Graham Street Market

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Just down from where we’re staying is the Graham Street market: a sloping street with every kind of food you can think of, and many you can’t. Alongside its stands of fruit, (very alive) fish, meat, bread and a whole lot of stuff I don’t recognise – seriously, they have these things which look like apples but they have spikes sticking out of them and I am not sure if it is from a tree or the sea – you can also buy slops, children’s’ clothing, toys and behind the stalls are restaurants and more shops selling food.

A view down Graham Street Market. Photo by Simon Williamson.

It’s a place raging with a bit of controversy as the market, where many local Hongkongers do their grocery shopping, is going to be razed so that residential skyscrapers (who are we kidding? That’s an average Hong Kong building) can be built.

I usually walk to work with my significant other in the mornings and his office is right at the bottom of Graham Street, where the market starts. So I always walk back up it. It is a fascinating set up – a complete balls up from the outside, until you stroll in and join the throngs wrestling their way to where they are trying to barter. The only thing I really buy here is fruit. I far prefer a quick visit to a market than a squish in the teeny tiny aisles they have here in grocery shops, and our closest decent grocery shop is about a 10 min ride up the escalator. According to a few touristy reports I have read, these kinds of markets are the real Hong Kong. The cynic in me finds that hard to believe after our experience in Mong Kok and I have a feeling that places like the Graham Street Market can help rich snooty Hongkongers feel like they are part of their own city – such as Soweto does for urban people in Joburg and Mzoli’s does for Capetonians. I certainly don’t scoff at places like these – the three listed I very much enjoy (ok I finally confess: I actually don’t like Mzolis all that much).

Above: Fish being kept alive, waiting for someone to come and buy them. Below: Fish after this process is complete. Pics by Simon Williamson.

What I cannot deny is that it is closer, cheaper and a far more enjoyable and interesting experience to buy goods in the Graham Street Market than it is in the 7-11 across the street or the Park ‘n Shop up the hill. The first time I saw live fish in the market get their heads lopped off as soon as someone wanted to buy them, or saw a crab being removed from a tank and be systematically tied up, alive, for the customer, I was grossed out. Totally. In fact it’s still something that doesn’t sit so well with the little part of my stomach that tries to prevent nausea. But here in China it is how people buy food. When in Rome... you know?

I do not believe that I am joining in some cultural recess of Hong Kong that no one outside locals manage to permeate. But I do feel like a have a foot slightly further into the East than I would have. I’d be lying if I said that grappling over a price with someone who can only speak Cantonese didn’t thrill me a bit – I’m still convinced I’m being ripped off though. I smile as they yak out words I can’t understand, and we make hand signals to each other amongst a lot of pointing and acting like the animal I wish to buy. Really though, putting my thumbs in my arm pits and clucking like a chicken is not the most absorbing way to buy food as I am one of those people who likes great distance between what is on my plate and what runs around a farmyard.

So when you people do come and visit, take your valloids before we go grocery shopping.

PS. Can anyone identify these things on sale at the Graham Street Market? I'm no foodie so am not sure.

Foraging for food

People filled me up with this wank that Hong Kong was this totally Western city that somehow wound up next to China. Well, let me tell you, get that right out of your head. This is an Asian city - the premier language is most certainly not English (although the language of business is, and all signs are in English and Cantonese) and many Hongkongers only know a few useful phrases.

The most noticeable Asian aspect of this city, though, is the food. There is a McDonalds somewhere in the city, and the odd Western takeway like Subway, but for the most part it is Chinese. I have eaten more noodles in the last fortnight than I have in the previous 27 years of my life, and I've taught myself to use chopsticks - the excuse of being left-handed which I've used throughout my life doesn't fly here.

