Cattle Depot and on to Causeway Bay

Saturday was quite busy. First stop: dim sum with Ingrid, Carrie and Rachel at the Shatin mall, where we made it just in time for the afternoon rush hour. I took photos of this bizarre, glass-enclosed peach tree sculpture to suppress my pangs of hunger until they finally seated us. After stuffing ourselves with dumplings and steamed vegetables and sponge cake, we split off on our separate ways-- Ingrid to antique shop in Central, the rest of us to track down "Cattle Depot" and the art event taking place there. Cattle Depot is a complex of galleries in a slightly out-of-the-way location (actually quite near the old Kowloon Walled City, which was torn down long ago and is now commemorated by a park I've been meaning to visit), and used to be an honest-to-god depot for cattle-- the whitewashed art spaces still feature big iron rings set into the walls that were used to tether cows. It's a really cool place and immediately made me think of Bergamot Station in L.A. where I used to intern at the Santa Monica Museum of Art. On this particular day, Space 1a in Cattle Depot was hosting a lecture about cyber-text and hyper-text by Linda Lai, Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, as well as a closing party for an exhibit of computer-texty art projects by some of Professor Lai's students. The lecture was interesting but really theoretical, as were, unfortunately, the artworks. They seemed sort of like works in progress, except for a pretty cool piece at the end of the hall called "Childgulations" where speaking into a microphone would trigger three video projections to talk back to you in bizarre voices and semi-nonsense speech. I got to talk to some of the art students present, and met a few local artists and curators-- always nice to meet new people. Then a DJ and VJ started playing, who were actually quite good-- strange loops of theremin and beats and live mixed video. I sipped away on red wine that nobody else (except us gweilos) seemed to be drinking. Then we headed over to Causeway Bay, and strolled through the G.O.D. (Goods of Desire) flagship store there (sort of a much cooler IKEA by a HK designer) before meeting up with Yomei and Ian at Times Square. Where to next? Some mysterious tropical-themed "seashell" party on Bowen Road in the Mid-levels...