Sha Tin - A Day of Culture, Heritage and Snoopy

This day, Feburary 26th, was a planned day. Jordan and I had discussed exploring around Sha Tin area for a while, and we invited a few friends that we knew that liked to explore. So on Sunday morning, Chris, Nigel, Jean, Jordan and I congregated at the Sundial at HKUST and left campus for a day of sightseeing. The weather was better than I expected - the whole week had been foggy, wet and misting. But today, it was relatively dry, and quite fogless. I was happy.

The first thing on our itinerary was the Che Kung temple. Truthfully, I did not know much about this temple, and why it was dedicated the Che Kung. When we arrived at the outside of the temple, I was immediately struck by the many flags that were displayed on the outer perimeter of the building. They were flags, not of Hong Kong or other countries, but of Chinese characters such as 仁 (benevolence) and 義 (righteousness). I realized, from knowledge acquired in my Chinese Philosophy class, that the characters displayed on the flags were traits that were valued and prized in ancient Confucian beliefs. The good and great men were considered good and great because they were benevolent, righteous, knowledgeable and performed the necessary rites (禮) with reverence and emotion. 

The temple was spacious, and like many other temples, it's dominant colour was red. There were quite a few people bustling around, performing their rituals and prayers. The familiar smell of inscents wafts to our noses as we continued into the temple.

Jean: Wow, he looks really intimidating.

I looked up to see what Jean was talking about, and sure enough, the statue of Che Kung looming over us looked intimidating, menacing and definitely stern. Later, I found out on Wikipedia that Che Kung was a general that served in the Song Dynasty and was believed to have the great ability to suppress rebellions. He kept many parts of southern China from disorder. No wonder he had to look so menacing, as to scare those who attempted to overthrow the Song Dynasty...

 Outside the temple

 Inside the temple walls

 The fierce warrior statues

Che Kung

Jean sponsored me by donating a few dollars so I could bang on the drums in the temple for good luck. After that, we decided to head on to our destination 2, the walled village of the Hakka building 1840s, called Tsang Tai Uk (曾大屋).

Chris, Jordan and I have been on an adventure to walled city before (Lung Yeuk Tau), and after that visit, we definitely wanted to see more cultural areas such as this. The village was set far apart from the actual city center, and was located beside many trees and large patches of grass. It was very serene and quiet as we stepped into one of the doors that lead into the village. The signs that families still occupied this village were apparent everywhere - hanging laundry, distant music playing and animals, such as dogs and cats, running around. Like many other Hong Kong residences we've seen, nearly all of the doors were metal bar doors, and a few of them were surrounded by red paper that displayed greetings or well wishes (出入平安, meaning enter and exit safely/with peace).

A lady exited her apartment, looked at us for a split second and walked on. She didn't look surprised or interested that a bunch of tourists-like youngsters were roaming around in her front yard, but I realized she must be used to this. This place, indeed, is listed as one of the cultural places to visit by the Hong Kong Government. We walked further into the walled village, stopping to take pictures and admire the ancient architecture of the walls and buildings. The village has been reconstructed so it can be maintained as homes for families, but we could still see some of the original brick, granite and woodwork. We reached the ancestral hall. An ancestral hall, as I learned, is crucial to have in village, since it was a place to worship your ancestors. In this one, many pictures of the Tsang ancestors were posted around the room, with some of them dating back to the 1800s.

 Tsang Tai Uk (曾大屋)

 Inside Tsang Tai Uk

Entrance to the internal Ancestral Hall

The doors that continued past the ancestral hall lead to the village shrine. The shrine was barred off, however, so we could only stand and stare at it. One thing that struck me as odd and interesting were the music and voices I heard, coming from beside the shrine. I walked over, and came face to face with an dark, narrow alley plastered with doors and windows. I realized that there were residences there - there were people that lived right beside the shrine! A man's voice boomed out of the darkness of the alley, followed by laughter of a little boy.

We saw a few more interesting things in the village, such as the unique entryway that involved wooden planks being slid over to bar the entrance. I also got distracted by a extremely cute and fluffy dog, and I snapped a few pictures of him/her. Around the outside of the wall, we also saw some abandoned, broken down cars and a blurry silouette in a window of a person apparently taking a shower. We didn't linger long there...

