Day 5 - Hong Kong

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First thing today, we headed to the Hong Kong Museum, which was three minutes walk from where we stay. But before we got there, we met up with two butterflies whilst strolling past under a Chinese Banyan Tree on the way. They were large black with blue flashes and landed on Maurs shoulder - one made a great picture. The history museum has two main exhibitions - one on the early history of Hong Kong and the other concerning the time since the republic of China movement began in 1911. The first exhibition contained many expensive static displays, exhibits, explanations and films about the pre history right up to now. This gave us an insight into Chinese life as it developed here. The latter part of this history explained the horrible events of the British Empire when to address an imbalance of trade in China , it imported opium to sell to the unsuspecting Chinese in an attempt to sell something the Chinese would buy. The emperor wasn't happy (who could blame him) he sent his forces in to stop this but the British might prevailed - so ended the 1st Opium war leading up to the emperor losing and ceeding HK. In a subsequent opium war when the emperor had had enough of his subjects being converted to opium, he again sent forces in - and lost again forcing him to ultimately give more land including HK to the British for 100 years - Just imagine now, if Mexico was able to successfully do that to the USA now. The second exhibition explained the course of history since the revolution by the people began against the emperor in 1911 ousting Puyi (the last emperor). Then came power divisions amongst the victors, the rise of the regional warlords culminating with the civil war of 1946-49 and the victorious communists. From what I can gather, China won’t be totally happy until Taiwan becomes part of the whole of China and this might even occur via a Hong Kong type of arrangement - lets wait and see. In the afternoon, we went to the Mong Kok markets again but this time to see the building and hardware shops and the goldfish shops and to a lesser extent, the electronic shops all in the hope of finding something we haven’t yet seen. The building shops were interesting as each has an open shopfront for plumbing supplies and fittings, plaster likewise and carpentry or joinery products. People just pull up in their cars and Bunning’s style, go into a few shops, buy what they need and leave - it was interesting to see how they do it over here because there are after all - lots of customers around. The goldfish shops offered many types of them mostly displayed in ready to go plastic bags all in open shopfronts.

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Photos

The butterfies
What surprise to meet you like this

Museum of Hong Kong
The Chinese exhibition

The Gold Fish Market at mong Kok
on display awaiting their new owners

Building Supply Area
at Mong Kok