knowledge of Hong Kong’s history and given the plastic-ness of most of the exhibits, it doesn’t really reward repeated visits – although obviously I overdid it a bit! It’s certainly not an essential tourist stop nor, speaking from experience, is it much fun for very young visitors.

My photos illustrate the few parts that, not being too bothered by models of Neanderthals making fire in prehistoric HK, I actually did find interesting. And oh dear, déjà vu, it includes some vintage calendar prints of girls wearing qi pao. Moving on…

This is the interior of one of HK’s oldest traditional Chinese medicine shops. A REAL interior, not a fake replica. When it closed its doors for the last time, the LCSD managed to procure its décor and stick it in the history museum. There’s also an audio recording from the shop’s owner (plus English translation!). It’s interesting because it feels real and what with Hong Kong’s record in demolishing sites of historical interest, the sort of thing the government should be doing much more of. You’ll find it in a street filled with less interesting replicas of other early Hong Kong shops.

Social history inevitably has a lot more to offer than a plastic model. The section on Hong Kong’s early schooling system has glass cases filled with old exercise books and report cards. and, if you can decipher the spidery handwriting, being basically quite nosy is always absorbing!

I know it might sound like my bugbear, having gone on about it at other tourist destinations (like the Museum Of Coastal Defence and the Botanical Gardens), but the eating facilities here would be the laughing stock of any Western cultural hotspot. The Museum Of History’s school cafeteria may be cheap, clean and offer an abundance of chicken wings, but it could be so much more. Flogging a mix of instant noodles and junk food (not in one dish… although I wouldn’t put it past them), it mostly serves as a last resort or for people looking for somewhere quiet where they can crab free Wifi for as long as possible. It did, however, have beautiful lamps made to look like birdcages.

Perhaps I’ve been spoilt by having “real history” in practically every back garden in the UK, but I found the Hong Kong Museum Of History’s Hong Kong Story exhibition rather uninspiring. I’d rather pick up a history book from Page One and hop across the way to the Science Museum, which is a LOT more fun. And hopefully you’ll believe me when I say that I’ll review that museum very soon – i.e. sometime before 2012, fingers crossed!

The Hong Kong Story, Hong Kong Museum of History, 100 Chatham Road South, Tsim Sha Tsui East, Kowloon, 2724 9042.

Opening hours: Monday, Wednesday- Saturday, 10am-6pm, Sunday and Public Holiday 10am-7pm, closed Tuesdays. Admission $10 (free on Wednesdays). For further details, visit their website here.

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Grand Cuisine Shanghai Kitchen restaurant review – bao down for the best xiao long bao in Hong Kong!

Posted on February 20, 2011 | 5 comments

Now for a blog that’s short on pictures but long on love… a review of one of my favourite restaurants in Hong Kong, Grand Cuisine Shanghai Kitchen.

My boyfriend has a stock list of restaurants he suggests whenever I ask where we should go for lunch: McDonalds, Subway, Burger King, Express Teppanyaki and instant noodles from 7-Eleven. Yup, he’s a classy sort. So imagine my surprise when one day, having been dating him and asking this same question for at least 18 months, he suddenly threw ‘Shanghainese’ into the mix.

Which Shanghainese did he mean? Hong Kong has its fair share of good but now overrated Shanghainese joints – the New York Times apparently reckons that the Michelin-starred Din Tai Fung is one of the ten best restaurants in the world (I can think of ten better in Hong Kong!) and it regularly features on blogs battling for the title of ‘best xiao long bao in HK’ with another Shanghainese called Crystal Jade (curiously neither actually originate from China). In fact, he meant neither of these places and his choice of Grand Cuisine, tucked away near his old work place in Quarry Bay, has xiao long bao that blow those two out of the water.

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Ice is back with a brand new invention!

Posted on February 13, 2011 | 7 comments

I remember there being quite a lot of hype for these ice-cold Coke vending machines when the first one popped up under Island Beverly (near Sogo) in Causeway Bay. Alas, Hong Kong’s combination of heat and humidity meant the machine apparently didn’t work too well during one of our trademark sticky sweaty summers. It quietly disappeared a few months later.

But that wasn’t the last of these icy Coke vending machines. We spotted one, classily located next to a dingy back alley, on our epic trek round Wan Chai on my quest for Gosh cosmetics. My boyfriend (a Coca-Cola connoisseur… or simple addict… who has fizzing black gold constantly coursing through his veins) decided to give it a go, at $11 a bottle (Octopus card only). I was on hand to commemorate the experience photographically.

Alas, the Coke didn’t arrive via a polar bear wearing shades.

As you can see above, there were handy pictorial instructions, plus plenty of choices of beverage…

The first step was to open the bottle and take a quick sip – I presume this was to prevent the bottle exploding due to contraction/expansion caused by freezing (science geeks, feel free to clear up my ignorance in the comments). This step was boring so no photos here.

Second, slowly turn the bottle upside-down, whereupon ice crystals start to form in your Coke. To compensate for no pictures of the last step, I took two pictures of this one. Yay! Ice magic! You can really see it in the close-up below.

Finally, tip back your head and quaff that frozen Coke right away! Dingy back alley optional.

It was a cool day so everything worked perfectly and the Coke stayed icy for ages. It tastes like a Coke slushie, only you don’t have to put up with a surly-faced cinema employee to get it. It would probably taste even better on a hot summer’s day – providing the technology still works, that is!

I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this, but I prefer to think the Coke fairies did it.

What next for vending machines?! Umbrellas?! Oh wait…

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Posted in Hong Kong, Random

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