Nothing Wins the Justice

So, I purchased a blessing today. Found a fine Chinese temple with incense and the works not a block from my crappy apartment. I was anointed with the sacred oils, handed a blessing card with golden lettering, and the priest invoked the scriptures to empower my Earthly form. Cost me a dollar.

To be more precise, it cost me a Hong Kong dollar. The Aussie dollar would stretch to seven blessings at least. But then, who really needs to be that blessed? I didn't want to go overboard, but I figured one would be a good investment, just in case some Innsmouth shit goes down. Besides, I just love the fact that you actually get handed a card to signify that you are blessed. It appeals to the gamer in me.

Admittedly, the chance of paranormal attack was pretty low today (it's on the news, right after fire danger), but at 14 cents per blessing, can you really afford not to be covered?

As the above example illustrates, you can buy just about anything in Hong Kong. Typically, you don't even have to walk very far to do it. Moreover, since the average store is the size of a thimble, you can usually find everything you need clustered within a small area. Add to that the Seven-Elevens on every street corner (often two to a corner), and that's a lot of convenience.

I had considered Japan to be densely packed with goodies, but it's got nothing on Hong Kong. Indeed, next to the stores you get over here ("space is at a premium", a local told me), Japan's narrow tunnels of wall-to-wall products are downright spacious.

One thing I miss about Japan, however, is that cute, useless crap was sold just about everywhere there. That and comics. You couldn't walk ten paces without seeing a giant plushie, a transforming robot or a girl with big, watery eyes. It represented a priority for frivolity that I was totally down with. The rest of the store might sell leeks and suppositories, but - see? - they know how to have fun as well. To me, all the anime bullshit sorta represents that.

In Hong Kong, you can don't have to go far to get an outboard motor or some bootleg CDs, but I still hadn't seen hide nor hair of any girls with cat-ears or french-maids (though there were plenty of such outfits on sale, mind), and given how very familiar everything else felt minus that exception, it was leading to some serious withdrawal.

As such, I decided that today, I would find the Hong Kong Japanimation scene. And so I did!

Ashnil, of course, was dead-set against leaving work before 10 pm to go off on one of my loosely-planned adventures. Indeed, he seems to be dead-set against anything I suggest by default. As expected, however, his unyielding resolve lasted about as long as it took me to tell him what I planned to do. Japanimation is an incredibly wide genre, and we all get different things out of it... but Ashnil, well, he knows what he likes. We all know what he likes. And there is plenty of merchandise. At this point, therefore, his baser nature took over, and he immediately dropped everything he was working on. We left then and there (knocking off a whole three hours early, at 7 pm)!

As it turned out, Hong Kong's love of Japan is actually quite pronounced. Unlike many mainland Chinese, the people here have nothing much against their weird eastern cousins, and eagerly lap up the Japanese goods, resulting in a thriving scene for manga and anime related products which may well be the second-largest in the world, behind Japan itself. Once we knew where to look, we were able to find racks upon racks of artbooks, DVDs, magazines, figurines and bizarre random paraphenalia without a great deal of effort.

Oddly enough, though, the whole 'scene' was somewhat unsatisfying. Despite the fact that you could get your hands on just about anything out here, and some of it was even in English (what with Hong Kong ostensibly speaking English and all), it wasn't really quite as much fun to go through as I had expected.

In Japan, the hobby is mainstream to an incalculable extent. People love this crazy crap, and it shows. Figurine stores are almost museums, carefully lit cases displaying the storekeepers' favourites, as well as new releases, in an artful way. In the case of some figurines, this kind of arrangement actually appears bafflingly high-class, given that some of the most popular figurines are far from tasteful themselves. Stuff was categorised, too, and sorted carefully into categories by people who had made this hobby their life.

By contrast, Hong Kong's anime stores are (like a lot of their stores) a winding catacomb of ugly cramped spaces. Here, carelessly mashed-together cartoon goods are doled out piecemeal (since only two people fit in the store at a time) by grim shopkeepers who look like Triad thugs. This wasn't quite the vibrant community I remembered. If these people felt any particular excitement about the latest Voltage Fighter Gowcaizer figurine or whatever, they hid it well.

