The Way We Dance (movie review)

Give The Way We Dance a chance!

The Way We Dance
- Adam Wong, director
- Starring Cherry Ngan, Babyjon Choi, Lokman Yeung, Choi Hon Yik, Tommy "Guns" Ly, Paul Wong, etc.

Give Them a Chance.  That was the message behind as well as title of a 2003 Hong Kong movie about hip hop dancers that, in all honesty, I didn't give a chance to -- i.e., didn't view -- because, in all honesty, I didn't appreciate hip hop dancing at the time.

In recent years though, thanks to having watched some b boys and other hip hop dancers performing live on stage in Hong Kong (including as part of the Tang Shu Wing Theatre Studio's incredible physical comedy production, Detention), I've become a fan of this type of performing art.  So when another Hong Kong movie about hip hop dancers appeared on the scene this year, I was more inclined to give it a chance and check it out.

Post having viewed The Way We Dance, here's stating that I am so very glad I did so -- because that which had its world premiere at the Hong Kong International Film Festival, was the opening film of the HKIFF's Cine Fan programme and is due to get a general commercial release in Hong Kong this August may well be my favorite Hong Kong movie of 2013!  

Funnily enough, The Way We Dance also may get my vote as one of the most unlikely Hong Kong movie I've seen in 2013, or even the past few years.  For in addition to being a rare Hong Kong film about hip hop dancers, it also has a cast of hardly big names (whose names, bar for rocker Paul Wong's, are more novel -- Babyjon?  Lokman?? -- than familiar) and a director, in Adam Wong, whose last film before this (Magic Boy) was released five years ago -- and was as low key as this latest one is exuberant.

If truth be told, this drama's story -- involving love triangles and dance rivalries -- can seem pretty generic.  But the dancing on display is impressive, the music helps gets one in a great mood, and quite a few members of the cast (particularly Cherry Ngan and the amusingly monikered Babyjon Choi) are very likeable.  

What really makes The Way We Dance a winning effort for me though is the creativity that's on display.  Among other things, it's not just the very idea of combining tai chi with hip hop in a single movie but the way this is done in this film.  Then there are the surprise elements in a couple of the dance scenes in the latter part of the movie -- which, in one instance, can cause one to gasp out loud and, in the other, should get viewers smiling at how very inspired and cool it is. :)

My rating for this film: 9

Critter spottings galore on a spring day Hong Kong Island hike! :)

Today, I had my first sighting this year of a butterfly

known as the Lemon Emigrant :)

I also spotted this long-tailed skink on the hike

 Another interesting creature out on today

was this cool stick insect :)

Early on in today's hike that took me up Mount Parker Road and then down from Quarry Gap (aka Tai Fung Au) to the Tai Tam Reservoirs, I stopped to visit the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department's Woodside Biodiversity Education Centre which opened in June 2012.  In there, I saw a live green snake along with photos of many critters that I've seen over the course of hiking in Hong Kong.

Shortly after resuming my hike, I spotted one of many interesting creatures that looked to have decided that it is already spring; this despite being today's weather still being cooler (i.e., in the high teens and low 20s on the Celsius scale) than what I've come to expect of April in the Big Lychee.  

Some of these critters were too small for me to clearly photograph -- this particularly applied to the tiny spiders that wove beautiful webs that were made even prettier due to their being rain and dew drops on them this afternoon.  Others moved too quickly -- including at least one small wizard that I spotted scurrying about in a rocky area on the edge of Mount Parker.  Then there were those frogs whose loud croaks could be heard but which simply weren't visible to me.

Fortunately, some other critters were better photographic subjects -- with my hitting pay dirt in this regard when going along a quiet section of forest track that I had never previously been on, and which nobody else appeared to be on when I was on it this afternoon.  First, one butterfly fluttered by, then another, and yet still others -- including a female Lemon Emigrant that I got pretty excited to have spotted for the first time ever. 

At one point, three butterflies looked to be fighting to rest on one single small flower, only for the Lemon Emigrant to somehow get sole landing rights for it!  And as if that weren't enough excitement for one afternoon, a few meters further along the forest track, what should I spot but a long-tailed skink hanging out by itself on the side of the path!!

