East-West Travelers Network may be the most quirky site yet for the latest in travel. It's a highly personal blend that reflects the predilections of two passionate travelers. Tom Honig is a journalist of long standing -- he's been not only a travel editor but also the executive editor of the Santa Cruz Sentinel, an award-winning small daily newspaper in Northern California. His base of operations remains in Northern California. Journalist and expert blogger Amy Wu lives in New York. She has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine (Asia) and Forbes.com. She worked as a writer and reporter in Hong Kong and Beijing from 1996-2001.
11/23/2011
Moon Cake memories
EDITOR'S NOTE: Writer Amy Wu has left her New York home for the Hong Kong home of her relatives. Here, she conjures up thoughts of Thanksgiving here in the U.S. with a delicious account of the Moon Festival -- an autumn celebration complete with food, family and fun.
By AMY WU
Moon festival came and went with the ferocity of a thunderstorm. For a few weeks I've been watching the locals here snap up boxes and tins of moon cakes in almost every texture and flavor available. There's the ice-cream sort, the cotton-candy colored ones, the funky ones with exotic stuffings of turkey or lobster, the white moon cakes with Mochi-like skin, and then there's the good old-fashioned sort as dense as a hockey puck and the classic artery clogger. So far I've liked the ones from the posh Peninsula Hotel the best, half the hockey puck and their insides stuffed with light creamy egg custard.
Mostly the overarching theme of these holidays -- no matter its history - -comes down to family gatherings: the excuse to press the pause button, leave work early, and once again get together and eat, drink and engage in gluttony. It’s a time for the kids to be cute and for the seniors to enjoy the perks of getting pampered by their offspring and their offsprings’ offspring. Instead of Monday night football there are the string of popular Korean TV dramas and TVB variety shows.
There is order and tradition in these gatherings. The grandparents or seniors sit down at the head of the table and start the meal first, and then their children and finally the under 10 crowd.
The aunt and uncle, both in their senior sunset years, tell me stories about a time when food was scarce, and when meat was considered gold. Noticeably the food eaten during the Chinese’s major holidays all resemble gold – deep fried spring rolls (gold bars), moon cakes and egg dumplings in soup, Well you get my message.
As an ABC who grew up on canned and bagged veggies, zappable meals, and vending machine cuisine, the eating fests and the gatherings are all a bit overwhelming. It’s kind of like having Thanksgiving and Christmas once a quarter. Make the greetings, eat more, drink, bottoms up, and then collapse on the couch and fall asleep and wait for the calories to settle in. Hey this is a family gathering after all, and yes I could get used to it.
No I’m not complaining about the multitude of Hong Kong holidays or frequent get-togethers. I’m just making observations that in my new home away from home, holidays and family gatherings are the heart and soul of life – a stronger and more regular beat than that of many big cities in America today.
The Hong Kongers work like dogs, but they play hard too, and they can be voracious eaters. In the U.S. family gatherings have dimmed to rare and more often bi-annual events, once at Thanksgiving and Christmas and perhaps the pseudo-family BBQ over the summer. Maybe it’s time for the Americans to consider adding the moon festival to the mix today, after all an excuse to press the pause button and get together with friends and loved ones is important if not necessary in today’s society.
10/06/2010
A secret Starbucks in Hong Kong
By AMU WU
The sight of Starbucks with its pine-tree colored emblem and the outline of a smiling caffeine goddess, either makes me feel incredibly warm and cozy or homesick. In this case it is the later.
Two weeks after I left Hong Kong I feel a growing distance between myself and my friends and family. I miss the Desperate Housewives suburban neighborhoods (aka Westchester), the penthouse on the Upper East Side, the view of the Sotheby's Building from the 16th floor, and the fantasy of a domestic life with home cooked meals, bubble bath, and Leave it to Beaver and the image of myself as June Cleavor. I am now in Hong Kong, a neon-lit fast-paced city packed with buildings and people, and loneliness catches up to me.
As a native New Yorker I've always felt the tug of war and the intense feeling of love hate with the city, but I realize that it isn't so much the city or Starbucks that I miss but rather friends and family back home. The e-mails have died down, as have the Facebook pokes, and I believe it has hit them that I may not be back at home so soon. Out of sight out of mind.
Hong Kong is as international a city as one can get. There is every kind of transportation imaginable including HK$2 tram rides and a sleek underground subway. There are shopping malls with brands galore, and in many ways this is also a city for foodies. The university where I am working has a tapestry of cuisine from dim sum to American-sized sandwiches. And from the first day my friend, who brought me here from the U.S., tells me about the Starbucks on campus.
The Starbucks at the University of Hong Kong is one of the best kept secrets, it is 30 percent discounted for all staff and students, and has an outdoor seating area surrounded by decorative palm trees and umbrella-shaded tables. The place is a magnet for faculty, staff and students who seem to be sucked into the caffeine-laced world. The more I visit it and drown myself in caffeine, the more I think of New York and the Manhattan skyline.
