Vignettes of the World
Time flies and we are at Mid-Autumn season in Hong Kong this year. In this entry, I will share some information and photographs of the places to go to celebrate Mid-Autumn this weekend. Since the pandemic, the lifestyle and spending habits of Hong Kong people …
As we walked from the Chorsu Bazaar to the Hazrati Imam Complex, we were going through the Old City area in Tashkent. However, I did not seem to get the impression that the sights on the way were particularly “old” in any ordinary sense of …
We went to see the locally-produced musical The Elephant in the Room. The show has long garnered popular acclaim since its first show in 2019. With boy band Mirror’s Frankie Chan as the lead character, this round of showing was guaranteed to be a hit. It was, in so many ways, exceedingly good.
I don’t want to spoil it for anyone here, so I will be brief. The scene opens at the “interchange,” where someone who dies will come and confess the regrets of their lives. Once they decide that they will let go of these regrets, then they will head on to the next leg of the journey beyond their death.
When the main character Lily comes, the two overseers of the interchange realize that she has no memory. If she does not remember her life, then she is not able to make the decision of whether she is letting go of the regrets. As such, she would not be able to go on to the next journey.
As she waits in the interchange for the next person, someone calls out her name. In comes Long, who recognises her. The story then unfolds as he tries to revive the memories of her life.
There is really only one original idea that runs through the musical, and it is the idea of regret. For a show of one hour and fifty minutes, one unifying idea that engages the audience on the thinking level certainly suffices. In fact, I thought the simplicity of the theme was a notable strength of the musical. The theme was well developed, both in terms of the storyline, characterization and the dialogues.
There were also some very good and witty insights into the somewhat nuanced distinction between regret and remorse. The play has conveyed this idea well, and certainly neither in Cantonese nor in English have I thought very hard about this distinction. Therefore there was some food for thought, and this was what added depth to the musical.
The show was held at the Xiqu Center, and it was a good choice. Xiqu Center has a large capacity for the throng of Mirror fans out there. The stage design was beautifully done, and the main scenes take place in a cosy setup that shows a typical Hong Kong home. The scenes transitioned seamlessly, and the stage crew did an amazing job.
The only reminder to audience is that the Xiqu Center is nearly unbearably cold. Do bring a windbreaker or wear long sleeves.
There are two main characters and two supporting characters. I really liked the performance by lead actress Wong Ching-ching. She is also the originator of the story. She has portrayed her character effectively, just like any girl next door and it was very likeable. All the four actors have drawn out the essences of the character that they played. They have also conveyed that sense of yearning for “what if,” in the characters’ lives.
There were also quite a few moments of humor, particularly good wordplays that Cantonese speakers are very accustomed to.
Finally, the music was a nice touch of creativity in the show. My only problem is that, although the marketing materials suggest that these are “Cantopop classics,” none of the songs, absolutely none of them, sounded familiar to me. It dawned on me that the Cantopop that I considered as classic belongs to an era that must have been prehistoric to the creators of this musical.
Granted that none of these songs were actually written specifically for the musical, I wanted to listen to the lyrics to understand whether the music was also chosen to accentuate some aspects of the musical. Soon, however, I realized that it served to distract me from the dialogue instead, because I could not really hear the lyrics. I then just enjoyed the music as it sounded. They all had a mellowness that fit the mood of the musical.
Finally, there was a live band on site to play the music. The actors sang the lyrics, and delivered the show very well.
The cast and the creators are indeed young. This production appears to be reflective of the sentiments of next-generation Hong Kong. Its success lies in the fact that there is an authenticity to the ideas of love, regret, yearning, misfortune, and death that were held together in a simple plot and a well-developed theme. The creators and producers of the musical have all had significant exposure with arts and theater abroad, but I sensed no pretence in the musical. There was no effort to represent it anything more than what it really was, unlike some of the local art that I have seen. The simplicity of the musical was what made it down to earth, moving and memorable.
The bazaars are as much for the locals as they are for the tourists. The Chorsu Bazaar features a few distinct areas of a marketplace. There are stalls for dried goods and clothes, there are open-area stalls for knick-knacks and fresh fruits. And then there …
VISA Do take note of VISA issues when you plan on travelling to Uzbekistan. For U.S. passport holders, you must apply for a VISA for a fee, and it is likely to be US$160. You may apply online on the official government portal of Uzbekistan. …
Perhaps Uzbekistan is only ubiquitous within its own borders. It is not a small country by any measure. Amongst the five central Asian countries of Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan, Uzbekistan is the third largest. Its population of 33 million also prides the top in the five.
Although their country is little known to the outside world, Uzbekistan’s people are rightly proud of their cultural heritage and natural endowments. And they are ever so ready to engage with the tourists when they do come across them, in the most genuine sense of curiosity, hospitality and warmth.
April is a good month to travel in Uzbekistan. The summers and the winters there can be unbearably extreme. We put together the trip within a short span of a couple weeks, and there were some real challenges, discussed in the next entry on preliminaries. It was out of good luck that we made it out there, and I would say this is a once-in-a-lifetime adventure into an unfamiliar territory and time.
We were perhaps done with the initial setup (money exchange, SIM card etc.) after a little over an hour at the airport. Time to head over to the hostel. We stayed at TopChan, because it is relatively close to the Tashkent North Train Station, where we would head out for a 7am train to Samarkand the next day.
At TopChan, the lady greeted me and started speaking Uzbek to me. That was when I had not even put on my head covering yet. I am always so flattered when people in other countries just speak to me naturally in their language. It does show that they feel like I am one of them.
TopChan is very clean and welcoming. The hotel rooms are hip and there is a community there. It was too bad that that evening would be the only night we stayed in Tashkent.
Tashkent greeted us with a drizzle. By the time we were done checking in at TopChan, however, it developed into quite a bit of a rain. We debated what to do, because the photographs would not show up well in that gloominess. We were eager to see the city, however, so we decided to head over to the Chorsu Bazaar, which should provide cover with plenty of photo ops indoors.
Tashkent is the capital of Uzbekistan and it is the most populous city in all of Central Asia. The words “tash” and “kent” in Turkic together means “stone city.”
As a city, Tashkent has a long story to tell. Suffice to say, it has ancient roots going back to 2,000 years ago, as a stop along the ancient silk road. Its riverways were fed by the meltwater from the mountains. As such, Tashkent as an ancient city was an oasis in the desert.
In the pre-Islamic times, there were early settlements of nomads and trade between the Sogdians and Turkic peoples. This early settlement took place between 5th and 3rd centuries BC, and the city then was known as Chach. Chach, at 7th century AD, prided a fortress, plus a system of 30 towns and 50 irrigation canals.
In the 9th century the Samanid ruler, the Persian emperor with Iranian origins, would bring forth a time of glory for Tashkent. At the time, trade was booming. Tashkent was a critical rest stop for Chinese merchants travelling further west to Samarkand and Bukhara. The Islamic period would go roughly for about two centuries, between 8th century and 10th century.
In Amir Timur’s (1336-1405) time, Tashkent gradually revived its cultural and strategic importance. The Mongol conquest in 1219 destroyed the city. It also ended a period of local rule by the Khwarazmian dynasty. Amir Timur rose to become the most revered ruler for Uzbekistan’s people, and that is so to this day.
Perhaps the next point of great historic importance would be Tashkent’s fall into Russian hands. As an independent state of Tashkent, its trade with Russia in the early 19th century had resulted in enormous prosperity. In 1865, Russian general Chernyaev launched a two-day attack at the well-fortified Tashkent, and surprisingly won. Since then, Tashkent became the capital of the territory of Russian Turkistan.
Tashkent (and later Uzbekistan)’s colonized status would continue well into the Soviet times. There will be more history about Uzbekistan’s transition into part of the Soviet Union in later entries. In 1991, it declared itself as the Republic of Uzbekistan, and naturally Tashkent became its capital city.
Given this history, Tashkent’s modernity is one of a truly melting-pot identity. Naturally, you can see all sorts of Russian footprints in Tashkent. There remains a sizeable Russian population in Tashkent today. Needless to say, the Uzbeks themselves have a distinct culture of their own, being century-long adherents to Islam, and also Asian in their ethnicity. The history of the ancient silk road has left its mark in Tashkent. The amalgamation of Arabic, Chinese and European influence is reflected in the city’s food, fashion, architecture, history and urban planning. It came to my mind often during my trip, that this is indeed Eurasia, a region where mixed heritages form a distinct way of life for its peoples.
And this distinct way of life is ubiquitously Uzbekistan.
Calum Macleod, Uzbekistan: the Golden Road to Samarkand (2014).
The Wikipedia on Tashkent.
The Wikipedia on Uzbekistan.
Time flies when one is engaged in seeing interesting museum exhibits, and I realised that I must head back to the guesthouse soon because checkout time was near. I hurried up and walked back toward to the Changshou Lu Metro Stop. The last bit of …
I saw signs pointing to the “Little Red House” on the street, when I was rushing back to the guesthouse. Despite being a little bit pushed for time, I decided to go for a look. I then came across the cluster of the three buildings …
Pun Tong (Pan Tang) is an area in Liwan that breathes history amidst a carefully manicured landscape.
The morning was still a little gloomy from the frequent thunderstorms. But it was my last morning in Guangzhou and I must seize the opportunity to do sightseeing. The Liwan Lake Park is very close to the guesthouse, and so I headed out early in the morning.
In the very ancient days, the Pun Tong area used to be a part of the sea. Then the silt and the sediments of Pearl River accumulated and a land mass was formed in the lowlands since the Tang Dynasty. The early villagers planted many, many Lychee and Longan trees. Liwan, with its first character meaning Lychee, thus acquired its name, to mean “the Bay of Lychee.” This area had many ponds as well. These ponds were hand-dug by the villagers, and for a long time they kept fish and lotus pads there.
The villages of Pun Tong have been in existence for nine hundred years. During the Qing Dynasty, the Pun Tong villages were the richest in the province. Lychee and lotus root farming were major sources of income for the villagers.
Like the other revitalized areas that I have visited in China, such as the Yongqing Fang, Enning Lu, and the Gankeng Ancient Hakka Townlet in Shenzhen, Pun Tong also underwent a process of creating a mixed heritage-business, and in some cases including residential, model. Although the whole area on which the current Pun Tong Cultural District now stands used to be populated villages, much of the residential area was cleared to make way for a revitalized district in 2007.
The most famous of the villages is the “Fifth Yeuk of Pun Tong.” A “yeuk” is a village organization. It is usually a reference to a given village. There were five “yeuks” in Pun Tong, and I only saw the Fifth Yeuk and the Fourth Yeuk there. After the revitalization, the Fifth Yeuk of Pun Tong remained as a mere showcase of a snapshot of old Pun Tong life.
The Fifth Yeuk was indeed photogenic. I noticed a number of interesting heritage and business establishments. There were coffee shops, sculptors, a magic theater, and a youth hostel that looked incredibly hip. None of these were opened in those morning hours, but I enjoyed myself as I walked down the neighborhood without having to stop for other tourists.
The mushy, low lying fresh water ponds of Pun Tong have enabled the abundance of the “five treasures of Pun Tong.” They are aquatic plants and food crops. The five treasures are lotus roots, arrowhead, water chestnuts, water bamboo, and buffalo nuts.
Like Tong Kee Chicken Congee and Noodles, Panxi Restaurant is also a Michelin Guide restaurant with a long history. In 1947, it began as a village eatery serving dim sums and dishes made from the five treasures of Pun Tong.
In 1958, the government invested in the construction of the restaurant’s current site. The landscaping, which really is quite amazing on the shore of Liwan Lake, was the work of architect Bozhi Mo. During the Cultural Revolution, the restaurant bore the typical name of Friendship Restaurant. In 1972, the prime minister of Nepal came to China for a visit, and he requested to visit Panxi. The restaurant then changed its name back to its original in order to greet the VIP guest. At the time, most other restaurants could not use their former names.
I passed by Panxi Restaurant before it officially opened for business at 7:30. The restaurant is on the way to the Pun Tong Cultural District. Surely, there was a crowd waiting for morning dim sum there, and they were mostly older diners. I first toured the Pun Tong Cultural District, then stopped at Panxi for the last proper meal I would have in Guangzhou.
Although I was eating alone, I ordered generously because I wanted to try out different dim sums. The restaurant has clearly positioned itself as a high-end establishment, as you can tell from the grand décor inside.
What amazed me however was the manicured garden space that one must pass through before entering the dining hall. It really was very beautiful.
As to the food, I have a feeling that what earned the restaurant a spot in the Michelin Guide was rather its supper menu and not the dim sum. The ha gow (steamed shrimp dumplings) were incredibly satisfying. Each morsel took me three bites to finish. All the other dim sums were also fair in terms of taste and generous in terms of portion. But it would not really be a Michelin grade in my opinion.
Time was running out, and I had in mind two more sightseeing spots. The Liwan Museum was next.
Descriptions on site.
The Wikipedia on Pun Tong (Chin).
The Wikipedia on Panxi Restaurant (Chin).
The weather remained calm this morning. I decided to walk over to the Shangxia Jiu Pedestrian Street for a look. The Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street The Shangxiajiu Pedestrian Street is known to be the “Commercial Corridor of Xiguan.” The pedestrian-only street spans a length of 1,237 …