The Lunar New Year banquet is one of the most important feasts of the year. Families gather to dine on auspicious-sounding foods, including hair moss, or “fat choi,” a play on the Chinese phrase “get rich,” and sun-dried oysters, “hou si,” phonetically identical to “good market.” Here’s where to start your new year with a bang.
Start the Year of the Ox in the luckiest way possible: with a Lunar New Year banquet.
As the ongoing global financial meltdown can attest to, no one—not even bankers—can tell us what the future holds. Then again, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared. Celebrity fortune-teller Mak Ling-ling gives us a heads-up on what to look out for in 2009.
A fortune-teller waxes astrological to Winnie Chau on what the Year of the Ox holds.
HK: What do you consider the main differences between Tchaikovsky’s “Swan Lake” and “Black Swan?”
The Hong Kong Arts Festival’s upcoming theater production “Black Swan” lends a contemporary twist to Tchaikovsky‘s “Swan Lake,” where instead of the original score, the play is set to songs from the local music industry. Winnie Chau talks to the show’s creators, playwright Yat Yau, director Victor Pang and Frederic Mao.
Splash Out
If money is no object this holiday season, splash out at Aqua, which is putting on a $10,000 seven-course menu paired with exclusive wines and vintage champagnes. Head chefs Eugenio Riva and Tatsuya Iwahashi have created a series of opulent dishes using gourmet ingredients flown in from around the globe. The super-swanky deal includes full limousine service, private dining room and an exclusive gift.
Aqua, 29-30/F, 1 Peking Rd., Tsim Sha Tsui, 3427-2288
Can't be bothered to cook? Eat out this Christmas instead.
It may seem too early to think about Christmas, but it’s hard not to get in the mood when fluorescent Santas are everywhere. If you have bad childhood memories of dried-out turkey or just suffer an aversion to the traditional trappings of the big Christmas meal, fret not, as there are plenty of alternatives out there for you culinary Scrooges.
Lynn Fung on decidedly different yuletide meals.
In May last year, local film distributors refused to take up the first picture by a Hong Kong director ever to win an Oscar. Ruby Yang’s “The Blood of Yinzhou District” had just won the Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject, yet nobody seemed interested. While some attributed this to the film’s bold subject—AIDS-afflicted orphans in central China—the director herself put it down largely to the film’s brevity.
The InDPanda Short Film Festival proves that short films are more than just YouTube videos.
Ahhh, Father’s Day. A festival of hastily purchased ties, golf accessories and novelty socks. Why not show pop that you really care by treating him to a meal designed just for dads?
Father's Day is on Sunday, June 15. What better time to take the pater familias out for a well-deserved treat?
Zongzi, or zong for short, are glutinous rice dumplings wrapped in bamboo or reed leaves and eaten to celebrate Tuen Ng, or Dragon Boat Festival. According to legend, poet-patriot Qu Yuan from the Warring States period was accused of being a traitor (some academics speculate that he was the king’s lover) and jumped into the Miluo river to prove his innocence.
It’s Dragon Boat Festival time, which means spring showers, stormy seas and those sticky zong dumplings. Sniff out the best in town.
Contemporary Northern Italian
Di Vino offers bite-sized degustare as well as full-sized mains and desserts to complement their menu of more than 40 quality wines. Their spring and summer Italo-tapas include grilled tuna with arugula, olives and tomato confit, and homemade chicken and duck liver pâté. Their seasonal mains include penne with gorgonzola and black truffle sauce and a risotto with saffron and goose salami.
73 Wyndham St., Central, 2522-1002
Le French May c’est passé. With Italian National Day on June 2, Lynn Fung and Johannes Pong celebrate la dolce vita instead.
IDAHO, that’s International Day Against Homophobia, and it’s every May 17. This year, the fourth IDAHO experience in Hong Kong is split into two separate events—on two separate days—a march and public forum in Kowloon on the 17th, and a rally in Causeway Bay planned by a number of organizations on the 18th.
