
750 things to do in Hong Kong before you die. By HK Staff.
Bucket lists aren’t just for terminally ill codgers in bad movies. For the 750th issue of HK Magazine, we’ve drawn up an extensive inventory for you to check your life against before the final curtain. Whether it’s eating dim sum at 7-11 or paragliding over Shek O, here are 750 things everyone in this busy city has to put aside their everyday business to make time for—just as we’ve put aside our usual features and listings this week.
Culture Course
The quintessential Hong Kong experience.
1. Have your fortune read by the oldest looking fortune-teller at Wong Tai Sin Temple
2. Watch all of Stephen Chow’s movies
3. Try to figure out what “sweep the street” means in Mong Kok slang, and then go do it
4. Learn a Cantonese opera song and join in the live music performance in Temple Street
5. Keep your Chinese doctor’s hand-written perscription stuck to the fridge
6. Watch “Mr. Hong Kong”
7. Burn pictures of your ex on a sidewalk during Hungry Ghost Festival
8. Pretend to be a triad
9. Learn Chinese chess
10. Watch old people gambling with traditional Chinese games at public parks. If you stay long enough they might teach you how to play.
11. Borrow the whole Doraemon cartoon series from a public library
12. Start a moody, “everyone hates me” Xanga blog
13. Join the Facebook group “I heart HK” (or create one)
14. Believe anything your feng shui master says.
15. Be a member of an indie band and curse Cantopop
16. ...But download a Cantopop ringtone anyway
17. Explore Wan Chai market. Smell the love.
18. Spend a night in Chungking Mansions with your backpack
19. Tell everyone you are single during Lunar New Year to avoid giving out laisee
20. Never sit on a warm MTR seat
21. Live in a caged home for a night in Sham Shui Po
22. Read “Old Master Q” cartoons and try to get all the jokes
23. Play mahjong with strangers at a parlor and pretend you are an undercover policeman when you lose
24. Play liar dice in a bar that sells bowls of peanuts for $60
25. Have your photo taken at a party and find it weeks later in a magazine
26. Open an art gallery with your retirement fund
27. Use smiley faces even when you are e-mailing your boss
28. Go speed dating. Make up a new job for every person that you meet.
29. Throw a party outside the Cultural Centre
30. Wash your utensils in hot tea before you eat at a teahouse
31. Name your child after a fruit
32. Bleach your hair blonde, especially if you’re a teenager
33. Get photographed by a tabloid magazine and watch as they fabricate an entire story about you
34. Seduce someone via SMS, then send them a Dear John text a day later
35. Stay awake during an entire art film at Broadway Cinematheque
36. Write a poem in an upstairs revolutionary café
37. End every English sentence with “la” or “ar”
38. Walk past the Museum of Art. Never actually go inside.
39. Photograph every dish you eat at every restaurant you go to. Post a review on openrice.com, even if it’s a Big Mac.
40. Jump in with the impromptu performance artists along Sai Yeung Choi Street South
41. Make a wish at the Lam Tsuen Wishing Trees
42. Intern at HK Magazine
43. Attempt to sleep with starlets and upload your DIY sex tape on YouTube
44. Watch a lion dance put on by firemen
45. Eat worm jelly to experience Fujian culture at Mun Nam Restaurant
46. Count the number of buddhas inside the 10,000 Buddha Temple
47. Misspell “Wellcome”
48. Finally finish your leftover mooncakes by Christmas.
49. Do a watercolor of the smoggy harborfront and find that you have to buy extra tubes of gray paint
50. Announce your phobia of chicken feather dusters
51. Claim you were stopped by a modeling agent in Causeway Bay when shopping the other day
52. Learn to grind your own soya bean milk • Soak 300g of soya beans in water for six hours. • Drain the beans. • Pour the beans and three cups of water into a blender until finely blended. • Use a piece of cheesecloth to drain the liquid and throw away the residue. Boil the liquid over medium heat. • Then cook for 10 minutes over low heat. • Add sugar or salt to taste, and ta-da! Your very own batch of soya milk.
53. Meet a blind date under the Tsim Sha Tsui Star Ferry clock tower
54. Grudgingly share your table with a stranger in a cha chaan teng.
55. Call your pet, child or boy/girlfriend “BB” loudly in public
56. Drink twenty-four herbs tea while listening to 24 Herbs.
57. Wear a Mickey Mouse t-shirt to Ocean Park
58. Make a short film set in your cramped flat and submit it to www.ifva.com
59. Sing karaoke around the clock at Red Box or Green Box
60. Be a bartender at the Fringe Club
61. Rent and re-watch all the old TVB dramas
62. Spend a whole Sunday going on open tours of houses on sale at the Peak
63. Get drunk at Artwalk, then expound obnoxiously on the artworks
64. Go to an all-you-can-eat buffet at a dodgy karaoke bar and get food poisoning
65. Pick a mobile phone number with as many 8s in it as possible
66. Get the first-row seat at a pop concert
67. ...And start crying when Andy Lau comes on.
68. Teach English as a second language
69. Drink pu’er tea in a Starbucks cup
70. Savor a pineapple bun outside the Space Museum
71. Go on a date with a local celebrity
72. Become a local celebrity
73. Sit your kid down at the piano until they pass the Grade Eight exam
74. Talk to a local artist at Cattle Depot Artists Village
75. Have a temporary obsession with anything from Japan or Korea
76. Belly dance outside Times Square
77. Gossip loudly about your friends in Tsui Wah, Café Landmark or Yung Kee (location depending on your age and gender)
78. Read the free newspaper of the person standing in front of you on the MTR
79. Join a poon choi dinner in Tai Po uninvited
80. Pronounce Louis Vuitton as “Louise Veeton” and Pucci as “Poo-See”
81. Practice your English or Cantonese with the ABCs in Lan Kwai Fong
82. Munch on a cheeseburger at the Chi Lin Nunnery
83. Take everything the tabloids say as the truth
84. Attempt to define “Hong Kong Culture” every time you’re drunk
Still Standing - Catch them before they go.
