Reptiles, Chickens, and Crazy People

For my first two months in Hong Kong it was easy to forget where I was.  The majority of my past year or so had been filled with empty meaningless days, and sitting around job hunting felt the same no matter what country I did it in.  However, since moving to Tuen Mun and working full time my life has gotten much more interesting.  Every day I am forced to confront the reality of living in a country where I am perpetually lost and confused.  Tasks like ordering a cheeseburger have become a frustrating game of charades, and figuring out where I am or where I’m supposed to be going has become downright futile.  To make matters worse I have had very little time to acquaint myself with my strange and bewildering surroundings. 

Today was the first day in over a month where I had nowhere to go, nothing to do, and an abundance of free time.  I decided that I would spend this time intentionally getting even more lost and confused than I normally was, so I packed my bag with enough snacks and drinks to sustain myself for a day or so in the likely event of me getting hopelessly lost and set out for an adventure.

I started my exploring by exiting my building and bravely turning right.  This immediately took me out of my comfort zone because until this point I had only ever turned left after leaving my building.  It had always been open door, turn left, repeat.  I had no particular reason for avoiding the right side of my building; I just knew where things were on the left side and when I was hungry or walking to work I never wanted to deal with any uncertainty.  But today was my day and I was feeling wild, so to the right I went!

After walking under a highway, past a group of people with umbrellas that yelled at me for a reason I will never understand, and through an open square full of old men doing slow motion karate, I found an interesting looking wet market.  As soon as I walked inside I literally ran into a row of chickens.  There was wrapped chicken meat on the far left , whole chickens hanging from hooks in the center, and live chickens in cages on the right.  I had never seen living chickens so close to chicken meat.  I stood there watching them flap about nervously, trying to connect where each piece of packaged meat came from on their bodies, when an old lady snuck up behind me and started shouting in Cantonese and pointing frantically at the chickens.  I think she wanted me to buy one!  I tried to give her my best “I don’t understand a what you’re saying” face, but she just got louder and more energetic.  This made it difficult for me to concentrate on piecing together what little Cantonese I knew, but finally I said what I thought was, “I would not like to buy a chicken”.  She stood quietly for a few seconds and smiled.  Then she walked over to the cage and grabbed a chicken!  I panicked!  Had I accidentally told her that I would like to buy FIVE chickens??  My Cantonese is unintelligible enough that “five” and “would not” probably sound about the same!  I desperately tried to think of something else I could say, but my limited Cantonese was failing me.  I did the only respectable thing I could think of for a situation like this.  I ran away!

By the time I ran to the produce section of the market I figured I was far enough away to relax.  To redeem myself for using Cantonese so poorly I practiced by walking up to each vegetable stand and asking for the price of something, repeating the price, then asking them to confirm that this was correct.  After annoying every vender in the market and feeling pleased with my sufficiently inflated bilingual ego I left the wet market.

My next stop was Tuen Mun Park.  My house looks over this park, but I had never taken the time to properly explore it.  Despite looking like a large and attractive collection of foliage, it was actually the sounds that came from it that made me curious.  All day every day I heard what sounded like at least a dozen terrible concerts happening simultaneously.  There was always singing and music, but so much of it that it transformed into an eerie white noise of Chinese vibrato. 

Once I got to the park I found rows of tents spanning as far as I could see, all filled with old people, tambourines, and keyboard players.  This was outdoor karaoke for old Chinese people!  As I walked through the park, people started staring at me like I was on fire.  At first I was a bit self conscious.  I checked to see if my pants were properly zipped then felt the rest of my body and hair to make sure everything was where it was supposed to be.  I even briefly glanced at my reflection in a pond to make sure I wasn’t actually on fire.  Thankfully I wasn’t.  Then it dawned on me.  I was actually the strange one in a large crowd that I found very strange, so I quickly moved along and started exploring emptier parts of the park. 

Out of nowhere I found a reptile house.  What a random but pleasant surprise!  They had turtles, snakes, lizards, and even an alligator!  I thought about how strange it was to have a reptile house in the middle of a park, but I guess it was no stranger than having me there.  Satisfied with my adventure around Tuen Mun I waved goodbye to my new reptile friends and started walking home.

While crossing a walking bridge over Tuen Mun Heung Sze Wui Rd to my home I wondered why anybody would give a big road such a long name.  I can’t imagine it being any less exhausting to say for fluent Cantonese speakers.  My philosophy on road names is that the more relevant the road is, the shorter the name should be.  It doesn’t even make a good acronym.  TMHSW.  If somebody asks for directions to my home I don’t thing I’ll ever be able to tell them because I know myself well enough to know that I will never remember the name of this street.

My concentration was suddenly broken by a tall man jumping in circles around me saying in clear English “hey hey hey, can you do 20 in 200?  Can you do 20 in 200?  In 200?”  I quickly tried to make a facial expression that would indicate that I’m French or German and don’t understand English, but in the moment all I could do was frown and blink while he hopped in circles around me.  Eventually he ran off down the bridge, started doing cartwheels, then exposed his genitals to a group of women walking the other way who gave him the finger as he ran away.   Suddenly I didn’t feel so weird.

I also honestly didn’t know the middle finger had any meaning here.  I always thought this was only done in America.  During a European vacation with a few friends in high school I remember us throwing the middle finger everywhere.  We thought it was funny and that nobody would care that we were doing it.  If it turns out that this is an international thing I’m going to feel really bad about ruining so many European travelers vacation photos. 

But this strange encounter was the first thing I had seen since turning right out of my house that I thought seemed normal.  I imagined that if this happened in Philadelphia, people would have reacted the same way.  I guess crazy is universal!  It is amazing what makes me feel like home!