My son is learn\u00ading Man\u00addar\u00adin, so when I went to Hong Kong recently, I asked what I should bring back. His teach\u00ader sug\u00adges\u00adted a Man\u00addar\u00adin dic\u00adtion\u00adary; it soun\u00added like a good idea to me. Find\u00ading one to buy ended up being more of an odys\u00adsey than I expec\u00adted though.<\/p>\n
The hotel had an Eng\u00adlish-lan\u00adguage Yel\u00adlow Pages, which seemed like a good place to start. Bad assump\u00adtion \u2014 there was a cat\u00adegory for Book\u00adbind\u00aders<\/em>, and one for Books \u2014 Whole\u00adsalers<\/em>, but no retail books. Even if they had had a list\u00ading there, it\u2019s doubt\u00adful it would have done me much good. It turns out that the Hong Kong Yel\u00adlow Pages lists addresses in terms of the name of the build\u00ading the store is in (e.g., Prosper Com\u00admer\u00adcial Build\u00ading, or Tai Sang Build\u00ading), with no hint as to which part of Hong Kong it might be in, let alone which num\u00adber on which street. I guess they expect people to know which build\u00ading is where.<\/p>\n One of my tour\u00adist guides men\u00adtioned that Dymocks (which I always think of as an Aus\u00adtrali\u00adan store) is near the Star Ferry ter\u00admin\u00adal, so after the required trip on the ferry (well worth it), I stopped off there. They did\u00adn\u2019t have any Man\u00addar\u00adin dic\u00adtion\u00adar\u00adies, so I bought anoth\u00ader book and asked the cash\u00adier where to find one. Her answer? \u201cCom\u00admer\u00adcial Books, on Sug\u00adar Street, ask when you get there, every\u00adone knows it\u201d. So I went down to Sug\u00adar Street, walked along it twice, up and down stairs at the Com\u00admer\u00adcial Build\u00ading, before find\u00ading the actu\u00adal book\u00adstore is called \u201cCom\u00admer\u00adcial Press\u201d and it\u2019s on Yee Wo Street, near the inter\u00adsec\u00adtion to Sug\u00adar Street. Close enough I guess, I did find it eventually.<\/p>\n Of course, I don\u2019t speak any Chinese lan\u00adguage, so I needed help to find what I wanted. I com\u00adpletely bam\u00adboozled the first book\u00adstore employ\u00adee I asked for help, she could\u00adn\u2019t believe she under\u00adstood what I was ask\u00ading for and asked someone else for help. They showed me lots of books on learn\u00ading Man\u00addar\u00adin, and Eng\u00adlish-Man\u00addar\u00adin dic\u00adtion\u00adar\u00adies, before finally believ\u00ading that maybe I did want a Man\u00addar\u00adin dic\u00adtion\u00adary with no Eng\u00adlish and show\u00ading me those. <\/p>\n As an aside: if you see a book in Hong Kong with a large num\u00adber on a stick\u00ader on it, the num\u00adber is the per\u00adcent\u00adage of the nor\u00admal price that you pay, not the final price. So if the stick\u00ader says \u201c85\u201d, you don\u2019t pay $HKD<\/span> 85, you pay 85% of the nor\u00admal price (which is on the back of the book). This can, ahem, be quite a dif\u00adfer\u00adent price.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" My son is learn\u00ading Man\u00addar\u00adin, so when I went to Hong Kong recently, I asked what I should bring back. His teach\u00ader sug\u00adges\u00adted a Man\u00addar\u00adin dic\u00adtion\u00adary; it soun\u00added like a good idea to me. Find\u00ading one to buy ended up being more of an odys\u00adsey than I expec\u00adted though. The hotel had an Eng\u00adl\u00adish-lan\u00adguage Yel\u00adlow \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cBuy\u00ading Dic\u00adtion\u00adar\u00adies in Hong Kong\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[79],"class_list":["post-634","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-travel","tag-hongkong"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=634"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":642,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/634\/revisions\/642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=634"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=634"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=634"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}