HANGZHOU, China - These days, Zhang Yimou is known chiefly as the show-biz whiz who staged the spectacular opening and closing of the 2008 Beijing Olympics. In fact, he has had a long and varied career, directing operas and making justly acclaimed movies such as "To Live'' and "Raise the Red Lantern'' with the exquisite actress Gong Li.
When Zhang was warming up for the Olympics, he put together an imaginative and entertaining multimedia show in this east-central Chinese city, called "Impression West Lake.'' The show includes many of the elements - light, music, movement - that captivated a worldwide TV audience during the Olympics, if on a smaller scale. It has run for several years and is staged right inWestLake, the premier attraction for visitors in this old city, China's capital during the Song dynasty. I saw it last year and was taken by its luminous qualities. At under an hour, "Impression West Lake'' doesn't tax the patience; even the camera-carrying tourists and texting spectators paid close attention most of the time.
This year, it rained hard at showtime, so I didn't attend a repeat performance. However, in the grand, show-must-go-on tradition, it was staged despite the elements, with spectators donning raingear and gamely enjoying the show. The reason I say it is staged in the lake is because dozens of performers float by on slightly submerged barges, creating the illusion that they are gliding on the surface of the water. Recorded New Age space music plays and the light show glows and glimmers throughout the nighttime performance.
Spectators sit outside on bleachers in the lakeside park, located a couple of hundred meters from the hotel I stayed at, the Shangri-la Hangzhou. The hotel itself, built in the 1950s and 1960s and managed since 1985 by Hong Kong's Shangri-la Hotels and Resorts, was one of the first 5-star hotels in post-revolutionary China and has been upgraded several times. It is known for its lush, spreading grounds and is located at the foot of a swiftly rising hillside on the road that rings West Lake. Big camphor trees more than 100 years old grace the garden.
The plant Hangzhou is best known for, however, is the tea plant. Hundreds of years ago, traders brought tea bushes from India and farmers have turned the plants into reliable producers of China's most famous and probably best green tea:Dragonwell tea. Independent growers typically live in modern houses in front of small, terraced hillside fields where the plant is grown and leaves are harvested by hand. I was taken there on my recent visit by a local guide who doubled as a taxi driver and seller of ginseng and furniture, surely an unusual combination. I didn't buy any ginseng or furniture but I enjoyed the rich brew of hot dragonwell tea. On a previous visit, another driver-guide took me to her family's house, where I observed a worker with one gloved hand roast green tea leaves in what resembled a very large wok. I later sipped tea in the fields where it was grown and bought some directly from the farmer to take home.
Such are some of the attractions of this old Chinese city, now swollen with a population of 5 million, with misty, manmade West lake serving as its liquid heart.
Tuesday, September 22, 2009
I.M. Pei and Suzhou
SUZHOU, China - The distinquished Chinese American architect I.M. Pei crafted what may be his last major commission when, in October 2006, his masterful Suzhou Museum opened in this east central Chinese city. An artful fusion of traditional Chinese elements - garden, pond, footbridge, rocks recalling mountain peaks, a circle incorporated into the main entrance, a high water wall inside - plus Pei's trademark triangles and pyramids, the museum is a must-see for any visitor to this part of China who nurtures an interest in art and architecture.
Pei, who is now 92, used elegant whites and greys in his design. He has told interviewers that he took on the job because his forebears came from Suzhou, a city of 6 million that was a center of art and culture during the Ming and Qing dynasties. For Pei, who was born in China but emigrated to the United States as a young man, the museum presented an opportunity to make an architectural mark in his native land, where he has done no other work, save for a Beijing hotel in the early 1980s.
Pei's work on the museum is subtle and contemplative - fitting for an institution that boasts major holdings of classical calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics and painting. Some artworks by contemporary Chinese artists are included in the museum's collection, too, but this is principally a home for classical art - and classical architecture.
