Thurs. New Territories: Vertical Sprawl & Search for Place

Today in our language lesson we learned proper table manners....and how to use chopsticks.... to pick up a lone PEANUT.

After we learned proper table manners, we went to the historic Luk Yu Tea House to demonstrate what we had learned. We had "Yum Cha", or Dim Sum, together with our Mandarine teacher. It was a lot of fun, but it is surprisingly hard to eat while you are drinking hot tea. At the end of it all, wo bao le (I was full).






We took a bus to the New Territories and went to Sunshine City. The Podium city is very strange. It is out in "nature", with mountains and forests everywhere...except for all the towers that are exactly alike, except for the color. 6 to 12 towers sit on top of a podium "city in a box", complete with mall, wet market, restaraunts, public spaces, arcades, pools, playgrounds, etc. The city-scape is incredibly dense and has an enormous, completely intimidating scale.

Prof Sanders and Prof Macloud pretended to be introducing us to Hong Kong and showing us where to live. We made the show people believe we were interested in buying, so they gave us a tour of 3 or 4 apartments.... now, when I say apartment, this is by no means a luxurious or spacial apartment like they might have you believe. Instead, most have 2 or 3 bedrooms, approximately 6' x 6'. Can YOU imagine living in a 6' x 6' bedroom? It was nauseating. Truely.

After seeing the Podia, we went to the Festival Walk Mall, by Arquitectonica. They love to shop over here. Man. Mall after mall after mall.