85. Have a French toast at China Cafe86. ...And wash it down with an iced milk tea
87. Still feeling hungry? Walk down to Mido Cafe for a baked pork chop rice
88. ...And watch the day go by on their first floor terrace
89. Have another nostalgic cha chaan teng experience at Cheung Lee Cafe
90. Try some tea and talk about tea culture with the owners of the 77-year-old Pang Yue Tai tea shop
91. Break your knees and get them fixed by the bonesetter at Leung Choi Shun92. While you’re there, buy a bottle of medicine oil to ease muscle pain
93. Get spooked in the haunted Nam Koo Terrace
94. ...or spook someone else there
95. Pet a cat and enjoy the sunlight at the Old District Office North in Tai Po
96. Coming down with a cold? Get some herbal medicine at Tai Wo Tong
97. Chat to the old lady still living in a 100-year-old house in Tai Hang
98. Hide from the junkies at the Sham Shui Po Public Dispensary
99. Visit the oldest printing press in Hong Kong at old tenement houses onWing Lee Street
100. Brave the guard dogs to admire the colonial-style mansion Jessville
101. Get your fortune told by a bird on Temple Street before the government tears down the area to build a highway
102. Don’t trust the bird? Go to the stall next-door next for palm reading
103. ...Or get a tarot reading across the street
104. Visit the Tai O Culture Workshop to understand the Tai O fishing culture
105. While you’re there, try the sweet dumpling snacks
106. ...After a fresh seafood meal
107. Try the freshest, cheapest pomegranates from the Graham Street Market
108. Get a permit to go inside the closed border area in Sha Tau Kok
109. And walk around the 1910-style buildings there
110. And don’t forget to take a peek at the other side of the border
111. Buy fresh seafood off a fishing boat in Sai Kung
112. Walk up the stairs of the worn-down pre-war buildings in Sham Shui Po
113. Find more of them in Tai Kok Tsui
114. Walk through the pre-war buildings and eat in the streets in Kowloon City
115. Think about those old blue buses we used to have at the Old China Bus depot
in Aberdeen
116. Sneak into the now vacant St. Mark’s School in Shau Kei Wan and graffiti the walls
117. Play mahjong with the villagers at the iconic “Eight Houses” in Stanley
118. Say a little prayer at the 120-year-old Main Cathedral on Caine Road
119. Wrong religion? Walk down Garden Road to St John’s Church
(built 167 years ago) instead
120. Still got it wrong? Go to Jamia Masjid, the 93-year-old mosque on Shelley Street
121. Or Visit the Ohel Leah Synagogue, which has been on Robinson Road for 107 years
122. Stop at the Lin Fa Kung Temple in Tai Hang 123. Or the Wong Tai Sin Temple
124. Trek along Hong Kong Island to look for traces of the City of Victoria circa 1913, which is marked by seven boundary stones. Find the first one in the playground at
Kennedy Town.
125. The second one at the junction of Pok Fu Lam and Hatton Road
126. The third one is on Bowen Road
127. Then walk up to Old Peak Road for the fourth
128. Before heading to Magazine Gap Road for the next
129. The last one is on Wong Nai Chung Road (the seventh has been removed)
130. Admire the way the URA have preserved the pawnshop at 60 Johnston Road,
and enjoy a meal at The Pawn.
131. Then take a turn down Wedding Card Street to see the damage they have done
140. Buy a hidden gem from a junk shop on Cat Street
183. Buy a seized sampan from a Government Police Auction
196. Pick a paper hungry ghost offering in Sai Ying Pun
200. Marvel at the carved mammoth tusks on Hollywood Road
235. Support your local musicians by buying a CD at White Noise Records
257. Buy a vintage toy in Select-18
299. ...And when your date complains, take them for a quality steak at budget prices at Lardo’s, Hang Hau
311. While you’re there, try the halal beef pancakes from one of the Muslim restaurants
351. Visit the seafood restaurants in Lei Yue Mun and pick your own seafood for dinner
394. Go to Paradiso in Shek O and pretend you’re in Thailand
407. Stand in the freezer at Balalaika
469. Get a cutthroat shave at the Mandarin Barber
473. Test drive a Maserati
475. Sneak into the Four Seasons pool and listen to the underwater music
480. Sip on a beautifying bird’s nest soup
487. Eat an entire box of mooncakes
488. Bid for an auspicious number plate
506. Go negative on your Octopus and leave the city—for good
528. Go to jail, then run for a seat in the government
556. Ride the Mid-Levels escalator from start to finish
560. Own a pair of Crocs
565. Bitch about Donald Tsang on a phone-in radio program
596. Forget the fancy pet shops; rescue a dog from the SAA
636. Save a street market
642. Bolster our oft-complained about arts scene and volunteer at The Fringe Club
656. Hunt ghosts on Barker Road or Ship Street
659. Compare the waves at the other Big Wave Bays (one in Sai Kung, two in Lantau)
674. Catch a sea urchin in Sai Kung
692. Tip feral water buffalo on Lantau
698. Hike every inch of the Hong Kong, Wilson, Maclehose and Lantau Trails
705. Climb Lion Rock
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