Suzhou, about 100 miles northwest of Shanghai and easily accessible by fast train or by car - allot 90 minutes or so to reach the city - also plays host to no fewer than 9 UNESCO World Heritage gardens. I roamed through several great gardens on my recent visit, but perhaps the most memorable garden experience I had in Suzhou was at Master of Nets Garden, the first Chinese garden I have visited at night.
It was illuminating in both the literal and figurative sense to see the garden, with its pagodas, neatly tended plants and waterways, under sensitive night-lighting. The nighttime garden also is home - from mid-March to mid-November, when the weather is warm enough - to site-specific performances by entertainers in vintage Chinese clothing. Two masked actors greet visitors with a good-natured blessing, and as a guide shows the way, the action moves from place to place, outdoors and indoors. An enchanting performance by a man playing xiao (a bamboo flute) was almost, but not quite, ruined by a drunk braying into his mobile phone. For me, the highlight was a performance on the stringed zheng by a young woman with dexterous fingers and graceful arm movements who coaxed celestial sounds out of the instrument.
Much of Suzhou is determinedly modern, but the city retains oases of calm among the hurly-burly. Master of Nets Garden and Pei's new Suzhou Museum are chief among them.
Pei, who is now 92, used elegant whites and greys in his design. He has told interviewers that he took on the job because his forebears came from Suzhou, a city of 6 million that was a center of art and culture during the Ming and Qing dynasties. For Pei, who was born in China but emigrated to the United States as a young man, the museum presented an opportunity to make an architectural mark in his native land, where he has done no other work, save for a Beijing hotel in the early 1980s.
Pei's work on the museum is subtle and contemplative - fitting for an institution that boasts major holdings of classical calligraphy, sculpture, ceramics and painting. Some artworks by contemporary Chinese artists are included in the museum's collection, too, but this is principally a home for classical art - and classical architecture.
Suzhou, about 100 miles northwest of Shanghai and easily accessible by fast train or by car - allot 90 minutes or so to reach the city - also plays host to no fewer than 9 UNESCO World Heritage gardens. I roamed through several great gardens on my recent visit, but perhaps the most memorable garden experience I had in Suzhou was at Master of Nets Garden, the first Chinese garden I have visited at night.
It was illuminating in both the literal and figurative sense to see the garden, with its pagodas, neatly tended plants and waterways, under sensitive night-lighting. The nighttime garden also is home - from mid-March to mid-November, when the weather is warm enough - to site-specific performances by entertainers in vintage Chinese clothing. Two masked actors greet visitors with a good-natured blessing, and as a guide shows the way, the action moves from place to place, outdoors and indoors. An enchanting performance by a man playing xiao (a bamboo flute) was almost, but not quite, ruined by a drunk braying into his mobile phone. For me, the highlight was a performance on the stringed zheng by a young woman with dexterous fingers and graceful arm movements who coaxed celestial sounds out of the instrument.
Much of Suzhou is determinedly modern, but the city retains oases of calm among the hurly-burly. Master of Nets Garden and Pei's new Suzhou Museum are chief among them.
Xintiandi: Take 2
SHANGHAI - A few years ago, I all but swooned over Shanghai's redeveloped Xintiandi - a cluster of vintage stone buildings transformed by Western architects into a warren of shops, bars, cafes and restaurants, complete with its own manmade lake and a mini-forest of mature trees uprooted and brought to the metropolis from all over China.
On my return to Shanghai this month - my fifth, or it it sixth? time in town - I had a more critical take on the place. Developed by American architect Benjamin Wood, of Boston, Xintiandi, which also saw input from the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, seems less charming than it had when I first saw it. Certainly, it is still beautiful to look at. Wood et al. basically cleared what had been a slum, reclaiming stone shikumen houses, with their distinctive stone gates and made it a prime example of urban rescue. Rather than simply level the place for highrises, as is happening over much of China, they built something new on the bones of the old.
