Tone Deaf Landlord

Louis Vuitton behind this protest sign will be closing its shop in Times Square

Of all the luxury brands, looks like Louis Vuitton is cutting its losses first.

After seven months of protests in Hong Kong, the French name brand is closing one of its eight stores in the city.

Times Square's owner Wharf Reic refuses to lower rents

The world's top luxury name is pulling out of Times Square in Causeway Bay, after landlord Wharf Reic refused to lower the rent on its second-floor space. Louis Vuitton currently pays around HK$5 million (US$642,000) a month in rent.

According to the Hong Kong Tourism Board's latest figures, only 2.65 million people visited in November 2019, a decline of 56 percent from the same period last year.

Other brands like Moncler, Gucci and Salvatore Ferragamo have seen sales plunge as much as 45 percent in Hong Kong during the third quarter. LVMH reported a 25 percent decline for its Hong Kong sales in the same period.

The mainland customers who use to deluge luxury stores in Hong Kong daily are now staying at home to shop, with prices becoming more competitive in China. Previously luxury sales in Hong Kong were driven mainly by international travelers, with visitors from the mainland accounting up to 70 percent of luxury goods sales.

Hong Kong Land has offered concessions to tenants

While it's understandable Louis Vuitton wants to minimize its losses, landlord Wharf Reic is hardly being sympathetic to the situation. Meanwhile Swire Properties that owns Pacific Place in Admiralty, and Hong Kong Land, with The Landmark in Central have offered a series of measures to tenants, including rent concessions.

Is this wishful thinking on Wharf Reic's part in expecting the protests to end soon? Or is the developer completely tone deaf to what has been happening for the past seven months?

Everyone has been financially affected by the protests in the city, one way or another. Job in the hospitality industry are being cut, shops closing down as well as restaurants. Perhaps telecom and internet companies are benefiting from all the communications and online use, but most of us and the city as a whole have been affected for over half a year.

Swire Properties has also helped ease rent pressure for tenants

And the unrest is expected to continue in 2020, with Chief Executive Carrie Lam yet to find out way out of this political crisis. The economy is not expected to return to pre-protest levels within this year, maybe 2021 if some kind of political resolution is found soon.

So for Wharf Reic to refuse to lower rents is hardly helpful in keeping Hong Kong's economy going, and in the developer's best interests, wouldn't it be better to have a giant prime retail space occupied than left empty? Hard to understand Wharf Reic's strategy when everyone is else is working together to find a way to stay afloat...

Hong Kong Protests by Numbers

Carrie Lam repeating herself every week, offering no new solutions

The anti-government protests have just stretched past the six-month point, and Sunday's turnout of 800,000 people shows the movement is still very strong.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam Cheng Yuet-ngor and her administration must be scared. Really scared.

Hong Kong police have fired 16,000 rounds of tear gas

This morning in her weekly press briefing she was asked her reaction to the "silent majority" who were not pro-government, but instead pro-protest. She evaded the question entirely, and instead replied in Hong Kong this showed people were given the freedom to express their opinions...

But here are some cold, hard facts from the Hong Kong police on the protests so far:

- Over 6,000 people have been arrested: 4,474 males and 1,548 females, ages ranging from 11 and 84 years old. Of those arrested, 2,393 are students.

- 16,000 rounds of tear gas fired

- 10,000 rubber bullets

- 2,000 bean bag rounds

- 1,850 sponge grenades

- 493 police officers have been injured since June, including 452 male and 41 female

Police did not mention how much pepper spray they used...

We don't know exactly how many protesters have been injured, with some not going to hospitals for medical help but instead through an underground system of volunteer paramedics, doctors and nurses.

As Lam didn't say anything enlightening today, the protests will continue, but with the protesters having a higher moral ground following the results of the November 24 elections showing wide support for them.

How is this all going to end, Carrie? Or perhaps Beijing doesn't have a clue either?

