China Orient Expressions 2
Orient Expressions #2 Local Knowledge
It’s Dec. 30 and the streets, malls, museums, and Victoria Bay g are teeming with shoppers, visitors, brides and grooms, and lots of locals on holiday. Let’s start with brides and grooms since there were so many of them as the holidays made for beautiful backdrops for the required photo album. This album, | which is prepared months before the wedding, will be on display at the actual wedding ceremony. Traditional Chinese protocol requires that there is prior approval of the chosen groom by the parents re: income requirements, age,
ff employment, brothel gifts, home and car ownership. In some
| regions, the “white dress bride” will change into a traditional stunning red gown for the ceremony. We heard this story in every Chinese community we were in as well as Hong Kong (a Special Administrative Region with their own government and policies- currently in a bit of political unrest-but that’s another long and interesting story). Interestingly, by the age of 30 a woman is considered undesirable as a wife. With more women choosing a career, there is a burgeoning (aka “expensive”) industry of seminars and consultancy for women to improve their suitability as a wife – to the tune of US $10K-20K! China still has the “one child policy” which was recently amended to allow for a second child if one of the parents is an only child. Other exceptions include: “rural families can have a second child if the first child is a girls or disabled. Families in which neither parent has siblings are also allowed to have 2 children”*Wikipedia. There are a number of families with more than one child who pay a fine based on income. There was a recent story of a filmmaker who was fined over $1mm! The unintended consequence of this policy has been studied and will likely result in more modifications. Wow, sorry for that digression but it’s a fascinating family/economic issue…speaking of weddings!
Not Just any old dough
Every morning, we walked by a block-long line of people that looked like they were cued up to buy concert tickets for some rock star concert. As it was New Year’s season, the line grew and grew each day and | scratched my head. This seemed like a purely Hong Kong/ Chinese phenomenon. A man, who looked to be in charge, stood at the start of the line looking quite stern and authoritative. A big sign was set up with all Chinese symbols except 2 things: “Ticket required” and “Jenny Bakery”. Soon the daily line stretched around the block. All | could see was a women’s tailor shop and a tiled path into the “inner sanctum”. The patient participants were 95% Asian/ mostly men by a small margin/serious/and quick to do whatever the man in charge said. By the third day, | went down
= the line asking “do you speak English” til | found someone who could explain this pattern. “Jenny Cookies….very good. Everybody know about Jenny Cookies”! With the gazillion bakeries in Hong Kong, this was a marketing coup if | ever saw one…and | thought it was some kind of exotic entertainment opportunity. | stand corrected!
Don’t Mess with Feng Shui
With all the style, grandeur, and uniqueness of the current architecture, a recurring feature was pointed out to us. An opening is designed into buildings. This feature takes on many creative construction techniques and was suddenly noticeable in many of the magnificent contemporary buildings. Besides position: scheduling, color, and materials, are critical to feng shui principles and is serious stuff. “The opening allows the dragon to move through without disruption”. We were told a story of a building that had a serious fire in it some years back. Before designing a reconstruction plan the owner called in the Feng Shui Master for advice. “Put a swimming pool on top of the building and you will be protected”. He did and, sure enough, he hasn’t had a fire since. We love Feng Shui.
