TEMPLE STREET NIGHT MARKET

 

 

 

One evening in Hong Kong we found our way to the night market stretching many blocks from Jordan Road to Kansu Street in a crowded area of Kowloon near the main arterial, Nathan Road. The transition from the glittering waterfront bejeweled with lights and high-end hotels and shops to what seemed a darker and more real corner of the city was startling. Instead of Gucci, Prada wares and the Peninsula Hotel, we entered the world of Wing Hing Hostel and the Dragoon Francais Tailor Co.

 

We had strolled through the laid-back (dare I even say genteel) market at Stanley with high-style clothing and even art, a seeming outpost of Colonial times, but now, the moment we entered the archway on Temple Street we were in real China.

 

The street was lined with stalls and their shouting proprietors desperate to sell their wares, all of which were repeated from one stand to another – CDs of Chinese opera or pirated pop from around the world, souvenir trinkets, sunglasses, smartphone cases and cheap tee-shirts decorated with Mao’s plump face or the “I Love Hong Kong” logo. Not must-have items for either of us but fun to look at the endless products of Chinese efforts to make a living.
 

 

Far more interesting was the dark sidewalk on the far side of the market and the bustling side streets crammed with outdoor restaurants. When we walked along the back side of the market, a more realistic picture of life for the poorer inhabitants emerged. The street is lined with old two- and three-story tenement buildings, all in various states of disrepair. Dingy stairwells lit by a single low-watt bulb cast shadows making me think of plots for a novel (A World of Suzie Wong knockoff?)

Scantily-dressed young women stood nearby waiting for customers.

In between the forbidding stair entrances we looked through the dusty windows of tiny shops on the ground level:  small altars and statues of Buddha, Chinese medicinal herbs, a barber shop, odds and ends of electrical supplies and ever more CDs. Closer to the main market stalls, vendors and their families sat around electric pots bubbling with meat and vegetable mixtures eating and listening to radios.

 

The streets leading toward Nathan Road in the other direction were alive with people, tourists and locals, all outside in the warm night for dinners or snacks. Busy outdoor restaurants offered ducks, chickens or other indeterminate flesh.

Other venues specialized in fresh seafood and wiggling fish kept alive by pumping water into plastic tubs. Customers sat at tables with bowls held to mouths, chop-sticks in motion.

 

 

Not a destination I would recommend for bargains but definitely a location to see what Hong Kong has to offer in the way of a very small look at China.

 

  

 

 

AN AUSPICIOUS DAY: A Shinto Wedding in Osaka

When I heard that it was an auspicious day for baptisms and weddings it seemed a good time to head for Osaka’s Sumiyoshi Taisha Shinto shrine despite the grey clouds and spring showers. The shrine, which contains a temple designated as one of Japan’s national treasures, is dedicated to various interesting and helpful deities, called kami, who ensure safe travel, good fortune in marriage, safe childbirth, business prosperity, family welfare, military valor and beauty. Because of its association with marriage and family it is an especially favored spot for traditional weddings. 

 

 

 

 

To enter the complex the visitor or worshipper passes by stone lanterns, through a tori gate marking the boundary between the everyday world and the infinite, and crosses the steep vermilion-painted Taiko-bashi bridge arching over a pond. The first stop is at the temizuya to wash hands and face for purification using a bamboo dipper for water collected in a basin supplied by a stone rabbit. Just outside the second tori gate ancient cypress trees are hung with shimenwa, ropes made of rice straw decorated with white paper streamers marking sacred areas.

 I strolled the gravel-paved grounds peering into various shrines; inspected the colorful sake barrels donated to the temple for ceremonial use; watched youngsters practicing  drumming for an upcoming festival;  looked for pebbles within a fenced area to see if I could found one marked with “five,” “big,” or “power” for personal charms (I didn’t); and made a quick prayer to the symbols of business fortune – a row of cats.

 

The ancient couple guarding them pantomimed the correct prayer posture: Proceed to the altar, stand straight; bow deeply twice; put palms together; clap hands twice; pray for my wish to come true; lower hands and bow once more. (No results yet I'm sorry to say).
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Finished praying and making my donation I continued to walk among the small orange and vermilion shrines until I came to a temple where a group of women were standing in front of the open entrance watching a wedding. Many of the onlookers wore kimonos and held traditional umbrellas to ward off the intermittent showers. I joined the group.

