Hong Kong: China Town

17 January

You might think that Hong Kong--China's "Special Administrative Region"--would not have a China Town per se, but it does. Anecdotally, this was the last hold-out against colonial (English) influence. Preparations for Chinese New Year fill many shops and walkways with celebratory RED. Markets swim with live fish, buckets of flipping shrimp, cages of frogs, platters of stomach lining, chicken feet, squid and bright stacks of vegetables. Apothecary-Tea Masters mix & pour special draughts for nearly any woe that ails you (my stuffy nose cleared at once). The ceilings of Man Mo temple (on Hollywood Road) are hung with great conical spirals of incense. On Sundays, we're told, the streets fill with the bird-chatter voices of HK's 300,000 Philippina nannies on their common day off, catching up over picnics outside.

My favorite market items were paper effigies for the dead. These are replicas of everything departed loved ones might crave in the afterlife: food, clothing, electronics, cash (called 'Hell money'), which you burn in ritual stoves on birthdays, death days, Grave Sweeping Day or during the month of Hungry Ghosts. They fill entire sections of shops: paper suits & gold watches, paper fried eggs, paper iPods complete with Nano. To look at the selection of effigies for sale, ghosts are not only ravenous, but discerning and finicky.