I don't know how anyone's meant to find anything here that they're interested in, save by serendipity. If by some miracle you were to come across something you wanted in the two-to-five minutes before the crowd-peristalsis pushes you out of the store, though, it almost feels like a waste to buy it here. The atmosphere is murder for the passions that inspire you to buy this stuff in the first place (unless the passion of your choice is lust for plastic tits, which are abundant). If I were to purchase anything here, it would only be because it's markedly cheaper... and actually, most things weren't.

I usually buy and/or watch anime stuff to motivate and inspire myself. Whatever else it may be (and 'stupid' often tops the list), this stuff is always fresh and unexpected. More importantly, there is genuine passion involved in its creation, and it filters through to every part of the hobby. Be it an animated epic about becoming the greatest baker or bartender in the world, or just a filthy ream of horse-porn, making an animated series isn't easy. To produce something people will enjoy, you have to be passionate about it, and - perhaps because those big watery eyes encourage empathy - that passion tends to rub off on the viewers.

To me, the best shows will showcase some situation, profession or facet of life you might never have thought about or considered interesting before, and do their utmost to ignite your passion and interest, and teach you a thing or two along the way. Even if you're already passionate about something, it's a great way to recapture your enthusiasm or explore new perspectives. The show can make you think, or just inflame your own ardor. If you're a classical pianist who doesn't really know how to appreciate classical pieces, you could do worse than to watch Nodame Cantabile, and I've never seen anything resonate so strongly with someone as Battle Programmer Shirase did with Ash.

From my perspective, it is these feelings that imbue the merchandising with any value at all. After all, without the associations as a part of the show, what good is something like a plastic figure? Our English teachers in high-school weren't kidding when they said that characters in fiction represent parts of ourselves. If I buy a character's merchandise, it is because the feelings, virtues or strengths I associate with that character are something I want to encourage in myself, and be reminded of daily by possession of this item.

This may explain why, despite the fact that Hong Kong's market for this stuff is at least as big as Japan's, I didn't really feel like buying anything.

I know it's a stupid attitude to have, considering, but I felt somewhat offended by the whole toy-store mentality. In Liviu's ideal world, you don't just cram the shelves with all the colorful crap you can import and expect people to cheerfully buy it while they're crammed against 5 other people and barely able to figure out what they're looking at. I'm not saying that the literary and artistic qualities of a work should determine where and how you shop for its merchandise, but surely if you expect people to attach sufficient semantic meaning to these bits and pieces to actually feel good about buying them, you should at least treat your own wares with a bit of respect?

If Japan's world of anime is truly the mecca of cheerful weirdness you might expect from immersing yourself in the culture, then Hong Kong's is the one that your parents imagine, where every element exists solely to waste your time and destroy your good Christian values. I tend to play up the twisted angle of it all, sometimes (and who wouldn't?), but I'll be damned if that's not exactly how it is out here. Even so, despite my disillusionment, there were a couple of things I would certainly have liked to buy: things I saw back in Japan, but which weren't available back then (this, for instance).

However many stores I walked into, however, I couldn't for the life of me find any of the things I was after. Presumably, the figure above was wearing altogether too much clothing, since the only versions of that character I saw had next to nothing on, and didn't look happy about it. Other girls looked markedly more cheerful, and wore even less. Some of the stuff I saw on offer would've triggered police-raids back in Australia. It was like I'd been searching online for a copy of Fantasia, only to get rickrolled onto Mickey Mouse porn. Except worse, since continuing to search online would eventually get you what you wanted, and all I found here was more crap.

Since the stuff I enjoy most, and actually want merchandise of, often tends to be non-mainstream and non-pornographic, I seemed to be bang outta luck as regards actually finding anything I want. This is difficult for me to understand, since obviously the world revolves around me, and any right-thinking person who actually took the time to read/play through Narcissu would either want to own a piece of merchandise or HAVE NO HEART AT ALL... but that kind of shopping was clearly better left to a better-organised place, and there was certainly plenty of stuff to enjoy even here.