 

I could hear the sound of a drum and flutes playing what sounded to me mournful and tuneless music while two priestesses with headresses of pine and what looked like cranes moved in a slow ritual dance accompanied by  musicians in green robes. The white-robed, black-hatted priest intoned words of a marriage rite. The bride and groom had their backs to us of course but through an open side door I could see a few family members sitting on the benches on each side watching the formalities. 

 

After the union was solemnized in what seemed to be a stately and timeless ceremony the couple and their family moved to the courtyard for photos and congratulations. The beautiful bride was swathed in a white satin kimono with a hood while the groom wore a tuxedo. Two of the other men were elegant in formal samurai dress complete with fans. It was a picturesque combination of ancient and modern.

 

I joined with the well-wishers to hope that it was indeed an auspicious day for the couple as it had been when I, too, was married at a spring ceremony in another time and place.     

Photos by author with the exception of the tori gate which is from Wikipedia Commons 

 

 

 

 

 

 

YOU NEVER KNOW WHAT WILL HAPPEN

The Madonna del Bagno is a small church nestled inconspicuously near the main road to Deruta. It is famous for painted ceramic tiles affixed to the walls by worshippers in thanks to the Virgin for rescue from near death.

In the 17^th century, an itinerant merchant, one Cristoforo Merciaro, or Christopher the Peddler,  found a ceramic fragment on the ground. Fourteen years earlier, a Franciscan monk had placed the little piece, painted with a primitive image of the Madonna and Child, in an oak tree for safekeeping.

The story continues: The merchant returned the fragment to its place and prayed to the image to save his dying wife, whom he did not expect to see alive again. When he returned home from his travels he found her not just alive but “out of bed in perfect health, sweeping the floors.” This housekeeping miracle gave rise to the fragment’s veneration.

The church, built to commemorate the event, became a magnet for ceramic artisans from nearby Deruta, a center for majolica-decorated terracotta tableware and decorative items made there since the Middle Ages.

The local inhabitants expressed gratitude for their own personal miracles by making ceramic ex-votos thanking the Madonna for her aid in times of danger. The original image of Madonna and Child, painted on a broken cup, still survives as shown above. Its depiction of a small Madonna holding a large fat Child who in turn holds a globe is a delight to all mothers. The colors are simple blue and yellow on a white background, the predominant colors on traditional Deruta ceramics.

Glazed terra cotta plaques made by the local artisans eventually covered the small church’s walls. These tiles had a partial miracle of their own: about 200 were stolen in 1980, but about half were recovered to grace the walls again. There are now about 600 plaques covering every aspect of human misery averted by the Madonna’s grace. Although varying in shape they all have a disaster scene, the Madonna and Child, usually in a tree, and the initials P.G.R. sometimes written out as Per Grazia Ricevuta, for grace received.

 Folk art in style, they depict scenes of people being miraculously saved from falls off roofs, tobacco drying sheds or out of trees, attack by animals or bandits, floods, fire, lightning, earthquakes, plague, or the dangers of childbirth.

 

While most plaques are from the 17^th and 18th century, reflecting the rigors of life in those times, survival from more contemporaneous disasters are also memorialized, especially auto accidents. Grateful familis have even commissioned tiles with scenes from World War II as well as the miseries of Bosnia-Herzegovina.

 All the tiles are colorful and hopeful, but also a reminder that whatever can go wrong will go wrong. I thought about ordering up one to celebrate my escape from death when I fell in the Rome subway or our avoidance of jail after the crash with the Carabinieri.

Photo Credits: top photos of church from Creative Commons; photo of Madonna & Child by Judith Works; photos of tiles courtesy of Lars Bjorkman

This story originally appeared in Coins in the Fountain, a memoir of living in Italy
                                                                                                     

 

 

HAITI BEFORE THE EARTHQUAKE

 

Not too long before the terrible earthquake that struck Haiti I had occasion to visit on behalf of the United Nations. Now when I look back I see that Port-au-Prince was paradise compared with current conditions with the lack of housing, education and jobs, and the presence of cholera increasing the suffering resulting from their tragic history.

* * *

The airport in Port-au-Prince was a madhouse. Suitcases tied with string, plastic bags and cloth-wrapped bundles circled the conveyor belt. Aid workers, dressed in jeans and safari shirts; preachers, nuns and priests in their conservative garb; returning members of the Haitian diaspora greeting their family members, all competed to claim their baggage and get out of the crowded arrival hall. French and Creole music blaring from boom boxes added to the din.

