Lectures - Environment Sustainability and Walled Cities / Field Trip, Basin Food in a Walled City

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There were two lectures today. One at the Hong Kong Institute of Education on Environment and Sustainability, the other at a walled city in the New Territories on the culture of walled cities. The lecture on environment was interesting, however, I was slightly disappointed because it did not concentrate much on the specifics of Hong Kong and China in general. As we just traveled in Beijing, I was looking forward to hearing about the smog (smoke and fog) and how they are dealing with it, but that did not occur. We received a lot of basic information about environment sustainability in general throughout the world. The second lecture took place at an actual walled city. It was conducted by a woman named Isabella who has been living there and conducting research for her doctorate. It was fascinating to hear about how the people live in these villages and how their laws are different from Hong Kong and mainland China. Their system is extremely patriarchal.

I enjoyed the tour of the walled city. It was surprising to me that it was one of the wealthier villages. The people seemed very nice, and there were a lot more dogs than I expected to see in China. The most surprising thing to me was the school area. It seemed like it was used as a storage space, not a school. Isabella told us that most children now go to Hong Kong schools instead of the village school.

Our last item on the agenda was a basin meal. It was different than things I am accustomed to in the United States, but basically a basin meal is meat, fish, and vegetables cooked in the same bowl then eaten family style. Our basin had shrimp, fish balls, pork, chicken, squid, yams, turnips, and some other items. I love turnips, which I had not discovered until coming to Asia.

Tomorrow is our last official day in Hong Kong for lectures, and then on to Macau! We will be back on the 17th to have one last field trip before flying out of the airport in Hong Kong on the 18th. Possibly Disneyland Hong Kong?

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