Chinabites

Posted: Apr. 03, 2009

Times Square in Causeway Bay is one of the prime areas of Hong Kong to shop and people watch. Living directly next to Times Square for the past three months has given me a chance to see the Hong Kong version of the seasons changing. In Times Square, this means watching the billboards and exhibits on the central plaza rotate.

When I arrived in Hong Kong in January, the plaza was filled with Chinese New Year's paraphenalia.

More recently it was full of the "100 Years of Hong Kong Film" exhibition, which included several small fake movie theatres with authentic movie theatre seats and constant screenings of the classics.

These exhibitions, while both wonderful in their own way truly failed to live up to the creativity of the exhibit in Times Square that rotated in over the past week: mushrooms and tea cups.

The floor of the Plaza is spotted with a variety of large, spilling, and eminently photogenic teacups.

While the interior plaza is filled with a wonderland of mushroom shaped houses covered in stretched patchwork fabric.

The interior of the mushrooms are decorated with plush stuffed animals and furniture, again with a teacup theme.

If all of this tea cup craziness gets you in the mood for a spot of afternoon tea, Times Square can deliver yet again, with a basement food court staple, Toast Box. I stopped in, appropriately enough, during afternoon tea time. I ordered the #1 set meal, the "kaya" meal, which was advertised as their best seller.

Kaya, Wikipedia assures me, is a coconut jam made with coconut and sugar originating from the southeast asia island region. I mistook the sweet flavor for extremely light honey as I was eating it, but now I'm now definitely on the look out for this tasty teatime snack.