Citibank's "Seafood Ads" in Hong Kong's Sai Kung Town

Similar to tram advertisements in Hong Kong, at Hong Kong's Sai Kung Town I saw several examples of ads displayed in a manner not commonly experienced elsewhere in the world. Two of the ad displays were for Citibank, a large international bank whose promotions can be found in a variety of places in Hong Kong.

The Citibank presence at one of Sai Kung's many waterfront seafood restaurants was hard to miss:

The sign on the left advertised a discount promotion at the restaurant if you use a Hong Kong Citibank card. Promotions by Citibank and other banks are not uncommon in Hong Kong at places such as restaurants or movie theaters. But this restaurant took the extra step with its Citibank awning and Citibank seat covers. If I were meeting a friend there I might just tell them to find me at the Citibank restaurant.

The other example I saw in Sai Kung Town was also seafood-related:

This was one of several boats along the waterfront selling fresh seafood to customers. Despite its Citibank umbrella, the boat did not appear to accept Citibank cards. However, it did have some impressively large crabs.

These two seafood-themed examples present a variety of issues worth pondering -- for example, the potential benefits for Citibank and the restaurant or the seafood seller. I also wonder whether Citibank specifically planned for one of its umbrellas to end up on a seafood boat or it was the result of an opportunistic act.

Finally, regardless of whether you are interested in considering seafood-related advertising issues, I can recommend considering something else in Sai Kung, eating a variety of delicious seafood dishes:

Don't worry, my friend and I were still awaiting a fish dish.

Inspiration on Tracks: More Tram Ads in Hong Kong

Almost exactly one year ago, I shared photos of advertisements on Hong Kong's double-decker trams. The unique canvas trams offer, their stop-and-go nature, and the wide range of activities engaged in by potential viewers can all be factors relevant to the design of effective tram ads. For me, contemplating the design of ads for less-than-common environments and how such ads are experienced by viewers can inspire new ideas for how ads could be effective in environments created by online services or software applications. The tram ads also interest me because I am curious to see which companies are making marketing efforts in Hong Kong and how ad designers are approaching Hong Kong's unique conditions and mix of cultures.

Sometimes, the consideration given to an tram ad's location is readily apparent:

Personally, the slogan "Unlike this tram the news never stops" makes me want to groan. But whether the ad influences its intended target audience as desired is a more important issue. Regardless, it is notable how the creators of the BBC Newsday ad took advantage of the ad's environment.

Another tram ad proved notable in another way, not so much for its design but its intended message:

A campaign encouraging citizens to vote in government elections may not seem significant until one considers the unlikeliness of a similar ad appearing in mainland China. Elections where there are genuine choices to be made by citizens is one of the ways in which Hong Kong is a "special" place in China.

In the spirit of updating my earlier post, I will share a new set of tram photos. They were taken in mid-August of this year in Hong Kong's Eastern District. Even if one has no interest in advertising strategies, the photos can be appreciated for the striking visual contrast the trams provide in a variety of Hong Kong Island city scenes.

Making Faces at Hong Kong's Victoria Peak

I feel safe saying that it is rare for people to unintentionally walk from the lowest levels on Hong Kong Island to its highest point at Victoria Peak. Well, my friend and I managed to achieve such a feat. After a sea-level dim sum brunch and Hong-Kong-style milk teas, we headed out for a walk without any particular destination in mind. We slowly made our way to higher levels and eventually passed over the tram tracks which connect Hong Kong's Mid-Levels with Victoria Peak. I interpreted a nearby split in the tracks to mean we were close to the top (which could not be seen from our vantage point), so we decided we might as well walk the rest of the way. However, the split was actually at the halfway point for the tram -- not a small difference. After walking uphill for a curious amount of time I realized my mistake, but now that we had a goal in mind we were determined to reach it.

Although we had both been to the top before, it was our first time to go up completely by foot. I thought it would be a grand idea to walk down the other side, but my friend was already rather content with our accidental achievement. At least the tram provided an entertaining return.

Above is an unremarkable photo of the remarkable view from Victoria Peak. What else sticks out in my memory of our time at the top is meeting a young Hong Kong family. Just before taking a photograph of them to remember the moment I exclaimed, "Make a face!". They were fully prepared for such a request and obliged without any hesitation:

Ah... family.

Just another small wonderful moment that confirms the joys of semi-random walks -- no matter the altitude.

Huang Xing Statue at a Pedestrian Street in Changsha

Earlier, I asked if anyone could identify a city in China based on a nighttime view of its most popular pedestrian street. Here is a daytime view:

Unlike previous attempts involving Shanghai/Munich and Huizhou, we have a winner. Congrats to Eric Beckers in Zoetermeer, Netherlands, for being the first to correctly identify the city as Changsha -- the capital of Hunan province.

There was less success in answering the bonus question -- the identity of the statue seen in the center of the photo. Of course, the statue would be rather difficult to identify solely through looking at it in the photo I provided. I assumed prior knowledge about Changsha or some research would be required to figure it out. Guesses included Mao Zedong, Lei Feng, Sun Yat-sen, Deng Xiaoping, and "an ancient sage". The first two were the most common. I suspect some people were misled by the existence of a Lei Feng memorial & statue elsewhere in Changsha and some peculiar inaccuracies in English online about the above statue's identity (such as a Flickr photo identifying it as "one of the famous Chinese philosophers from the early 1900's").

For more help, here is a closer view of the statue:

If that is not enough (and it was not enough for at least one Chinese college student who was standing in front of the statue), a plaque in Chinese at the bottom of the pedestal makes it clear. Unfortunately, most of the plaque is currently covered by shrubs:

Huang Xing (黄兴):

(born Oct. 25, 1874, Changsha, Hunan province, China—died Oct. 31, 1916, Shanghai), [was a] revolutionary who helped organize the Chinese uprising of 1911 that overthrew the Qing dynasty and ended 2,000 years of imperial rule in China.

Huang's story is rather compelling. A condensed and easy to read version of it can be found at Encyclopædia Britannica here.

It may now come as no surprise that the statue is found at the north end of Changsha's South Huang Xing Road Commercial Pedestrian Street (黄兴南路步行商业街). Sometimes it all fits together.

That was fun, and I appreciate all of the responses. I will do this again at an opportune moment. As I mentioned before, several upcoming posts will be inspired by my time in Zhuhai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou. As you may suspect, Changsha will be thrown into the mix as well. I also plan to return to some technology & UX related themes.

Squid Ink Hot Dogs for Breakfast in Hong Kong

In an earlier post, I pondered McDonald's serving hot dogs as a breakfast item in China. Recently at some eateries in Hong Kong which served a variety of foods, including Hong Kong's "traditional" Canto-Western fusion cuisine, I noticed that hot dogs were available for breakfast. This was also true at at least two different Macanese-style restaurants, which served hot dogs in a bun specifically as a breakfast item. Perhaps Hong Kong & Macau provided inspiration to McDonald's that a hot dog breakfast might be appealing to people elsewhere in China.

However, that does not mean there is not more room for hot dog inspiration at McDonald's. For example, one of the Macanese restaurants in Hong Kong served breakfast hot dogs with a bit of a twist:

(fyi -- 30 Hong Kong Dollars is about US $3.85)

There was another item on the menu my heart was set on ordering, so I decided to give the squid ink hot dog a pass. Next time, maybe. I have tried squid ink bread before, and it is common at least one Taiwanese bakery chain. I remember I enjoyed it, although I cannot recall the taste.

Anyways, maybe squid ink hot dogs will soon be available in McDonald's all across China. Could they be a hit? I don't know. But I feel safer guessing that McDonald's will not be serving them for breakfast anytime soon in the U.S.

A Pedestrian Street Somewhere in China

I still have posts about Zhuhai, Hong Kong, and Guangzhou planned, but here is one end of a popular pedestrian street in the city where I am now:

I blacked-out sections of signs displaying the city's name.

Can you identify the city? It is not obscure. I would expect that most Chinese would at least be familiar with its name.

Bonus points if you can identify the statue.


Update: Answers here.

Delicious Cantonese Food in Guangzhou

Earlier I wrote "I now find myself in a place I had no plans to visit. But at least it is a place with good food". So that readers cannot claim I wrote empty words, I will share just a few of the wonderful dishes I opportunistically enjoyed during my recent and brief stay in Guangzhou.

A restaurant I earlier mentioned for their "Chinese-style donuts" is also deservedly well known for their congee and rice noodle rolls. Here is just one of the items I enjoyed, a shrimp rice noodle roll in a tasty sauce:

I had to splurge for this item since it is their most expensive roll at about US $1.60 (10 yuan).

I also enjoyed several dishes at another well-known restaurant, Nanxin (南信). Here is something you do not often (ever?) see in the U.S. -- brisket with radishes in a fish broth noodle soup:

I would not have thought of putting beef in a fish soup, but I can only praise the results.

After noticing it while taking a walk, I tried another restaurant for the first time. The cold green beans in a fermented bean sauce were refreshing:

Yet what impressed me most was their spicy seafood curry:

It might have been my favorite Cantonese curry ever.

Continuing the curry theme, before heading to the Guangzhou South Rail Station today I gave this seafood curry fried rice a try:

The crab roe was a great touch.

At yet another favorite restaurant, I already knew what I wanted to order before I walked in the door. Although it had been more than half a year since I had last been there, the staff not only remembered me but my favorite dish as well:

The fish is filleted and mixed with assorted vegetables, wood ear mushrooms, and sweetened cashews in a light sauce. The head, tail and remaining fish bones (which still include some meat) are deep fried. When I shared the photo with an American friend he commented, "I like how they made the fish look just like a plate." Yes, it is amazing what they can do in Guangzhou.

I could go on but I will leave it at this. I do not want to bore the people who do not care about food photos, and I do not want to overly torture those who might care about them a bit too much.

A Dog in Guangzhou

In case you are waiting for a new post, you need not feel like you are the only one waiting for something:

A dog in Guangzhou

Tomorrow I will head to where I had planned to go before my enlightening experience at the Shenzhen North Train Station. More soon about my impromptu destination and several other topics.

Mooncakes and Freedom

Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival, otherwise known as the Mooncake Festival. So I reveled in the holiday spirit the best way I could:

A variety of mooncakes for sale at a shop on Longjin East Road in Guangzhou

I have heard foreigners compare mooncakes to the sometimes dreaded fruitcake that can be passed from person to person. For example, some companies in China will give vouchers for boxes of mooncakes to their employees or business partners, and depending on your position or connections it is possible to end up with multiple vouchers. Although I enjoy mooncakes, I typically have little need for several boxes of them. Often I give most vouchers I receive to friends or coworkers who are happy to receive them. Do they want to eat more mooncakes? No. Instead, they typically use the voucher (or the mooncakes) as a present to give someone else...

The holiday also has a matchmaking tradition in some parts of China. That reminds me of a conversation I had today with this young woman:

She works in international trade in Zhongshan, a city between Guangzhou and Zhuhai. However, she was spending the National Day holiday period (coincidentally overlapping with the Mid-Autumn Festival this year) working at her sister's clothing store in Guangzhou so her sister could be free to visit her hometown. I was checking out the store due to a side project I have been working on (some of which I hope to later share here), and she took the opportunity to try to sell me a shirt. They were all for females, though, so she said it could be a gift for my wife or daughter. After telling her I was not married and had no kids, I feigned feeling suddenly depressed and jokingly said "I am so sad."

She quickly and enthusiastically replied, "Don't be! You are free!"

So although there was no matchmaking for me today, at least her comment helps me appreciate my continued "freedom".

And by the way, I truly enjoyed the mooncake I chose at the shop in the first photo.

