Tuesday I went to Macau to cancel my tourist visa - I had planned to stay the day but I got put in the very front row of the massive catamaran ferry where there were no windows (but loads of legroom) and by the time I got there I felt so ill, that after taking 40 minutes to clear customs I sat in the loos for half an hour and got the next ferry back to Hong Kong!
Still, as it meant I left the country (Macau is part of mainland China), when I came back through passport control they activated my dependency visa so I can now apply for that ID card & stay here longer than a tourist could. Woohoo, nearly official! I had the wierdest breakfast - what I thought was a real croissant - but the middle was filled with fluffy pinkish brown stuff that was sort of sweet then tasted meaty. I later spotted a packet of it in the supermarket so we got it - 'Flossed Pork'. It looks like the contents of a loft insualtors' hoover bag - it really is dust/ fibres of pork, with a sort of sickly sweet sauce it was cooked in, I guess - but it goes back to feeling/ tasting meaty as you eat it! Odd.
Pork as youv'e never seen it before - being sweet loft insulation fluff
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
On the ferry they had a truly awful 'Gong Show' type of talent competition on the TV - public came on, often with very clever/ pro-looking costumes & ingenious props, to perform little skits, dances, etc. If the audience liked them a big sort of clapometer scale lit up, if it reached past a certain level they were 'winners' and went mad with joy as bunny girls gave them medals. No-one failed in the 2 hours I was there! But it was really 'old fashioned' by our standards - lots of stuff with people in all black costumes 'hidden' against a black background moving coloured puppets/ helping visible people do amazing stunts; small children singing (badly? I can't judge Chinese style) with simple actions; kids on stilts in costumes etc. Anyone under the age of 10 won by just being there I think; aside from that they loved when people did things on their heads so it was their feet/ backside being seen. Its the same with a lot of the Tv adverts, they seem SO naive & simplistic - like early TV adverts in the USA/ UK - you know, the perfect family with fixed smiles, simple, stilted, cheesey lines to say & lots of stroking the product being advertised whilst holding it against their cheeks, yik! The most-run ads at the moment are for a tutoring school, where all the school kids are running into a bakery to buy 'A' shaped bread, or onto a bus to hold 'A' shaped handles with the tutors. The other which I really don't get, is a posh lady in a beautiful house, remembering things from photos on her mantlepiece - her being podgy and doing a strange sort of 'birdy song' keep fit class, then being skinny & wandering around her amazing pool & grounds in beautiful designer dresses & doing more odd Spice Girl dance routines on the lawn. There have been ads for other weight loss/ get popular dance/ fitness classes - sorry, if you did what they seem to like here in the west you'd be laughed out the door by anyone over 6! I don't even know how it works - doing a few gentle John Travolta type points & hip swings surely isn't effective exercise??? But this ad - is if for weight-loss, dress designers, posh hotels or what???
I found the Hong Kong western market as I left the port, and spent more than I should have on amazing fabrics in the hope I can find a tailor to make me a new fairy dress to work in - BEAUTIFUL silks there, not just the more usual brocades with traditional patterns, but 2-tone with wired embroideries etc; sparkles, beaded. spangles..and the price is still half of what the chinese Arts & crafts centre had it at even though the market was in a pricey bit of town! Still, some of the silks were about £3 a metre, I think - thats what rubbish cloth costs in the uk! There were lots of rather rude Indian ladies buying sari materials too. The stall owners all really try to push the latest designer fabrics at you but I had no interest in rolls of Calvin Klein/ Chanel etc - expect its handy if you want rip-off copies made though!
Does anyone know if sulphur does actually drive away snakes? I keep seeing it everywhere so I asked what it was - just big streaks/ lumps of bright yellow, under boardwalks, around plants etc. I came out of the flats stairwell yesterday to catch the boat and a local said, 'stop, snake, over there!!!!!!" (pointing about 4 houses away in the opposite direction). I said, oh cool, can I see it? And he stomped off in a huff....... Pete apparantly did the same to one of the ex-pats he often walks back up the hill with, who constantly nags him about not wearing shoes. The guy was so happy to have finally SEEN a snake when he was with the shoe-less Peter - but as it scarpered as soon as they were in sight Peter sort of won the arguement I think.
