Cheer up, ladies! Things can only get better, eh? Like, we might be greeted by a soulless empty block of a Chinese government edifice, with the sole attribute that it has an escalator in a grand hall. The whole ground floor might be guarded by a wild looking Chinese lady with chaotic hair and rudimentary English who nonetheless has a nylon uniform! That will qualify her to extract a couple of hundred dollars from me for a family museum pass! That might happen yet, eh?
Once you get past the escalator guard who's trained to point at you and examine your museum sticker, you can travel in style on the glorious multi-speed escalator up to the top floor. There you'll find the real fierce looking tomb guardians, dragons, and pottery monstery creatures who've been recently exhumed from the yellow earth, now hungry and looking for blood. We might find those, what?
Or what about wandering off between the ceramics? I'm learning my Zhou from my Yuan and my Ming from my Shang.
That'll come in handy when we pass the local village cancer charity shop, and eye spy the Song dynasty celadon in the 50p bucket. I'll bargain the old woman down to 10p, then quick as a flash I'll be standing in a queue at the Antiques Roadshow, clutching my old green vase and blubbing how my grandfather passed it down through the generations, and how we used it for my grandmother's ashes. I'll tell the bloke at Sotherby's that grandad always said, keep the proceeds in the family.
Anyway. I'm wandering. Slap me about with some Cantonese opera. This museum is the world centre for that happy oddity.
Hey! We can be virtually made up!
My turn! I look fantastic. I shall start my Cantonese singing career immediately! How do mean, shut up screeching. Squirrel, I am enthused. This museum may have all the charm of an aircraft hanger, but look! It has amazing stuff in it! Me, Cantonese made up!
And then they have art! I'm sure we could bash out some squiggles. I like that. Squiggles with red hat. Only we are not allowed to take photographs. There are plenty of guards patrolling round the art. They probably outnumber me 3 to 1. Just a sly snap. Then runforit.
And I am glad to find Shark studiously copying down every display panel in the entire museum. She is into this government sponsored fun. One day I bet she marries someone like a corporate lawyer.
Tiger taking notes too! Get that! One day she might emerge from that state of childhood madness and become a fashion designer or textile artist. Her key influence she will cite as the pink sparkly Cantonese opera costume of Sha Tin. You never know. That's the glory of home ed. You're free to wander into a Hong Kong Heritage Museum, as severe and as heavy a building as you could think up of brick, marble and concrete, then do whatever takes your fancy with Hong Kong heritage, so long as you don't nick it, photograph it, or cross one of the 2,300 patrolling heritage guardians in blue nylon.
But thanks to the family museum pass, we'll be back soon! We have yet to see the history of Sha Tin and 100 years of Chinese railways! Whoopee!
No comments:
Post a Comment