On the way to Pétionville, a suburb south of the main city where my hotel was located, I peered out the windows of the air-conditioned SUV. Before me was a scene of burned out cars, mangy dogs, pigs, goats and people rooting in piles of rotting garbage, crumbling or half-built concrete buildings with tin roofs housing tiny indigenous protestant churches or small stores and repair shops. A few schoolgirls in uniform passed groups of men in tattered clothing idling alongside the road. Women with baskets or bowls on their heads walked along.

The city appeared to be one huge African slum dotted with a few exceptions like the white Presidential Palace and the main cathedral. “Where does anyone with money live?” I asked. My escort pointed to steep hills overlooking the city where the lighter skinned resided in gated estates near their exclusive shops for French pastries, food, wine and clothes, unthinkable luxuries for their blacker brethren in this country where,he said, skin color is closely observed.

It was pleasant sitting on the beautiful terrace of the Hotel Montana high above Port-au-Prince awaiting a ride to the office. That is, until I looked at the city spread out below in all its misery. Dust from the unpaved roads hovered in the air mingling with smoke from burning garbage rising in plumes in the hot air, an earthly vision of Dante’s Inferno and its circles of hell. The hotel was half-way up one of the hills neatly placed between the verdant heaven of the few rich and the crumbling hell of the vast numbers of poor. Favored by the few tourists on group tours and many aid workers, it had spectacular grounds with purple and orange bougainvillea, enormous hardwood trees, ponds filled with fish and tropical plants, a swimming pool, bar and dining room on the terrace serving Creole food. Open air public rooms were filled with Haitian paintings depicting idyllic scenes in magical realism style: well-fed people, forested hillsides and tropical scenes, fantasies all. Large flower arrangements with bird of paradise, anthurium and helicona graced the tables. African-looking Haitian sculptures stood in corners. Sofas and lounge chairs made of dark tropical hardwoods in Art Deco style invited guests to rest in while awaiting their rides.

The road to the office from the hotel led along steep, narrow, winding, unpaved pot-holed roads. Women were selling a few fruits and vegetables spread on the ground and urchins tried to polish shoes or sell packets of tissue or gum. Occasionally, a man had a display of tin sculptures for sale. Pickups made into mini-buses hurried by loaded with people. The colorful vehicles were painted with slogans and designs. One had “Full Life, Full Love, Full Beat, Full Compa” along with “Bomba” and “Gay.” Rounding out the decorative scheme was a painted Israeli flag, various Chinese characters, stars, flowers and waves. The colors seemed a demonstration of defiance against the drab sea of crushing poverty.

The blue UN flag was flying at their offices. I had been asked to review some organization issues and to assess a personnel problem. The organizational issues were routine but the personnel problem was unique. Without going into details I’ll say that it involved a culture clash and threats of a voodoo spell – not the typical personnel problem.

It was time to leave on the next leg of the trip. The itinerary was to travel first to Santo Domingo, the capital of the Dominican Republic, on the other half of the island of Hispaniola and then on to Nicaragua via Miami for the final stop. Even though we had less than 200 miles to drive, it was a long day’s journey. A two-car convey showed up at the hotel at sunrise. The vehicles were equipped with several radios and sported impressive antennae waving in front of the windshields. Their presence suggested danger. 

But it was peaceful as we passed hamlets with people squatting outside their huts cooking food over charcoal, the only fuel readily available and the reason for the denuded and flood-prone hillsides where the charcoal makers cut down the trees that others had planted in an effort at reforestation. Cemeteries with half-built mausoleums of tile, drug lord compounds and tiny stores with “Articles Divers” painted above the grilled doorway lined the roadway. Barefoot women with baskets on their heads leading laden horses and mules walked on unpaved side roads.     

When we arrived at Lake Azuei on the border crossing at Jimani, a long line of trucks and pickups waited. A boy in a red, yellow and blue boat poled along the lake bringing sacks of charcoal to market. A rickety table and two chairs sat in the dust in front of a blue and white painted mailbox near the custom house. The iron-grilled gate marking the border was closed for inexplicable reasons, a frequent occurrence, and reflective of the Dominicans profound dislike and distrust of Haitians. Almost all food in Haiti is imported and these waiting trucks with their frustrated drivers were trying to get across the border to pick up produce. Brightening the chaotic scene, the vehicles sported the same colorful paint jobs as in Port-au-Prince. A dust covered truck behind us in the lineup said “Immaculee” over the cab and “Exode 14” and “Generation de L’An 2002” on the sides.

