Day 3 in Hong Kong

Tuesday 8th May

Destination: We headed for Lantau island to visit the world’s largest Buddha statue, the Tian Tan Buddha Statue. To reach the statue from the MTR station, we had to take the Skyrail, which was a nice half-hour cable car ride. The alternative route was the "Wisdom Path", and while on the cable car we did spot someone walking his way on that very long path.

While watching a bunch of tourists gazing at the statue I realized how it seemed that neither tourism nor religion was out of place.

There are times when foreigners step into existing places of worship as observers, but in this case the statue was very likely to have been built with both tourists (fancy cable car ride) and worshippers -although, seeing as to how daunting the long flight of steps were, not the elderly- in mind. Ngong Ping Village, which housed Starbucks and small cafes and souvenir shops.

Beside the statue there was the Po Lin Monastery, which was also filled with both tourists and religious worshippers. Here, some tourists also took part in the rituals of burning joss sticks - a young American boy who clearly didn't understand why he was made to do this was dismayed at the red color the sticks left on his hand and started to cry, thinking that he got burnt.

Religion on tourist display may be a way of sharing and reaching out to new people, and it is heartening to see that the display does not reduce the religious value of the place – we met many locals (and a good number of elderly ones!) who were genuinely there for worship, and a lady we met on the MTR also told us that she visited the statue and the nearby temple regularly with her family.

Destination: To max out the last day our unlimited MTR pass, we picked another far away place: Festival walk, the largest shopping mall in Hong Kong. It was glitzy and contained expensive international brands, expensive resturants and an indoor skating rink – a far cry from the street shopping in Hong Kong. The sales personnel were clearly more fluent in English. We continued the glitzy mall experience at Causeway Bay and Times Square. Consumerism by locals and tourists is clearly an important part of Hong Kong’s economy, and it is amazing how almost the entire Hong Kong is filled with shops, whether in the streets or in the malls. Even more remarkable is the crowd everywhere even though the prices are comparable to those in Singapore, where some malls and streets are not doing so well.

Menu: Being on the move the food we had today were testaments to the cosmopolitan side of Hongkong more than something of Chinese migrant tradition. A bakery selling portugese buns, sushi, Mexican wraps and cheese cakes, and later a food court, were amongst the many other examples of things that had entered Hong Kong in recent history.

-Yinghui