Hong Kong Markets Reveal China's Past
By peter neville-hadley
Despite the 150 years of rule that ended when the British left in 1997, Hong Kong remains more traditionally Chinese than the mainland China ruled since 1949, at least in theory, by an alien ideology.
While over the border the Communist Party busied itself with campaigns against the "four olds" (old customs, old habits, old culture, and old thinking) until the populace was too terrified to lift a mahjong tile, the colonial administration in Hong Kong mostly left the people to pursue their hobbies, traditions, and religions as they pleased.
Of course, no one goes to Hong Kong expecting to find streets of curly-eaved mansions thronging with wispy-bearded old gentlemen, their hands thrust deep into long sleeves, muttering inscrutable quotations from Confucius. But beneath the unsentimental modernity of the spiny apartment towers festooned with pole-hung washing and studded irregularly with cantilevered balconies and air-conditioners, many traditional pastimes and activities go on unchanged. For the slightly more adventurous visitor who wants something beyond shopping and the usual sightseeing from this most westernized of Asian cities, there are many opportunities to observe and even participate in traditions Confucius himself might have considered familiar.
At the Yuen Po Street Bird Market, for instance, old men may be seen walking to meeting places under trees, carrying bamboo birdcages containing songbirds, which they uncover and suspend from wires strung between the branches next to those of their friends. Both species proceed to chat.
Inside, rows of stalls sell every kind of songbird, from tiny and shrill tropical flutterers to morose hill mynas that make sudden pronouncements in Cantonese. Birds are more valued for their coloratura than colour, and there's a centuries-old tradition of bringing larks down from the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to command high prices here. Since the gender of the infant birds is difficult to detect and only the males sing, catching them has always been something of a gamble. Even then only a few of the larks turn into avian Pavarottis, although a young bird of moderate voice worth only about HK$800 ($127) may be improved by hanging his cage next to that of an older, proven soloist worth many times as much.
Other stalls sell the paraphernalia for pampering these pets as much as any Pekinese: elegant bamboo cages in the shape of pagodas, miniature ceramic feeding dishes painted with goldfish or plum blossoms, special strength-building snacks of live crickets, and soothing honey drinks for those valuable throats.
The abrupt transition to the brilliance and humidity of a Hong Kong spring, combined with the icy temperatures of its air-conditioned interiors, had left my own throat and nasal passages in a delicate condition. But the Chinese have ancient remedies for that sort of problem, if of the "eye of newt and toe of frog" variety. Hong Kong is well supplied with western-trained doctors and modern pharmacies, but none of them are as redolent of tradition as Stanley Street's Good Spring herbalist, with its stocks of pungent roots, bark, leaves, seeds, flowers, insects, minerals, and animal and marine matter filling endless rows of carefully labelled drawers and shelved jars.
An earnest white-coated gentleman originally from Fujian seated in one corner offered a traditional diagnosis, not taking my temperature or listening to my chest, but instead with firm, cool fingers checking three pulse points on my right and then left hand, and having a quick look at my tongue. With a steady and deliberate hand, he then wrote out a prescription in neat columns of blue characters between printed red lines, for a mixture of hemp, mulberry leaves, some kind of fungus, several other ingredients that might make a good salad, and a snake part I couldn't identify.
He also gave strict instructions on my diet for the next three days, forbidding me to eat an assortment of "heating" meats and fruits, unfortunately describing exactly the lunch I'd just eaten.
The diagnosis cost HK$30 ($4.75); the medicine, HK$58 ($9.25). The staff were busy making up prescriptions from dried ingredients that looked like piles of builder's rubble in miniature and wrapping them into a neat parcels. For a further HK$10 ($1.60) they would convert mine into a soupy concoction and have it waiting for me in a Thermos whenever I chose to return.
I was actually more interested in the procedure and the paper prescription itself, but I paused for a glass of special medicinal tea from one of the two shiny silver-and-copper urns at the entrance.
"Sweet or bitter?" I was asked. Inevitably, and in superficial similarity to western medicine, bitter was said to be better.
But without taking the prescription, would I survive? Here again, Chinese tradition could help, and that evening I went to the Temple Street Night Market. Down a side street filled with the amplified wails of amateur performers of traditional Chinese opera stood rows of tables beneath banners bearing garish yellow characters on red backgrounds and lit by bare bulbs. "Palmistry face-reading astrology speaking English" said one (but apparently not punctuated English).
I chose a man in a leather jacket with a fake astrakhan collar, who offered everything from a face reading for HK$100 ($16) to a home visit for a complete feng shui analysis for HK$2,000 ($318). Two perky red-beaked white birds--called in Mandarin baiwen niao (literally, "white culture birds")--cheeped cheerfully in a miniature cage on his table. They could also be involved in a divination process for HK$40 ($6.40).
I decided to look further ahead than the clearance of a head cold to the future of my nearly two-year-old son.
When one of the birds, bobbing with eagerness, was released from the cage, it skittered across the table to a pile of folded pieces of cardboard and instantly selected one, a kind of Chinese tarot card covered in indistinct characters and images.
Luckily the little creature's haste turned out to be due not to the need to convey some urgent warning, but to the prospect of a reward in seed.
"At the moment your son's a bit naughty, and not very obedient."
I had mentioned that he was nearly two. "What about the future?"
The forecast was full of the kind of positive predictions a parent wants to hear, and we moved on to a face reading. Other than a warning against getting mugged in Mainland China, a place many Hong Kongers still regard as too dangerous to visit, the drawn-out reading was also positive. Because my nose is high I'll have a good career. My ears are big so I'll be lucky, and my chin is a little turned up, which means that I'll have a comfortable old age. I'll live to 80, apparently, but I don't suppose that I'll be coming to demand my money back if he proves to be wrong.
"Don't go away from home too often," he said, which perhaps he should have been able to see was not the best advice to give someone who travels for a living. "Spend more time with your family."
"Did my wife call you?" I asked.
He laughed, and for a finale freed the second of the two little birds, which made straight for the freshly shuffled pack and picked the same card again. I went away only slightly poorer, and much amused.
While keeping songbirds is mainly the hobby of older men, and younger people generally choose western medicine over Chinese, the rows of soothsayers were doing brisk business answering questions about marriage and job prospects from many of Hong Kong's youth.
And making a fortune, no doubt.
I will learn..
