Temple Street night market

Pictures are sporadic because I didn't feel comfortable snapping away in many of the shops (Got yelled at enough as is!).  Thought about using someone else's but you can google Temple Street market if you would like to see more.

            The other night I went to the Temple Street night market with Adriana, R, and N in search of school supplies and silliness.  The night was perhaps defined by desperate searches for bathrooms.  Perhaps these searches were brought on by overindulging in the newly found freedom to buy 1 dollar beers at 7/11 and drink them walking down the street, but who can say.  We get better and better at knowing where to find public toilets but I do need to find an app that shows them.   I once laughed at my mom for having such an app in New York City but I understand now.





On arrival in Kowloon R needed to go badly and we ducked into a hotel.  There was nothing but a desk with a man staring at us and an elevator so we instinctively dove into the elevator and found nothing but 2 locked bathrooms outside rooms.  We went down and asked nicely at the desk.  We were sent out and told to pee in an alley.  But going in an alley is different here than in the States because there are people living and working so close by on both sides, and even the alleys can be crowded.  So we decided some food wouldn’t be bad and went into a restaurant that had a “Quality Sanitation approved” toilet.

            We ate noodles and fried vegetarian dishes and watched in awe as women on tv folded sushi into perfect roses and other flowers.  I got into a rhythm with the chopsticks then fell out of it and shoveled food in any way possible.  Then we dived into the market.

At the start there were women selling some beautiful handcrafted goods.  There were tea sets in all colors and beautiful little boxes that we bought a variety of for our classrooms.  Adriana showed a great knack for bargaining, handing a calculator back and forth with the women and refusing to give ground.  She often walked on right away if not getting the price she wanted.  R and I showed a great knack for getting yelled at.  The first time was when we were trying to buy some silk boxer shorts (of course) and the man insisted we were both extra-large.  R is much smaller than me and while I’ve gained some weight I have never worn extra large, even at my absolute fattest.  I said I was medium and he screamed “Hong Kong sizes different, Chinese people skinny…here you big!”  Once I got home and tried them on I found out he was right, in China I am extra large!  Next time I was looking for shoes and had the two women in the store help me for 3 or 4 minutes.  None of them fit quite right so I said I would look around then maybe come back.  “Many try no buy!  Many many many try.  My time, too many try!”  She switched to Chinese and kept yelling as we walked away.

            There were a wide variety of dragon and tiger robes, of beautiful tapestries and statues of Buddhas, elephants, and so many more animals.  There were tables covered in jumbles of neon bracelets of all shapes and colors.  And fans, dishes, bowls, chinese checkerboards.

The market filled the middle of the street and on each side there were restaurants filled with living and dead seafood and little fold up tables.  Neon signs led into lines of ribbons and Chinese lanterns that formed a canopy over the street.  There were also more formal clothing stores interspersed with dark doors that opened into smoke filled room where solemn rows of men fed coins to lines of slots.  There were some prostitutes standing in front of dark buildings shouting at all the men but not as many as in Wan Chai.

            There were tables covered with thousands of tiny bright plastic figures on keychains.  Thousands of characters and animals we recognized and many more thousands we didn’t.  On closer inspection we realized that they were all little USB drives.

            R and I needed to go to the bathroom again.  We wandered some and asked some shopkeepers who sent us down to a busier street where some sort of chaos we couldn’t even begin to comprehend was happening.  We found out later it was the fortune telling area.  We saw a brighter, flashy casino and figured it would be a good bet for a quick toilet with relative anonymity.  We walked in and saw suits, flashy gold jewelry, velvet tables, spinning wheels, money sliding every which way.   As we walked in wearing grungy shorts and t-shirts we saw a man at the front with a headset on look us up and down.  He turned, muttered into the microphone, then glared at us again.  We walked towards the side of the room for cover and hopefully a bathroom and as we got up to the stairs onto the floor another security guard glared at us and shook his head no.  We darted back towards the entrance to see a restroom right by it, shrugged and went in.  It was delightful and everything was gold plated.  Then, heads hung low we went back into the madness of the street.

            The girls were buying some little odds and ends for school and we looked at little files and tins to hold papers and trinkets.  I still hadn’t seen my classroom so it was hard to know what I would need.  A round old British man somehow ended up in my face screaming about how great Hong Kong was ten years ago and how now it was too crowded to even sit while you ate in a restaurant.  Now the shoppers were mixing with drunks who staggered through the market.   We walked into more clothing shops.  There were places with thousands upon thousands of ties and belts, and many with cheap Hong Kong t-shirts, coffee mugs and keychains.  We found a store that sold little paper cutters that made beautiful designs.  There were symbols, animals and plants.  They would be great for kids to decorate papers with so we worked out a deal to buy a set of 40; 10 each.  Then our fingers were racing each other to snatch up the best ones.  I got an evergreen tree, a bunny, a flower, a dilphin and various others.

            We went into a small, dark shop that had bells in the window.  We needed them our class to ring to silence children.  This shop was filled with beautiful patterned shirts and bags, metal sculptures, candles and sweet incense.  We each rang several bells and waited for one that spoke to us, and experimented with trying to ring each one time only.  Its common in Montessori to challenge children to ring the bell once so they compete for care and precision rather than to make more noise.  It should be challenging but not impossible to do so.

The short woman behind the counter came and smiled and rang some of her favorites for us as I meditated on different tones.  The store had a different feel than any of the others.  It was quieter, and somehow a peaceful energy radiated that put me in a different place far from the hustle and bustle of the market outside.  She had goods from Nepal and I asked if she was Nepalese; she grinned and nodded.  She was a whole mountain range of beautiful tranquility bottled up and taken down to offer respite in the heart of the urban madness.  After trying a variety of bells we chose.  A lower tone spoke to me though Adriana got a higher pitched one.  We asked for receipts to get reimbursed by the school.  One shopkeeper earlier on had giggled when we asked for receipts for little trinkets and another had looked extremely annoyed and handed us blank ones to fill in ourselves.  The Nepalese woman filled the receipts out meticulously in the neatest, most beautiful letters.  It took her a few minutes but was a masterpiece.  She did everything with such a quiet, peaceful                                                                     dignity.  I didn’t want to leave her store.

            We went down a side street and aimed to turn around to go back up to the top of the market; we realized we had entered in the middle and missed half of it.  We got into a much shadier area and there was nothing but sex toys and pipes that seemed to be designed for meth.  Or maybe opium, I guess that is one of the things this place is famous for.  Many of the shoppers had vacant, dark eyes.  We got back into some arts and crafts and lines of pirated dvd salesmen, and more tech related goods.  A man showed me some magic tricks with a chain and a ring that fit onto it, but I couldn’t replicate them.  I looked down to see daggers and samurai swords mixed in among grinning heads and long metal and wood pipes.

  We were worn out so we began to angle back to the train.  We heard there was a bathroom at the station but you had to specifically request it.  We went to the information station and they said “go to control center.”  We went to the control center and found a small door around the back.  We opened it and there was a man sitting in a tiny closet looking surprised to see us.  “Toilet?”  He looked more confused.  We went out and tried the other side; the door was locked.  We then saw people at the microphone in front of control station.  They talked, then went to the locked door that clicked open for them.  We dashed in on their heels.  Sure enough there was a line of single stall unisex restrooms.  We relieved ourselves then got on the train and raced back to Hong Kong island.