This time, Xintiandi struck me as decidedly touristy. Of course, this may have little or nothing to do with the architects who brought it into being, and everything to do with the mercantile impulse of others. Roughly five years old, this development in central Shanghai, on the Puxi (west) side of town, has lost much of its early arty sheen. Anchored by a Starbucks on one end, a German chain brewpub and restaurant near the middle and a modern cineplex that sits jarringly on the other end, Xintiandi seems more ordinary than I'd remembered. Heavy consumer use has reduced its distinctiveness rather than given it a deeper, lived-in quality. Moreover, I saw way more people with Western features there, and markedly fewer Chinese faces. Xintiandi had injitially been popular with Shanghaiese, but that may have just been curiosity. A Hong Kong-born acquaintance of mine remarked "Chinese people don't think much of this.'' "Is it because it presents a somewhat idealized picture of China to the West?'' I asked. "I think so,'' he said.
I came away from my visit thinking there must be a more attractive shopping and eating district, and a cheaper one. I needed to find it Following the advice of locals, I walked the streets of the leafy French Concession, just following my nose. Before long, I found a nicely interlaced tangle of lanes and little alleyways, many of them lined with one of a kind shopsand lovely plane trees. Local advice also took me to an enchanting Sino-Franco tea shop, also in the French Concession, called Song Fang Maison de The. Co-owner Florence Sampson - she's the French half - has selected 20 French gourmet blends and 40 distinctive Chinese teas and is selling them out of her year-old shop, with its collection of vintage tea tins. Poking around the French Concession more than made up for my mild disappointment with how Xintiandi is aging. It's the best place in town for a visitor who wants to blend some style with the local color of a great city.
Song Fang tea house, by the way, is located at 227 Yongjia Road (near Shanxi South Road), telephone 86.21.6433 8283, Shanghai, China.
On my return to Shanghai this month - my fifth, or it it sixth? time in town - I had a more critical take on the place. Developed by American architect Benjamin Wood, of Boston, Xintiandi, which also saw input from the San Francisco office of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, seems less charming than it had when I first saw it. Certainly, it is still beautiful to look at. Wood et al. basically cleared what had been a slum, reclaiming stone shikumen houses, with their distinctive stone gates and made it a prime example of urban rescue. Rather than simply level the place for highrises, as is happening over much of China, they built something new on the bones of the old.
This time, Xintiandi struck me as decidedly touristy. Of course, this may have little or nothing to do with the architects who brought it into being, and everything to do with the mercantile impulse of others. Roughly five years old, this development in central Shanghai, on the Puxi (west) side of town, has lost much of its early arty sheen. Anchored by a Starbucks on one end, a German chain brewpub and restaurant near the middle and a modern cineplex that sits jarringly on the other end, Xintiandi seems more ordinary than I'd remembered. Heavy consumer use has reduced its distinctiveness rather than given it a deeper, lived-in quality. Moreover, I saw way more people with Western features there, and markedly fewer Chinese faces. Xintiandi had injitially been popular with Shanghaiese, but that may have just been curiosity. A Hong Kong-born acquaintance of mine remarked "Chinese people don't think much of this.'' "Is it because it presents a somewhat idealized picture of China to the West?'' I asked. "I think so,'' he said.
I came away from my visit thinking there must be a more attractive shopping and eating district, and a cheaper one. I needed to find it Following the advice of locals, I walked the streets of the leafy French Concession, just following my nose. Before long, I found a nicely interlaced tangle of lanes and little alleyways, many of them lined with one of a kind shopsand lovely plane trees. Local advice also took me to an enchanting Sino-Franco tea shop, also in the French Concession, called Song Fang Maison de The. Co-owner Florence Sampson - she's the French half - has selected 20 French gourmet blends and 40 distinctive Chinese teas and is selling them out of her year-old shop, with its collection of vintage tea tins. Poking around the French Concession more than made up for my mild disappointment with how Xintiandi is aging. It's the best place in town for a visitor who wants to blend some style with the local color of a great city.
Song Fang tea house, by the way, is located at 227 Yongjia Road (near Shanxi South Road), telephone 86.21.6433 8283, Shanghai, China.
