Last week was intense but full of excitement and surprise. On the first day, the walk tour gave us a really good image of Hong Kong. We visited the most expensive tree around the world (for preserving the tree, the construction work had to dig a large amount of earth around the tree to work underneath it without moving the tree off site), which totally changed my impression about Hong Kongnese never care about nature. And with a series of lectures we had a glance about different types of housing that gathered different communities. 

Gavin & Banyan tree

And I feel so lucky to work with my teammates, Jack and Yuyu. To me it was actually  working with people from my own culture, but I can feel the difference between my group, which is made up by 3 people all speak mandarin, with other groups that made up by people who have to speak in a language that is not the first languages for all of them.We worked on the Yat Tung site, which is a public housing on Lantau island. After visiting the site, we researched a bit history about this relatively young community that just established less than 15 years. Those tall blocks are not human scale, but they create shade for people in such climate, and most people seems enjoying their time just sitting in the community space. We drew our mental map onsite, we found out that the circle plaza is actually not the geography center of this estate after comparing with the real map. However, all of us three drew it in the center of this estate because people’s daily life is centered here – it is not only the commercial center for this estate, but also has different functions that supports residences’ other daily activities, like barber shop, ATM, etc. We are eager to find out if people living here feel the same as us from interviews next week.

Our first weekend also impressed me with its heat and humidity. On Saturday, thanks to Crystal, and Bella as well, we went to the cheapest Michelin starred restaurant – Tim Ho Wan. It was definitely good, but the best thing of the day was walking along the Woman street. It was so Hong Kong style, local venders and delicious street food crowded together. After we went to the Time square and took a group selfie with Gumdam, enjoyed our shopping in totoro shop. 

On Sunday, our trip to Macau probably created a long lasting memory to everyone. Like what they says “The road to happiness is strewn with setbacks,” there was a little drama happened at beginning, but everything turned out fine. We visited the Venetian casino, the pineapple casino. It was interesting to walk around in traditional Portuguese house and to discover remains of old streets and architectures. But nothing can compare to the experience at the plaza in front of st. Paul’s cathedral – our strong Bella opened that coconut.