Just as I started to long for red,white and blue, my aunt and uncle took me to the American Club tonight, which occupies two floors up at Exchange Place. When the elevator went ding up to the 49th floor, I was faced with a bronze emblem of a bald eagle and some overly friendly Filipino women who sat us at a nice table at the corner.
From the window I caught a panoramic view of Hong Kong, and the bumper to bumper traffic at rush hour. The view reminded me of New York's Time Warner building and the view of Times Square at 42nd Street and I quickly shifted that thought and focused on tackling the glass of gin and tonic and the surf and turf dinner, and a cheesecake. Literally a slice of Americana.
09/27/2010
McDonald's no! Great noodles yes!
By AMY WU
SHANGHAI -- This is a city that doesn't sleep. This is a city on amphetamines.
So I arrived in Shanghai last night after a marathon 14 and half hour flight. By the time I settled into the Hanting Hotel on The Bund it was near midnight. The Hanting is China's version of the Holiday Inn: No frills; basic comfort. A Konko-branded TV hangs on the wall, and I have a view of another building. Just like New York City, I laugh.
Summer is alive and kicking here and refuses to be replaced by a new season. The city is hot, humid and sticky, a balmy 88 degrees at the height of noon, and everywhere one goes there is the sound of horns, mopeds, motorcycles and speeding cars and there are people everywhere.
I've been cabbing it everywhere and have quickly discovered that Shanghainese taxi drivers need more information to operate than I've ever imagined. A simple address, or even the address written in Chinese won't do. They want the names of nearby side streets and the 411. They will stop, pull over, and declare their cluelessness until I produce a more exact address. It's all and it's all disconcerting. I have the feeling that I will be abandoned by the driver like it or not.
My project today was finding the Hong Kong University Study Centre where I'm going to be working a journalism conference on Saturday. My host was about an hour late so I went to find breakfast.
The security guard pointed me to the street around the corner. From the corner of my eye I spotted the famous golden arches, and I laughed at the idea of celebrating my first meal in China with a Big Mac. Thankfully I spotted a hole-in-the-wall mom-and-pop noodle shop. The little shop was simply named "Shanghai Noodle Shop." It was the sort of place with a TV playing Chinese soap operas, mom and pop making noodles in an open kitchen. The place smelled of grease and hot peppers, and I was the lone customer. The cook, aka owner, and waiter, pointed to the menu board when I asked what was good. Okay, so I can't read much Chinese. I'm as blind as a bat when it comes to this.
But my ego quickly takes over and I give the waiter-cook-owner my pseudo literature look. I scan down the list of characters, which look like hieroglyphics to me, and then I nod and ask. "What do you recommend?" "What do you like?" the owner asks, and I am left at my own devices to say something other than "fried noodles." The menu carries about two dozen sort of noodles and I am in a funk. "Just give me a bowl of wonton noodles," I say.
This bowl of noodles is the best that I've had as far as I can remember. The noodles are boiled perfectly, a heavenly balance between chewy and substance and yet light enough to twirl around my chopsticks. The noodles are drowned in a spicy broth and topped with bright fresh boiled vegetables. Despite 80-degree heat and the few flies that flit about my ear I am in paradise. The cost of paradise today is a mere 6 yuan, or less than $1.
I swear that I will return maybe three times a day or okay at least once a day. Amazing how I can get so excited over a bowl of noodles. Everything is wonderful when one lives in the moment and is always on the move.
09/11/2010
Farewell Gotham, Hello Shanghai
By AMY WU
The fortune teller was right. Come Fall my fate would shift soil, and move from the East Coast to the Far East, or at least that's what he told the father asked about my future. Thank God for fate and for fortune tellers. As I write I am closing shop in the penthouse on the Upper East Side where I've been high-class squatting over the past year, and I am Asia-bound.
Here's how it all started. With the end of the job and the end of summer, the father called up the family fortune teller and asked him about my future. The fortune teller swore that in mid-September the stars would align, and the constellation would change. There would be a new season, a new beginning, and it wouldn't be here in the U.S. but someplace halfway across the world. Sure enough the phone call came a few weeks before summer's end. After sending out an e-mail blast to friends about my roller coaster year, I received a call from a fellow journalist who runs a journalism program in Hong Kong and Shantou, China. '"Want to come to China and check us out?"
At 34 going on 35, I had thought that I had outgrown wanderlust, and over the past year was convinced that it was now time to be a grown up and acquire a mortgage, a two car garage, a stable job, and maybe a couple of kids and dogs, and yes the minivan. Alas, that ended when the boyfriend walked out. So I thought about my friend's offer. Why not board a plane and head overseas, what's the worst that could happen?
As I write I am at a tiny tea cafe in Greenwich Village named "Thirstea," where I am sipping Bubble Tea in front of the golden cat with the waving golden paw at the window. I randomyl wandered into this place with shelves stocked with Asian snacks like Pocky sticks and rice candies. Hmmm, maybe it's another sign that the fortune teller is on the mark. With a plane ticket in one pocket and a passport in the other, I am ready to take flight. Let the adventures begin.