On Tuesday Lee and I went on an AWA “Gallery Romp” that evening. It was supposed to be a tour of several art galleries in SoHo . The first one that we went to, however, turned out to actually be this amazing place where a woman displayed these absolutely gorgeous Chinese robes that she has been collecting for over 20 years. She explained the symbolism on the robes - the dragons, the water, the mountains. The dragons are not supposed to be scary; they’re benevolent creatures in Chinese mythology. That explains why so many of the Chinese dragons have such goofy looking faces! The robes were all in silk, and they were old – some were several hundred years old. They were mostly worn by the Mandarins and were used for various ceremonial occasions. They were SO pretty. Some of them were for sale, at prices approaching $22,000 HKD! You would never wear them, but you could enclose them in a glass frame and display them that way. There was one with beads and fringe that I really coveted, but what would I do with it?
She also had designed pillows, quilts and sheets with traditional Chinese designs, also in silk. These were also very beautiful, and more affordable. We are fantasizing about purchasing some of them.
On Thursday I went on a hike with the super-fit ladies to Lion’s Rock. I was very proud of myself because I had no trouble keeping up. I didn’t go all the way to the top, but not because I couldn’t have handled it physically. It’s just that there was a bit of climbing and exposed rock at the very top, and I was afraid of getting in a situation where my fear of heights would get the better of me. So I went around the peak instead of up and over it. There were 4 of us that went that way; we had a good time too!
The only bad things about that hike was that Hong Kong was incredibly smoggy and hazy that day, which muffled the views, and made us wonder if we were killing ourselves by huffing and puffing up that mountain and inhaling all that smoggy air! I said that it made me want to cry for this city, and it does….
This was a fun week. Lots of fun activities – hiking, mahjong (twice!) and just hanging out with Lee. Lee had a presentation here in Hong Kong , so he was in town for most of the week. I liked having him here. I was a little sad when he left for Japan
Cyndi and her sister Sherri will land here in Hong Kong in a couple of hours. It will be fun to have some guests to show around. After they leave we go into a frenzy of travel, Chinese New Year, and then Joanne arrives. We are either going somewhere, or have someone visiting pretty much all the time (well with a few breaks here and there) from now until May. We decided that we better get cracking if we’re going to see some of the places in Asia we want to visit before our time here is up.
No comments:
Post a Comment