For one thing, they don't just sell anime stuff here. It gets lumped in with just about every genre of random comic stuff you can think of, and while this makes anything you might be interested in even harder to find, it also means they have a lot of great stuff in here to look at, such as larger-than-life-size replicas of R2D2 and C3PO. If you're some kind of a maniac, and can figure out a way to get it out of the sub-basement or down from the 13th floor (there are no elevators), you can even purchase one, for about the price of a year's groceries!

Further, the mixing pot that is the Hong Kong shopping scene gives the whole crowd a bit of a more integrated feel. That is, in Japan most people of all ages seem to love their local exports, so it's hardly an issue, but in Australia you could be forgiven for the impression that anime stuff only appeals to sweaty male nerds with social disorders. Despite the often-quite-specifically-targeted nature of the merch down here in Hong Kong, there is so much cross-pollination between stores that they are turned from a dreary suburban porn-ring into a viable place to socialise. The baffling choice of combining nerdy fetish material, ladies' fashion, cute bullshit to put in your hair, huge-ass models of the Starship Enterprise, cosmetics, life-size R2D2's and floral arrangements in the one cramped multilevel mall ensure that Chinese nerds and attractive young ladies are regularly thrust together. Given the numerous cafés just outside, and the fact that the girls are hence developing an interest in nerdy pastimes whereas the nerds have been learning about skincare products and deodorant, this combination just makes sense.

Believe it or not, the people I saw browsing the aisles (some of them prominently featuring disturbing figurines of naked little girls) were some of the most attractive, well-dressed nerds (and young ladies!) I've ever seen in a place like this. Whatever crazy Marxist came up with this ploy for social integration deserves all kinds of praise, because this baffling idea is solid gold.

To round off my report of this day, and display that the breadth of Japanese otaku culture is definitely all scattered throughout Hong Kong somewhere, even if it is the Chinese interpretation, Ash and I decided to end our day with a trip to "Maid Date", Hong Kong's first maid café.

Aimed at the many unfortunate fellows who work 12-hour days and would appreciate a bit of pampering from a pretty young French-maid at the end of the day, Maid Date was a replica of the many such establishments in Japan, and seemed a perfect place to relax and eat an overpriced slice of pie after work.

Maid Date, however, proved hard to get to. That is, it wasn't hard to find. Not at all: it took barely a few minutes to hop on a train, get out at the right station, and spot the wiking store-sign saying "Open". What was difficult was the actual 'getting inside' part. See, aside from the obvious storefront, there was no actual indication of where the place was. Beneath, a hundred little stores plied their business, but there were no stairs or entrances to be found on any side of the building. Indeed, with the exception of some horrible little alleys leading to locked and barred doors that looked unpleasant, there really was no clear way to get into the building at all. You could walk through some of the stores, but they had no upper level. Enjoying a "Maid Date" would seemto've required you to fly.

I considered asking a local, but no-one around here seemed to speak English at all, and the one local I did consider trying to ask anyways turned out to be standing under another of those red-light-district lights I always mistake for traditional lanterns. As Ash tried to usher me away, I briefly considered trying out my limited skills at Chinese after all, to say something like jei guo, ka-shi hei-ryn hen yao yi ge bou gui nu-hai-zi qing ni. This is probably the most complicated sentence I can string together with the words I know (and I can't quite work out how to write the sounds in English, since I only know them phonetically), so I kinda wanted to try it out, particularly since Ash would think I'm asking how to get upstairs.

However, since it translates to something like "Excuse me, but the black man would very much like a cheap young boy, please.", and the dude I was asking didn't seem like he would have much of a sense of humour about his profession, I decided to just wander off into the only stairwell I had seen, instead.

Now, this looked like a private apartment sort of stairwell, but sure enough there appeared to be a resident-button labelled "Maid Date". Unfortunately, pressing this had no effect, and there was a heavy metal grate separating us from our evening of maidly delights. Not to be deterred, I tailgated a family, snuck inside, and prepared to go to work on exploring this dingy little apartment complex.

Unfortunately, I had failed to follow proper ninja procedure in checking all the dark corners (with throwing knives), and as such missed the furious old Chinese man who was apparently watching the bottom-floor stairwells intently from his alcove, despite not appearing to work here. He began a torrent of incomprehensible Cantonese gibbering, waving his arms and shouting loudly, chasing me outside, much to Ashnil's amusement. I think Ashnil would prefer it if this happened every time I entered a building, the bastard, and admittedly it often does when I'm exploring places with him; but then, it's their own fault for always labelling picturesque parts of their temples and such with signs that say 'no admittance'.

