Traditional Chinese Medicine and Fortune-telling.

March 30: Dim sum brunch in nearby mall with most of Joyce’s family (Joyce, second-brother, mother, father). Excellent food and plenty of tea (jasmine 香 片 and tie guan yin 鐵 觀 音). Joyce checks the selections from a paper form. I can’t read Chinese, but her choices are excellent. I especially enjoy the shrimp steamed in wheat flour (Ha Gau or 蝦 餃), the hometown pancake (which hometown? Not certain), and the deep-fried chicken soft bones (gai yun gwat or 雞 軟 骨). Of many others, the chicken/phoenix feet/claws stand out (gai guet or 鳳 爪) - they taste good, but the waterlogged skin texture was not my favorite.

Joyce, her mother and I head to the local Traditional Chinese Medicine practitioner. Joyce places her hand on a cushion and he feels her pulse. She switches hands. They talk about skin. Her body is too warm and needs to cool. He prescribes a concoction to be brewed. It includes herbs, strange plants and beetle shells.




Next is my turn. I had dislocated my shoulder a year before while snowboarding and popped it back in myself. A few weeks prior to Hong Kong, and I slipped on ice while playing with my dog (very stupid) and popped the shoulder out and in once more.

Joyce explained the predicament. The doctor told me to sit. I place my right hand on the cushion. He feels my pulse with gentle fingertips and kind eyes. I switch hands. He asks Joyce if I had popped it back in myself. She says yes. He says I am healthy, but he could prescribe something for the pain or to speed recovery.

He returns to the shelves of glass jars. My concoction includes a tree bark that contains nutrients essential to ligament recovery.




We leave for a local wet market. Joyce’s mother buys fresh fruit. We walk home through the mall where we ate dim sum. We pass electronics stores full of the latest wide-screen televisions and miniature washing machines. We pass toy stores, candy stores, and more stores.

In the evening, Joyce and I join friends at Xi Yan 囍 宴, a speakeasy (si fong choi or 私 房 菜) in Kowloon. Unlike the U.S. prohibition-era establishments, Hong Kong speakeasies are nontraditional restaurants in a chef’s home or rented space, and they are typically unlicensed to avoid the high cost of operation.



The twelve-course meal is excellent and typical presentation for Chinese fine dining in Hong Kong/China. However, Xi Yan offered not the typical Chinese fare with a fusion of Shanghainese, Sichuanese, Thai, Japanese cuisine (Joyce thinks a bit of Cantonese was mixed in, too). Depending on the ranking, Xi Yan is the 2nd or 3rd best speakeasy in Hong Kong.




After dinner, stuffed, on our way to the fortune tellers, we wander the Temple Street night market and pass rows of inexpensive items: clothes (baby kimonos), toys (imitation Legos), adult paraphernalia (swirling, flashing dildos), communist memorabilia (Mao Zedong’s litte red book and imitation posters), watches, jewelry, faux antiques and more.



An elderly fortune teller catches Joyce’s eye. He waves a feathered fan. Past more kitsch salesmen and beckoning fortune tellers (hand, face and tarot card readers advertising fortunes in Cantonese, Mandarin and/or English), we walk around the block and return to the wizened man (the eldest present). His whiskers hang from above his lips and trail long from his chin. Joyce negotiates a price for two ($165 HK down from $300 HK). I go first and sit on a small plastic stool. The man’s crumpled eyes look into my own. He traces lines on my left hand with a blue ballpoint pen. I will have good fortune between the age of 28 and 78 with a peak at 33. I should live a long life and be careful next year, he says. Joyce translates as her tape recorder roles.



When it’s her turn, Joyce learns her years of fortune will last from 28 to 73. She questions the man. Her fortune sounds almost identical to my own, and she wants an explanation. It’s probably because we were born in the same year, he says, and she translates after we leave the stand.

We leave happy with our good fortune.