Over the hills, under the moon - and off the beaten path

It has been this way for centuries. Every year, on the 15th evening of the eighth lunar month, the small, secluded Hong Kong neighborhood of Tai Hang is the center of an awe-inspiring dance of the flames. That evening was yesterday - and I was lucky to be one of the many running around the narrow alleys, while a 67-meter blazing dragon was carried around by 300 local men. The ceremony is part of the traditional Chinese Mid-Autumn Festival, where the city parks are filled with lit paper lanterns and  where friends and families gather to enjoy an evening of the full moon. In the parks, it is a family event - in the alleys of Tai Hang it is a ritual of flame and fury. You first hear the drums and gongs - and then the beast, the mighty dragon, winds its way with burning cput into its long hemp-rope spine. It is prompted along forward by two so-called 'pearls', two burning balls of fire swinging on the end of long sticks.   Sometimes the procession moves...

When I look out the window from my 22nd-floor apartment in Causeway Bay, the view is filled with glittering lights from the high rises surrounding the Hong Kong harbor. Anchored boats are gently rolling on the water below me. Lots of cars are driving by on the Wai Chan Bypass It all seems so romantic, but it is - literally - the quiet before the storm. Mangkhut, the fiercest typhoon ever to hit Hong Kong in all of recorded history, is just hours away and I, coming from a peaceful Denmark, which was never hit by any major natural disasters, have no idea of what to expect. The last few days, CNN has been wall-to-wall about the storm Florence, which was hitting Florida. Hundreds of thousands were evacuated and as far as the news was concerned, the US storm was a matter of life or death. The Mangkhut  typhoon, coming our way, is so strong, it should  make Florence look like just a mere puff of wind, but here in Hong Kong, I see no preparations ...

I just walked past a palm tree, but it was not in Hong Kong, where  Michael and I had been planning to spend this  Autumn. The tree, I walked by, is standing on the harbor in a windswept, small, Danish fishing village   How come I'm here?  Well, as they say, life is what happens when you're busy making other plans The other day, hours  before our planned departure for our several months long stay in Hong Kong, I visited my doctor for a routine check-up - and I was immediately put up for further examinations, as my blood pressure turned out to be pretty high We thought it would just postpone my flight for a couple of days and Michael took the scheduled flight out to arrange everything in the Hong Kong apartment, we had rented. Now it turns out, my high blood pressure needs some medication - and the doctors have forbidden me to travel for some time. What to do?     Our flat was sublet to another family, the Danish autumn had set...