Anyway, I decided I would wait the old guy out, and hung around outside pressing the "Maid Date" button. Nobody answered. The old guy sat there like a gargoyle, his beady eyes visible in the darkness. Watching me closely.

A few more circles walked around the building later, I decided that this was probably just God telling me that my Maid Dates aren't likely to go any better than my regular dates. After one last check, revealing that the beady-eyed old guy was still there and no less furious-looking, we gave up on that part of the entertainment, and headed on home.

Hong-Kong-ites have a curious relationship with the sea. On the one hand, they will cook and eat just about anything that moves down there, however disgusting or endangered. On the other hand, they're perfectly happy to turn sea creatures into big fluffy mascots or star performers and make giant piles of glinting money from charging us tourists to see them.

I've always found it a bit weird how the dual-nature of Hong Kong's money works.

Back in the slums where we live, and even at the uni, one would be outraged to spend more than seven Aussie dollars on a full meal. Indeed, one can comfortably eat multiple courses for five bucks. I once got three courses for $3.50. Certainly, you wouldn't spend more than five to ten Australian on a pair of pants or a shirt. If you were desperate, you might go as high as fifteen.

In the center of Hong Kong, though, you can forget about that kind of pricing. It's like a whole new currency has taken over. The currency of brand-names! I had never considered that there might be such a thing as brand-name food, and was startled to find that a crappy muffin with a chic French bakery brand-name on the wrapping set me back more than the price of a restaurant meal. It didn't much bother me at the time, since it was still half the price I might've paid for a stale bread roll supposedly subsidised by our University Union back in Sydney, but I would've imagined a true Hong Kong resident would be more outraged than slightly bemused.

Not so! In Hong Kong, brand names are a source of social status, resulting in the strange effect of the rich and poor living pretty much the same way, save that the rich spend far more money on exactly the same things. Fashion, in this case, is the great equaliser.

Seeing as how no-one thinks to question the status quo, I feel a sort of moral obligation to get worked up about it all on their behalf... even if it's probably hypocritical of me to do that, since I've been buying brand-name camera equipment just about exclusively ("you paying more for the NAAAME", shrieked the storekeep, waving about a Fisher Price looking Chinese replica he assured me would do the job at half the price). Besides, in a place where anything you want is easily and cheaply at your fingertips, what else are you supposed to spend your money on? Getting slightly nicer stuff is as good an idea as any. However rich you are, I don't think you can afford a larger apartment.

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So, where I'm going with this rant is that the entry fee for Ocean Park (and for Disneyland, though we haven't been there yet) is - in terms of what else that money would buy you - downright unbelievable. For the same price I could probably pay for food and transport for a week, buy two suits of clothes, a chicken, a two-hour massage session and a colour TV, and still have the change to get some Pocky and/or drinkable water.

Upon seeing the entry fee, therefore, I was seized by a sudden impulse to throw up my hands in disgust and leave - except that I then realised this was still pretty cheap for a theme park, by the reckoning of Australian Liviu anyway. Nevertheless, I can see why the Chinese might pick up a reputation for being cheap if they had to contend with this kind of currency double-standard every day. It's enough to drive a man squinty!

After contending with the gigantic queue (or 'scrum', rather) and the admission price, I amazed Ash with my miracle of turning bottled water into wine (well, Berocca), and we set off to explore the fun-park for ourselves. The first ride we tried was some kind of subaquatic 'multisensory experience' which was basically a dimly lit tram car that shakes around a bit when the lights flash. This was pretty disappointing until we realised that it doubled as an actual tram, and had delivered us all of the way up a mountain.

At the top of the mountain, we got to explore the real business of Ocean Park: carnival games, rollercoasters, animal shows and exhibits. Within a short walk of each other, a variety of attractions allowed you the opportunity to meet your undersea friends as cheerful mascots, learn all about them from educational museum rooms, ride their corresponding roller-coasters, see them do a show, watch them in their natural habitat, and then get them served up on a bed of rice with a slice of lemon.

Watching the seals and the dolphins was good fun, and they had an enjoyable little side-show wherein you got to see dolphins save a drowning guy and a seal give him mouth-to-mouth. There was much jumping and splashing and asian dudes wearing skin-tight suits. Overall, there was plenty for everyone to enjoy, and I can only recommend it.

I even learned a thing or two from this business, such as the fact that seals apparently enjoy swimming upside-down and frustrating attempts at photography. Also, it would seem that certain jellyfish just don't show up on film at all, like vampires.

Speaking of ghastly pale bloodsuckers, Ashnil lost a few degrees of coloration today - and for good reason. Afflicted with some reasonably nasty vertigo (as you may know), Ashnil was downright thrilled to find out that the most exciting parts of the park were its surprisingly large number of really tall tower-rides (some of which sent you plummeting back to earth), a roller-coaster overlooking a sheer drop down the side of a cliff, a cable-car that sways dangerously as it shows off the local scenery from dizzyingly high up, a simulated hot-air-balloon ride and a series of other fine ways to fall to your grisly death on the stones below.

This made Ashnil very edgy for a lot of the duration of our stay at the top of the mountain, and practically the whole cable-car ride back down. It also didn't help that, thanks to the locals' love of Halloween, some kind soul had thoughtfully peppered the area underneath the various high-up attractions with partially decayed remains and shattered skeletons.

Unsurprisingly, Ash was pretty keen to check out some of the more indoors-oriented activities, and there were also a good set of those to choose from. Now, there were certainly some highlights here and there that rate a mention, such as the "Sea Jelly Spectacular!" and a fine little terrarium where you could watch real Pandas eat real bamboo real slowly... but these were not really as exciting as advertised.

The "Spectacular", in particular, may well have been a mistranslation (and, admittedly, I too struggle to think of a word which means "slimy-ass jellyfish bobbing in glass jars set to trance music"). The Panda exhibit was as large as advertised, but there was only one panda in there, and he was studiously ignoring his audience to attend to the Bear Necessities, which for him (if I recall correctly) means eating bamboo pretty much continuously from dawn 'til dusk.

Like every attraction in the park, these funneled the viewer into a corresponding gift shop, where we could stand around and wonder why anyone would buy a big ol' plastic Sea Jelly...

The real attraction here, however, was one particular building, which went down several levels, and featured the biggest darn indoor fish-viewing pool I have ever seen. This simulated coral-reef basically drills down in a spiral-shape, providing visitors the ability to view the busy undersea scene within from a variety of viewpoints both above and below the water. As you got lower, new layers of the ecosystem were uncovered, with different fish making their homes in different parts of the pool while the larger fish and manta rays and things zipped about all above them.

I don't know how they introduced such a vast amount of fish into the one massive tank without resulting in a feeding frenzy. Indeed, a number of very large sharks were swimming about all over the place, not to mention enough stingrays to take down a platoon of Australians. Although we wisely kept our distance, I never saw any fish make a hostile action towards another fish. They all just lived down there together, ignoring their usual antagonism in the wild, floating in their own cramped-yet-comfortable Fish Hong Kong.

Watching these fish do their thing was quite fascinating, and probably the most interesting part of Ocean Park. Besides the giant tank, there were also numerous smaller tanks featuring other species such as seahorses and clownfish, and all in all there was a great deal to see in this building.

Even here there was queuing out the wazoo, however. One expects to queue up for things at theme parks, but here in Ocean Park (perhaps surprisingly, given the price-tag) there is such a profusion of attendees that even though they manage the crowds with an amazing level of effectiveness, and roller coasters and the like run two at a time (!), they still can't get through all the people very quickly at all. Everything had wait-times associated, from the cablecar to the least popular ride, even down to peering into a small fishtank on the wall, getting a bite to eat or looking at the Panda you've already queued up to see.

It was fortunate, therefore, that Ash and I are reasonably patient folks (with iPods), because just about everything required at least a quarter-hour of wait time, often going up to 30 or 40 minutes. Overall, given the amount of standing around we had to do, they couldn't have released the iPhone version of Team17's Worms at a better time.

