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Sunday, December 30, 2012

Ancestral Home Visit

It had been years, like 20 years since I had last visited our ancestral home in China,I only carry faint memories of the place, none of us, except for my father had lived in that house, it had been abandoned for a long time and now it is considered for the Chinese government to be of historical importance so nobody can knock it down. It isn't the best kept place on earth, however through my pictures you can still see that it was a magnificant marvel in it's prime many years ago.

Dad describing the photographs to us.

Soot covered walls of what was the old kitchen.

Astonishing detail on the smallests of things in the house.

An old broom.

Beautiful stained glass window.

Display of light through the stained glass caught by my wife.

This is an ornamental pomelo, my dad said there was four when he was young, probably stolen, so I took it home as a souvenir.

More souvenir I took home.

Saturday, December 29, 2012

中山石岐佬 Dining in China Zhong Shan

Dining in China, not only was it fresh, made to order and beautifully decorated, it was above all very cheap, the following pictures will give you a bit of an idea of what you can expect, we ordered all of the cooked dishes in the pictures catering for 10 people and it all came down to around $600 RMB, that's around $70-80 AUD. Excellent service and mouth watering food, exotic nonetheless, things that are very difficult to locate outside even in Hong Kong was available fresh in this restaurant, kudos to our cousin for bringing us there.

中山, 石岐區康華路66號

I think this was made of plastic, a chef.

Frying a large ball of dough, you'll see the one we ordered down below.

Special type of food almost exclusive to Asians, all the above ingredients are stuffed within the green leaves you see below then it's boiled for a few hours to cook the ingredients.

The finished product, we brought 2 home but unfortuntely it was not boiled to perfection, it needed an hour or two more of cooking, the rice was a bit raw.

Fresh food you can choose from and a variety of cooking methods all at your finger tips.

Some type of fish or eel.

A type of clam.

Fresh fish heads.

Fresh fish organs.

We call this milk fish, nice flavours but full of pin bones, not for the faint hearted.

Cooked pig blood for entree.

Even with the incredible pricing, they still managed to print their own tissue box and custom tea pots, amazing.

The finished product, it's hollow inside.

This is stir fried silk worm cocoons.

Fried pork mince cakes.

Fried baby pigeons, it's so young and nicely fried, even the bones were edible.

This would definately not go down well with the animal conservationists.

Fish skin salad with century egg.

Apple Cider, highly recommended.

Fish intestine omlette.

This is the milk fish that we saw live earlier, stir fried with pickled vegetables.

Saturday, December 22, 2012

荃灣 Tseun Wan

We landed around dinner time at the International Hong Kong airport, an arrangement was made with my brother in law's sister to pick us up and bring us to the rented apartment she arranged for us in Tsuen Wan. To and fro the Hong Kong airport is always a hassle, it's far enough to be inconvenient for everyone in the country, prices for the most accomodating transport, taxi and MTR would cost at least $200 HKD or more depending on where your heading. A relative took us from the airport back to the apartment. It's a short drive, around 20-30 minutes, the views on the way was spectacular, especially the 青馬大橋 Tsing Ma Bridge, it was stunning, the only let down was the pervasive polluted air resulting in a hazy outlook, and also I couldn't leap out of the car to take some pictures of the magnificant scenes. The apartment was very close to a waterfront with a runner's path and general walking, a luxury in Hong Kong. Downstairs is a small scale shopping mall with supermarket and various eateries, what was the most interesting was an indoor wet market right under our feet. With a wet market there was bound to be some food stalls with fresh food and excellent prices, it was all there. I was quite surprised by the location and the amenities at hand. The prices in the wet market was quite competitive especially in comparison with Sydney, also the restaurant was excellent, we spent a few dinners there.

$20 HKD per plate, thats what under $3 AUD

The balloon you see here is the device that keeps fishes afloat

Preserved duck legs, mmm

Fresh Yum Cha every morning at great prices

Sunday, October 28, 2012

Flowers

Been meaning to photograph these flowers from my parents' backyard, they started blooming lately with amzing colours and finess, but the awful cloudless sunshining days prevented me from going ahead. Finally today lovely overcast day, ran downstairs with my camera and took these, very pretty indeed.