Film: 春田花花同學會 (2006-McDull the Alumni)

A great Hong Kong comedy from 2006! Great light-hearted comedic acting that bring out the best in a collection of parodies of Hong Kong culture. A good choice of the cast and a nice extension of the Hong Kong animation McDull. I enjoyed the guy who did the “Point” scene or should I say “Tniop”. Reminds me of “turnip”. The first time I saw Sandra Ng 吳君如in Golden Chicken, I did not think very highly of her acting. In retrospect, it was probably because I found no meaning in the plot whatsoever and though her performance may have been great, the storyline subtracted from it.

All else aside, I have to admit there would not be much of a benefit from watching the movie relying on subtitles because they are pretty skewed from the real lines of the movie. And like most parodies, to get the full effect of the movie, you’d really have to understand the culture of Hong Kong to enjoy the movie.

 

Film: 七小福 (1988-Painted Faces)

Finally, saw a good movie that had a great sense of humor, well-developed plot, and moving performance delivered by a superb cast from 洪金寶 Sammo Hung to all the young actors in the film. I particularly admired that as the film follows the young students growing up in the Peking Opera School, documenting a time period of universal “growing up” passages, it was realistic and very humble, never overly patronizing or overdone. The topic of friendships, of adhering to one’s ideals and values, and never giving up a dream that 于占元 Master Yu had taught to his students is very real. The film touched on the topic of love and adoration that every teenager goes through but stopped short of idealizing it, making the story more realistic and enabling the audience to relate to those emotions.

This is the kind of Hong Kong film I would be proud of, versus some of the current pop culture films in standing like 72 Tenants of Prosperity.

Part 1 of 12 of the film

 

炸纸雞, 腐竹白菜汤 & 菜心 Dinner

One of our newest additions to our soup repertoire is the 腐竹白菜汤 which was suggested from newspapers that the PRC president’s, 胡錦濤 (Hu Jintao), chef regularly made to maintain the president’s good health. Well, 白菜 (bok choy) is always yummy to eat and versatile as with many foods in our ‘fridge. I do stir-fry and soups with it. There’s what we call “old fire” method of cooking soup, which is to simmer it on lower heat settings for many hours (anywhere between 2-5 hours). But anyways, this soup is made with 白菜,  腐竹 (dried bean curd sticks), red dates, and we added carrots to it for sweeter flavor and because we thought it belonged there. We tried this soup with 炸纸雞 (it’s chicken that is marinated and then drenched with boiling hot oil to make the skin “paper thin” and very crispy which is where its signature name is derived from) that we bought from Asia City restaurant (~$22.95). Chicken was a little overdone and small but otherwise, tasted great. Most of our dinners have an accompanying veggie dish; tonight it was 菜心 (choy sum). Topped it all off with a little XO Cognac (which, by the way is a little too bitter for me) as a drink.

And actually we had dessert first, which was our lovely traditional 生果 生日蛋糕 that we handmade ourselves.

炸纸雞, 腐竹白菜汤 & 菜心 dinner

腐竹白菜汤

炸纸雞

Dessert: 生日蛋糕

 

Asia City Restaurant Dim Sum 點心

Asia City Restaurant (Dim Sum/Chinese Restaurant) 2905 Washtenaw Ave. Ypsilanti, MI 48197  Tel: (734)829-0999

We had heard that the newest Asian cuisine restaurant in Ann Arbor boasts of a dim sum chef hailing from Hong Kong. Being Hong Kong-ese (but mostly because our taste buds were starved of some good honest Canto dim sum),  we had to go check it out – and it did not disappoint!

The dining room was clean and tidy, which is priority – but of course, it’s also what we expected being a newly built restaurant (from scratch actually too). The dim sum was served via carts, like how it is traditionally so for folks who want to get this full effect, this is a good place for that as well. First we ordered 焗叉燒包 (baked char siu pork buns) and 芋角 (deep fried taro dumplings). The 焗叉燒包 were a little dry but when we re-microwaved it at home, it actually tasted pretty good. What’s unique about these buns here is that I tasted a hint of coconut juice used. What I usually for as a key to good dim sum is trying out their 蒸叉燒包 (steamed char siu pork buns). The texture of the bun has to be light, fluffy, and not dry and crumbly, and the filling should be moist and the meat tender. Asia City’s 蒸叉燒包 is up there with this kind of quality. 鮮竹卷 was also especially good. Pricing wise for dim sum here, however, is a little bit expensive. Usually dim sum dishes are categorized into small, medium, large, specials, etc. but all of Asia City’s dim sum start as medium dishes at $2.99 each which can add up pretty easily. Still, I would say that in the Ann Arbor area, this is still definitely worth the price.

Finally we followed up the dim sum with 肉絲炒麵 (pan fried pork chow mein $10.95) which was delicious. It was loaded with chinese mushrooms and the noodles were pan fried rather than at some places where they deep fry the noodles.

Very nice dim sum and lunch place to eat out at. I would recommend.

from left: 焗叉燒包; 芋角

from left: 蒸叉燒包; 豉汁蒸鳳爪; 豉汁蒸排骨

from left: 豉汁蒸排骨; 蠔油鮮竹卷

Asia City restaurant dining

廣東 肉絲炒麵

 

Lantau Island – some memoirs

Waiting in the Rain

|In the rain, he awaits by the shore of a forgotten place. For the mail that won’t come. For the decrepit and dilapidated village that can only be home|

It was raining really hard when I took this photo on Lantau Island.  And this one dog just would not stay out of the rain.  I think he was having so much fun outside – I wish I could do the same. We ended up missing the last bus to Po Lin monastery, mostly because I really really had to go pee.. :/

Shopkeeper

I took this photo on the bus on our way back down to Tung Chung. This little shop/living shack offers the infamous “Mountain Water Tofu” which is the best tofu yet, supposedly very silky and pure because it is made with mountain water. You can see below those red painted words is a little miniature shrine for the gods of the ground – and probably the remains of innumerable incense. I wonder if they really still use water from the mountain but maybe so since this is on Lantau Island afterall. I really wonder if Lantau will soon be overrun with pollution and overpopulated like Kowloon and Hong Kong island is now. The middle tables are for Chinese chess I believe. On a sunny day, that is.

I really wonder what it is like to live like this and I wonder if I’ll ever have the chance to.