Sunday at Hang Hau and Tseung Kwan O

Today, I went to the first Sunday Mass of my stay in Hong Kong at St. Vincent Catholic Church (聖雲仙天主堂). Like yesterday, I took the 11M minibus towards Hang Hau station, but overshot the St. Vincent Catholic Church minibus stop. It also started raining, but luckily I brought my raincoat with me.

I was lucky to arrive way before the start of the Mass at 10:30 am because the tiny church building was eventually packed full of parishioners. Most of them were Filipino but there were also some Chinese and Westerners. The Mass was very lively - quite unlike any of the Masses I had ever attended back in Canada. The church choir was packed with male choristers while female parishioners led the praying of the Rosary before the Mass began. The parish also used a PowerPoint projected onto a church wall to display all the Mass responses and hymn lyrics.

After Mass, the parish held a tea and coffee drinking session outside the church building for the parishioners to socialize, similar to what they have at St. Thomas Aquinas Church in Toronto.

Then, while walking to Hang Hau station, I passed through the neighbouring Hang Hau Village (坑口鄉村). As a village bordering one of the booming high-rise residential areas of Hong Kong, it was quite a welcome surprise. The houses have only a few storeys and have quaint quasi-traditional Chinese roofing. What a contrast with the uniform high-rise residential blocks of nearby Tseung Kwan O!

Hang Hau Village

Hang Hau Village

Tseung Kwan O, courtesy of Wikipedia

I ate lunch at Tseung Kwan O Shopping Centre and then went over to the Commercial Press Bookstore there to buy some Chinese books. Here is a shot of some books that I bought (Note: 『日向』 is a Chinese translation of a Japanese novel):

I also went to the Lee Shau Kee Library to borrow a book that I've been wanting to read for a long long time. It's called The Missionary's Curse and talks about 300 years of oral history from the Cave Gully village in Shanxi Province, China which consists entirely of Chinese Catholics who are descended from original converts from the early Jesuit missionaries.

While walking back to UG Hall II, I noticed something I hadn't noticed before - two pavilions with traditional Chinese roofing! However, I do question their designer's attention to authenticity: I'm pretty sure that traditional Chinese pavilions (亭) should have circular, conical roofs (攢尖式屋頂) and not the hip-and-gable roofs (歇山式屋頂) shown by the HKUST pavilions. That immediately piqued my attention - maybe I'll explore them later...