Guia Fortress, Macau

Another postcard from a friend.. My dear friend Miranda went back home to Hong Kong again recently and came back a couple of weeks ago. While she was away she also visited Macau, and brought me a gorgeous postcard pack of Macau. The cards are all amazing, I had a hard time picking just one to post about here. I chose this one as it's a slightly different view of Macau and I really like the colours here.

The Guia Fortress is a historical military fort, chapel, and lighthouse complex in the St. Lazarus Parish. The complex is a UNESCO World Heritage Site as part of the Historic Centre of Macau.

The fort and chapel were constructed between 1622 and 1638, after an unsuccessful attempt by the Netherlands to capture Macau from Portugal. The lighthouse was constructed between 1864 and 1865, the first western style lighthouse in east Asia or on the China coast. The lighthouse stands at 91 meters tall, and has a light visible for some 20 miles in clear weather conditions. The complex was built upon the highest point on Macau, Guia Hill, and named after the same location. Today, the site is a tourist destination.

Hong Kong

A few posts back I wrote about how my friend Miranda went for holiday in Hong Kong and Taiwan for around New Year's. This is one of the postcards she brought me from Hong Kong, showing the celebrations of different festivals and other special occasions in Hong Kong.



In case you can't read the descriptions on the scan, the one on top left is for Chinese New Year, the one next to it Tin Hau's Birthday, the one under that Dragon Boat Festival, and the picture on bottom left is from Mid-Autumn Festival.

Aside from Chinese New Year, Mid-Autumn Festival is one that really fascinates me. It is also known as the Moon Festival or Mooncake Festival and is a popular lunar harvest festival celebrated by Chinese and Vietnamese people. A description of the festival first appeared in Rites of Zhou, a written collection of rituals of the Western Zhou Dynasty from 3,000 years ago. The celebration became popular during the early Tang Dynasty. The festival is held on the 15th day of the eighth month in the Chinese calendar, which is in September or early October in the Gregorian calendar, close to the autumnal equinox. The Government of the People's Republic of China listed the festival as an "intangible cultural heritage" in 2006, and it was made a Chinese public holiday in 2008. It is also a Taiwanese public holiday.

Accompanying the celebration, there are additional cultural or regional customs, such as eating mooncakes (round or rectangular pastries, measuring about 10 cm in diameter and 4–5 cm thick. A rich thick filling usually made from red bean or lotus seed paste is surrounded by a relatively thin (2–3 mm) crust and may contain yolks from salted duck eggs), matchmaking, carrying brightly lit lanterns, lighting lanterns on towers, floating sky lanterns...

Taiwan

My friend Miranda visited her home in Hong Kong again recently, and she also went to Taiwan for a few days. She was kind enough to bring me some postcards from her trip ^_^ I'll probably post one of the postcards from Hong Kong here at some point, meanwhile here's one from Taiwan. I love the colours and the sky in this one.



The National Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall is a famous monument, landmark and tourist attractions erected in memory of Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek, former President of the Republic of China. It is located in Taipei, Republic of China (Taiwan).

The monument, surrounded by a park, stands at the east end of Memorial Hall Square. The structure is framed on the north and south by the National Theater and National Concert Hall. The entire plaza is located within sight of the Presidential Office Building.

Hissar, Bulgaria

I'm pretty nervous at the moment - tomorrow it'll be Aikido gradings in Birmingham and I'm be going for brown belt. I keep thinking what if my mind goes blank and I just forget everything, or do something stupid... Wish me luck! I'm also a bit worried about actually getting to Birmingham (and then back home) as it's supposed to snow here this weekend and the traffic is always a total chaos if it does. :S ...that, and I wish my friend Miranda was there tomorrow, I could do with some support from her. She's on holiday at the moment, though, back home in Hong Kong and she'll also be visiting Taiwan (and she said she'd bring me back postcards :)). She gets to travel so much! Earlier this year she visited Bulgaria. It wasn't just for fun and relaxation although she did get to do that as well. Anyway, she brought me back a couple of postcards and I thought I'd show one of them here.



Hissar is a small resort town in Bulgaria, in Plovdiv Province. Located in the outskirts of the Sredna Gora mountain range, it boasts of a very mild climate and over two dozen different mineral springs, which make it a favorite spa for many Bulgarian and foreign tourists. The town's population is 7,691. The population of the municipality is approximately 14,826.

Because of these springs, the town was founded thousands of years ago. Some pre-historic remains have been found in what is now the town centre. Later, it became a Thracian city, and when Thrace fell to the Romans and became a Roman province, Hisarya became a Roman town - one of the three most important towns in the province. At various times it was called Augusta, Diocletianopolis (after emperor Diocletian) and a couple of other names. It was a famous resort even in those times, which is proved by the fact that emperor Septimius Severus himself visited the city.

Many Roman ruins are still visible everywhere - public buildings, a small amphitheatre, the barracks of the Roman garrison, the foundations of a couple of the oldest churches in Bulgaria, as well as the best preserved Roman fortress in Bulgaria. The southern gate is known as "The Camels", because it had broken in the middle and looked like two camels facing each other, before it was partially restored in the early 20th century.

Hong Kong

Another old postcard from a friend! :D This one is from Miranda (she's one of my friends from aikido, too, and she used to be one of my flatmates when I was studying in Wolverhampton). She's from Hong Kong and sent me this card in the summer 2006, when I had to go back to Finland. (Miranda is going to Hong Kong again this summer, I'm thinking of asking her if she could bring me some more postcards from there... obsessed, me?! :P)



Pictured is the Hong Kong Island. The harbour is busy with boats off the Tsim Sha Tsui waterfront. The 88 storey IFC II Tower dominates the skyline of Central and the Peak.

Hong Kong seems like a very fascinating place, a bit crazy and full of contrasts. It'd be interesting to visit it one day but I doubt that'll happen any time soon, my finances being what they are. Postcards are a much cheaper way of travelling around the world!



Here's the stamp, it's one of the nicer Hong Kong stamps I've seen. It's from a set of 4 stamps issued in 2006, depicting Chinese Idioms and Their Stories. The idiom here is "Prepare for success."