Telling Hong Kong to be like Macau demonstrates how little understanding Chinese officials have of the immense differences between the two cities.

Over 6,000 people have been arrested since June

Hong Kong refuses to die too. Yes, many shops and restaurants are closing down, but in some ways this is a good reset for the city's economy and it must innovate to find a new way out of the recession.

For example, does Hong Kong really need eight Louis Vuitton stores? They were mostly catering to the mainland market. It's time for the city to diversify its customer base and look elsewhere to bring in tourists and create new activities for visitors to do besides shop.

The Hong Kong government can't even find its way out of a paper bag so it's up to local residents to come up with creative ideas to stimulate business.

香港人加油！

Hermes Brand Value Reaches New Highs

A Christie's Hong Kong auction from 2015 of a Hermes Birkin bag

The luxury economy in Hong Kong is thriving more than ever. Forget Louis Vuitton and Gucci -- Hermes is where it's at.

Christie's Hong Kong just held its sale of Hermes handbags and it netted a whopping HK$45.59 million. Apparently clients from 20 countries were fiercely bidding for Kelly and Birkin bags.

This Birkin bag went for four times its estimate

Hermes bags are highly coveted because they are handmade and take months to make, let alone months or years on the waiting list for your order to be processed.

The French company is best known for using quality materials and skilled craftsmen (and women) to make its objects, but it's the Kelly and Birkin bags that everyone wants. They are the ultimate status symbol.

Even better when the bag is made from crocodile skin.

The world record for a Hermes So Black series handbag was set last night with a rare, limited edition matte black Niloticus crocodile Birkin bag from 2010. The final price was four times the low estimate at HK$1.625 million (US$208,000).

The So Black series was created by Jean Paul Gaultier when he was Hermes creative director from 2003-2010.

Have a spare H$2 million to buy this Birkin bag?

But one bag that was sold for even more was another Birkin bag made from Himalaya Niloticus crocodile matte white (though it is brown on the edges) complete with a buckle that is 18k white gold and diamond encrusted. It dates back to 2011 and its price? HK$2 million (US$252,892).

Many people don't see the point in such extreme luxury, but to see buyers willing to bid fiercely for these items show there are people with lots of money to burn, and the gap between the rich and poor is widening even more.

But don't worry if you didn't get your Hermes bag this time -- Christie's is holding two more sales next month in London and New York.

Although Hermes won't get a cent from this sale, its brand value has been elevated to even greater heights.

Impressions of Art Basel

Japanese installation artist Chiharu Shiota's Where Are We Going?

March is such a busy month with the Hong Kong Arts Festival, Asia's 50 Best Restaurants, Hong Kong International Film Festival, Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central. Oh and did you know the artist Kaws' Companion is out floating in Victoria Harbour? Wish I could be like him and just relax but there's too much to see!

Photographer Liu Heung Shing

Today was the start of Art Basel and I took a taxi to get there. The drive decided to take the Central-Wan Chai bypass and before we got out of the exit for Wan Chai North, there was a traffic jam with cars going to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

The first day is usually reserved for the media and VVIP, but by the time I got there around 3.30pm (it had started around 2pm), the bottom floor of the massive art show was already crawling with people.

And there were lots of beautiful people or people trying to dress arty farty. And lots of Mandarin was being spoken by lots of young women wearing Chanel boucle jackets and dresses, and men in Louis Vuitton shirts and even a crazy white vest with lots of pockets embossed with the LV logo. Do people actually wear this stuff?

Detail of pink swirls of Park Seo-Bo's Ecriture No. 160208

We didn't spot many celebrities, or wasn't paying enough attention, but saw Uli Sigg, the art buyer and philanthropist who is a big supporter of Ai Weiwei. We also saw Hong Kong-born photographer Liu Heung Shing who has come out with a new book comparing and contrasting the Soviet Union and Communist China.

