Audrey Zong, HKUST Exchange, Fall 2013
Among many other firsts, Hong Kong has unveiled to me the sport of Horse Racing. The Hong Kong Jockey Club is quite famous, especially for horse races at the Happy Valley Racecourse every Wednesday night. A few exchange students and I found our way to the public, lower-level part of the racecourse, and we were met by a sea of fashionable, young working adults, casually hanging out with other young, hip, working people. Granted it was the opening night of the night horse races, the racecourse was packed with people, and the area we were in (the lower-region) doesn’t even account for the numerous VIP tables and booths in the upper region.
Looking completely lost, we made our way to the bleachers to watch the first horse race begin. There are a total of 8 races per night, and each race has 10 – 12 horses racing, but each horse only races once a night. After watching the first race, some people we were with were ready to try their luck and place bets, but we had no clue how to. On the bleachers and in the area where you place you bets, we discovered a very different demographic of people; we saw many older, local men, clutching to a wad of sheets where you write down your bets, along with newspapers scribbled with notes and marks. Many were also plugged into the handheld radios; their concentration would not be broken. The contrast between these older locals and the posh, younger crowd was startling.
With no idea of the difference between quinellas, tierce, quinella place, win, and place, bets were somewhat blindly placed 15 minutes from the start of the next race. From the bleachers, we watched the horses run on the large screen, but were able to see them on the track while they sprinted in the last straight-a-way.
Some won, some lost, but by the end of the night, most came out to zero.
Another first for me is celebrating Mid-Autumn Festival, the second biggest holiday in China – the equivalent of Thanksgiving or Christmas for many people in the United States. To celebrate, I went to a Mid-Autumn Festival. There were a ton of lanterns at the festival, but not as many as the number of people. Thousands of locals and tourists alike gathered at the park where the festival took place to see the lanterns and a few traditional Chinese dance and song performances.
Besides observing the hundreds of lanterns, I ate THE food of the Mid-Autumn holiday: the Mooncake. It’s a dense pastry filled with red bean or lotus cake paste, and generally has an egg yolk in the center. In the historical context, mooncakes were used to smuggle messages to overthrow the Mongol rule. While it was neat to see the lanterns and try traditional foods, the congestion and heat got the best of me and I called it a night.