Restaurants in Hong Kong are pretty expensive, even by Cape Town standards. Pizza is excessively pricey (you won't find one for under R100, and that will be for a small margherita) as is steak, probably due to the fact that everything in Hong Kong needs to be imported - I cannot fathom where would be enough land for farms. Or even just one cow, to be completely honest. It does mean, though, that groceries are also damn expensive, particularly in the central part of town where we live. The South African rand is about 10% stronger than the Hong Kong dollar, so two pieces of lean chicken breast, costing about HK$50 at a Pick n Pay type of store (called Park n Shop, believe it or not) are about R45. So it's almost worth eating out as much as we do.

Every kind of restaurant you can think of is here. Thai, Italian, British which you can easily browse if you're prepared to pay for it.

Our personal restaurants of choice are what translates to "tea shops", called yum cha in Cantonese, if my Wikipedia browsing is anything to go by. This is where it seems Chinese people eat - I have never seen a non-Chinese patron in one of them, other than the two of us. We started going to them less for tea and more for the amount of money they charge for food - which keeps our bank accounts happy - but the quality of food served is also decent. There are stupidity traps though. The first time we went to a tea shop, we were served tea as we sat down. On our second visit to one of these shops, the waitress plonked two cups of hot water down on the table. In the spirit of trying to be Chinese, we sipped on it, assuming it aided digestion or some such shit, until we saw the table next to us putting their cutlery into it. We very quickly pretended we hadn't been so stupid, and ordered from the menu, which, in these kinds of restaurants, is noodles with a meat or soup prepared in some fashion. I find these tea shops are the best place for chicken dishes, but there is always pork (I think it's the most popular meat here) and beef on the menu, and you're looking at about HK$30 to HK$50 per meal. A lot of meals here are served in soup - like sweet and hot pork with noodles (which could conceivably stand on its own, but is served) in a bowl of soup. I assumed that sweet and hot pork was a mistranslation of sweet and sour, but no, they really meant sweet and hot, as the burning in my mouth testified.

On that note, there is a restaurant which all visitors will be taken to called Chilli Haven (we only noticed the name of it afterwards). We were walking around looking for a spot to eat when we came upon this cute little restaurant with affordable prices. In we innocently went and ordered two Tsingtao's (Chinese beer) while we pondered the menu. The beers were served in bowls, and I'm still unsure as to whether this is some ancient Chinese custom, or the staff were snickering around the corner, watching two morons lap up beer from a vessel ill-suited to the purpose. Our waitress, a seemingly innocent twenty something woman (but was actually a totally psychotic bitch) recommended we order the dumplings, a speciality of the restaurant. We took that, some peri-peri chicken dish and a dose of sweet and sour pork. Well, it tasted like these dumplings were grown in an Indian chilli plantation, cooked in gunpowder and were then pissed on by fire ants, and we put our brave faces on as we schlepped through them, wiping sweat from brow and trying to keep the limpid snot from escaping our noses as tears poured out of our eyes. During this process of trying to remember to breathe, I somehow managed to touch my eye with a sauce-covered finger - it caught fire and melted a little bit before I managed to save it by putting an ice-cube beneath my eyelid. We don't really know what the other food tasted like because our mouths were on fire until the following day, when we were distracted by the pain of, well, let's just say the food was digested in a very heated manner.

The one last and most important adjustment we have been forced to make in a culinary sense, is the staggering price of liquor in bars, compared to in grocery shops. In the 7-11, a beer is about HK$8, so not too far off what we pay in South Africa. However, a beer in a bog-standard bar in Soho will knock you back about HK$60 which is even more than you get schmucked for in a London pub. Wine, oir tipple of choice back in SA, is prohibitively expensive here - the cheapest bottle we can find (so our regular selection) is from Chile and costs about HK$45 - double the cost of a Zesty White. So we've had to revert to the amber drink of men - beer. Yes, glorious beer. In fact I am sipping on one right now while I type this.

And not one menu has had dog or cat on it. I am very disappointed.


ERRATA: In the post I mentioned that Tsingtao was a Japanese beer. It's actually Chinese. It's been changed.