The man himself embodies history, having seen China become a Communist country and watched it transform into a capitalist country with Chinese characteristics. I heard him speak about 10 years ago in Beijing and he has so many anecdotes he can still produce even more books.

But on with the art. My colleague noticed there were fewer large art pieces on show this year, perhaps galleries were worried about having big price tags that would scare off potential buyers and only brought out smaller ones instead.

What is she doing? Dan Colen's Rabbit and the Moon

For example some Francis Bacon prints were going for US$40,000. Wonder if they were snapped up right away.

As usual there was a lot of strange art that wasn't executed very well, and some that were visually arresting, which is what you need at an art fair where it can get mind numbing going by every stall. I did see a few pieces that I had seen at previous Art Basel shows. Perhaps they were hoping to catch buyers who were first timers at the art fair?

One of the large installation pieces was beautiful and airy. It's called Where Are We Going? by Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota. It's actually composed of lots of strings to make up a series of boats that seem to be floating in the air, making it very dreamy and light.

Rivane Neuenschwander's detail of garlic peel on fabric

A pretty piece in shades of pink is called Ecriture No. 160208 by Korean artist Park Seo-Bo. It's a series of acrylic swirls of paint that seem to be applied with a piping bag and different shaped nozzles. It's so pretty and pastel-y, like a giant vertical cake with tons of pink icing on top.

There were also some sculptures that made us do a double-take. One had a naked woman playing with a rabbit on her chest. New York-based artist Dan Colen created Rabbit and the Moon and it's a weird piece. Who would put that in their living room?

Another has a woman wearing a T-shirt and shorts, reading the paper with miscellaneous goods around her. And then we read the caption and it says: Flea Market Lady by Duane Hanson. A security guard had to be posted next to this statue in case people would touch her!

Chinese artist Zhang Yu performing Tea Feeding

Meanwhile Vietnamese artist Dinh Q. Le presented some quietly strong pieces featuring embroidery on cloth. And the embroidery is white thread on white cloth. One is called Texture of Memory #7 2000-1 and it's a portrait of three people together in a line drawing by embroidery. The lines look simple, but up close involve a lot of work and skill to execute well. Utterly beautiful to me.

This other work was white too. It's three-dimensional and at first it looked like bulbs from flowers, but up close they are actually garlic skins. How did the artist, Rivane Neuenschwander extract these thin skins off of the garlic in one piece? She had to do several hundred for this untitled piece.

Vic Muniz's Letter Rack Hong Kong (Yellow)

I find Brazilian artist Vic Muniz's work fun to look at and so I purposely made sure I swung by Ben Brown to take a look. This time it's more like a random collection of items one might find in someone's memory box or time capsule of Hong Kong. There's postcards and ticket stubs, name cards, coins, maps and stamps. I miss his visually-arresting collages. Or maybe he didn't have much time because Ruinart champagne had recruited him to do a special collection creating collages using the actual bark and leaves from the vineyards. Yawn.

The Thai artist Rirkrit Tiravanija had some pieces shown this year that are new, but using 2014 copies of the South China Morning Post as his canvas. One was untitled and strangely featured two giant circles on newsprint. Usually he has a message written on them. Another exhibited by another gallery had Chinese characters written in red on top of the paper, saying something like, "We are together under one sky making dreams". I prefer his previous piece that said: "Freedom cannot be simulated".

Oh and one final performance art piece. We saw Chinese artist Zhang Yu pouring red tea in giant bowls that were sitting on top of paper. He kept pouring the tea until it slightly overflowed. Then we could see why -- on the walls were uniform circular blotches from previous pourings. We don't know the significance of it, but they kind of looked like fuzzy ancient Chinese coins. The performance art is called Tea Feeding...

SCMP newspaper used by Rirkrit Tivavanija

After about two and a half hours of going through pretty much the entire fair, it was time to call it a day. I like seeing what's out there, the artistic zeitgeist. It was more whimsical pieces than serious political statements. Another Art Basel done and dusted!

Picture of the Day: Louis Vuitton's Lucky Charm?

Giant red cat for Louis Vuitton -- will he bring good luck?

Tonight I went to Galaxy Macau for a dinner and as I rushed to the restaurant I saw this big red maneki-neko, or in Japanese "beckoning cat" and had to stop for a second and check him out.

Turns out he was part of a Louis Vuitton display with the "LV" initials on his chest. Apparently these maneki-neko are meant to bring good luck to the owner.

Perhaps Louis Vuitton needs a lot of luck after luxury sales fell down again thanks to the Chinese government cracking down on daigou, or people who shop overseas for customers who live in China, many of them used to buy fashion brands like LV...

Fan Bingbing's Big Fine

Actress Fan Bingbing must pay a hefty fine for tax evasion

The big news today is that finally after months of no word from actress Fan Bingbing, it has now been revealed that she has been fined nearly 884 million yuan (US$129 million) for tax evasion.

In the office we were speculating if she could even pay that amount.

According to Forbes she made 300 million yuan from July 2016-July 2017, and 1.4 billion yuan between 2003 and 2016. But surely she spent a chunk of that money. She will probably be cleaned out after paying the fine and will have to lay low for a while before re-starting her career again.

She was an ambassador for Louis Vuitton

It's unfortunate she was singled out as an example of what happens if you evade paying your taxes.

It was found that she had two contracts, one at a lower amount to pay less taxes, and another that was her actual income. Her production companies were also fined 117 million yuan for also omitting income and not paying tax on it.

Apparently Fan will escape criminal charges if she pays the hefty bill by December 31.

While she was invited by several luxury brands like Louis Vuitton, De Beers, Montblanc, and Guerlain to be an ambassador, probably no money or not much changed hands, but now it'll make fashion, jewellery and cosmetic brands think twice about using Chinese artists as brand ambassadors.

It puts these companies in a tough position because they want to target mainland Chinese consumers, but don't want to be caught using the wrong celebrity for promotional purposes.

The whole fiasco started in May, when outspoken state television presenter, Cui Yongyuan posted pictures on Weibo of two contracts that appeared to be for Fan's upcoming film. One showed a salary of US$1.6 million to be reported to the tax authorities, and another with US$7.8 million.

This is a common practice called yin-yang contracts. It is also not unusual for companies to have two books, one for the tax department to look at, the other containing actual figures.

Fan also promoted De Beers

After there was public outcry about his whistle-blowing, Cui later apologized to Fan and in June he withdrew his claims altogether. But that didn't stop the State Administration of Taxation from launching an investigation, which led to her disappearance the same month.

Fan was held under "residential surveillance at a designated location", where the police can detain anyone suspected of endangering state security, terrorism, or significant corruption at an undisclosed location for up to six months. It is a practice widely condemned by human rights groups.

Today Fan released a letter apologizing to fans and the Communist Party for her transgressions, saying she would "overcome all difficulties" to pay what she owed.

"One could say that every bit of the achievement I have made cannot be separated from the support of the state and the people," she wrote. "Without the good policies of the Communist Party and the state, without the people's love and care, there would be no Fan Bingbing."

Who knows what she went through when she was in detention for several months. Regardless of what people think of her, we can only hope she will get through this terrible period and eventually move on.

Picture of the Day: Red Wallet

How superstitious are you when it comes to your wallet's colour?

During my time window shopping at the Galaxy Macau, there wasn't much to do except wander into the luxury brand shops.

One of my last stops was at Louis Vuitton, a shop I never venture into in Hong Kong because it's so intimidating and the shop assistants are usually snooty.

I asked to see some wallets and they were duly taken out of the cases and carefully explained. Then the salesgirl asked if I was superstitious and I asked why...???

She pointed to the wallet in red and explained Chinese superstition is that one should not have a red wallet because red represents fire and it will burn away all your wealth, or another explanation that red is also the colour of bankruptcy!

