Mong Kok with Anna

The boys were busy with their own social lives, so Anna and I went to Mong Kok Saturday evening.

As in many parts of Hong Kong, the apartment buildings in Mong Kok rise like soda straws.

We went to a crowded street market.

I have always liked the red glass lampshades used in Chinese markets.

The market was full of beautiful fruit and fascinating food for the living. There was everything, from the familiar ...

... to the unusual. This is called dragon fruit in English.

Its flesh is white and speckled with tiny black seeds. Good ones have a mild, sweet flavor.

There were many varieties of banannas ...

... and prepared meat stalls selling roasted ducks and geese and pork.

This is a detail from the picture.

This is another detail.

There were mounds of dried fish and dried squids and dried eels and dried kelp and dried things that we couldn't identify.

There were stands selling Gui Líng Gao, a traditional Chinese medicinal drink or jelly that is supposedly made with powdered box turtle shell and various herbs. It's sold all over southern China and particularly in Hong Kong.

The box turtle is endangered, though, so I'm not sure that there is really turtle shell in Gui Ling Gao any more. I had it recently as a jelly in a drink and can only describe the taste as, well, swampy.

There was also plenty of food for the not-so living. This is a steamer basket of dim sum, including a spring roll, dumplings and a chicken's foot. Chicken feet are a Cantonese favorite.

It's all made of paper and burnt for offering to the lately departed so they have everything they need in the afterlife. These are boxes of cookies.

Paper versions of almost anything you can think of are for sale, from dentures ...

... to lingerie.

Even the minor vices are catered to.

And, of course, there is plenty of negotiable currency so that the departed can buy whatever else they might need if their loved ones overlooked anything.

Much of it is in the form of cash.

These are known as "Hell Bank Notes." Besides supplying people in the afterlife, they are burned as offerings to various gods, usually at curbside outside of shops.

If you click on this picture to see it larger, you'll see that the notes are issued by the "Hell Bank Corporation." All of it to go up in smoke.

We went to eat in a second-floor Thai restaurant that Anna had spotted.

The English on the menus in this part of the world is often unintentionally amusing.

We didn't order the explode yellowish rpawns.

But the food that we did order was excellent.