Ancestors 

 Antechamber to the ancestral hall

 Some furry friends

Little side alley to the walled village

Next stop on the itinerary - Hong Kong Heritage Museum! I love Hong Kong Museums for many reasons. One being that they are so well planned out, well made and gives great entertainment as well as learning value. Another reason is its cheapness. It cost us each $5 HKD for admission free (equivalent to $0.63 CAD). Now, where could you find that in North America? Our first stop in the museum was at one of their special exhibitions. This one is dedicated to a gentleman called Lam Kar Sing (林家聲), who has made a great and lengthy career in Cantonese Opera. Although I am not a particular fan of Cantonese opera, it was amazing to see the dedication, time and effort Mr. Lam put into his passion and career.

 Space optimized titling - vertical print

This guy really liked dressing up

The next exhibit we went to was my favourite - it was 'A Imprint of the Heart', which is an exhibition to showcase the art of Huang Xinbo (黃新波). Huang Xinbo was born in China in 1916 and suffered through many long years of war during his life; his works mainly portrayed war, society and the revolutions that took place during his time. Although he was also an oil painter, Huang Xinbo's main art form was the woodcut. Each piece of art portrayed a gripping story and message, and even an image as simple as a woman doing a ballerina pose has so much meaning and emotion in it. There were some pieces that I stared at for a couple minutes straight, to try to understand and process the message and emotion Mr. Huang put into it.

The great deal of time we spent in this exhibit was balanced out by our next exhibit, which was 'Fashion Visionaries'. We walked through the exhibit in a matter of 3 minutes; high fashion really wasn't the interest of any of ours there, but we still had a good time looking at the extravagant and ridiculous designs there. I figured the designers who showed their pieces there work hand in hand with Lady Gaga's designers.

Before we left, we all went to the 'Rubbing Corner' of the exhibition (Yes, the Rubbing Corner...some jokes were definitely made :P). It turned out the Rubbing Corner was a place where we can actually roll ink on, stamp and press templates of Huang Xinbo's art onto pieces of our own paper. We all were very excited and had lots of fun rubbing!

 Huang Xinbo's workspace

 Rubbing art

Rubbing out an image

We went for lunch next at one of the malls in the Sha Tin City Center called New City Plaza. It was incredibly busy - it seemed almost like boxing day shopping in one of the departments stores in the mall. It took us a while to find a place to sit and eat our meal, but eventually, we filled our stomachs and set off for our next adventure - Sha Tin Park. It was nice to explore outside after being in the museum and a crowded mall for a few hours. The park has a little waterfall, bridge and many colourful koi fish. We walked across the park, and continued alongside the water and came upon something unexpected - a group of men and women, ballroom dancing by the water!

 Melody and her lunch

Lunch

 Melody and Jordan on a bridge

 Exploration gang

 Melody and Jordan by a waterfall

Jean taking photos

It was quite a cute sight. Clearly, there were members of a club or a society, since there was at least 30 of them. They had a stereo system set up, with a karaoke - yes, karaoke! - station in the back, and happy people dancing around. There were many other spectators beside us, and we got to see them dance the Jive and Cha Cha before we decided to continue on.

Our next and final stop was one that I, and I think I alone, wanted to see. It was Snoopy World! I have been a fan of Peanuts cartoon since I was kid; I used to cut the Peanuts cartoon strips out of the daily Province newspaper and collect them in my photo album. It took us a while to find the Snoopy World, and we had to walk around in the crowded mall again, which was slightly frustrating. We finally found it, and I, along with 50 young kids, was running around and snapping pictures all the life-size Snoopys and Charlie Brown's. We didn't stay too long, since everyone was tired from the whole day out, and, although I don't understand, not everyone appeared to be a big fan of Snoopy. Psshh :P We decided to head home, and thus concluded our day of adventure!

 Melody and snoopy and random kiddo

 Melody in the crowd

 Snoopy world!

 Group shot

Jordan on the bus

Our day at Sha Tin turned out to be one of my favourite days so for in HK, since I got to experience a variety of activities with pretty awesome people! I was happy to be able to experience a bit of old Hong Kong heritage at Tsang Tai Uk, different sorts of HK culture at the Museum, nature at the Sha Tin Park, and, at least for me, a bit of childhood memories at Snoopy's World :)