So what was that red wallet doing in Louis Vuitton in Macau of all places?

Flashing the Cash in Macau

Beautiful blue skies this afternoon with a view of Galaxy Macau

Usually when I'm in Macau for work, I'm rushing to where I want to get to, and then rushing back to the ferry terminal to get back to Hong Kong as soon as possible.

This time I had an hour to kill before dinner and wandered around Galaxy's shopping mall area. It's very glitzy, much like Elements in West Kowloon, with practically every top luxury brand you can think of having a store there.

Everywhere you look there are luxury brands in the mall

However, unlike Harbour City and IFC mall in Hong Kong, they are not crawling with lots of mainland shoppers. Some stores were completely empty and desperate for anyone to at least walk in, others might have one or two people.

There are two types of mainland consumers these days -- the sophisticated ones who already have the brand name bags and designer clothes who act nonchalant, while the country bumpkins like to flash the cash, but don't have much style.

The latter ones I saw at Burberry, a group of women ranging from 20s to 50s who sat around couches in one room of the store and chatted loudly as they waited for a saleswoman to bring a bag out from the supply room.

One even took her foot that was wearing a dirty nylon sock out of her shoe and rested it on the coffee table. Classy. They spoke in a dialect I couldn't understand but it sounded like they were shouting at each other, but probably having an inane conversation.

Burberry is one of the stores that had some customers

Meanwhile the sales staff wore earpieces and would constantly report on customers' whereabouts -- "the young woman with the black bag is coming up stairs" or "they are still sitting there" in Cantonese.

The gaggle of women got so frustrating for one salesgirl to deal with that she vented her stress by stomping on the store's internal staircase as she walked up the stairs.

Burberry items may be cheaper than Louis Vuitton, but still considered luxury at over HK$10,000 for a handbag.

There's no choice but to try your best to please the rich -- no matter who they are -- because they're the ones paying your salary.

Takashi Murakami's Superflat Art

There are 55 works shown, many featuring Mr. DOB, the mouse character

Takashi Murakami is a famous Japanese artist who is known for his commercial work -- collaborations with Louis Vuitton, an album cover for rapper Kanye West (in 2007) and music producer Pharell Williams.

Early on, Murakami explored the theme of the atomic bomb

But at the same time Murakami's work is exhibited in museums and sold at auctions. His show, Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg, closes tomorrow at the Vancouver Art Gallery and my friend and I had a chance to catch it a few days ago.

It's a major retrospective that spans three decades of his career, featuring more than 55 works. It turns out that Murakami has a PhD in Nihonga, a traditional style of Japanese painting, but he wanted to explore the boundary between fine art and commercial art, like anime, a concept he calls Superflat. To Murakami, superflat is as if a metaphorical atomic bomb has flattened high art and low culture.

Murakami's Mr. DOB character again in abstract forms

He created an anime character called Mr. DOB that kind of looks like Mickey Mouse, but in some cases you can see bits of Murakami in it. He uses Mr. DOB in various ways and it becomes more and more abstract and bizarre. His works featuring the character look like anime happening simultaneously with various references.

I love his flowers -- they are daisies with smiling faces -- what's not to like about them? These flowers while they are his earlier works, can be seen in later ones with Mr. DOB or they pop up in other pieces as if to add some comic relief.

However not all his art is frivolous. When the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan on March 11, 2011, Murakami was profoundly affected by it and sought to process the shock and sadness through his art. He created works featuring ahrats, or Buddhists who have advanced on the path of Enlightenment but have not yet reached Nirvana.

100 Ahrats, Muramaki's response to the 2011 tsunami

He has created a piece featuring 100 Ahrats, each one different from the other, old men with scraggly faces, looking learned or have suffered profoundly for their beliefs. The piece seems dark, but at the same time there is a colourful background, perhaps showing the contrast of life and death.