Monday, September 21, 2009
Shanghai's Expo 2010
SHANGHAI - The big travel and tourism news in Shanghai revolves around next year's world's fair, called Shanghai Expo 2010. The spawling expo grounds on both sides of Huangpu, the river that bisects the metropolis, are expected to draw 200 international exhibitors and serve as a showcase within a showcase; the city of Shanghai is itself Exhibit A for modern China.
The last world expo I attended was Aichi Expo 2005, in the Japanese province of Aichi. The semi-rural site was modest in size, green in theme and made from recycled materials whenever possible, with buildings that were meant to be torn down after the fair ended. The expo officials said they expected maybe 15 million people to show up. When a few million more attended, they declared the show a success, though I suspect they kept expectations low on purpose.
Not so, Shanghai, which always thinks big. Shanghai is predicting 70 million visitors and is building large, spectacular national exhibits, many of which, I suspect, will survive the fair, which runs from May 1 to Oct. 31, 2010. The exhibitions are look-at-me structures, with a Danish center that resembles a spiral seashell and a performing arts center that looks like a flying saucer. Shanghai is extending its Metro subway system, adding lines 6, 8 and 9 to connect fairgoers to the site, which will also be accessible by river ferry.
You can get a good idea of what the expo grounds will look like - and for that matter, what all of Shanghai will look like, up through the year 2020 - by visiting the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, located on People's Square, in the heart of the established Puxi (west of the river) district of the city. Despite its dry-as-dust name, the 7-story center (admission 30 RMB, about $4.25 U.S.) has some fascinating points of interest, encompassing extensive photographic histories of Shanghai and including a jaw-dropping, room-sized model of every significant residential and commercial building in the city, built to scale. That alone is worth the price of admission. Here, you can get a graphic sense of one of the world's great cities and its envisioned future (http://en.expo2010.cn).
If ever the old Western expression "Make no small plans'' applied to a place, that place is Shanghai. It's a city that is living large.
The last world expo I attended was Aichi Expo 2005, in the Japanese province of Aichi. The semi-rural site was modest in size, green in theme and made from recycled materials whenever possible, with buildings that were meant to be torn down after the fair ended. The expo officials said they expected maybe 15 million people to show up. When a few million more attended, they declared the show a success, though I suspect they kept expectations low on purpose.
Not so, Shanghai, which always thinks big. Shanghai is predicting 70 million visitors and is building large, spectacular national exhibits, many of which, I suspect, will survive the fair, which runs from May 1 to Oct. 31, 2010. The exhibitions are look-at-me structures, with a Danish center that resembles a spiral seashell and a performing arts center that looks like a flying saucer. Shanghai is extending its Metro subway system, adding lines 6, 8 and 9 to connect fairgoers to the site, which will also be accessible by river ferry.
You can get a good idea of what the expo grounds will look like - and for that matter, what all of Shanghai will look like, up through the year 2020 - by visiting the Shanghai Urban Planning Exhibition Center, located on People's Square, in the heart of the established Puxi (west of the river) district of the city. Despite its dry-as-dust name, the 7-story center (admission 30 RMB, about $4.25 U.S.) has some fascinating points of interest, encompassing extensive photographic histories of Shanghai and including a jaw-dropping, room-sized model of every significant residential and commercial building in the city, built to scale. That alone is worth the price of admission. Here, you can get a graphic sense of one of the world's great cities and its envisioned future (http://en.expo2010.cn).
If ever the old Western expression "Make no small plans'' applied to a place, that place is Shanghai. It's a city that is living large.
The View from M on the Bund
SHANGHAI - It is an overcast day here, but bustling, as always. Flotillas of ocean-going ships and barges ply their way upriver, the hideous yet compelling Oriental Pearl transmission tower looms over the city on the ultra-modern Pudong side of the waterway and heavy earth-moving equipment rumbles along the Bund. on the Puxi side.
