Dog or Bird or Goldfish?
The answer is ……bird!
You can watch the old Hong Kong commercial for brandy from YouTube first.
Frank the tour guide is going to explain the answer to you in this blog post.
Frank is eager to share more interesting Hong Kong history with clients during his private car tour service.
Customers with cage birds in Chinese restaurants
Keeping song bird in cage was a long tradition for rich Chinese males.
There was an old saying in Guangdong Province, Macau and Hong Kong, “rich people go to upper floors of the restaurant, poor people squat on the ground floor”!
Hong Kong dining culture originated from Guangzhou. This is Guangzhou Lin Heung Restaurant. The first and second floor of the restaurant were full of customers with their birds.
Rich people or their young sons mostly brought their cage birds to go to the first or even second floor of the restaurants to have business lunch and more importantly to kill time and show off their expensive pets!
Painting shows customers brought birds to enjoy dim sum in the past
There were a lot of keen competitions between rich men.
The competitions were about the birds’ feather color, voice, song, bamboo cages, porcelain food/water containers etc.
Sometimes birds are more important than dim sum.
This was the historical background for the old Hong Kong commercial for brandy in YouTube.
Old photo shows old restaurant with bird cages covered by the white cloth. Photo is scanned from the “Voice”.
That brandy product actually targeted at the rich old fathers’ next generation!
The commercial aimed at teaching customers: Please don’t mind! Drink VSOP and your birdie will shine!
Those song bird owners were generous to spend their fathers’ money on high quality birds, bird foods, bird cages, accessories etc.
Art work shows bird cages in restaurant in the past
Therefore hawkers opened their stalls and later businessmen opened their shops near the restaurants to sell them the above-mentioned goods.
Art work shows old bird market in the past
That was why the first three generations of Bird Market in Hong Kong all located near the big restaurants in the past.
Rich people might also spend a lot of money on gold fish for good fung shui or good luck.
That was not easy to bring the aquarium to restaurant.
If the aquarium broke on the way to restaurant, that was extremely unlucky to the owner!
They might not spend too much money on dogs as dogs were mostly the guards at home only.
Ladies might have pet dogs, but they seldom went to restaurants in the past.
That was why people won’t see much pet dog and pet gold fish in the restaurant in the past.
Now due to public hygiene, all pets are not allowed in the common restaurants.
Dog is waiting his owner outside Starbucks.
So Frank the tour guide’s pet, Birdie Emerald, can just enjoy apple at home and cannot go to have dim sum with Frank and Frank’s parents!
Birdie Emerald is eating cherry at home.
Frank the tour guide wants to share more interesting Hong Kong history with clients during his private car tour service
Apart from the cage bird history, Frank the tour guide is eager to share more Hong Kong history and his own story with clients during his private car tour service.
Hope can serve you in Hong Kong!
See you in Hong Kong after Coivd-19!
See amazing view of Victoria Harbor at Victoria Peak during our half day private car tour.
Visit beautiful Nan Lian Garden during Hong Kong Kowloon full day private car tour.
Visit the World heritage building, St Paul’s Ruins, during our full day Macau private car tour.
| Click to contact Frank |
|---|
 For enquiry, please contact Frank. |