The process of how Murakami creates his works is also fascinating. He starts off with his original sketch of what he wants to do. This is scanned into the computer and refined. Once the composition is approved, it is then blown up to a huge size, into several panels and teams making up over 100 people start working on them.

Using a kind of silkscreening process, the bright colours are placed layers on top of layers and then some parts of gone over again manually with a paint and brush, others decorated with gold leaf. Murakami has a giant catalog of silk screens with patterns that are used over and over again, which is what helps him create works in a kind of mechanical way.

One cannot help but smile at Flowers Flowers Flowers

He inspects each piece before he deems them finished, and this can be a painstaking process as the designs need to perfectly connect together, let alone the silkscreening process. If you see enough of his works you will see repetition of textures and designs.

Perhaps what makes Murakami legitimate is his having studied a PhD in traditional art, and then periodically referring to the past, some pieces harking back to antique lacquer works, yet his flower designs are there, or a cartoon-like lion that is a reminder of a centuries' old Japanese lion as if to give him legitimacy in the art world.

However, he doesn't seem to regard art as "low art" or "high art" -- they are all art to Murakami.

Another interesting aspect was that two large pieces weren't completed on time for the Vancouver show -- they are called TBC and if you first look at them, they seem finished, but if you look closer, there are outlines of characters that have yet to be filled in. Murakami writes a note to visitors of the show, apologizing that he didn't have enough time to finish them. He knows this doesn't absolve him of not meeting the deadline, but at the same time do his fans really care?

Kanye Bear, inspired by Kanye West

The show is strangely called The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg because in extreme circumstances, an octopus will eat its own leg for survival, but at the same time it does this knowing the leg will grow back. So Murakami sees himself as an octopus, growing and evolving his art.

At the same time he's a smart businessman -- he has a company called Kaikai Kiki that churns out Murakami products from stickers to plastic folders, prints of his works and even giant flower cushions. We were shocked at how expensive they were -- the large round flower cushions were CAD$395 each! With the exhibition closing, the gift shop was hoping fans would sweep up the merchandise at 50 percent off, but even that didn't entice many big purchases. We might have bought some of they were in HK dollars, not Canadian dollars...

However, at least two of his series of prints were sold out, one priced around CAD$1,200, the other at over CAD$5,000.

Murakami must have been a blockbuster show for the VAG and good on it for snagging such a top popular artist. So many young people came to check out the exhibition and it also gives everyone a better understanding of where the artist is coming from. I certainly learned a lot!

Murakami combines old and new, life and death

The show next goes to the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Takashi Murakami: The Octopus Eats Its Own Leg

February 3-May 6, 2018

Vancouver Art Gallery

Blunder of the Week: Gucci

Paper handbags and shoes with the Gucci logo in a Hong Kong shop

Luxury brands are aggressively wooing the Chinese market, lowering prices on the mainland, and having Putonghua-speaking staff in boutiques around the world.

But earlier this week Gucci hit out at companies in Hong Kong selling fakes of the Italian uber cool brand -- for the dead.

Let me explain: Those who are Buddhists believe in the afterlife, and that loved ones on earth must send paper offerings to them in the next world by burning them.

Burning "money" to send to the dead in the afterlife

Traditional items would be paper clothes and money, known as hell notes, gold papers that are folded to look like gold ingots and other combustible items of significance.

In recent decades, paper offerings have evolved to include cars (with chauffeurs), homes, watches and mobile phones -- all made of paper. And in the last few years, the name brands of these offerings were more prevalent, like Mercedes-Benz, Rolex, iPhone, and Gucci, and Louis Vuitton.

So you can imagine six small shops in Hong Kong that sell these items were shocked to receive angry letters from Gucci, demanding they stop infringing on the Italian brand's trademark. The items were only going to be burned up anyway. And what if the deceased was a loyal Gucci customer?

After word got out in the media mocking the luxury brand for going after these shops selling paper offerings, Gucci made an about-face on Friday and apologized for sending out the letters.