Nothing was moving. My driver went to the border post to try to get my laisser passer (UN passport) stamped for exit. No dice. After 45 minutes of no action, he drove around the lineup. Seeing the blue “UN” painted on the white SUV, the Dominican authorities opened the gate and stamped my passport even without the required Haitian exit stamp. Our escort turned back.

* * *

The earthquake caused the collapse of the Hotel Montana, entombing the staff and over two hundred guests, many of whom were aid workers.

* * *

I treasure three photos given to me by a doctor. The first is a beautiful mother and child (shown at the top of the post), second is of three delightful children, happy in spite of poverty.

The third, two boys dressed in rags sitting on a pile of rocks in front of hovels with corrugated tin roofs shaded by palm trees. They are pretending to play guitars, each made of a board, two pegs and two strings. Whatever music was made, they represent an indomitable will to survive in that often sad place. I pray that they are still alive.  

 

 

THE GAMBIA

 

The mellow sound of a marimba and harp-like kora welcomed us to Banjul, the capital of The Gambia. It was a Friday in this heavily Moslem country. Prayers were finishing at mosques, which despite being in abundance, were insufficient in size so that even gas stations were used for worshippers. Later, streets and walkways were filled with men walking home with rolled up prayer mats under their arms while holding on to their little boys’ hands.

Women wore long dresses often in blue or mauve but even men were brilliant in their canary yellow, magenta, saffron, teal and lime green tunics, contrasting colored pants and pointed backless slippers. The passing scene was typically African with goats, broken pavements, tiny shops, a colorful central market, ambulatory traders and oh so many children, although instead of the red dirt and palm trees found farther south, Sahara sands dusted the scene and greenery was in short supply. 

The tiny country lining the lower reaches of the river Gambia is the smallest in Africa and is  surrounded by French-speaking Senegal. It is an English-speaking remnant of British colonialism, soon apparent when we drove by the dilapidated-looking and now misnamed Queen Victoria Teaching Hospital. Always intrigued by colorful signage in Africa, the first one to catch my attention was on the hospital; it proclaimed that “Allah is the Greatest.” The next sign, along the wall next to the hospital, brought viewers back down to reality. It said, “avoid urinating here.” The admonition was followed by a man dressed in a blue jacket and white pants sitting at a treadle sewing machine making a woman’s yellow dress.

 

A barbershop sign recommended the “All Nature Barbing Saloon. Always Nice.”

 

 

A small boy dressed in orange and yellow leaned against a green door decorated with an ambiguous painting of a hand, eye and foot. Was it a doctor's ad or a fortune teller's message?

By the museum, full of interesting tribal artifacts and costumes, and instruments from the country’s rich musical heritage, we were greeted with “Welcome to the Beautiful City of Banjul.” Boosterism knows no bounds. Although advertised in Europe as a tourist destination for beaches and bird-watching (“The Smiling Coast of Africa” is their motto), our welcome seemed dubious as several groups of scowling men gestured menacingly and, disconcertingly, boys pounded on girls to grab candy that some tourists attempted to share.

Colorful as the signs and many of the people are, on the whole the scene was discouraging with resigned families sitting idle in garbage-strewn yards while plastic bags flew in the desert breeze like kites. Literacy is low (under 20% for girls); AIDS is a plague; poverty is endemic. Illegal sand mining has severely eroded the coastline while workers on Chinese fishing boats unload tons of tuna for shipment home, the wealth of Africa moving to new colonialists. After all the  intensity of day at dusk we watched small fishing boats in the estuary marking their presence solely by the faint lights of charcoal cooking fires. Even that idyllic African scene marked a very tough life. It’s hard to imagine what the populace of such a tiny strip of land could do to pull the country out of poverty. I have visited many poor countries but in Banjul, at least, The Gambia seemed to be the most unlikely to escape third-world status.

