After Korea, we flew to Hong Kong to visit Pokin’s family. This is what we do. Every year or so, Pokin’s dad and her brother Pokong come up from Shenzhen, and we all meet in Hong Kong for a few days of food, family, and tradition. We always stay at the Conrad.
The trip had a few objectives. See family. Eat everything. And take care of some important business with the ancestors.
Paying Respects#
Every visit, we go to Cape Collinson to pay respects to Pokin’s relatives. This time, we went a little extra.
In Chinese tradition, you burn paper offerings so your ancestors can use them in the afterlife. Money, houses, clothes, whatever you think they’d appreciate. The tradition has, shall we say, modernized.
Nicholas spotted a paper Tesla at the vendor and insisted. It was for Pokin’s uncle, a man who had a tough life. He was found abandoned in a bathroom as a baby, taken in by Pokin’s grandfather and raised as family. He worked as an electrician his whole life, never had much, but he made sure his niece Shirley could get through school and become a nurse. He gave what he had.
So we got him a Tesla.
The paper model came with a miniature Supercharger station. It also came with a paper gas pump, which is funny because the whole point of a Tesla is that it doesn’t need one. Details.
Pokin’s dad led the ceremony at Cape Collinson, on the eastern tip of Hong Kong Island. The joss paper, the Tesla, the incense, everything placed at the family niche on the hillside, with the cemetery stretching out below and Hong Kong’s green mountains beyond.
The Pig Year Problem#
We also went to Wong Tai Sin Temple, one of the most famous temples in Hong Kong, because this was an important year for Nicholas.
In Chinese astrology, certain zodiac signs clash with the ruling animal of the year. 2025 is the Year of the Snake, and the Pig is one of the signs that conflicts with it. This is called fan tai sui (犯太歲), and it means your year is going to be rough unless you go to the temple and sort it out. Nicholas is a Pig. So this was his year to pay the visit.
The fortune teller at Wong Tai Sin is smart about this. Every year, a different set of zodiac signs are in conflict, which means every year somebody in the family has to come back. Good business model.
We lit incense, made offerings, and asked for good luck. Given that Nicholas had already wiped out on a bunny slope and sliced his knee open a few weeks earlier, the Pig needed all the help he could get.
Pokin’s dad had a different take. He said Nicholas’s accident was actually a good thing. The injury “cut off his bad luck at the knee.” Got the bad stuff out of the way early. That’s one way to look at a ski patrol toboggan ride.
Food (Obviously)#
Pokin’s dad took us to his favorite hot pot place. Lau Haa, a restaurant that still looks like the Hong Kong he grew up in. Neon signs, red tiles, old-school everything. He reminisced about the city of his childhood while we dunked things in boiling broth.
Another night, dinner at Uncle Adolf’s place. He’s one of Pokin’s dad’s oldest friends and the man who gave Pokin her first real job at Campbell Soup back in the day. Good food, good stories, the kind of evening where the adults talk for three hours and nobody checks the time.
And of course, dim sum. A proper Hong Kong dim sum spread with the whole family around a lazy Susan, arguing over who gets the last har gow.
The Horse#
Now for the important part.
Every trip to Hong Kong, we go to the Jockey Club. This is tradition. Years ago, Pokin’s dad won enough money betting on horses to put a down payment on her parents’ first house. They couldn’t have afforded to buy one otherwise, and that bet kickstarted everything. So we always go back. For luck.
The Hong Kong Jockey Club in Central is the kind of place where horse racing is taken very seriously. Members’ lounges, dark wood paneling, the smell of old money and new odds.
And in the stairwell, a vending machine.
Pokin spotted it first. The HKJC Priority vending machine, tucked into a stairwell, stocked with official Jockey Club merchandise. Caps, tins, memorabilia. And plush horses. Little brown racing horses with bridles, wearing the Jockey Club colors.
Pokin used to have stuffed horses when she was younger. Princess and PB&J. She wanted one.
“No, let me,” insisted her dad.
“Let him,” insisted Nicholas.
So Pokin’s dad vended a racing horse from the Hong Kong Jockey Club.
There he was. A small brown horse with a black bridle, standing on the counter, looking earnest and slightly confused about his new situation. The kind of face that says “I will try very hard at whatever you need.”
“I think his name should be Chestnut,” said Nicholas. After Pokin’s favorite cake.
“Sounds about right,” said Pokin.
And that’s how Chestnut came to live with us. A Hong Kong Jockey Club horse, vended from a machine in the members’ lounge, paid for by Pokin’s dad, named after a cake.
He’s a hard-working, earnest, overwhelmingly optimistic horse who tries incredibly hard to be helpful. He’s so wholesome I can’t be mad at him. Plus he’s a gift from Pokin’s dad. That counts for something.
It’s a little ridiculous how upbeat he is, though. Just relentlessly positive. Like a motivational poster that follows you around the house.
Welcome to the crew, Chestnut. Try to keep up.