I am surveying China's largest city and financial capital from the 7th floor outdoor terrace at M on the Bund, one of Shanghai's most popular restaurants. Opened in January 1999 by Australian-born Michelle Garnout following her success in Hong Kong with M at the Fringe, this sophisticated eatery shows influences from Europe and North Africa. It also boasts some of Shanghai's best views, especially at night, when lights deck the riverfront in a necklace of neon.
The Bund - it's pronounced "bond'', the word is Hindi - is presently a construction site. The riverfront boulevard and companion pedestrian promenade will reopen next year in time for Shanghai Expo 2010, with most motorized traffic directed underground. This will make strolling about that much easier, which is good because walking around this dynamic downtown district is the best way to see it.
My most illuminating walkabout along and near the Bund was with Peter Hibbard, an expat Brit who draws on his academic background as an urban planner to lead tours of the Beaux Arts and Art Deco stone buildings that front a several-block-long stretch of the river. Hibbard bills himself as the Ginger Griffin - griffin being an old word for newcomer to Shanghai and ginger being the color of Hibbard's hair before it turned grey. I spent about three hours with the ultra-informed, chatty Hibbard, who lead me down back alleys and into courtyards, even into grand old mansions now converted into apartment buildings, the wash hanging from windows.
The best part of the tour was poking into the handful of buildings - old banks and offices, some now honeycombed with shops - that were built along the Bund between roughly 1900 and 1935. Once the home of mighty European, American and Japanese companies, they are mostly now inhabited by Chinese firms, including banks. Many have stunning decorative touches such as mosaics, murals, ornate front gates and gold trim. Hibbard (http://gingergriffin.com) knows so much, he sometimes corrects the historical plaques on the old buildings. And he knows so many locals, they barely bother to look up when he leads a tour through their private courtyards, greeting everyone in Chinese. His beautifully illustrated book "The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West'' is a definitive history in English of the Bund and its urban surrounds. The walk I took started at the historic Astor Hotel, passed the old Peace Hotel (nee the Cathay), which is currently being renovated and will open next year as a Fairmont, and ends near the 1921 office tower that houses M on the Bund.
M, for Michelle, is unlike so many restaurants with a view in that it has first-rate food (www.m-restaurantgroup.com), not just a view. My lunch there was Moroccan-tinged, consisting of toothsome spiced lamb in big puff pastries that came with a savory pumpkin soup. I also lunched on a fresh salad of sliced mango, green cilantro and shredded carrots. It isn't especially Chinese and it doesn't come cheap - M on the Bund is a destination restaurant for expats and the expense-account crowd - but the fare is delicious. Down one level is the Glamour Bar, the restaurant's cool, see and be seen nighttime watering hole.
Shanghai's heyday as a capital of cool was in the 1920s and '30s, when this huge port city was considered to be the epitome of sexy, dressy decadence and, well, glamour. As the city began to come out of its communist-induced stupor in the late 1980s and 1990s, it tried to regain its lost allure. Places like the Glamour Bar in Puxi (west side of the river) and the Shangri-la Hotel's design-driven Jade on 36 in Pudong (east side) have brought back some of the glitter, and China's economic surge has invested Shanghai with a newfound prosperity that continues to elude China's poverty-stricken interior. In short, the view from M on the Bund is magnificent, going a long way to resurrect the legend of Shanghai.
I am surveying China's largest city and financial capital from the 7th floor outdoor terrace at M on the Bund, one of Shanghai's most popular restaurants. Opened in January 1999 by Australian-born Michelle Garnout following her success in Hong Kong with M at the Fringe, this sophisticated eatery shows influences from Europe and North Africa. It also boasts some of Shanghai's best views, especially at night, when lights deck the riverfront in a necklace of neon.
The Bund - it's pronounced "bond'', the word is Hindi - is presently a construction site. The riverfront boulevard and companion pedestrian promenade will reopen next year in time for Shanghai Expo 2010, with most motorized traffic directed underground. This will make strolling about that much easier, which is good because walking around this dynamic downtown district is the best way to see it.