Beyond the fishy attractions, Ashnil and I basically spent our time queuing up to try every roller-coaster at least once, since apparently Ash's vertigo doesn't stretch to being turned upside-down over a cliffside or dumped down a waterfall riding a log boat (oddly enough). These were the perfect way to round out the Ocean Park experience, because we got to tuck a few more death-defying 'coaster-rides under our belt (for our international collection), and get good and wet (which, at Ocean Park, seems like a must, really).

Moreover, the Raging Rapids ride was not so much notable for drenching us all over with water, but for also doing the same to every single young lady who rode it. Since light-coloured T-Shirts are popular in the Hong Kong heat, and not everyone chooses to wear a bra underneath, this added all kinds of extra appeal to the ride.

Given my powerful zoom lens, I was tempted to share this part of the experience on NWTJ also, but this is just the kind of thing Ashnil needs to finally get me thrown into a Chinese prison, so I decided that your numerous Internet-high-fives would have to take second seat to self-preservation.

Once we had sampled every rollercoaster, hung around the Raging Rapids exit for a while, eaten some more overpriced carnival food, and discovered an oddly out-of-place garden of flamingoes, Ash and I decided we were done with Ocean Park, and went on our merry way back home, enjoying another fine non-over-priced meal as we returned to Hung Hom (and appreciating it even more than usual).

We may return another day for the Ocean Park 'halloween content' which happens at night - but I don't really expect to, so don't count on it.

So, today I accidentally swallowed a mouthful of the local water. In horror, I tried to make myself cough it back up, but it was too late. As such, I decided that it was time to go purify my soul, just in case.

Now, although most of the actual people I have met here are actually Christians, I figured that the appropriate local religion was Buddhism. My choice was aided in no small part by the fact that the prime purification locations of each faith were either the small, not-as-impressive-as-the-guides-make-it-sound Christian chapel in the city center, or an honest-to-goodness Buddhist temple complex right beside the second-biggest Buddha statue in the world.

Obviously, Buddha won by default.

As such, Ashnil and I spent today trekking high up into the mountains in search of bigass statues, vegetarian food and spiritual enlightenment.

As has become pretty much standard practice, we started our journey by standing in an incredibly long queue. Enlightening as this attraction is, it obviously attracts a vast number of visitors from both here and abroad, to the extent that they have had to build an extremely large and complicated cable-car station at the bottom capable of handling over an hour's worth of enlightenment seekers standing in a long, winding line and slowly shuffling forward.

Everything here in Hong Kong is full of people, and difficult to visit without exhibiting some serious patience, but in this case it seemed to make sense. After all, no one comes unto the Buddha but by letting go of Earthly impatience, right? To truly experience the Buddha, one should no longer desire to see it.

This wasn't a problem, since the "45 minutes from here" sign which we got to after some 30 minutes of waiting certainly discouraged any and all desire to see the Buddha to slowly disappear, and when that didn't make me turn back the fact that there was a second queue to actually go up once you'd gotten your tickets from the first queue almost did. It's fair to say that I had worked up an almost Buddha-like indifference to the Buddha by the time I got onto the cable-car. This saved me some money, because when they offered me a trade-up to a ticket which would also include some animated 'monkey theatre' and a short cartoon about Buddha's life, I told them where to stick it.

What we did decide to spring for, however, was the "Crystal Cabin": a cable-car system that was so amazing, so wildly innovative, that you could actually see through the floor which was TRANSPARENT. Whoa.

As it turned out this was incredibly pointless, since all that passed directly underneath you was water and treetops (and the glass was tinted blue for some reason), but it did set us in good stead as regards standing in line, because those foolish enough to pay extra for a crappy glass floor (and I just about had to, since it is my solemn mission to jostle the cabin and make Ashnil wet himself) didn't have to stand in the queue for quite as long.

After a lengthy and picturesque cable-car trip (which passed over a fascinating group of chinese fishermen, among other things, whom we were able to watch as they caught fish by the traditional method), we made our way to the top, from where the Big Buddha could be seen. The cable-car dropped us off in what was essentially the Buddha Gift Shoppe, leaving a large variety of restaurants and tourist stores between ourselves and the Buddha, so as to properly attract our tourist dollar.