I also enjoyed that I did not walk away with an entire box.

Happy Mooncake Day!

A Ghost Town and Shocking Experiences at the Shenzhen North Train Station

It has been quite a day, so a lighter post...

Today began pleasantly enough around 6am with a jog along the water at Hong Kong's Quarry Bay Park. Ah, if only I had kept running. But I had plans to take a trip to another city and running would not have been a practical way to get there. So today I partook in long subway rides in three different cities and threw in a high speed rail trip and a double-decker bus ride for extra spice. You might be thinking that means I must have been determined to reach my destination. Well, it turns out things did not go as planned, and I now find myself in a place I had no plans to visit. But at least it is a place with good food.

Instead of explaining why I spent more time on subways today than I ever intended, I will share one "special" part of today. I had the luck to spend a couple unplanned hours at the Shenzhen North Train Station:



The above photo was taken from the non-busy end of the station. Most (all?) of today's trains were unfortunately (for me) full, but the station appears to have the capacity to serve many more passengers. It was clear more trains (or more train cars) would have be useful today for the many travelers getting an early start to China's National Day "Golden Week" holiday.

The second level of the station particularly caught my eye. According to an article on The Nanfang, there used to be many more restaurants at the station. Although Kung Fu and KFC looked to be in fine working order, McDonald's, Yoshinora, Ajisen Ramen, and some others did not appear to be operating anymore. So I pondered the meaning behind this fast-food ghost town. At least it was bathed in natural light.

The most entertaining part of the station for me, though, was the security. As usual, I saw security using handheld metal-detecting wands. And as is not unusual for what I have seen at train stations in China, even when the wands beeped a warning, people were allowed to pass through without being checked further. (secret: After becoming suspicious, I once asked security at a hotel in Shanghai if their wand was functional. They admitted it wasn't.)

So to liven things up a bit, when a young woman checked me with the wand I pretended to receive an electric shock. I did not expect my admittedly unoriginal act to be at all convincing, but her unexpected scream suggested otherwise. Fortunately, she was more concerned about composing herself and continuing her conversation with her coworkers than exacting any retribution for my nonsense.

The best part of security involved the man operating one of the x-ray scanners. Impressively, he was actually viewing the screen. But I was not excited to see him eying one of my bags (full of harmless electronic goodies) rather suspiciously, and I was quite sure he wanted to search it. But then he saw me and asked if it was my bag. After I said "Yes", a smile spread across his face. He said since it was mine there was no need for him to check it. Then he chuckled a bit. I wondered if he had appreciated my earlier act. Or maybe it was something else. There seems to be much to ponder here.

Anyways, I did manage to catch a train out of the station, even if my choice of destination was improvised. Now I look forward to a good night's sleep. I am not exactly sure what I will be doing this weekend, but I think I will take a break from extensive subway riding.

Managed Protests, Restricted Speech, Counting Silently, Japanese Records, and Self-Medicating

I have read a number of pieces regarding the Diaoyu/Senkaku islands dispute and the related anti-Japan protests in China. I do not plan to comment on all of them, but I would like to recommend a few (in addition to those I mentioned before) simply because I think they add intriguing details or perspectives worth considering.

1. One of the often-discussed issues surrounding the recent anti-Japan demonstrations is the degree to which they were supported or organized by the Chinese government. In her piece on NPR "China Ratchets Up The Rhetoric In Island Spat With Japan", Louisa Lim touches on this topic and shares an intriguing discussion she had at a protest last week:

Almost all the demonstrators say they came out spontaneously to protest. But an onlooker who gave his name as Mr. Luo lets slip that he'd like to march, but today isn't his day to do so.

"I haven't been organized to demonstrate," the man says. "I'm having the day off. The government controls and organizes the demonstrations. You can't just go if you like. At the very least, there's organization among the universities. There are half a million college students in Beijing. If they all came here at once, it'd be unimaginable."

I would not argue with that last statement. See (and hear) more of what Lim found here.

