Pics of Hong Kong

When you feel at home in a place you tend to look at it and not see it. This is one of the reasons that I have always loved taking pictures, looking out for something interesting to shoot keeps your perspective fresh, and you continue to seethings that otherwise you would miss out on.
Here are some of the results of me having a proper look at Wanchai yesterday...
This sign in the market made me smile. The meat may be fresh, but somehow didn't look very appetising!

These shoes are a familiar sight to any long-term Hong Konger. They used to be easy to find, in China Products, in the days before everything became a China product making the store superfluous. I have never seen this particular brand name before though!



















The barbecued meat stalls are ever popular, and although I am not a huge fan (unless it is in the middle of Dim Sum - Char Sui Bao - BBQ pork buns - are divine!) the colours, smells and queues at these shops are always a sight to see.














The ubiquitous Chinese medicine shop in Wanchai - also getting less and less in number. This one has a bone setter, or Chinese herbalist, running a clinic at the back, past the dried antlers and sea horses, the seaweed and pulses, and the sharks fins in the window. What I really need to capture though is the smell - and I can't do that here, even in words! It's a particular earthy, herby, flowery, musky combination - that I don't think any Parisian perfumer would chose to bottle!















In the middle of the market we spotted the scaffolding going up on this building the old fashioned way - bamboo and raffia string. The men that do this work are amazing - climbing like acrobats without safety harnesses, swinging through the bamboo and hauling up the next piece for their mate to tie on above. Cirque de Soleil is nothing compared to these guys!














The freshness of the things in the market always impresses me, the veg are wonderfully bright green, and the poultry so fresh it is still alive in many cases! These birds hanging up looked comical though, like some kind of avian judging panel! If you peer between the dried salted fish, the stall holder is using the old catty weighing scales. And as for the 'one only' sign on the 1000 year old eggs - what surprises me is that anyone would want even one of these - certainly the number of people buying two would be limited enough that I would have thought the sign unnecessary! (For the uninitiated, these eggs are not 1000 years old, but certainly many days. The fresh eggs are taken, packed in mud, then eaten once the yolk has set to the consistency of a jelly bean. Not my thing!)

























































In this old shop house in Wanchai, the proprietor lives upstairs (you can see the tip of the bamboo ladder in the top left of the picture) - it like the house equivalent of a bunk bed - shop downstairs, living up. Hanging up are Dim Sum baskets, ready for a myriad of uses from steaming breakfast buns in Hong Kong, to holding chocolates at Christmas for Hong Kongers in Italy! The one I bought (for a bred basket) needs to be sanded down as the bamboo is fraying, but the lady running the shop dismissed my concerns instantly, telling me that even if I ate the bits fraying off the side, there was no problem.














The fact that this man's hand is blurred as he chops the sugar cane does nothing to indicate the speed at which the knife was flying. I loved the stacks of eggs behind him too!














At the exit of the market, and currently covered by bamboo scaffolding, is the stall where people buy incense and offerings to burn at temples. The head of the lion above the stall is a new feature, and seemed a fitting marker for the beginning of the market.