Thursday, September 6, 2007

Graveyards, the Mafia, and the Red Light District


I almost forgot to talk about the graveyard in my last post! The picture above (which is the view from a different window in my dorm) is a Christian graveyard here in Hong Kong. It's basically a multitude of gravestones carved into a huge sloping hill. I got so excited about it that I forced some other exchange students to walk through it with me at night. I tried to take pictures but it was too dark to give it any justice. Unfortunately, no one shared my enthusiasm.

Now for the Mafia--last night, about 10 other students and I (almost) went to a jazz club in SoHo*, an entertainment zone located in the Mid-levels. The place was called the Jazz Roof. I was very close to walking in the door until two of my friends ran out and told me not to go in...they were inside for about 2 seconds when they realized the place consisted entirely of Mafia members, commonly referred to here as triads. Don't go to Jazz Roof.

*On a side note, SoHo is the location of the Central-Mid-Levels escalators, the longest outdoor escalator in the world. My friend David and I went up it one day-- very anti-climactic.

From there, we mozied on over to Wan Chai, considered the Red Light District of Hong Kong (last night I learned prostitution here is legal, I guess I didn't think about it before then). We went to a bar called The Wanch, where local bands that don't consist of cantopop play. It was mostly rock and metal and it was exciting to see this different aspect of Hong Kong society (one that I must say is quite hard to find based on my experiences here so far).

2 comments:

hoi said...

hard to find because you don't hang out with people who would listen to those sort of things.

when you ask those in the bands playing at the Wanch, they'd be ex-international students from hong kong working (or not) in hong kong after uni. oversimplifying everything but nobody who's a real hong konger would listen to rock and metal.

nevertheless, welcome to hk. and hku. was looking for the directions of Jazz roof - and googled it. surprised that it is this that I find. :)
forgot to introduce myself - I'm from hku too :)

Leah said...

Wow, I totally googled Jazz Roof and you're right, this blog is at the top. Thanks for the info, although the guy I met in one of the bands was actually a local here and he made it sound like the rest of the band was too. However, I do agree that the majority of the crowd there was international.