Fine China

Last month I traveled to China on a business trip. While I can say China was never on my list of "must see" places, I would venture back -- the first time is really only a reconnaissance mission. I was in Hong Kong for two days and on the mainland for another three days.

With eyes wide open, I tumbled through a landscape that was Canal Street multiplied by a million -- every public square is teeming with people, culture-shocked tourists, bicycles balancing five-foot high provisions powered by 60 pound old men, more people on foot -- everyone carrying packages, relatives or animals.

Every street is filled with scooters: families commute 3 to a scooter, school girls ride side-saddle behind their boyfriends (and they don't hang on, only balance to keep from falling off) and business men scoot to the office. Add a multitude of double-decker buses, brand new American cars, 20 year old Audis and Toyotas, stores brimming with dried fish of every kind, people walking with no concern or worry about traffic laws and you have controlled chaos. There was movement and noise everywhere. 

The madness tends to keep you alert -- I was always waiting for something to happen. Some kind of drama to unfold. But it never really did -- I was an American Giant bobbing in an ocean of tiny, chattering natives.

Luckily, I had a contact in Hong Kong, who not only served as a business partner, but was also my interpreter. Teddy, took us on a 12 hour whirlwind tour of Hong Kong and Hong Kong Island. On the way to Lantau Island, we traveled almost an hour by subway. Then grabbed a cab for the last few miles up the mountain. Our first destination on Lantau Island was the Po Lin Monastery and the Big Buddha. 

The Po Lin Monastery was built in 1906 and ranks first as one of the most magnificent structures amongst the four popular Buddhist temples in Hong Kong. We toured the monastery and the Buddha -- similar to touring the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island. Because it is a sacred site, photography was limited. Families come to honor the dead -- and in a series of small rooms situated beneath the Buddha, at it's base, people have left flowers, photographs, letters and plaques.

A shrine is a shrine the world over. The only difference expressing grief is the language.

To get from the monastery to a small fishing village nestled in a bay in the South China Sea, we took a bus. And it wasn't a tourist bus -- all of the local farmers and villagers were riding with us. Oh, and we had to travel back down the mountain about four miles -- when you read the small in-fill articles in the New York Times with headlines that read: BUS CRASHES OFF MOUNTAINSIDE, 24 PEOPLE KILLED -- that was the mountain I was on. That was the bus I was riding.

While I was hard-pressed to take photos while I was hurling down the mountainside, here's a few snaps of the village Tai O.