My most illuminating walkabout along and near the Bund was with Peter Hibbard, an expat Brit who draws on his academic background as an urban planner to lead tours of the Beaux Arts and Art Deco stone buildings that front a several-block-long stretch of the river. Hibbard bills himself as the Ginger Griffin - griffin being an old word for newcomer to Shanghai and ginger being the color of Hibbard's hair before it turned grey. I spent about three hours with the ultra-informed, chatty Hibbard, who lead me down back alleys and into courtyards, even into grand old mansions now converted into apartment buildings, the wash hanging from windows.
The best part of the tour was poking into the handful of buildings - old banks and offices, some now honeycombed with shops - that were built along the Bund between roughly 1900 and 1935. Once the home of mighty European, American and Japanese companies, they are mostly now inhabited by Chinese firms, including banks. Many have stunning decorative touches such as mosaics, murals, ornate front gates and gold trim. Hibbard (http://gingergriffin.com) knows so much, he sometimes corrects the historical plaques on the old buildings. And he knows so many locals, they barely bother to look up when he leads a tour through their private courtyards, greeting everyone in Chinese. His beautifully illustrated book "The Bund Shanghai: China Faces West'' is a definitive history in English of the Bund and its urban surrounds. The walk I took started at the historic Astor Hotel, passed the old Peace Hotel (nee the Cathay), which is currently being renovated and will open next year as a Fairmont, and ends near the 1921 office tower that houses M on the Bund.
M, for Michelle, is unlike so many restaurants with a view in that it has first-rate food (www.m-restaurantgroup.com), not just a view. My lunch there was Moroccan-tinged, consisting of toothsome spiced lamb in big puff pastries that came with a savory pumpkin soup. I also lunched on a fresh salad of sliced mango, green cilantro and shredded carrots. It isn't especially Chinese and it doesn't come cheap - M on the Bund is a destination restaurant for expats and the expense-account crowd - but the fare is delicious. Down one level is the Glamour Bar, the restaurant's cool, see and be seen nighttime watering hole.
Shanghai's heyday as a capital of cool was in the 1920s and '30s, when this huge port city was considered to be the epitome of sexy, dressy decadence and, well, glamour. As the city began to come out of its communist-induced stupor in the late 1980s and 1990s, it tried to regain its lost allure. Places like the Glamour Bar in Puxi (west side of the river) and the Shangri-la Hotel's design-driven Jade on 36 in Pudong (east side) have brought back some of the glitter, and China's economic surge has invested Shanghai with a newfound prosperity that continues to elude China's poverty-stricken interior. In short, the view from M on the Bund is magnificent, going a long way to resurrect the legend of Shanghai.
Making Mooncakes in Kowloon
HONG KONG - I have long known about mooncakes, the rich, round pastries made for the Mid-Autumn Festival in the Chinese lunar calendar, but I had never made them until I visited the kitchen at the Kowloon Shangri-la Hotel, and got some coaching from a hotel chef.
Like gumbo in the American South, cooks in Asia like to come up with variations on tradition and put their personal stamp on this popular creation. In the case of the Kowloon Shangri-la (http://www.shangri-la.com/), the hotel has taken mooncakes upmarket, adding black truffles to the recipe. The hotel is about more than mooncakes, gastronomically speaking, to be sure. The Kowloon property's traditional Cantonese restaurant, Shang Palace, snared two Michelin stars in the recent Hong Kong guide. Still, mooncakes are special treats.
I donned a hat and apron and washed up with antibacterial soap in a gleaming metal sink in the immaculate hotel kitchen, then walked over to a long metal counter to see how mooncakes are made. You take hand-rolled dough and add steamed, salty egg yolk, take a few shaved black truffles from a bowl and sprinkle-in white flour. Then you knead the truffles into the dough, working them in good, and shaping the doughy mass into a cylindrical shape, cutting them into pieces - in this case, 10 pieces. When the dough is throughly kneaded, you take one of the pieces you've just cut off and put it into a long wooden implement with a hole - a mold - at the end, which gives the mooncake its shape. With a sharp, hard rap on the metal counter, you dislodge the piece; if you've done it right, it's ready for the oven.