I have been keeping busy writing (not paid! - but fun) for one of the big Face Paint trainers/ supply shops- the London School of Face Paint & their international supply shop. Bibi the owner freaks me out a bit as I think I will turn out JUST like her, (I hope so anyway shes lovely& her work is fab) and that was before she told me that all the stuff I do now (wings, jewellery and obviously art/ face paint) she did years back!!! Anyway, we talk a fair bit on email & she was sending me some stuff I ordered, and said would I write a bit for their online magazine; so I did & think she liked it - all about alternative Halloween/ afterlife beliefs & practices in different cultures. Will be published on her site soon anyway & has said would I do more. It was quite interesting actually - I knew the Celtic, Mexican & Chinese stuff but the few examples of African (Ananse the spider god) & Aboriginal (the octupus-tentacled man monster who eats people whole then sicks them up as shorter versions of themselves) etc I researched were cool! The idea was to give inspiration to painters fed up of vampires & pumpkin faces. She wants me to do more, which I will. Slightly addicted to the internet (which keeps cutting out) at the moment, but being out of contact (as my phone ran out & I'm not allowed to buy an HK contract until I have my ID card) winds me up.
On the subject of magazines, the Industry mag that asked me to do a step-by-step face for them (and liked the ones I did on Vicky & my wee cousin Stephie) wrote to say they wouldn't be using my pics in the launch issue after all. Then they saw the 2 pics I sent you lot (the green monster cat & tiger-licking-arm) on my website and offered me an entire article/ page on me instead in the second issue! Yeeks! Won't be till spring I think, as they only publish 3 times a year. Annoying as I still can't use/ enter comps with the faces I did for them until they have published them first, and have to do them more now. Still, they are posting me an early copy of their launch mag so Petes sis can bring it with her in October, when they don't actually 'launch' properly until the International UK Convention in November.
I spent the afternoon at Petes work - I still don't understand HOW he eats his 2 portions of lunch on his own - I only managed half a sandwich and a few forks of the noodles, and I can EAT!!! He says his portions seem to get bigger weekly too. I tried to find suppliers etc (unsuccessfully) on the internet while he worked - and I had a proper shower, LUSH!!!
Dragons for the Autumn Moon festival at Petes Middle Island centre
Originally uploaded by wildcatfin.
As we walked along the shore in the dark to get the bus, lots of families and parties were set up on the beach, with BBQ's and picnics. All the kids had home- or school-made lanterns, and everyone was covered in those little glow-in-the-dark flexible snap-stick tubes that you can twist into shapes or just wear as bracelets. With all the candles and glow sticks it really looked magical. Anyway I persuaded Pete to go into Central as the big lantern lampshade things I spotted being built last week got launched last night, were on tonight (Friday) and finished on Bank Holiday Saturday, so I thought it was best to see them tonight as possibly it would be slightly quieter. (Every club, cafe and organisation was having its Autumn Moon Dinner tonight - even Petes centre was going mad as the head chef stressesd out about having 100 bookings already!). The crowds in Central were SCARY, luckily our tram by-passed them all & dropped us in front of the main library by the park entrance.
The wierd structures I spotted last week being built were a 'Lantern Wonderland', with amazing clear plastic pebbled/ bubbled pavements surrounding them that had blue, green & white fairy lights flickering through it (I actually preferred that to the structures!). Allegedly it was a 'fusion of modern & traditional culture on a water theme' (I got caught to do a survey for the tourist board but got my own back by not having a job that fitted into any of her categories and really confused her - and not knowing what my annual household income was in US dollars!). The massive lantern things had mechanical bits inside them that raised or lowered the sort of volcano-shaped wire & fabric structures, and lights, music, drums, smoke, and odd coloured shapes were projected onto & out of them. The rest of the place was decorated with traditional fan & lantern lights, with some HUGE lanterns which looked more like immense fairground rides - but were really intricate multi-colored statues almost, lit from within.
