Bird Men of Hong Kong

Hong Kong was my first opportunity to be a Tour Escort. This is a rather cool job, in which a ship employee accompanies the passengers on a particular tour. (also called an “excursion”). The name of this excursion was “A Day in the Life of Hong Kong”.

The bus took off at 9:15AM with 36 ship guests, and a few minutes later pulled into a huge parking lot. This was the parking lot for the Taoist temple, and I was stunned at the amount of other tour buses. I counted over FORTY tour buses in this parking lot.

A few minutes later we were in the middle of a mob scene on the temple grounds. The actual Taoist worshippers were quite few in number, maybe 20 or 30 or so that I saw, inside and outside the temple. Our tour group was on a strict schedule, so we were herded like cattle into the temple, with cameras clicking away, filing past a certain worship area, where people were on their knees, shaking little sticks in a tin can, asking advice from the gods.

Yes - multigods, like in Greece and Rome. The tour guide said each god was a former living person who somehow distinguished themselves during life, something like a saint in Catholicism, but much more elevated. Made me wonder how good a life I would lead if there was a chance of becoming a god later on. That could really motivate me.

Anyway, the tour got more pleasant after we got away from the awful visit to the temple. After a peaceful ½ hour visit to a historic old park, we moved on to the third and most interesting stop….

…The Bird Garden and Market. The tour guide, a lifelong Hong Kong resident, said that space is very limited in the apartments, 350 sq feet being typical, and so it’s inconvenient to own cats, and especially dogs. So birds are the most common pet.

In the afternoon, men leave their apartments, carrying bird in cage, and “take the bird for a walk”, as the tour guide put it. They gather up in this little park area with other bird owners, hang the birdcage on long racks provided for that purpose. Then they stand around and chat, usually about birds I guess. Take that back. I don’t know what the hell they talk about.


Adjacent to this little park is a series of stores, a little mall of sorts, selling birds, cages, and bird food. The tour guests got a kick out of all this, snapping photos of these guys with their birds. The question was asked, “Why is it only men? Where are the wives?” Tour guide’s answer -- “they’re all home playing mah jongg”. So this birdwalking routine is a way for husbands and wives to get a break from each other. All of the men looked middle-aged, but I forgot to ask why.

The last stop on this 4-hour tour was Hong Kong History museum. There was only an hour to check it out, and I got antsy after 15 minutes looking at more pottery from the Ding Dong dynasty. The gift shop in the lobby seemed more interesting. So cultured I am.

I was particularly interested in postcards depicting the mesmerizing nighttime skyline of Hong Kong. It’s kinda famous, and it ought to be. From right to left it stretches longer than the Manhattan skyline. The buildings are newer, and you get the feeling it was all built together as part of a unified look. Everything is from 20 to 50 stories high. The whole thing is framed by the crest of the mountains behind it, no building taller than that crest.

At 8:00PM the buildings put on a light show, with each building participating with its own flashing colored pattern, also green laser beams coming from some buildings, swinging around in arcs like krieg lights. Gorgeous in a hi-tech way, if you happen to like neon. The left side of the ship faced this skyline two nights in a row, in fact from the piano I had an all-evening window view, a really nice way to remember Hong Kong.