After I got to a part of the trail that was part of the Hong Kong Trail and consequently trekked on by a number of people, the critter spottings tailed (no pun intended!) off.  But near the end of my hike, I spotted a stick insect hanging from a gray railing!  Funnily enough, no one else seemed to have noticed it.  So I had it all to myself to photograph -- something that, I have to admit, made me uncommonly gleeful!! :b

Wither and In a park (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

As regular visitors to this blog know, I regularly spend my Sundays in a park -- more precisely, one of Hong Kong's many country parks.  And as they (including regular participants of Sandi's and Gattina's Photo Hunts) know, I frequently take a number of photos when out hiking in Hong Kong on those days.

But because Hong Kong is a pretty rainy (and also humid) place, one is more likely to be surrounded by greenery that really is green rather than brown, dry and, you know, withered, when out in a park!  So Sandi's part of this week's Photo Hunt most definitely presented more of a challenge than Gattina's!!

After some hunting, I finally came up with the three photos in this entry that features withered leaves or tree branches (but all have quite a bit more color than just the browns one tends to associate with 'wither').  And yes, they definitely all were taken in a park -- and for the record, here's stating once again how much I love that my life in "Asia's World City" regularly includes time out in nature spots as well as super urban surroundings! :)

Anyone for... baby mice wine?!

Believe your eyes!

This has been one exhausting week.  So much so that, among other things, I went to bed four hours usual on this past Wednesday night -- and still felt brain dead by the end of the work week earlier today.

Thanks to a lovely evening of classical music courtesy of the Hong Kong Sinfonietta and guest soloist, French harpist Xavier de Maistre though, I'm feeling considerably reinvigorated a few hours on.  Still, on the way home, I stopped by my favorite herbal tea shop and drank a bowl of five flower tea to further relieve my fatigue.

Years of living in Hong Kong has turned me on to the curative powers of five flower tea and, also, 24 herbs tea.  I also enjoy drinking chrysanthemum tea and sugar cane juice on occasion -- and find them to be, at the very least, thirst quenching.

But I don't think the day will ever come when I'll agree to drink what I saw for sale at a village store while out hiking in the New Territories last Sunday: not just bee wine (complete with bees as well as bits of honeycomb in it) but also baby mice wine!  Incredibly, the mice wine is considered by some as a traditional health tonic. Even more incredibly, the bottles we saw for sale were selling for HK$250 each and, if the date on the bottle is to be believed, is of 2006 vintage.  

So... if you drank that, you'd have paid HK$250 for the privilege of drinking 7 year old wine that had lots of baby mice fermenting in it for 7 years!!! (And yes, compared to that, the bee wine does seem pretty tame....) :O

From the Sir Edward Youde Pavilion down to Luk Keng (Photo-essay)

A couple of years before I moved to Hong Kong, I viewed a Hong Kong movie directed by Derek Yee entitled 2 Young about two young lovers (played by Jaycee Chan and Fiona Sit) who run away from their families and try to make their own home in various places, including an abandoned village in the countryside. 

At the time, I couldn't believe that there were abandoned villages in Hong Kong.  Heck, I even found it hard to imagine that there were villages -- as opposed to concrete jungles -- in "Asia's World City"!  Some years and many Hong Kong hikes later, I know better.

And yes, this is a prelude to confirming that the hiking route that a friend and I went on from near Bride's Pool to Luk Keng did pass by and through a number of villages, abandoned and still inhabited! (Also, if anyone knows which abandoned village features in 2 Young, do please let me know!!) ;b     

The Sir Edward Youde Pavilion is a nice place

to rest a bit before continuing the hike

It was hazier than ideal that afternoon but one still 

could see across to Shenzhen from this part of Hong Kong

The area between Nam Chung and Luk Keng has 

a number of old fish ponds that are still operational

My hiking buddy and I went along a trail we hoped 

would be a short cut down to Luk Keng from the pavilion, 

only to find that it led to another large grave! 

