Venus Transit

June 6th was the day of the Venus transit. A very special astronomic event that can be observed again only in the year 2125. What made it amazing for me was the fact that I was actually able to see it and not only read about it. Usually eclipses, transits and special flickering stars are seen best in some exotic places, islands or the desert. Hong Kong certainly is exotic and yes, the transit could be seen. In Estonia, even if the time would be appropriate (this year it happened during the night, so difficult to observe), there would always be clouds. And the need to go to some special observatory to have the equipment to see the heavenly events.

In Hong Kong I stumbled over information that a “temporary observing station” was opened to the public on Avenue of the Stars. This is a chic promenade on the southern tip of Kowloon (mainland Hong Kong) overlooking the skyscrapers on the Hong Kong island on the other side of Victoria Bay. Local film industry stars like Jackie Chan have left their “mark” (handprints) there just like in the Hollywood Walk of Fame.

My eagerness to see Venus pass in front of the sun as a black little dot was so great that I forgot to bring my camera. So I have found some pictures from the internet to illustrate the event. What I did get, however, as a proof of having been there, were two stamps about the transit of Venus as well as two about past solar eclipses in Hong Kong.

The observation center had been open and running since 6 am with information booths, video cameras and an array of telescopes in different sizes to follow the event. Special solar viewers were handed to people to be able to look directly into the sun in a safe way. The history of the Venus transit was explained as well as how to measure the sun’s distance from earth by photographing the transit in different locations of the earth, for example. There were models showing the planets in the solar system and once again, many many telescopes to see Venus moving from around 11 o’ clock to 2 pm on the solar blade.

June 4th in Hong Kong

June 4^th marks the day of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989 when pro-democracy demonstrators were killed by Chinese government forces in Beijing.

Nowadays Hong Kong is the only city in China where this day can be commemorated and wanting to experience it, I headed to the central Victoria Park on Monday evening, too.

My Hong-Kong-native colleague from work Winnie, who kindly asked me to join her in this adventure and led me the way on my second day in this immense city said, that the celebration is not what it used to be. It is quietly fading, as is the memory of the people. This year it is the 23^rd anniversary of the massacre, therefore not a round one, she said. It also falls on a Monday and not the weekend, which might make it less popular. But to our surprise the streets leading to the Park were so packed that it took us about an hour in a slow and cramped procession to get there. Because of the heat and the crowd there was hardly any air to breathe. Winnie’s suggestion to turn my face towards the sky to get some air from higher up proved very necessary and helpful.

The streets leading to Victoria Park were also stages for political activity and advertisement. Posters of several candidates, people shouting slogans into microphones (photo below) as well as donation boxes embellished this pilgrimage road to the park. As I do not understand Cantonese I cannot judge what the shouted promises were. The donation boxes, however, were to support the political endeavours of these candidates, the newly opened  Hong Kong 4^th of June museum and the soon to come July 1^st protest. (Both the June 4^th commemoration and July 1^st protests are annual pro-democracy events. The latter has been a channel for fighting against the Basic Law Article 23, which threatened Hong Kong’s independent legal system, different from that of mainland China).

The commemoration service was to last from 8 -10 pm. As we got there by 8.20, the huge baseball court where the event took place was already packed with people and there was no possibility to enter. We could find a place to sit down in the adjacent field, where a screen was set up and which was also practically full by then.

Everybody was given a white candle. I noticed some amazingly creative ways of preventing the candle wax to drop on people’ s hands during the two hour ceremony. There were candles melted to stick on top of turned-around plastic soda bottles. Many people had folded paper around the candle in a conic shape.  I was a able to catch a photo of  a candle stuck through a little McDonalds French fries box (below). Very imaginative!

The commemoration itself included ceremonial drumming, many speeches, songs, stories by victims and survivors. And a minute of silence that was penetrated by the powerful chirring of the cicadas in the trees surrounding the park. There was a speech by a woman from the association of Tiananmen Mothers who had lost her son in the massacre. Tiananmen Mothers echoes the Abuelas and Madres de Plaza de Mayo (Grandmothers and Mothers of May Square) in Buenos Aires, Argentina, who have equally joined to share and express their pain for their disappeared children and grandchildren during the Argentine dictatorship of 1976-83.

There was also a teleconference greeting by Wang Dan, a Chinese democracy activist and one of the main student leaders of the Tiananmen protest in 1989. Now he lives in exile in the US and his greeting came from Harvard.

The event finished with a speech by the organizer of the ceremony who stated that the number of people present in the park this night had been 180 000. Also the donation boxes had been filled, helping to make the newly opened 4^th July museum a permanent one. Finally, lists filled with people’s names, who had signed them while visiting the museum and showing solidarity for the 4^th July commemoration, were burnt in a ceremonial way. (Apparently in Hong Kong there are shops full of beautiful paper items to burn in memory of the dead, so doing some nice burning in the end of an event like this makes very much sense).

Hong Kong parks have free wi-fy and. Half way through the ceremony, however, with photos of the event going all around the world through people posting them on Facebook, internet was disabled…

For some professional photos of the spell-bounding sea of candles in the Hong Kong night have a look at the photo gallery from the Spanish newspaper El Pais. What my loyal telephone is capable of can be seen below.

Food – beware!

Now this is interesting! I came home with a beautiful yellow dessert (Pudding with Nata de Coco) from my first trip to a Hong Kong supermarket. To my surprise I discovered the following text on the label (it cannot be discerned from the photo so I will write it out):

“Caution: Little children and elderly should not be left alone when eating the product. The product should be cut into small pieces before eating.”

Can it really be that dangerous? Does eating it make one feel lonely? Can children and elderly eat only a little bit of it (since it tasted pretty artificial)? At leats that´s how I understood it.

Maybe something just got lost in translation.

Hong Kong apartments

TheTravellingMe was on holiday for three weeks that turned out the be such a busy time that I had no time to write. But tonight I would like to share something as for the first time I have landed in Asia,  in a place called Fragrant Harbour (translation for Hong Kong).

I had read in books on cultural differences that houses are very small in most Asian countries. Therefore hosting guests in one´s home is not so popular for example as in the big-house-countries like the US or Australia. But I had never imagined that Asian homes could be SO small. Even a one-room (not one bedroom!) flat in a Soviet tower block in Tallinn or St Petersburg is a giant compared to this one where I am staying now. My room in the central Hong Kong district of Kowloon (overlooking the Hong Kong island) is about 4 square meters big, making it the smallest room where I have ever stayed. And even this comes with a price. A two-bedroom apartment like that costs 2000 euros per month which makes me think that Lonely Planet is right once again. Accommodation is the most expensive and problematic topic in this city as room is very scarce. And sizes differ. Beds are also tiny as are the rooms, due to the physical differences of people on this part of the planet.

What I also find interesting in this new home of mine is the fact that almost all spaces (walls, cupboards, the fridge, the air conditioner and even the ceiling) are covered with stickers ranging from Hello Kitty to Disney  and local cartoon heroes. Lots of pink and kitch to ponder upon. Maybe by the end of my two month stay I will understand what makes them so attractive to Asian girls. I also found my favourite which is Hello Kitty (or rabbit) flying around on a spoon as seen below: