5 Ways to Spend (And Not Spend) Your Birthday in Hong Kong

March 15, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy 1 Comment

My birthday is the 12th March. That means right now you must be saying, “Oh, I know someone with that birthday,” or, even better, “That’s my birthday too!” – and you are certainly not alone. A 12th March birthday can be a blessing and a curse, and must be shared with everyone else that was born between 5th-13th March, which seems to be everyone else, period.

But one thing a 12th March birthday is not is uneventful. From summer dress snow days at primary school, to Comic Relief sleepovers throwing up, to pub golf mayhem at uni, my birthday always manages to be memorable, if not always for the right reasons.

Living in Hong Kong has not changed any of that. So, just in case you were wondering how to spend your own birthday in HK or elsewhere, here are some ways to do it (and not to do it):

22 – The White Wolf Birthday

Hey, I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling that 22 is the best age to theme your birthday after your favourite cheap vodka brand. White Wolf vodka, only available at the cheapo store in North Point, is HK$40 for a million litres, and thus the White Wolf theme for my 22nd birthday was born.

Highlights: inventive costume ideas from three-wolf t-shirts to Wolf gladiator lycra suits; getting so wasted that I would apparently only speak to party guests in Cantonese (except my Cantonese is mostly limited to “Singapore noodles please” and “Kam Ping Street, North Point”, even now).

Lowlights: taking a swig of “snake wine” before leaving pre-drinks at our flat and not remembering anything after getting off the MTR at Wan Chai; waking up the next morning with no memory, no money, and a makeshift “wolf tail” key-ring digging into my back. Safe to say that The Hangover wolf pack had nothing on my 22nd birthday.

23 – The Harlem Shake Birthday

In the space between my 22nd and 23rd birthdays I left Hong Kong, lived in Italy for six months, moved back to the UK and then moved back to Hong Kong.

Not satisfied with my Wan Chai experience from the previous year, this time I made sure that I would actually make it to Wan Chai by living in Wan Chai, and had everyone round for drinking games on my balcony. It was the spring of 2013 and therefore it was obligatory to make a Harlem Shake video.

Highlights: Ian licking that mop.

Lowlights: if you’re trying to find me in that picture and can’t, it’s because I thought it was an excellent idea to bleach my hair.

24 – The Boob Hat Birthday

The best thing to do on your birthday is move house. Said no one ever. I spent the day in Ikea buying furniture (some of you may remember that this was the infamous year that a certain someone bought me an Ikea voucher for my birthday, ever the romantic), then moved stuff into my new place only to realise I had left all my clothes and make-up at my old place.

Regardless, I continued the tradition of getting birthday drunk in Wan Chai by consuming margaritas at Coyotes and wearing a sombrero that looked like a boob.

Highlights: did you not see the picture of the boob hats? Hilarity! And also – a free hat!

Lowlights: getting drunk and not being able to figure out whether to go home to my new place or old place.

25 – The “I missed it, I was napping” Birthday

The best thing to do on your birthday is move jobs. Said no one ever. I had the day off between moving from one job to another, so I tried to go to the Art Museum for a cultural and classy birthday, but it was closed.

Then, I came out in hives for no reason and had to take an anti-histamine, but the anti-histamine made me sleepy so I took a nap. All day.

Highlights: it was a really good nap, though.

Lowlights: no drinking, la!

26 – The Breakfast at Tiffany’s Birthday

And so it arrived. The big 26. What birthday drama or epic fail would incur on this night, this year? Well… I hate to disappoint, but IT WAS THE BEST BIRTHDAY EVER.

Highlights: North Point cooked food market; beers in bowls; Belgian beers; cocktails with chocolate round the rim; Insomnia’s amazing band; TAKE ME TO CHURCH; McDonalds breakfast at Tiffany’s

Lowlights: I wanna do it ALL over again!

Many thanks to all that made it out for an epic birthday night out this year and even bigger hugs and kisses to those who sent cards, pressies, emails and even Facebook messages. It may be my fifth HK birthday, but I certainly don’t feel any less loved than when I had a birthday at home.

So now to my 26th year, the sixth year of being in my early twenties. What do you have in store for me, 26? Older, yes. Wiser? Maybe not yet.

Why Italy and Hong Kong Are Kindred Spirits

March 7, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy Leave a comment

Outside of the UK, I have lived in two places: Hong Kong and Italy. Therefore it sounds a bit biased to claim that the Italians and the Chinese are kindred spirits, because their countries are the only two places I’ve lived in away from home.

However, living in these two very different corners of the globe, I have felt déjà vu more than a few times and have thus come up with a theory that Italianos and Heung-Gong-ers have more in common that you may think… Read more

5 Authentic Chinese Foods You’re Missing Out On

March 1, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy Leave a comment

Last week I made you question everything you thought you knew about Chinese cuisine by revealing 5 Chinese Foods That Are Not Actually Chinese (well, that’s what Confucius told me in my fortune cookie). So now, I would like to introduce you to five authentic Chinese foods and dishes that I have come to love, living in Hong Kong, that haven’t yet made it big in the Western hemisphere: Read more

5 Chinese Foods That Are Not Actually Chinese

February 23, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy 3 Comments

Yep, that’s right, Western world. You have been eating Chinese food wrong your entire life. But don’t feel bad as I too have made the same mistake in thinking that these dishes were the epitome of authentic Chinese cuisine. It wasn’t until I moved to Hong Kong that I learnt these Chinese foods are not actually Chinese at all.