 So we ended up backtracking a bit and taking

this more obvious trail down instead

I find it interesting how many villages in Hong Kong

entirely consist of a single row of houses like this one

In Hong Kong, a 1962 building is old!

 

Luk Keng looks like an idyllic locale, doesn't it?

So Lo Pun - largely ruined but still not entirely uninhabited!

At first glance, the Northeastern New Territories village 

of So Lo Pun looks completely ruined

And indeed, many of its buildings are not much

more than mere shells now

But at least one building looks to still be inhabited -- 

and we met three residents of the village this afternoon

(at least one of whose English was pretty good)! :)

 

Earlier today, my hiking friend and I paid a visit to a Northeastern New Territories village whose origins date back to the 9th century according to its Wikipedia entry.  Mind you, the same Wikipedia entry also states that "Today, the village is now derelict and is uninhabited." But among the things we discovered over the course of this afternoon's excursion was this village is not completely abandoned -- or, at the very least, has been recently re-settled by at least three people.

 

Definitely inhabited and prosperous in 1898, the year that the British leased the New Territories for 99 years from China, this village whose geography may be ideal according to fung shui principles  -- what with it being nestled in a valley but also with access to the sea -- was then known as So Nou Pun, with "pun" referring to its location in a wide valley (or basin -- which is what means in Cantonese).  However, no doubt because its location is less than ideal in terms of it being far away from any roadways, never mind any main roads, the village went into decline in the 1960s, and only a handful of residents remained by the 1980s.

Somewhere down the line, this remote settlement got to have a reputation as a "ghost village" where compasses would malfunction when in the vicinity.  Stories about the village renamed as So Lo Pun -- which translates from Cantonese to mean "the compass is locked" -- include a man having died of a heart attack after seeing ghosts there.  And a local hiker who joined our party midway through our excursion did appear much happier to be visiting the area with other people rather than on his own (even while having been happy to hike by himself on other parts of the trail!).

 

While it's true enough that So Lo Pun's buildings generally look to be in worse condition than the nearby abandoned village of Yung Shue Au and sparsely inhabited Kuk Po on the other side of the ridge, I didn't find the admittedly quiet settlement to be all that creepy.  Indeed, I found myself wishing that we could have spent more time there than we could spare, given its distance from our hike starting and end point of Luk Keng (reachable by green mini bus 56K from the Fanling MTR station).

 

Hopefully, I'll pay So Lo Pun another visit one of these days.  And if there are no signs of life in the village, only then will I be inclined to pay attention to all those urban legends about it being a haunted part of Hong Kong... ;b

Scrumptious and Where do you sit while watching TV? (This week's Photo Hunt themes)

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While going through my photo archive in search of images that fit Sandi's and Gattina's choices of themes for this week's Photo Hunt, I got to realizing how many scrumptious meals I've had in Hong Kong (never mind other parts of the world) over the past few years -- and also remembering how certain multi-course or -dish meals can be quite uneven, with some distinct 'lows' but also some pretty amazing 'highs' on the scrumptious scale!  

Somewhat coincidentally, the two food photos in today's blog entry were taken over the course of those kinds of meals. More specifically, the top-most picture is of a portion of absolutely delicious Iberico ham that had been aged for 36 months, accompanied on the plate by a refreshing spoonful of a concoction that included fish roe along with vegetarian ingredients, that was part of a sadly ultimately disappointing dinner at the (in)famous Bo Innovation; with the other food shot being of an incredibly scrumptious crab roe-(chicken) egg custard dish at an otherwise unmemorable meal at a Japanese crab restaurant in Causeway Bay.

Just last Sunday, I had another scrumptious meal that, in retrospect, I really should have taken a photo of -- not least because it marked the first time in decades that I had had gammon steak, a dish that I only ever had previously been served in England.  Instead, I fixated on the fact that the place where I had my post-hike dinner had a television -- so could take a photo that would work for Gattina's "Where do you sit while watching TV?" query (because, if truth be told, I hardly ever watch TV -- especially in my apartment!  Indeed, the last time I did so there, it was for the Opening Ceremony of the 2008 Beijing Olympics!)! :D