Many people - I am one of them - find mooncakes heavy and rich, but, hey, they're celebratory morsels; you don't eat them every day. Here is the recipe - courtesy of this 5-star Hong Kong hotel - should you want to make your own mooncakes at home. The Mid-Autumn Festival, by the way, runs this year until Oct. 3.
Ingredients: egg custard (380 grams); black truffle slice (8.4 gram); salty egg yolk, one piece, finely chopped; pastry puff dough, one large piece; egg wash (one egg).
Method:
1. Knead the egg custard until smooth, then add salty egg yolk and sliced black truffle. Divide the mixture into 10 small portions and set aside.
2. Knead the pastry puff dough until smooth and then divide it into 10 portions. Use the palm of the hand to press the dough to form a thin disc.
3. Place one portion of the custard mixture in the center of the pastry puff. Fold in the sides of the dough to completely enclose the filling and press the edges to seal.
4. Place the mooncake dough, seam side up in the mold, flatten the dough to conform to the shape of the mold.
5. Remove the mooncake dough from the mold, then brush with egg wash and bake the mooncake in the oven at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Stuffs 10 - er, makes - 10 mooncakes.
Like gumbo in the American South, cooks in Asia like to come up with variations on tradition and put their personal stamp on this popular creation. In the case of the Kowloon Shangri-la (http://www.shangri-la.com/), the hotel has taken mooncakes upmarket, adding black truffles to the recipe. The hotel is about more than mooncakes, gastronomically speaking, to be sure. The Kowloon property's traditional Cantonese restaurant, Shang Palace, snared two Michelin stars in the recent Hong Kong guide. Still, mooncakes are special treats.
I donned a hat and apron and washed up with antibacterial soap in a gleaming metal sink in the immaculate hotel kitchen, then walked over to a long metal counter to see how mooncakes are made. You take hand-rolled dough and add steamed, salty egg yolk, take a few shaved black truffles from a bowl and sprinkle-in white flour. Then you knead the truffles into the dough, working them in good, and shaping the doughy mass into a cylindrical shape, cutting them into pieces - in this case, 10 pieces. When the dough is throughly kneaded, you take one of the pieces you've just cut off and put it into a long wooden implement with a hole - a mold - at the end, which gives the mooncake its shape. With a sharp, hard rap on the metal counter, you dislodge the piece; if you've done it right, it's ready for the oven.
Many people - I am one of them - find mooncakes heavy and rich, but, hey, they're celebratory morsels; you don't eat them every day. Here is the recipe - courtesy of this 5-star Hong Kong hotel - should you want to make your own mooncakes at home. The Mid-Autumn Festival, by the way, runs this year until Oct. 3.
Ingredients: egg custard (380 grams); black truffle slice (8.4 gram); salty egg yolk, one piece, finely chopped; pastry puff dough, one large piece; egg wash (one egg).
Method:
1. Knead the egg custard until smooth, then add salty egg yolk and sliced black truffle. Divide the mixture into 10 small portions and set aside.
2. Knead the pastry puff dough until smooth and then divide it into 10 portions. Use the palm of the hand to press the dough to form a thin disc.
3. Place one portion of the custard mixture in the center of the pastry puff. Fold in the sides of the dough to completely enclose the filling and press the edges to seal.
4. Place the mooncake dough, seam side up in the mold, flatten the dough to conform to the shape of the mold.
5. Remove the mooncake dough from the mold, then brush with egg wash and bake the mooncake in the oven at 200 degrees Celcius for 15 minutes or until golden brown.
Stuffs 10 - er, makes - 10 mooncakes.
