Vignettes of the World
When I woke up on my first full day in Japan, I decided to ditch the Osaka Castle and head right on to Kyoto. I took the JR line to Kyoto from the Osaka Station, having to navigate the morning’s rush hour, and arrived in …
Historic Sites to Visit in Central A walk amidst the hustle and bustle of Central during a weekday rush hour can be a bewildering experience. As Hong Kong’s business district, Central is the heart of the matter when it concerns business. But visitors to Hong …
The plane touched down at Kansai Airport and I looked for the train ride to Osaka. The plan, originally, was to stay that evening in a hotel in Osaka, then the next morning I would see Osaka Castle before heading out to Kyoto.
I saw a ticketing station when I just came out of the airport. The ticketing booths sold JR tickets, and naturally I bought a JR ticket, although there would have been (slower but cheaper) trains on the Kansai Airport Rapid trains (Nankai Rapids) to Osaka, for which I could have paid with the Suica Card.
As it turned out, I purchased the ticket for the Limited Express Haruka train, which presented Hello Kitty, Japan’s sweet ambassador. This boded well for my trip. It brought up pleasant childhood memories seeing the most enduring icon of Sanrio. Hello Kitty was my very first encounter with Japanese culture, and it brought forth a fuzzy sweetness.
It took maybe about an hour for me to reach Osaka station. It was well into the night when I arrived, so I could not quite see what Osaka was like outside.
Inside the metro, however, I saw an urban scene that was very familiar. It appeared that a lot of commuters were going home. Tickets in, tickets out, people hurried through the station minding their own business. It could have been anywhere in the world, really, that the motions of life take its pre-programmed course, automated in a foot traffic that runs a mindless rhythm until one reaches his destination. No one paid attention to anything, perhaps not even to himself.
Serving a population of 2.75 million in Osaka, the Osaka Metro is the integral part of the extensive mass transit railway system of Greater Osaka. This network of metro transit system reaches eastward to Kyoto and extends westward to Kobe, consisting of more than 1,000 stations. I noticed that some stations seemed slightly tired. Indeed, the Midosuji Line that runs through Umeda Station began its service in 1933, the second oldest metro line in Japan.
I then made it to a mall at Umeda to have the very first Japanese meal in Japan in my life. I opted for grilled beef bento at Romantei Lucua at the Umeda Station, and, while it was not too bad, I was a little disappointed.
“Once you have had Japanese food in Japan, you would never want any Japanese food outside of Japan,” so I was told by numerous friends. Good food is expected at even the most unlikely, humblest of all places, such as the kombini’s (convenience stores), and at any kind of food court. This first grilled beef I had was not too bad, the quality of the meat was fair. The temperature was right, it was cooked to medium rare, and there was marble on the beef. But something was missing, namely, basic flavor. It tasted bland at the first bite. I added a whole lot of furikake powder, dipped it in the sauces, and it tasted better.
Well, as it turned out, the food I had in my first trip in Japan was the only, and single most, disappointing experience. Even at that first dinner in Osaka, I figured that I was simply too accustomed to the Japanese food that was adapted to local preferences, and that was why I always loved having Japanese food wherever I lived. There will be more on Japanese food on a later entry.
The hotel of the evening was the Hotel Keihan Tenmabashi in Tenmabashi. I booked this hotel because it was within walking distance of the Osaka Castle. The hotel room was clean and petite with a whole lot of free toiletries for guests to take freely.
I was so excited at my first night in Japan that I could not fall asleep. When I used to tell my Hong Kong friends that I had never been to Japan previously, they looked at me with disbelief. In 2023, the Japanese Yen was at its historic low and I thought it was the perfect opportunity to see it, finally.
Osaka was good to me. I had no trouble understanding how the metro worked and people were courteous. They did also understand my English as well. I already knew that I would have incredible memories in Kansai.
Ask just about any Hong Kong person and you would find answers to all things Japan. Japan is hands down the most popular travel destination for Hong Kong people. In fact, many in Hong Kong call it “going home” when they go to Japan. Clearly, …
Besides the Cha Chaan Teng’s, the Dai Pai Dong’s are also a way of dining that is distinctly Hong Kong. In recent months I have had the pleasure of visiting a few Dai Pai Dong’s in Hong Kong. I do consider the Dai Pai Dong’s …
The train to Shenzhen would depart in the early evening and I debated how to spend the day in Jiangmen. To be honest, there was not very much in this city that I wanted to see, as I was almost always only keen on heritage sightseeing. There were maybe a couple of fortresses here and there, but it would be prohibitively expensive for me to hire a car for a day to see them. One of them was a site of ideological education, and I thought it best to avoid it.
Close to the hotel at which we were staying was a museum with exhibitions on the history of overseas Chinese. I ruled that out as well because I thought the learning from the Kaiping diaolou’s has amply served the purpose. The Diaolou’s are a living history.
It then came upon me that I had not had a chance to have claypot rice. During the car ride with my driver in Kaiping, we talked about local food. A Chikan specialty, the claypot rice was highly recommended by Mr. Guan, my friendly driver. I then began searching for a few options in the area. On my wish list were claypot rice, fried fish cakes and dried mandarin peel coffee.
Zhaogongxiang Ji seemed popular in the food review circle. It would require quite a bit of walk to have the claypot rice and the fried fish cakes, but I had a whole day to kill, so off I went.
I arrived at a little after 2pm and was very nervous when the waitress told me that the chef had already left for the afternoon recess. It would have been exceedingly unfortunate if I did not get to try this claypot rice. And plus, I really did need food at that hour as well.
Somehow the manager told me to order quickly, and I did. Traditionally, Chinese people think of the Asian swamp eel (in Chinese, the yellow eel) to be very nutritious. I was eager to try that in a claypot rice.
It being a claypot specialist, the Zhaogongxiang Ji offers a menu that caters to a wide array of preferences for Chinese diners. Its menu options are quite different from the standard claypot rice restaurants in Hong Kong. Some offers are truly eye-catching to a Hong Kong diner: seabass, meatloaf with shrimp paste, meatloaf with crab, and even fusion claypots like salty eggs with beef and cheese or Thai style claypots.
My claypot came sizzling with mouthwatering aroma. The ritual is to pour some of the soy sauce over the food and close the lid for the soy sauce to seep through the rice. I like my food piping hot, so I dug in soon.
I thought this was Michelin star grade claypot. In any claypot, the rice is the very soul that defines the claypot. It is the most critical technique, the standard by which the quality of the claypot is appreciated.
The claypot rice of Zhaogongxiang Ji was dry, with each grain thoroughly-cooked but with no sogginess. This enables each grain to have a distinct texture within the palate, resulting in a chewiness. This alone is an achievement.
What amazed me further was the fact that the crispy bottom had not one burnt grain of rice. Now, that is new to me. In Hong Kong, the rice is usually a bit burned in the bottom of the claypot, which indicates that the bottom layer of the rice has crisped up. I spooned a whole sheet of crisped up rice without it being stuck to the bottom of the claypot because of its being burnt.
In any authentic claypot rice, the rice is added raw to the claypot. As such, the claypot serves as the rice cooker on an open fire stove. That is how the rice crisps up at the bottom. In this kind of cooking, timing is the very key that makes or breaks a claypot rice. The manager told me that the chef never fails in his timing, and that is how the rice turns up crispy with not a grain of it burnt.
The Asian swamp eel was a perfect combination in this claypot rice. The eel had a natural sliminess. When it is well-seasoned and placed atop the rice, its flavors are fused with the rice beneath. The natural sliminess became a smooth sensation when eaten with the rice, as if you can slurp it.
I highly recommend this claypot rice restaurant in Jiangmen.
It took me 30 minutes to walk to Zhaogongxiang Ji, and then another hour of walk to get to this very local shop for fish cakes.
There was not very much to see as I walked through a quieter part of Jiangmen City. It was a boring urban landscape, and I managed to find no cafe on the way that offered chenpi (dried mandarin peel) coeffe. The clouds were gathering. I pushed on because I really wanted to try the fried fish cakes, as a popular local food in Jiangmen.
There was a line at this small shop already when I arrived. I had a nice chat with the locals there, as it was clear to everybody that I was a tourist. Batches of fish cakes were being fried. I ordered a few and really enjoyed them as they were piping hot, bouncing in my mouth.
I figured that I had better get back to the hotel soon, it was a long walk to get to this part of the city. As heavy rain befell me, I decided that I must take public transportation. This was a good conclusion to my trip in Kaiping and Jiangmen.
I have a very favorable impression of Jiangmen due to a personal memory of my grandma. When WWII began, resources were scarce. She would take her mother’s Qing dynasty clothes to the merchants of Jiangmen in exchange for money. “One piece of my mother’s Qing …
The theme of security and protection has been prominently featured in the diaolou’s that I have visited in Kaiping. But Nan Lou is perhaps the only diaolou that came with an official history in the defense of the nation. We called a car to take …
My friend and I went to Kaiping because she saw an ad on the MTR in Hong Kong promoting the Chikan Ancient Town. As such, it was with a whole lot of anticipation that I arrived at Chikan from Majianglong Village.
And, to say the least, the experience at Chikan was disappointing, and I shall explain below.
Upon arrival, Rongan Lou greeted visitors with a cheeky banner saying “fat choi from now on,” (become super wealthy from now on). This is one of the few diaolou’s in the ancient town. Rongan Lou has 6 stories, and it is one of the taller diaolou’s that I have seen.
We stayed at the Changsheng Hotel on site at the ancient town. The hotel was clean and modern, and that was about the best experience we had there at Chikan.
Included in our room fees was the entrance fee into the Chikan Ancient Town. As with Huangyao, you will be going through a face scan as your “entry ticket.”
Entrance fee is waived for Kaiping locals. We are not sure if other Chinese locals can enter the ancient town for free as well. Our appearance certainly did not pass for a local Chinese, therefore every time we tried to enter the ancient town, we were asked to show our “tickets.”
