Mui Wo's God of Fortune

This little prosperity god made an appearance at the Dynasty Finance for Chinese New Year.

Hope he gets a permanent spot to improve the wealth feng shui around the area.

How to invite a lion to dance

During Chinese New Year, there will be lots of itinerant lion dance troupes wandering the area in search of patrons.

If you want to invite one to perform in your home/shop, just hang a lettuce and a lai si above your door. The higher the better – in the old days, the dancers were so skillful they could extract the red packet from three/four stories up.

The lion will "chew" the lettuce, grab the red packet and unroll the scroll of blessing to ensure good luck in your premises all year round.

Kids just love them.

Lion dance drums

Woke up to the lion dance drums today. As Mui Wo is surrounded by mountains, it's impossible to miss the drumming as the lion troupe goes round the town.

The drummers decide the lion's movements.

There are two basic beats: The syncopated rhythm is for playing.

And the drum roll is for bowing and paying respects.

Once you know that, you'll know, without having to look, what the lion is doing.

Will upload photos in the next post.

Village CNY decorations

I think this year, Ham Tin wins the MuiWoandMe award for best decorated village.

Maybe the sun being out when I was there played a big part. The colours were just so vivid.

Wang Tong village.

Pak Ngan Heung village.

Spooooky animals

Don't be fooled by the cutesy Chinese zodiac animals in the park next to the bridge. By day, they look like harmless cartoon characters but, come night time, and they take on a whole different dimension. Whoooooahahah!

New ferry timetable

I didn't realise the ferry tender was up but thank goodness, NWFF has won it again – I was worried I'd have to go on the smaller HKKF ferries.

Anyway, they have some changes to the ferry times but nothing too drastic.

The good news is they have changed some ordinary ferries to fast ferries, especially returning to Mui Wo at night (10pm fast ferry whoo hoo!).

Here are the new ferry times and press release.

Fortune favours the shameless

Thank goodness the rain has stopped. To celebrate, Buffalo Wilbur and I went for a quick stroll around Chung Hau village.

Remember how I said there's always something going on in Mui Wo? We hadn't gone very far when Buffalo Wilbur spotted a guy dressed as the God of Fortune walking around the village.

I reasoned that where there's a God of Fortune, there's fortune to be made. So we hung around shamelessly trying to catch his eyes.

We were in luck. He gave us chocolate coins with a face value of 2 euros. Success!

Enter the lion

We were going out for our usual hike today when we heard the sounds of drums getting louder and louder. Turns out a lion dance troupe was going around Mui Wo bestowing Chinese New Year blessings on all the businesses (for a big fat lai see of course).

Told you there's always something happening in town.

Back to work

The ferry was full today -- but mainly with mainland Chinese tourists ooh-ing and ahh-ing every time we hit a big wave. It was quite funny.

The office was half empty. Clients also were non-contactable.

Post Chinese New Year blues, I wondered?

No, it's for fung shui reasons, said my colleague. Apparently, Monday is not an auspicious day to start work so many offices remain closed until tomorrow.

Only in Hong Kong can fung shui dictate when you open your office again.

I wonder if a big fat lai see can make up for dragging myself into work today.

Lights up!

Ok, I take that back about the fortune trees. They're pretty cute when they light up.

Sunday stroll

Chung Hau village is a hive of activity early Sunday morning. People are out and about early getting in a bit of Chinese New Year shopping.