My wonderful city is ready for Christmas. From the Flower market to the finest malls, there is Christmas magic in the air. Here are my photos for you. Enjoy!
{at the Flower market}
{IFC mall}
{in Prince’s Building Heather&March shop window display}
{Tiffany & Co. window}
{Christmas carols at the Festival Walk mall in Kowloon Tong}
{Festival Walk mall always has the tallest Christmas tree}
My absolute favorite holiday display however, is in the Landmark shopping mall in Central – a Christmas village in the snow covered mountains with a mechanical train riding through it. It is the work of American interior designer Preston Bailey.
Here is what he’s said about it: “For the last few years, I’ve been designing a holiday installation of my own for The Landmark, an impressive business and shopping complex in Hong Kong. I think this year’s designs turned out pretty well. I wanted them to be festive and fun for shoppers, and I think we accomplished that.” You can read more about Preston Bailey’s work on his blog.
No, it is not about eating it for the first time. After ten years in Hong Kong there has been plenty of different kinds of Moon cakes eaten, fancy and traditional but they all came from a shop. This time it is different … I’ve learned how to MAKE my own.
Thank you to Candy, a Chinese lady from my morning dancing class, for offering us a cooking lesson on making Moon cakes. Six of us spent a few hours making total of one hundred cakes, joking that we could open a Moon cake factory. We had so much fun!
{ready to go into the oven}
They came out beautiful and oh, so tasty!
{ready for tea time}
To learn more about the Moon cakes go here.
The Mid-Autumn Festival falls on September 13th this year and it is one of the four most important Chinese festivals.
It’s been 10 years and one month today since my family and I moved from Florida in the US to Hong Kong.
So, here are some of my photos, older and newer, from the city I live in and love.
Enjoy!
{this is one of my first photos of HK. I took it from Victoria Peak in 2001 a few days after our arrival in HK}
{“небоскребы, небоскребы, а я маленький такой”}
{lovely #1}
{lovely #2}
{D&G boutique’s window last Christmas}
{this used to be our apartment view for five years}
{Canton Road always has nice flower arrangements along the street}
For the last few days we not only had the best people in the world visiting Hong Kong but also staying with us. I cannot even tell you how much fun we had!!
Since it was their first time visiting Hong Kong, my husband and I took Corey and Yann to the places that are a must see.
But to see some of the ‘must places’ there is an important condition – clear skies which is in this time of year far from guaranteed. So, when the weather forecast predicted fog for the whole time they were staying in HK, it was a bit of a disappointment because you want to show your city at its best.
Probably our wishing for good weather reached the God’s ears. He just could not refuse us and the next morning we woke up to the perfectly blue sky.
Up in the cable car going to visit the Big Buddha.
There are two choices of cable cars, one is a regular car with windows all around, the other one is the “crystal cabin” which also has a glass floor. Of course we did the crystal one.
The point of our destination – the Big bronze Buddha greeting us from the mountain of Lantau Island.
There are more than 200 steps to walk up to say Hi to Buddha.
“The Buddha statue sits on a lotus throne on top of a three-platform altar. It is surrounded by six smaller bronze statues known as “The Offering of the Six Devas” and are posed offering flowers, incense, lamp, ointment, fruit, and music to the Buddha. These offerings symbolize charity, morality, patience, zeal, meditation, and wisdom, all of which are necessary to enter into nirvana.” – Wikipedia.
More info here.
“The Offering of the Devas”:
The perfect morning to visit the Big Buddha was followed by a wonderful alfresco sea food lunch in Mui Wo, a fishing village. This is one of the ‘must’ if you ever decide to visit Hong Kong.
Young happy people from different parts of the world. They came to Hong Kong to study, some exchange, some are full time students at the University of Hong Kong and the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. It is still a school break for University students here until the end of the Chinese New Year holiday. So last Sunday they went hiking in the most beautiful part of Hong Kong – Sai Kung.
Among them my son – Illya (Илья). He’s 20 and a senior in the School of Business and Management at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology and will be graduating this May.
Whatever their lives are going to be I know for sure this is a happy time they will remember often. It is a beautiful life – enjoy it to the full.
PS. This coming summer is going to be 25 years since I graduated from college.
