Birds, Flowers, and Fish

The next day we spent hours at the Hong Kong History Museum— it is a great museum.  The first floor is all about the Chinese heritage of Hong Kong and the sailing history of the bay; and upstairs is how the British screwed the Chinese over with opium and then took over the island with a 100 year lease.  

Having Flat Stanley with me meant that he must pose with replica opium crates and balls!  This is for educational purposes, after all.  Flat Stanley also drove a tram and sat with me on the trolley.

The section of Hong Kong after World War II was fascinating to us, especially knowing that Edward was stationed here during the Korean War.  He commented that when he was there in the later 1950s, the only tall buildings were the St. John Church and the Standard & Pours bank (8 stories high).  We laughed at that, as we craned our necks up to see the tops of the hundreds of skyscrapers that now make up the skyline of Hong Kong.  In the 1960s section, we kept listening to this great song by the Reynettes, “ Kowloon Hong Kong”   You should take a listen….

After the museum, we walked to the bird street and the flower street, passing the best idea ever: a dog latrine. 

Yuen Po Street is where the bird market is.  One can buy almost any type of bird, from finishes to toucans, and take them home as pets.  There are several birds crammed into bamboo cages, porcelain water & food dishes, and other bird-care products all for sale.   There is a garden near-by, where you can see old men preening their birds trying to get a song out of them (no one was there when we passed by, cuz it was raining).  

This street was more sad to me as so many birds were crammed into small cages.  There were large parrots that could hardly open their songs.  The toucan just looked so depressed in a small cage that he could hop around in but not fly.  I was glad to leave this street.

We wandered over to the flower market, where orchids and bonsais and all the paraphernalia are sold: small statues for the bonsais, gorgeous large pots for the orchids.  If we did live in Hong Kong, I can guarantee that we would have no furniture in our flat, just miniature trees and sprays of orchids.

Further on, we came across the fish street, where every time of fish is sold, displayed in plastic bags hung from a rack.  Some of the bags were about 10 gallon, half filled with water and the largest fish I have ever since, hung up for sale.  

Most were beta fish and clown fish. We did see lots of people buying the baggies, so hopefully the fish don’t spend too much of their lives hanging around in plastic.