The fashion house acknowledged the stores had no intention of infringing on intellectual property rights, and promised not to pursue any legal action.

Even paper cars complete with chauffeurs can be offerings

"We regret any misunderstandings that may have been caused and sincerely apologize to anyone we may have offended," the company said in a statement, explaining that the letters were sent as part of efforts to protect its global trademark.

If the company was smart, it would have asked its local Hong Kong staff about these items and their cultural significance, and then this big PR faux-pas would never have happened.

But it did, and thankfully Gucci has gracefully bowed out.

This incident illustrates how the Italian brand hasn't really done its homework in terms of getting to know one of its important markets.

It does now...

Xiamen: Day One

Xiamen on a rainy Wednesday late afternoon overlooking Yundang Lake

Our three-day trip to Xiamen got off to an unauspicious start when our flight was delayed an hour. After we checked in, we received a text message from Dragon Air saying it was delayed for no particular reason, and then after we boarded the plane, we sat there for another half hour because the water system was faulty.

Marinated goose with the garlic sauce

And yes -- there were naughty mainland Chinese children on the flight. One row ahead of us was a family of five -- the mother, a baby and their eldest daughter sitting in the front row of economy, then behind them the father and second daughter who was about two years old. The girl kept talking loudly and intermittently shouting, screaming, crying -- and yet the father didn't discipline her to quiet down, or tell her she was disturbing other people, that she was not behaving.

He let her be loud and dramatic and the rest of us had to deal with it. I don't know if the father was too embarrassed to say anything, or he is usually that indulgent, but that girl certainly did not have any manners. Only when the plane landed and we were waiting to disembark was she quiet!

As soon as we walked out of the airport we could smell cigarette smoke -- we were definitely in the People's Republic of China! Thankfully the long taxi queue moved quickly and in less than 10 minutes we were in a cab and on our way through rainy Xiamen.

Many of the apartment buildings that are six or seven stories high are run down, with architectural styles left over from the early 90s, featuring white tiled buildings with small balconies where people hang their laundry. Closer to town there are more swankier, taller apartment blocks that look sleek because there are no balconies.

Delicious rice cooked with peanuts, taro and dried shrimp

Turns out our hotel is in the more posh part of town, complete with Louis Vuitton, Salvatore Ferragamo, Aquascutum, and Bally boutiques with no customers in them. Our hotel room looks over Yundang Lake, and we hope to get to walk around the circumference, which should take about an hour or so of brisk walking. There's also a lot of tea shops near us, as the province is best known for producing tea leaves on terraced hilly terrain.

When we arrived it was raining and so it's fog not smog we're seeing, but overall the air here is fresh -- a nice change from smoggy Hong Kong.

Since we arrived late in the afternoon we had an early dinner in a nearby restaurant, that serves all kinds of Chinese food -- Cantonese (even dim sum at night), Shanghainese, Sichuanese, and some Fujianese. We try going local and order lo sui or master sauce goose -- less than half a bird marinated in a soy sauce concoction that was very tender and flavourful. It went very well with a minced garlic vinegar sauce,

Assorted small fish (lots of bones!) cooked with Chinese celery

Another local dish was fresh assorted small fish cooked in a claypot with Chinese celery, radish and peppers. This was another tasty dish, the fish cooked perfectly, but required a lot of patience because the bones in the fish were so small! But like my relative remarked, eating the entire fish was like eating fish cheek, the most tender and sweetest part of the fish.

We also picked a healthy option of stir-fried vegetables with gingko that are meant to improve memory and eyesight, wood ear fungus, wai san, a kind of white yam root, lots of lily bulbs and carrots. And finally another Fujianese  dish was rice cooked with shrimp and cubes of taro topped with peanuts that was delicious -- and even better with spoonfuls of the soup left over from the fish dish.

Stir-fried vegetables including wai san, gingko and fungus

It was so good that we finished everything -- and the bill only came to 230 yuan for the three of us. If only Hong Kong prices were like that!