Trip to China - day 18

13.07.2014

Did I tell you about HK metro? In my opinion, the most remarkable thing in it is the number of exits from a station. Exits leading in different directions are marked by different letters (A, B, C,…), and when they further split they get numbers (A₁, B₃). Therefore, after you get off a train you can still travel for some 10 minutes by foot before you get to the ground surface. For example, when I exited Tsim Sha Tsui metro station to get to my hostel, I had to take exit N₅.

I decided to continue my excursion to different temples in HK and directed my feet to Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery…

…where among other things I had a lunch at this place’s vegetarian canteen…

…and had a great opportunity to practice my Chinese as the staff there almost didn’t speak English.

N.B. As in most countries, people in China in general, in HK in particular, are usually very happy if you try speaking to them in their language. (Even though by Chinese I mean Mandarin, not Cantonese most of people speak in South China). In mainland China, even in the big cities like Beijing or Guangzhou, it is sometimes a hard task to find an English-speaking person in the streets. In HK, however, it is usually not a problem to survive with English – almost everybody speaks it, better or worse, but they do.

The next point of my itinerary was the Daoist Wong Tai Sin temple.

N.B. In China Daoism and Buddhism are extremely close to each other and it is hard for me to tell the difference.

Perhaps, the most beautiful part of the temple area is the garden.

Interestingly, you can find a statue of Confucius in the garden. Concentrating on different things, teachings of Confucianism, Buddhism and Daoism seem to complement each other here in China.

A walk over Ladies’ Market and Nathan Road brought some interesting characters like this one…

The writing says "don't touch".
The pose says the same.

…or the guy jumping at me in a crowded street and trying to sell some marijuana (“It’s good, really good!”). By the way, does anyone know whether that is legal in HK?

The rest of the evening I spent wandering around Tsim Sha Tsui embankment, taking nice pictures…

Writing above the handle says that it is
disinfected 8 times a day.
In HK they are really concerned about avian flu.

…seeing the evidence for Jackie Chan’s (or at least his hands’) popularity (compare yourself!)…

…and watching the HK light show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Symphony_of_Lights).

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