2. William Farris, a lawyer for an Internet company in Beijing, in a blogpost "What Protesters Could and Could Not Say During Demonstrations In Front of Japanese Embassy" shared an excerpt from Caixin Online which provides a bit of evidence supporting the idea that the protests were examples not of free speech, but of government-permitted speech. He also shared photos of a number of strongly-worded signs that were permitted at a protest in Beijing. He provides English translations for the signs so more people can understand their messages. See and ponder the signs here.

3. Previously, a reader commented:

As a Chinese, I'm sad to see all the violence that's been going on, even in a modern city like Shanghai. I know that most Chinese don't agree with this, but 60+ years of anti-Japan brainwashing propaganda is hard to simply ignore.

The topic of brainwashing also appeared in Qi Ge's article "China's Brainwashed Youth" on Foreign Policy:

Ever since the 1970s, I have known that the Chinese people are the freest and most democratic people in the world. Each year at my elementary school in Shanghai, the teachers mentioned this fact repeatedly in ethics and politics classes. Our textbooks, feigning innocence, asked us if freedom and democracy in capitalist countries could really be what they proclaimed it to be. Then there would be all kinds of strange logic and unsourced examples, but because I always counted silently to myself in those classes instead of paying attention, the government's project was basically wasted on me. By secondary school and college, my mind was unusually hard to brainwash.

Even so, during my college years, I still hated Japan.

See what else this Chinese writer in Shanghai had to say here.

4. Regardless of any protests, many are focused on applying research to better determine who has a stronger claim to the disputed islands. Nicholas Kristof in his blog on The New York Times shared an article by Han-Yi Shaw, a scholar from Taiwan. In "The Inconvenient Truth Behind the Diaoyu/Senkaku Islands" Shaw shares some "new" evidence:

My research of over 40 official Meiji period documents unearthed from the Japanese National Archives, Diplomatic Records Office, and National Institute for Defense Studies Library clearly demonstrates that the Meiji government acknowledged Chinese ownership of the islands back in 1885.

See Shaw's review of the evidence here.

5. In his post "Seriously Hooked on Nationalism" Jeremiah Jenne shared his theory for why the island dispute has recently received so much attention in China:

Yes, I know thar’s oil and gas under them thar rocks, but the real concern is that the current storm of violent knucklehead patriotism no longer has anything to do with national interests and has become all about national pride and transition politics.

China’s leadership swap is in a few weeks and it’s fair to say that things have not gone according to plan. A little bumptious distraction like, say, everybody hating on Japan for a week or two might seem like the perfect remedy.

But basically it’s just the Party self-medicating.

See Jenne's argument for his claim here.

That is all for now. I am not sure how much more I will focus on this topic, but other topics are definitely on the way.

A Day "Without Fuss or Tears" for a Boy in India

Although it is set in India, Andrew Hinton's excellent documentary "Amar (all great achievements require time)" captures some themes I plan to soon revisit in regards to China. An article on The Telegraph (the one published in Kolkata) described the short film:

In 9 minutes 45 seconds, the film captures 24 hours of Amar’s life, where he is awake and on the go for 20 hours. The sequences show how he gets up at 4am, delivers newspapers, goes to an electrical shop to work, reaches school in the afternoon, and then again goes to the shop and works till night, after which he grabs a quick bite at home and starts his homework, for he has his reputation as class topper to live up to.

Hinton said he wanted to show the difference between the haves and have-nots.

“My nephew Javia is of Amar’s age, but he has such a privileged life. I wanted to show Javia that there are people like Amar who make their way in the world even in such adverse situations without fuss or tears. People have seen it across the globe and understood that they are blessed to have the privileges they take for granted,” added Hinton.

To this I must add... Based on the people I met during my two months in India several years ago, I would not be surprised if Amar himself feels blessed in certain ways.

A land of incredible diversity, here is a day in one of India's 1.2 billion lives:

Amar (all great achievements require time) from Pilgrim Films.