Whoever was selling the kids plastic blow-up cartoon character lanterns that sang annoying songs should have been shot though - and they looked so tacky against the others! All of them were carried on little mini fishing rods, the plastic rods had batteries in the handles to light the lantern or make it move/ sing. Pete went totally drippy over all the wee kids in their chinese dresses - cute! The full Moon was amazing.
We then headed for a region behind the library where a fire dragon dances all around the streets from the Lin Fa Kung temple. It started 175 years ago, when a village plague was stopped after an elder dreamt that Buddha told him to light fire crackers and do the fire dragon dance - they think it was the sulphur in the crackers that helped too! it was SO crowded even Peter could only see the tops of the drummers flags, so we went wandering around the whole dance route to try and find food or a spot to watch. Luckily I found a tiny ally which ended on the blocked off street where they were actually preparing the dragon! We were stood at about the front 3rd of the body/ tail. It's body was a long sinuous rope-like wired piece of fine brushwood, about the thickness of my arm; like when you twist and wire brush as a base for Christmas wreaths - like heather branches. Except this went as far as I could see in each direction - 67 metres long!!!! Every meter the 'rope' was wired onto a thick numbered pole that rested on the ground and was held by a 'dancer'. The head was an ornate outline of the traditional chinese dragon, with the big eyebrows etc, again in brush, but attached to the body by a long proper rope so it could be more flexible. As we watched, runners from surrounding streets were bringing sheaves of thick incense sticks (as long as to my elbow) from fires where they had lit them, to some more of the dance team who were frantically stabbing handfulls of them into the brushwood structure. There were also several poles with massive balls of joss sticks which were independent like the pom-pom bits those dragons have. Anyway, eventually (they were late starting) they had enough sticks bristling out of the dragon, and picked up the whole thing & shook it to get rid of as many loose sticks as possible. The police & even us behind the street barriers got showered with sparks & glowing joss sticks!
They gave a huge cheer as the drummers reached the front of the dragon, and off they went! It looked like there was a lot of inertia or it was hard to control the body, as while the head cavorted off in very life-like fashion, the tail was listing & veering from side to side of the street and started a few shop awnings smouldering! The dancers all had matching Tshirts but ranged from kids and young women to old men, so I hope they had lots of rests and swapped - it was blazing heat from where we stood, so being directly under 1000's of joss sticks must have been BOILING!!! As well as the sparks/ smoke - a more valid reason for wearing the face masks they love so much, I would have thought! Some had towels & sunglasses on but really only a few. Still, it was a fab atmosphere and looked great, just a pity we had no chance to see it from the front - but we headed off to get our last ferry & avoid the mass exodus. I'll try to add my iffy video of it to this email - was only taken on my camera, in very crowded conditions, so not brilliant but gives the idea! the bit where i go 'whoo' and there are sparks is where it hit the awning above me.
Waiting for the minibus home we were drooling over the tiny puppies in the pet shop district again. You are not allowed to take photos otherwise I could show you the odd shaved faces on the wee terrier dogs. Finally saw a 'normal' faced cat - most in the shops have the horrible squashed noses like pugs/ those oriental cat breeds, (although the ones on our island are normal) but this was a gorgeous maine coon cat. I always remember the one the medical research student had in Belize when i was doing my thesis on Mayan herbs - it would hang out the jeep window like a dog & go bounding off into the jungle wherever we stopped, turning up to check out where we were every hour or so, even crossing rivers with us.......... Don't know if its normal or for the festival but we kept seeing pets being carried around last night, with 'outfits' (oh dear) or at the very least Elton John style star-shaped sunglasses! True fashion victims as its dark after 6 pm now!
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