And yet ...back home we wandered into a festival put on by the local Gambian association. A famous kora musician and his band were in town for an AIDS benefit. We ran into people who knew some of our friends and received a warm welcome by everyone. We sat to listen to the music and to watch as women and girls in bright sequined gowns and headdresses glitter and sparkle as they danced across the stage while opening their evening bags to extract what seemed like thousands of dollars into a tub. Perhaps the Gambian diaspora will manage to make enough of a difference and Gambia will have a "Better Life" after all.  

 

 

 

 

BE READY FOR GOOD FORTUNE

A Guest Post by fellow traveler, Janette Turner:

One summer I traveled to Italy with my husband’s business school and set out on a side trip to Venice. My companion was another wife amusing herself while her spouse was in class. As I sat in the back seat of a student's rental car next to Barb, she revealed why all the other wives had gone off without us.
 

“Slow down!" said Barb every few minutes, even though the young driver was motoring in the right lane, letting cars pass. Soon there were so many admonishments and complaints from Barb that I realized I was reflexively cringing whenever she opened her mouth. She seemed to have the same displeased opinion about everything, including the short ride on the train and the choppy water against the sides of the Vaporetto that finally arrived. Most of all, she complained about her husband. “Martin flirts with the coeds and doesn’t seem to notice me.”

I nodded in sympathy while leading us down the alley to our budget hotel. Opening the door to our room, I was shocked to see a chandelier and gilding on the bathroom fixtures. The floor at my feet was a mosaic of marble. “This room is divine.”

Barb looked around. “It’s dirty,” she said and continued her list of marital complaints. At one point she abandoned the subject to discuss dinner. “I don’t care where we eat as long as it’s cheap.”

As we wandered an alley, I read menus posted under strings of white lights outside restaurants. Over pasta and tap water, Barb continued her husband’s crimes against their marriage, from forgetting her 50th birthday to drinking too much vodka. She waved away the waiter’s platter of desserts and, still talking about Martin, marched us back to our gilded room.

The next day was a repeat of the first. Barb recounted every one of Martin’s crimes and I listened, but this time we were walking along waterways, up and over the Bridge of Sighs and past shops selling gold jewelry, Carnival masks and glass works. Every once in a while I would point out something to Barb, just to get her eyes off the dusty ground in front of her.

I finally got a break from her chatter in a glass shop. I admired the craftsmanship that went into the goblets, but my budget was tiny. My husband and I could barely afford his schooling and the trip, so I turned my attention to the “seconds” table when I heard something surprising.

“I love this,” said Barb, holding a glass pen in her hand.

I turned it over for the price tag. “It’s just ten dollars, so buy it.” I knew from listening to Barb that she had amassed a fortune for herself and her husband, although he did not appreciate her penny-pinching talent.

Barb held the clear instrument to the light off the canal. “I’ve always wanted something special to write a book with.”

While she mulled, I bought a handful of bracelets with the fewest number of deformed beads. When we left the shop I asked Barb about the pen that she surely must have bought.

“I didn’t buy it,” she said, resuming her pace and recounting of her husband’s crimes.

At dinner that night I finally broke over a glass of wine. “Just divorce him.”

She startled as if coming awake. "Divorce him?” She looked at her plate of ravioli. “Well, I guess I could. I probably should. Yes, I will divorce him.” She raised her water glass and we toasted her decision. “I’ll finally be happy. He can date coeds and we can split the property.” She took off, detailing her future divorce. Every plan she made was a thousand times happier than the misery she had sown earlier.

The next morning I awoke early and saw her eating a candy bar on her bed. “People came by all night long to buy candy out of the machine below us. It kept me awake.”

“I have to get something,” I said, quickly changing into a skirt and sleeveless blouse. Out on the street, I walked past the candy machine for the nearest glass store. This shop was in the hotel district, so the prices were triple those we had seen a day earlier. But this was a special purchase. Back in our room, I handed over the narrow package. “I had to get this for you.”

Barb undid the green ribbon. “Thank you,” she said, picking apart tissue paper to find the glass pen inside.

I opened my arms for the hug I expected. “May you write and create the life you want after your divorce.”

She put the lid back on the box, re-tied the ribbon and walked over to her luggage. “I’m not getting divorced.”

I watched her pack the pen away, knowing there would be no book written with that instrument. It would be forever locked away in its little coffin tied with green ribbon, a frozen symbol of her life, stuck and waiting for something. Something that might never happen.

 

Janette Turner is a writer, reporter, and memoir coach. You can read more of her work at www.JanetteTurner.com.