It turns out that the popular “Chinese: dishes beloved in the UK and other Western countries are about as traditionally Chinese as a family pack of Tesco Value spring rolls. Here are five of the biggest culprits:

Prawn Crackers

Prawn crackers served with every meal? Pure fiction. When I first moved to Hong Kong, I sat down in a restaurant and perused the menu, wondering when the waiter was going to bring over a basket of crunchy prawn crackers for me to munch on while I made a decision on what to order.

How long was I waiting? Well, I’m still waiting now…

The closest things I have found to prawn crackers are prawn flavoured crisps on supermarket shelves (and they’re not even cracker-shaped!). They’re not the same and they definitely don’t come with every meal, or with a sweet dipping sauce, or in a white plastic bag on top of the foil containers of your Chinese takeaway.

Chow Mein

Chow mein literally means “fried noodles” in Chinese. Therefore, it is technically real Chinese food, but it is used to describe any kind of fried noodles. “Chow Mein” in the style that we eat it as a dish in the West does not exist.

However, there are a million different kinds of fried noodle to choose from: some familiar (Singapore fried noodles, always an excellent choice) and others you that may surprise you (there is a kind of “chow mein” where the noodles come as a hard basket and you pour hot gravy over them to cook them on your plate and it’s heavenly!).

Sweet and Sour Chicken

Sweet and Sour - Chinese Food — © Alpha via Flickr

What? I hear you cry, not sweet and sour chicken too! Never fear, the traditional Cantonese sweet and sour dishes do exist in Hong Kong, but just not in the form that you might imagine. Sweet and sour pork or sweet and sour fish are the preferred versions, and rightly so.

I have learnt the hard way that chicken in Hong Kong and China is vastly different from chicken in the West. The meat is often grey in colour, served on the bone and the emphasis is on the fat and skin rather than on white breast meat. Let’s just say it’s an acquired taste…

Spare Ribs

Ribs are often on the menu here, but like sweet and sour chicken they are far from the delicious fried ribs in a finger-lickin’ sticky-sweet barbecue sauce you may order at your local Chinese restaurant. Instead, the ribs are often steamed and served in their own juices. Yes, you read that correctly – steamed meat. That’s a thing.

Fortune Cookies

You can blame the home of the free and the land of the brave for this one. Fortune cookies were popularised in the US (reportedly fortune cookies were invented in San Francisco or Los Angeles, although some claim fortune cookies originated in Japan). Chinese people think they’re weird.

And those badly translated quotes from Confucius? Also bullshit.

More Chinese foods that are not Chinese

So there you have it! Five typical Chinese dishes you have been stabbing at with chopsticks (before sheepishly asking for a knife and fork) from the local Chinese takeaway or at the all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet all these years without them really being authentically Chinese at all.

This is by no means an exhaustive list. Chinese cuisine is a complex mix of different cuisines: Sichuan, Shanghainese, Shandong, Cantonese, Hunan, Fujian… Just look at a size of China to understand why “Chinese” is a really a huge umbrella term for a wide variety of regional cuisines. It’s like putting French, Scandinavian, Italian, Irish and Greek cuisines under the inadequate and reductive umbrella of “European food”.

Most of the Western, especially British, Chinese foods we are familiar with are actually Cantonese, due to the links between Hong Kong and the UK.

But don’t worry, I also share in your despair and I’m not ashamed to admit that I actually crave Western Chinese food (arguably a separate Chinese cuisine in itself) while living in Hong Kong. Oh, what I’d give for a big plate of yuk sung at The Big Wok in Birmingham!

I hope I can take the bitter taste of disappointment out of your mouth by revealing the five Chinese foods you wish you knew about in another post? Or, you could just order a Chinese tonight safe in the knowledge that your Chinese meals are being catered to your Western taste buds.

Order an extra serving of prawn crackers on me.

What is it like living in Hong Kong? | An Expat Guide

February 16, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy 10 Comments

What is it like living in Hong Kong? I get asked this question quite often, especially when I’m back in the UK. So, I thought it was about time that I put a little more care into my answer rather than just shrugging my shoulders and saying something non-committal like, “Uh, ok, fine, I guess…” while wondering how best to describe the madness of being an expat in Hong Kong. Read more

Hiking the MacLehose Trail Stages 1 and 2 in Hong Kong

February 10, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy 5 Comments

What better way to spend Chinese New Year than hiking the MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong? This is the story of how we attempted to hike the whole of one of HK’s most challenging trails over the CNY weekend and ended up only managing only the MacLehose Trail Stages 1 and 2.

Oh, the MacLehose Trail, you say? It’s only 100 kilometres! You can do it in three days! Hiking only 10 hours a day! MacLehose was the Bear Grylls of his time! (Ok, no one really said that last part.)

Contrary to what we heard, it turned out the trail was not what we expected, as old Mac had a few tricks up his sleeve… Read more

10 Surprising Facts About Chinese New Year I Learnt Living in Hong Kong

February 2, 2016July 6, 2020 - Amy Leave a comment

Red lanterns are up, the banks are packed and preparations are well underway for Chinese New Year, also known as Spring Festival. Before I started living in Hong Kong, I thought CNY was all firecrackers, dumplings and fun animal horoscopes (and those are definitely a fun part of it). But there’s so much more. So, here are 10 surprising facts about Chinese New Year that I’ve learnt during my time in HK: