The Hong Kong Heritage Museum [Jacob Burke]

One out of the many museums I've gone to here in Hong Kong is the Heritage Museum. Dad made reservations online for the Bruce Lee exhibit and we set off. It was a huge ways away but the MTR made it much easier. We had to take about four different lines with many stops. After about a hour we got of at our stop on the brown line called the Che Tung temple. It was a nice walk to the museum. When we arrived at the place we instantly went to the the Bruce Lee exhibit where I looked and read about Bruce Lees life. My favorite part of the exhibit was the cut films of the movies Bruce Lee was in. Outside of the exhibit there was lots of stuff with Green hornet and Kato on them. Green hornet and Kato are from a old film that Bruce Lee acted in. After the exhibit I went to the religion section where I looked at the old artifacts and watched at a movie about Tibetan culture. After that part I went to the small park outside/inside the museum. James played around a bit while the rest of the family sat down. Later we went to the restaurant next door called Mix Noodles. After eating spaghetti, roasted chicken wings with cheddar cheese sauce I went to the kid area where there were instruments from all over the world, and lots of interactive stuff like 3d Chinese letters and trains and cars. After playing there we started toward the Che Tung temple, a small walk away. When we got there and went up to the gate we realized that it was closed. That was the last thing we did in that zone. The last thing we did was take the bus back to Causeway Bay.

James playing in the park.

MTR map

Buddist God

Statue of Bruce Lee

  

Noon Day Gun [Jacob Burke]

    

The noon day gun (午炮)

Here in Causeway Bay one of the famous tourist sights is the noonday gun (午炮). Going off at twelve o'clock the noon day gun is fired quite often. People can donate over hk$ 33,000 (us$ 5,000) to fire the cannon and get a souvenir. The noon day gun goes quite far back in history in the 1860's. The jardines would fire the gun when a Jardines tai-pan would arrive by sea. This tradition went on until a senior british officer came in and didn't know of the tradition. As a result the jardines had to fire the cannon every twelve o'clock as a penalty. The cannon, in 1941 was lost to the Japenese occupation but after british forces regained Hong Kong the gun was replaced with a six pound gun and the gun was operating again in 1947. As time went on there were many complaints so the six pound gun was replaced with a three pound gun.      

  

Mid-Autumn Festival [Joshua Burke]

Mid-Autumn Festival

The Mid Autumn Festival, or also called the Moon Festival is like our Thanksgiving where the families come together and eat. The Chinese originally celebrated the Mid Autumn Festival for celebrating thankfulness of heavens bounty. The moon is also part of the festival because of an ancient Chinese folk story, and the festival is celebrated on the Autumn equinox when the moon is full. There is many versions of the story but here is one version. In the ancient time their was a man named Hou Yi who was a great archer. One year ten suns rose in the sky causing disaster to the people. Yi shot down nine suns and left one to provide light. An emperor admired Yi and gave him the pill of immortality. His wife, Chang'e got ahold of the pill and swallowed it. She then spent the rest of her life on the moon. Every Autumn equinox Yi could get together with his wife because the moon was close. They have cerebrated this festival since the first century. We actually went to the Mid-Autumn Festival down at Victoria Park. There was lots of paper dolls filled with lights, lanterns, and of course food. What amazed me was there was a half sphere made up of 5 Liter water jugs with lights in it the were synchronized to the music. I think it was suppose to represent the moon. There was also a 50 foot (17 meter) Chinese dragon that was to come out at 10:30 pm but we didn't hang around that long.

Now thats a lot of people 

Paper dolls at the festival 

Lanterns 

Festival lights 

Full moon 

The "moon"

That's it for now 

Keep in touch 

      Joshua          

Hong Kong History Museum [Joshua Burke]

History Museum

This post is going to be about the Hong Kong History Museum. 

Finally after being here a month and a half we get to go to the Hong Kong History Museum. We bought some annual passes that lets us go to all the major museums in the Hong Kong area and hopefully we will be here next spring so we get to keep using them. The Museum was about the history of Hong Kong from the beginning to the present day.

The Early History Theater  

The first couple rooms were about the start of Hong Kong.  They say that most of Hong Kong was formed by volcanoes, glaciers, and floods and that explains all the mountains here. There was also a room about the Qin and Han dynasties which was pretty neat because they had ancient pots, bronze tools, and other archeological finds.The great wall of China was also built during this time.

We then came upon the age of boat people and what was it like in the late 1700's. Speaking of boat people, they have been living on boats since very recently. My mom came to the the Hong Kong area in 2006 and she said that their were tons of boats in the harbor. Now when we are here, there are no boats in the major harbors anymore because I found out that the government moved all them out because they wanted the place to look modernized, which the place is. In this age fishing was  a huge product. In fact, they fished so much that the fish population is very low. The government wanted the fish population back up again for tourism so they bought out all the fishing companies.

Front view of the model boat that people live on. 

Me on the model boat looking in to the cramped living courters. 

The next stage in the Museum was the opium wars. During this time in History, Great Britain was trading with China, (mostly smuggling in opium in the country in turn for silk and other items). What sparked the war was that the emperor took a commissioner, Lin Zexu and put him in charge of dealing with the opium. He took care of the opium by dumping a lot of opium in trenches and then mixing it with lime to make it poisonous. It then drained into the sea. That made the British really angry and then turned into two opium wars in which the the Chinese lost badly in both of them and they had to give the Hong Kong island to the British, open up a lot of trading ports to other countries, and give a lot of silver (the equivalent of 66 million US dollars).

A model of the dumping of opium that Lin Zexu orderd. 

After the opium wars the Hong Kong area was under British control. During this time Hong Kong expanded rapidly and flourished under British control up until WW2.  

WW2 started. After the infamous December 7th attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese then started bombing Hong Kong on the morning of the eighth. Even though the British forces fought back heroically the Japanese eventually took over Hong Kong. Hong Kong then became a territory of the Japanese empire. Unfortunately the Hong Kong people suffered under the Japanese hands and they made some of the inhabitants to move off the island and on to the mainland. When the war ended it took a long time for the country to build up back again.

We then ran out of time and we didn't get to see the period after WW2 to the present day.

Just so you know if we eventually leave Hong Kong we will be going the Philippines, and then back to Malaysia.

Thats it for now 

Keep in touch

Joshua   

                 

Amusement parks in Hong Kong [Jacob Burke]

There are two popular amusement parks in Hong Kong: Ocean Park and Disneyland. In my opinion Disneyland has better characters, shows, and more family rides but Ocean Park has less lines, better transportation, and really good exhibits. They both have the same quality of rides, gifts, and food. I have annual passes for both of them. I have gone to Disneyland five times. Amazing. More times then all the times I've been to disneyland before this trip. The last time I went there was the best for it was not summer break, on a weekday, and a working day. That trio put together equals very small lines. Disneyland also started setting up the Halloween theme so Space Mountain was turned into Ghost Galaxies and so on. While we were there we got our Halloween costumes. The last time we went to Ocean Park wasn't as great as the trip to Disneyland. There were still lots of people and the park closed a lot earlier. Although there was still a lot of people I still had fun. Since we got the annual passes we got some coupons which allowed you a few free skill games and dollars off at gift shops and restaurants. They disappeared  pretty fast. Anyway, that's what I've been doing here in Hong Kong.

    

The Flash, Ocean Park

Mad Hatter's Teacups Disneyland

James in Grizzly Gulch, Disneyland

Orbitron, Disneyland

Us with Buzz Lightyear, Disneyland

Hong Kong Islands [Joshua Burke]

High Island

We have now moved to High Island and the whole area is not covered in buildings and is away from the city. We arrived in the afternoon and it took us about 3 hours to get there from Middle Island. The bay was pretty cool with two large beaches and a neat waterfall running down from the island into the sea. The water was also clean and we took a dip as soon as we got in. There are these "junk boat" day charters that come into the bay on friday, and the weekend. They are jammed pack, and the person who helped put in our batteries James Bourke told us that you have to get a spot three weeks in advance. I also got to go wake boarding once all the junk boats were gone. I hope to explore the other anchorages in the area.

Joshua     

Hong Kong! [Joshua Burke]

Where is Sea Glass?

In case you are wondering where Sea Glass is right now, at this very moment, we are at Middle Island, Hong Kong staying at the RHKYC (Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club). We have been in the Hong Kong area for just over a month now and I am having a blast.

Chinese Dragon 

When we first came in to the harbor, we had just done a 5 day passage and everyone was pretty tired. It was a nightmare getting in here because so many huge container ships come through the Hong Kong area to get to Guangzhou where all the shipping now goes. When the UK had control of Hong Kong, all the shipping came there, but when the Chinese got Hong Kong back they moved all the shipping and manufacturing to Guangzhou. Now, Hong Kong is just a very touristy place.

The city of Hong Kong is very populated with 7 million inhabitants and who knows how many tourists come through. Almost everyone who lives here uses public transportation, subways (MTR), double decker buses, taxis, and cable cars. The people who have the money, and don't use public transportation have fancy cars. Iv'e seen Ferraris, Bentleys, BMWs, and Mercedes on the streets. Most people live in apartment buildings and you see them as far as the eye can see. Anyway, theres lots of stuff to do in town and the surrounding areas.

Apartment Buildings 

We also found out that there is a Hong Kong Disney Land. We went when Dad was putting in the new batteries. We took the MTR to get there and Hong Kong Disney land is the smallest Disney land in the world. I have not been to a Disney land in over 3 years and was amazed that  there was one even here. My favorite ride was called Grizzly Gulch, which was a Wild West theme roller coaster ride. Most of the lines were an hour or more, so even if you showed up in the morning you could only do 5 rides in a day. We went to Hong Kong Disney Land approximately 4 times.

Disney Land 

Adventure Land 

The lines 

There is also many museums in town and we went to the Science and Space Museums. In case you are wondering everything here is labeled, and all the signs are in English, and the two main Chinese languages, Mandarin and Cantonese. We also found another Amusement part called Ocean Park, which is basically an amusement park+connecting people to marine life. My favorite ride is a ride called the hair raiser and was a fast loop-ti-loop roller coaster ride. The park was so big that you had to take a  cable car from one side to the other.

Ocean Park with the Abyss on the upper left

Scary fuel dock 

I now come up to talking about Middle Island and what we are doing here. We are staying on a mooring and the water in this bay is surprisingly clean, so clean that you can even swim in it. I finally got to do wake boarding again, and I had a blast. The dingy is still having problems, but at lest the engine starts and were not rowing. The club here is nice and we did two barbecues.

    

I would greatly appreciate any comments that are posted.

Thats it for now, stay in touch 

(hope to leave here soon) 

Joshua