Chikan, meaning “red ground,” acquired its Chinese name due to the abundance of red earth in the area. The two main clans that settled in this area of Kaiping in Chikan were the Guan and the Situ. The history of settlement began about 350 years ago. In the earlier times, the Guans and the Situs did not get along. They each set up their own marketplaces, which were the economic lifelines in Chinese societies. Where their economic and territorial interests clashed, the two clans had resorted to violent confrontations.
Photos: The ancestral halls of the Situs and the Guans, respectively.
The Tan River (Tanjiang) runs through now Chikan Ancient Town. Traditionally, the Situs marked their territory north of the river. The Guans took the south. As with the general area of Kaiping, Chikan is also known for the heavy influence that the overseas Chinese have had in all aspects of its history and landscape.
Finally, because of the beautiful city-scape of Chikan, an abundance of its fusion architecture and qilou’s (arcade buildings that are very much a prominent feature of Guangdong architecture), Chikan has been a very popular choice for movie sets.
Photo: The qilou’s (arcade buildings) are very prominent in Guangdong architecture.
Amongst the best-known ones are Qiuxi (2009) and The Grandmaster (2013). Another movie that has earned wide acclaim was Let the Bullets Fly (2010). It was set in Kaiping.
Our first sense of Chikan was its night scenery. To be fair, Chikan at night was beautiful in its own right. There was a very happening night market, but we opted to have dinner at a proper establishment. We found Meitang Hotel.
Located in the boundary point between the territories of the Guans and the Situs, Meitang Hotel was revitalized into a heritage site with upscale ambience. It is named after Situ Meitang, an overseas Chinese of the Situ lineage that had a legendary life working as a chef in the United States. He was a pivotal figure in a few anti-Qing organizations. He would eventually make great contributions to the 1911 Revolution.
The food was good, no doubt. Although we were hoping for western cuisine, we were shown a Chinese menu. For some reason, the restaurant was not able to handle the demand that evening (it did not seem like a full house to us). It took a very long time for our food to arrive. Considering that the experience was not perfect, we thought we paid a lot for this meal.
After our meal, we walked around the Chikan Ancient Town. Here are some of the photographs that shows its night scenery. The riverside areas are very popular with the tourists.
The next morning we woke up and decided to walk a little bit more in Chikan, to see it in daylight. We slowly warmed up to the ambience of the studio city. We debated whether those buildings were heritage, or merely props that were built for movie sets. They looked, oddly, so new and so old at the same time.
After a leisurely lunch and coffee, we decided to take the tour bus as our finale in Chikan, before we would head off to the Nan Lou for some authentic, history-heavy diaolou viewing. I highly recommend the tour bus. Do keep in mind that the afternoon hours are very busy for this tour. It takes the tourists on a run around the studio city, certainly to spots too far for us to walk to.
By then, we have decided that most of what we were looking at were indeed old, heritage buildings. It was just that they were too poorly renovated, (they could not have been called “restoration”) with clearly new materials simply plastering over the old, without even skillful craftsmanship.
The popularity of Chikan being a prime location for movie sets has resulted in Chikan Ancient Town being turned into a Universal Studio-type of venue. The Chikan studio city was built in 2005 with an RMB 20 million funding. The area spans 60,000 square meters.
Within its enormous square footage, the Chikan Ancient Town offers little by way of direction. In such a space, it is difficult for visitors to navigate the key sites without getting lost. The signages did not help much within the studio city. There is a large map that we saw, but really only in one spot within this vast space.
What frustrated us the most was the fact that it was a big hassle trying to get inside the studio city from our hotel. Our hotel stood right across the river from the ancient town, and for some reason, we kept walking on streets and bridges that looked as if they were leading into the ancient town but they turned out to be dead ends. We could not understand why a clear throughway could not have been provided. We have had to turn back a few times as we tried to get inside the town area.
In my humble opinion, the sites inside the studio city were poorly-renovated. The clear intention was to serve as movie sets and there was no effort to bring out the historic qualities in these buildings. The studio city trumped the authenticity of valuable historic sites with gaudy makeshift props and that broke my heart. There was little for the heritage tourist within the studio city.
The story of Chikan was not told to us in any coherent manner. I only learned about some key historic sites after we left: the Jinghui Lou, the two libraries of the Situs and the Guans etc. In the large map, there was no indication where the narrative of Chikan would be told, and there were thousands of buildings claiming to be heritage in the area. Although some shops showed exhibitions, the story told was pitifully inadequate.
Photo: One of the very few exhibitioins that we came across, on the former site of a light and power company.
My conclusion from this experience was that Chikan was actually not touristy enough. It was meant to be a studio city, certainly not for tourists. The poor design of the studio city was amply frustrating to those who look for more than instagrammable photographs.
Having spent one frustrating night and half a frustrating day there, I suggest tourists to scrap the Chikan studio city, and just visit the arcade buildings on the west bank of the river.
Our next stop is Nan Lou. It was going to be a whole lot better for the history tourist.
The Wikipedia on Chikan (Chin).
I had to hurry through the Majianglong Village because time with the hired car was up soon. Even a quick walk through the village brought forth quite a different experience from the previous two sites that I visited, the Zili Village and Liyuan Garden. Majianglong …