Saturday, September 19, 2009
Hong Kong: City on Fast-Forward
HONG KONG - Until this month, I hadn't been in Hong Kong in a year and a half - long enough for this dynamic Asian city to dream up half a dozen new travel attractions I didn't see or even know about before my recent visit.
Some changes are relatively small, such as a new Big Bus tour like you see in many cities - you get on and off at designated tourist sites. The Big Bus rolled out in Hong Kong last December.
Some big dreamers in this metropolis of 7 million have got their show on the road, too. The expansive Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center has just expanded again, for one.
Moreover, the 1881 Heritage shopping complex was opened just this past June at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, very close to the Star Ferry terminal. This nicely done reconstruction and reinvention of the former Marine Police Headquarters has the inevitable Shanghai Tang showcase clothing store, plus a range of high-end designer shops. This month, a 30-room boutque hotel called Hullett House is scheduled to open in this crowded corner of the metropolis.
Of course, Hong Kong being Hong Kong, that's just the half of it.
A newly landscaped piazza is scheduled to open late this year or early in 2010 near the enormous Giant Buddha statue and Po Lin monastery at Ngong Ping, accessed by what promises to be a spectacular cable car ride.
By late next year, the 118-story high International Commerce Center will top out on reclaimed harbor land. It will be the fourth-tallest building in the world, with an observation deck on the 100th floor for those 360-degree, panoramic views. Occupying floors 102 through 118 will be a 300-room Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
And if you're really looking ahead, Hong Kong has promised to build its fourth big terminal for cruise ships, this one on part of the land used for runways at Hong Kong's former airport at Kai Tak, on the Kowloon side. That project is set to be operational by 2013.
Verily, Hong Kong is a city on fast-forward. But it looks to the past for a bit of its future, opening this year a replica of Noah's Ark, on Wa Man Island. Yes, Noah is back, complete with a Noah's Hotel, with 19 hotel rooms and 24 hostel rooms for people who aren't taking any chances when global warming causes sea-levels to rise.
For more information about Hong Kong, go to the Hong Kong Tourism Board's Web site, http://www.discoverhongkong.com/.
Some changes are relatively small, such as a new Big Bus tour like you see in many cities - you get on and off at designated tourist sites. The Big Bus rolled out in Hong Kong last December.
Some big dreamers in this metropolis of 7 million have got their show on the road, too. The expansive Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Center has just expanded again, for one.
Moreover, the 1881 Heritage shopping complex was opened just this past June at the tip of the Kowloon peninsula, very close to the Star Ferry terminal. This nicely done reconstruction and reinvention of the former Marine Police Headquarters has the inevitable Shanghai Tang showcase clothing store, plus a range of high-end designer shops. This month, a 30-room boutque hotel called Hullett House is scheduled to open in this crowded corner of the metropolis.
Of course, Hong Kong being Hong Kong, that's just the half of it.
A newly landscaped piazza is scheduled to open late this year or early in 2010 near the enormous Giant Buddha statue and Po Lin monastery at Ngong Ping, accessed by what promises to be a spectacular cable car ride.
By late next year, the 118-story high International Commerce Center will top out on reclaimed harbor land. It will be the fourth-tallest building in the world, with an observation deck on the 100th floor for those 360-degree, panoramic views. Occupying floors 102 through 118 will be a 300-room Ritz-Carlton Hotel.
And if you're really looking ahead, Hong Kong has promised to build its fourth big terminal for cruise ships, this one on part of the land used for runways at Hong Kong's former airport at Kai Tak, on the Kowloon side. That project is set to be operational by 2013.
Verily, Hong Kong is a city on fast-forward. But it looks to the past for a bit of its future, opening this year a replica of Noah's Ark, on Wa Man Island. Yes, Noah is back, complete with a Noah's Hotel, with 19 hotel rooms and 24 hostel rooms for people who aren't taking any chances when global warming causes sea-levels to rise.
For more information about Hong Kong, go to the Hong Kong Tourism Board's Web site, http://www.discoverhongkong.com/.
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