As has become the traditional thing for us to do when starting anew in a brand new locale full of stuff to see, Ashnil and I immediately went in to one of the local restaurants and proceeded to stuff our faces. Enlightenment (and vegetarianism) forgotten, we picked out a downright unholy amount of meat (every major animal-group was represented!) and settled down to devour the lot.

I can't say that this was terribly pious of us, but the best part about Buddhists is that they're not terribly judgemental about this sort of thing. In fact, they're not even terribly sure whether they're allowed to eat meat themselves. The Buddha wasn't all that clear about it all, so most Buddhists just end up eating anything that's sufficiently delicious, tending to prefer vegetarian food when possible. That is, they're basically on the Ethistan diet.

Luckily, I myself was not, and I gotta tell you: it may very well be possible to overdose on meat, even for me. Particularly since Ashnil has a stomach the size of a dime, I ended up feasting so richly on pork, beef and duck that for a while I considered just curling up under a Bo tree in perfect contentment myself, and waiting to attain the Buddha state.

Eventually, though, I decided that - having come all this way - I should at least go see the giant Buddha.

Sporting some wicked cornrows and ears the size of a man, the mighty Buddha overlooked a valley full of natural beauty, his serenity marred only by a profusion of Indian tourists who insisted on shouting at each other at the top of their lungs from every direction (perhaps because they, alone out of everybody, couldn't read the "keep silent" signs).

Surrounded by statues of lesser exemplars of perfection (bodhisattvas, folks who remained mortal despite qualifying for Nirvana), the Buddha sat atop a massive monument, crowning one of the highest hills in the region. The view from up there was an amazing one, including all manner of other statues, inscribed gates, plazas, temples and wide open areas for prayer, as well as a wealth of natural beauty in the form of forests, mountains, crumbling weathered stones, meadows and waterfalls. Save for the cable-car linking the area to Hong Kong proper, this place existed outside of the influence of modern life, set apart as a spiritual (and touristic) haven for the appreciation of the richness of Buddhist life.

In actual fact, this may not even be the second-largest Buddha in the world, since apparently Ashnil was wrong about that part (or perhaps trying to throw me off the scent of his countrymen), but I really couldn't see the point of building a Buddha bigger than this one, and was suitably inspired by having seen this one, to the point where I probably wouldn't be that impressed by one that's slightly bigger. The important part, after all, was the temple complex surrounding it, and the isolation and natural beauty of this area coupled with the carvings, iconography and agressive untethered livestock essentially equalled a rich, concentrated experience of monastic and cultural interest that I can't see another temple easily replicating - however large their Buddha.

At first, I must admit that I found the whole thing a little samey. After the giant Buddha, the actual temple complex and such was pretty much exactly the same as every one of the many such temples we had seen back in Japan (well, I say 'we', but after we got separated at the Buddha, Ashnil apparently couldn't find his way through the trees to the temple proper, and thus missed out on that part of the experience).

As my parents can attest, I need a fair bit of variety for any kind of sightseeing to hold my interest, and the fact that this complex looked to me exactly like the one in the center of Tokyo (Meiji Shrine, to be precise) made me yawn and roll my eyes. Where were the unique Chinese touches? One might point to the Chinese characters everywhere in place of the Japanese - but actually, the Buddhist language is not really Chinese nor Japanese, and neither languege is lettered within. What *is* written there is much the same in both countries: in each case, comprehensible only to the monks themselves, and all somewhat obtuse to the lay people. So, yes, with only slight variations, the architecture and decor of temples here and in Japan seemed much the same.

Having expected that all Chinese monks would be ass-kicking Kung Fu types who force every tourist that passes to kick them repeatedly in the balls, and laugh at their puny efforts, I was somewhat disappointed. The butt-kicking here was limited to the ceremonial, and there was not much to be seen on a regular weekend. Sure, I suppose Chinese Buddhists couldn't all be quite as awesome as the Shaolin (nor even the Jews, whose mysterious martial skills are well known), but they could at least have let me boot them in the nuts a few times just to keep up appearances. No fair.

According to the various helpful English plaques, however, this similarity amongst Buddhists is actually one of the most positive traits of their faith. Unlike a lot of the 38,000 or so sects of Christianity, Buddhist denominations (of which there are up to about a thousand, but only really 8 or so main ones) pretty much all get along well and labour to a common purpose, treating all other Buddhists with a deep respect and never once coming to blows over doctrine. Much as I might've enjoyed a bit more variety in their temple's offerings, or maybe just a few roundhouse kicks, I couldn't argue with those statistics. Besides, all religions being equal, when he faces the afterlife the average Buddhist would seem to have at least a 38-times higher chance of being right about everything, provided his overall faith turns out to be the correct one.

If they've never had to fight one another, though, why are these monks so very good at kicking ass?

It only took a bit of careful exploring and the ignoring of a few "no admittance" signs to get a bit deeper into the unique aspects of this particular complex, however.

In particular, this place was big. Very big. Big enough to despair at Ashnil's eyesight if he didn't notice it. Whereas I have seen monasteries that claimed to be self-sustaining before, this is the only place I really would've believed it. The monks tended a vast stretch of grounds consisting of temples, statuary, conference centers, mess halls, accomodation, craftshops, greenhouses and gardens as far as the eye could see. Behind various conveniently unlocked gates, I found rows upon rows of beautiful bonsai trees, huge stretches of potted fruit trees, unfinished carvings, noticeboards bearing newspaper clippings in Chinese and English about various issues of import to the physical and spiritual wellbeing of people in and around China and Hong Kong, and a great deal more.

All about, the temples and bells and gardens and things were a great deal more colourful than I remembered from Japan: not on the outside, but most definitely on the inside. Whereas the exteriors were frightfully generic (though, of course, still very dignified and finely crafted), the interiors were always painted in strong colours, and decorated with a patchwork of symbols, images and emblems so dense they would've made Robert Langdon lay down and weep for joy.

It was this side of the temples I was interested in, and I skulked about for a long time, in both private and public areas, inwardly pretending that I had arrived at this temple as an acolyte, for my induction in the Sutras and the Way of the Open Palm. It was good fun trying to figure out the purpose of the various halls, items, bells, plants, tools and other paraphenalia, and by the time I squeezed down a passage between two buildings to avoid a wayward monk and found myself back at the exit, I had invented quite a rich personal history for the place, almost all of which was undoubtedly bullshit.

The shops and tours and whatnot in the adjoining tourist section around the cable-car stop were also most intriguing, particularly the more expensive stores which showcased the monks' most beautiful and expensive creations.

My favourite stores amongst these sold exquisitely carved statuary made of various semiprecious materials such as marble and Jade and so forth, and it was amazing the way the creators had worked the natural shape, texture and coloration-changes of their materials into harmonious scenes from the Buddhist scriptures which used these traits to excellent effect. There were also shops displaying other intriguing curios such as a downright unnecessarily varied and vivid collection of designer chopsticks, amongst other little finds such as little scrolls bearing calligraphied sutra.

In fact, there was so much to see, and so little time in which to see it (since the queue for the cable-car back was also at least an hour long, and the last car went out at 6 pm), that the least interesting thing to do in the area was to enter the Tourist Trap Theatre and enjoy a pointless animated film about monkeys. By the time I lined up for the return trip in the cable-car, I was quite footsore, and very glad I hadn't opted for the 'trade-up' which meant also getting the movie tickets.

The cable-car trip back was just as picturesque as the arrival-trip, save that this time the encroaching sunset painted the area in vivid colours, temporarily making the outside of the temples, and the surrounding countryside, match the rich colouration of the temple interiors. Although the cable-car windows were annoyingly reflective, and actively fought my attempts to take good pictures (oh, for a polarising filter!), the above may give you some idea of how the sunset lighting set off the most attractive shapes and colours of the natural environment.

We had gotten used to the hustle and bustle of downtown Hong Kong, and had few chances to get any real distance away from the skyscrapers that dominate the skyline. As such, it was a fabulous experience to also see the other side of this region: the natural and spiritual side; and to have the tallest building around as far as the eye could see be a gigantic, finely crafted Buddha, his serene countenance a warm, radiant bronze against the rich greens and browns of the forest and the ethereal blue, pink and gold of the sky.