Saturday, November 22, 2008

Bits and pieces

The picture of the cigarette warning posted earlier didn't do it justice so I blew it up a bit so you can see this odd piece of Japanese civic advice.
The can below is my new favorite drink. Originally a Japanese invention its sold all over Asia. Despite the name it tastes great. In fact it was because of the name that i gave it a try.
Elevators in HK tell you about a superstition amongst the Chinese. Let's see who amongst you is observant enough to come up with the answer: Write a comment and let me know. I live in an area of Hong Kong called Mid Levels and more specifically SOHO which means "South of Hollywood road"
"South" is actually uphill which for some reason feels counter intuitive to me.
Its an area that became developed after the advent of the escalator which runs up the steep gradient from Central to Mid Levels. More about the area here and here.It's the longest outdoor escalator in the world and runs "down" before 10 am and "up" afterwards. The area is predominantly expats and overseas Chinese, but there's a fair amount of people and places predating gentrification. There are curio shops, restaurants, bars and a mixture of expensive apartment buildings and local Chinese life.Interesting choice of name huh?That's it for today.
T

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Please tell me that actual drink itself isn't blue!

So are you going to tell us the significance of missing number 4's or is that an extra test for a gold star?

Terry said...

The drink isn't blue.

Terry said...

The numbers 4, 14 and 24 are associated with death for Cantonese-speaking Chinese people, as the words for these numbers sound like the words for “death”, “must die” and “easy to die”,
Most buildings don't have a 4th or 14th floor. Kind of like the 13th floor in Canada or the US.

Kjell Tjensvoll said...

For similar reasons Chinese loves the number 8. The word for 8 is pronounced similar to the word for prosperity. This is why the Olympics opened 8th of august 2008 at 8:08. This is also why you can actually find hotels in China where all the room numbers have the number 8 in them ... :-)

Anonymous said...

Hey Terry, My guess was also that numbers ending in "4" were taboo, but the lateness of my post (and the presence of answers) doesn't make me look like such a genius anymore, does it? I'll let you be the judge.