Day Seven: Sunday, July 27, 2014

Sunday, July 27^th (Ping Che)

Written by Miho Fujii

 

7:45am: Wake up. Some of us got up earlier than others, as usual. Kelli wanted to sleep in a little later. As we got ready, Ty and Felicia were very delirious and laughing constantly for about 15 minutes about every little joke. I think we were quite sleep-deprived haha.

 

8:30am: Breakfast! On the menu: cereal, fruits (gala apples, peaches, oranges), and bread with Nutella, jelly or peanut butter, and rice cakes. There were many different kinds of cereals and ones that are similar to US brands. Soymilk, either a malted, regular or low sugar version is used as a substitute for regular cow's milk. Steph said it's due to the high price of cow's milk, which is about 2-3 times the price of milk. Though this is about the same as Hawaii they still opt to buy the soymilk. It was a very family style of eating where everything is on the center of the table and you just grab whatever you would like and eat a little, make a bowl of cereal, eat that, and maybe go and grab something else. All the volunteers at the work camp here in Ping Che introduced themselves to us again and we introduced ourselves and our area of studies. There are a total of 10 volunteers here in Ping Che. 2 from South Korea, 1 from Mainland China, 1 from Thailand, 1 from Spain, 2 from Taiwan, and 3 from Hong Kong.

 

9am: We quickly cleaned up breakfast as we had a workshop by Anson, the Hong Kong volunteer that's in our group.

 

9:25am: We had a quick briefing with Bird about the happenings of the day and the times [pictured below] they would occur to give us a better sense of what we should expect and so we won't be overwhelmed with the constant change of traveling. I admit that at this point in the trip I was starting to feel the effects of my constant sleep deprivation of not getting a full 8-hours of sleep and more like 5-6 hours a night.

 

9:45am: Anson presented on the perception of rural areas and how agricultural land compares to urban areas. He had the different volunteers get into their respective countries and draw our perception of rural areas in our country. Our Hawaii group drew Hawaii specifically and not the continental US. The difficult part about drawing rural areas in Hawaii is that rural areas differ from island to island. We then went on to compare rural areas from where we are from to Hong Kong's rural areas. Anson went on to explain that most of the food available in Hong Kong is imported which is similar in the case of Hawaii. Hong Kong used to be more self-sustainable but farming is becoming less common. Overall, I think the most interesting part about the workshop was when everyone shared what their perception of rural is in their countries. We not only learned about Hong Kong in this workshop, but also the places where the volunteers are from.

11:30am: We relaxed and hung out outside in the dining area to talk story with one of Anson's colleagues, Jonny, that wrote the paper that the workshop was based on. Felicia and I talked with him and Anson about Hawaii, it's agricultural, rural areas, and geography.

12:45pm: Lunch!

2pm: Ping Che tour. There is a forbidden area between Ping Che and the border of Mainland China. Many refugees were trying to escape Mainland China to Hong Kong because of the Cultural Revolution and World War II. This forbidden area is more of a buffer to try and keep as many Mainland Chinese out of Hong Kong. The gate into the Forbidden Area wasn't put in until 1951 so anyone coming from Mainland China could just walk in. You need a special written permit to go in or out of the area. The people that live there are the descendants of the refugees

In order to be indigenous you had to been already living in New Territories before 1898. This includes many privileges including ownership of a large piece of land. Indigenous often sell their land to private developers who then turn the land into apartment buildings most of the time for a rather large income.

We walked through many different farm fields filled with ong choi, egg plant, okra, and much more!

We got back to the Ping Che camp and ate a fruit salad with a couple of chicken wings. By this time we were all really tired and some of us had headaches from the walking tour. We relaxed in the dining area where there was discussion on the importance of preserving the farmlands as farms and not developing them.

6:30pm: It was "US night" in which we do cultural sharing about Hawaii with the other volunteers from Ping Che and Wing Lung. We started to make spam musubi to give as a side dish for dinner. Kelli, Ty and I explained what's in it and why it's so popular in Hawaii.
 
7:30pm: Dinnertime! We had a variety of food such as nigiri sushi, egg rolls, sautéed ong choi, a kalua pig and cabbage-like stuffed bun.

8:45pm: US Cultural Night (Hawaii) we opened with telling everyone about the state anthem, Hawaii Pono'i. We then sang it to them and had volunteers (John from Korea, Bird, and Vicky from Ping Che) come up and sing with us. I drew a map of Hawaii and the flag. Kelli taught them how to say the different names of the islands and we explained a little bit about the history of the flag. After we explained, many volunteers and guests had questions about Hawaii such as what can they do there, if there are volcanoes, and so on. They all seemed pretty interested which was exciting! Afterwards, Ty taught them how to say the numbers 1 to 10 in Hawaiian and we had a little test afterward between two groups on who could put the Hawaiian numbers in the correct order first. It was the end of our cultural night and we thanked the volunteers and guests for having us at Ping Che. My headache was feeling worse so I went to go shower while everyone else sang songs while some guests such as Venus and Jonny played ukulele and drums.