HONG KONG, THE CITY WHERE ANYTHING WORKS, WHATEVER
By LINCOLN SILIAKUS
Coming from the West, you might not realize that Happy Valley is a particularly wealthy part of the Island. On steep sidestreets, car repairers and metal workshops spill onto the roughly finished, cracked concrete sidewalk. Trucks double park as bare-chested labourers unload kitchen components. The sound of jack hammers, cranes and diesel engines is constant. The windows are aluminium, the aircons leak.
Bensons Crab and Wine store, Established 1999, is crammed between a bakery and a dry cleaning shop. At a low table just outside the door, a sun-darkened fellow is tying live Shanghai crabs up with raffia.
I push the door open and shiver. Just as well, as crates of wine are piles almost up to the roof. The Hong Kong faves are all here: Lynch-Bages, Lascombes, Palmer, Pichon Longueville. The Bordeaux first growths are in a fridge. (suite…)