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Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
06/21/05 at 11:13:33
[slm]

Wow, I have just been reading jadoogar's exploits in China.  Good stuff.   ;-)

Bro, your account of your visit was very well written and entertaining (I loved the bit where you spoke with the men in the mosque about Musharaf  :D )

I just got back from China, but not the mainland like jadoogar went to.  I went to Hong Kong, which is on the southern Chinese peninsula.  Many of you will have heard of it.  It was a British colony up until 1997, when it was given back to the Chinese in a treaty that had been signed 99 years prior.

I can't promise my account will be as in depth and descriptive as the other China threads, but I shall try and give a little taster of what it was like.  :)

The first thing that hits you coming from England out of a chilled, air-conditioned, pressurised cabin is the heat.  In a word... humid.  Wasn't as hot as I had imagined but still... us Londoners are not used to the heat.  :P

Hong Kong is busy. Very busy.  The land area is very small, and there are millions of people, so... the only way is up.  They build huge skyscrapers.  The friend I stayed with was on the 39th floor.  That was nothing.  Some had up to 80 floors.

Maybe our American members find this normal, but by UK standards... wow.  I normally feel a bit dizzy high up, but suprisingly, I was okay, alhamdulillah.

I attended the main mosque in the centre of Hong Kong, which is in an area called Tsim Sha Tsui, if anyone knows or has been before.

It was interesting to see that most of the Muslims in Hong Kong are in fact immigrants and not Chinese. Although most of the resident Muslims were Indian with a sprinkling of Pakistanis and a handful of Arabs, I was most suprised at the large number of black brothers, mashallah.

The mosques in England are carpeted, but in the heat of Hong Kong the marble floors were cooling especially when you do sajdah (prostate your head on the floor). It reminded me a little of the mosques in Malaysia.

The Khutbah was done in Urdu, or maybe it was Hindi.  Either way, it was nice.

Moving on...the food was a little more tricky.  

Unfortunately for us, the Chinese... they love pork.  It seems to be the most used ingredient (or maybe it just felt that way to me).  Here's a sample conversation:

Me: "Does this have pork in it?"
Chinese Dude: "No."
Me: "Cool" *About to take a bite*
Chinese Dude: "No wait. I think it does... Yes. Yes it does"
Me: "Aww... ok well thanks anyway"
Chinese Dude: "So, you can't eat chicken? You allergic?"
Me: "No, chicken's fine... but errr... you said it was pork..."
Chinese Dude: "Oh, I thought you said chicken"
Me: "Umm... no I said pork. So this is chicken?"
Chinese Dude: "Yeah, its chicken... or maybe its pork.... can't tell.... Wait let me check"
*sniffs the meat, then tastes some*
Chinese Dude: "actually I think this is beef"

And so on, and so on. I call it the Pork Issue.
It's like asking if something has salt in it. Imagine if you ask someone if a dish has salt in it...
Most people would be like "Huh? Who knows, probably, who cares anyway, salt is a basic component of any meal"

In Hong Kong, pork is like salt.

Before I left London, I heard from another friend who's also from Hong Kong, about an old mosque away from the city centre.  I hailed a cab and decided to go check it out.  It was in an area called the MidLevels (I think) - very hilly.  I was wondering whether we were going the right way, when the taxi stopped.  I glanced at the street sign... "Ah" I thought, "Must be right".  The sign read "Mosque Street". :)

The entrance the mosque wasn't actually on Mosque Street.  you had to go down all these steps.  It was quite amusing that instead of stairs going up, there was an escalator.  An open air escalator. It was actually quite handy on the way up.  :)

Anyway back to the mosque.  I went through the gate and the mosque itself was quite small.  It looked quite old.  As I approached it, I could hear the sounds of children chanting.  They must be learning to read the Qur'an, I thought.  I peered through the door, and there were indeed children rocking back and forth, reading the Qur'an.  
Just behind them, there was a group of men, sitting in a circle, talking in lower voices.  I gathered it was a halaqa ([I]halaqa[/I] is an Arabic word meaning circle - its a common traditional means of studying and discussing Islam and the Quran in the mosque)

I noticed a man just outside in the courtyard, washing some pots and pans at an outdoor faucet.  I approached and Salam'd him and asked him a little about the mosque.  He told me the mosque had been there since 1815.  The present building
had been built in 1915, which is still pretty old, I think.  I asked him about the Muslims, and he told me they were mostly Pakistanis and Chinese.  As I was leaving I noticed an inscription near the entrance which said the mosque had indeed been built in 1915, commissioned by someone from India.

salam
jadoogar
06/21/05 at 21:55:03
salam,
thx brother nadeem..  sounds like you had fun in honk kong..  any pictures?
Noman
wsalaam wrt
jannah
06/27/05 at 13:47:26
wsalam,

wow you went to hong kong around the same time as i was thinking of going!!! koinkydink

my friend has been working there temporarily since january.. she came back this weekend for a visit and showed up in front of my house!! i was like what the...... it was awesome alhamdulillah :)

her descriptions are so interesting and funny.. she is taking an arabic class from an old shaykh that only speaks cantonese and arabic! so its pretty interesting trying to take the class... she also showed us a picture of a building with a square space in the middle.. we were like 'oh cool architecture' and she said oh they design buildings like that so "when the dragon comes it can fly through it."

we were like  :o

please post your pictures!!!
Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
06/30/05 at 08:30:27
[slm]

Sorry if this sounds silly... but... how do I attach pictures?

;-)
apply as needed
jadoogar
06/30/05 at 14:45:37
with a duct tape!  apply as needed
wlm
jannah
06/30/05 at 16:25:45
wlm,

lol

its actually alot easier than that.. when you click on reply at the bottom you'll see an Attach:  and next to it a Browse button.. use that to find the file and attach it to the document and then submit and then ur all set

Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
06/30/05 at 18:52:06
Jannah, would you be able to tell me how I could post more than one pic in a post?
http://www.jannah.org/board/attachments/HK1.JPG
HK1.JPG
wlm
jannah
06/30/05 at 19:07:43
wlm,

you can only post one per post...sowwwy u can also try checking out photos.yahoo.com or shutterfly.com to make a huge number of pictures public..

Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
07/01/05 at 07:20:29
Jannah, another quick question... it always says I have to fill out a subject field?

http://www.jannah.org/board/attachments/HK2.JPG
HK2.JPG
Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
07/01/05 at 07:21:46
View from the 39th floor  :o
http://www.jannah.org/board/attachments/HK3.JPG
HK3.JPG
Hong Kong, China
Nadeem
07/01/05 at 07:23:44
Market place in [i]Ladies Street[/i]  :)

http://www.jannah.org/board/attachments/HK6.JPG
HK6.JPG
dizzy
jannah
07/01/05 at 10:14:33
wlm,

wow how do ppl live on the 39th floor?? i get dizzy just looking at that!

ps yup sorry the subject field is required now


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