One of the things I did while in Hong Kong was check out their Avenue of Stars, the equivalent of Hollywood's Walk of Fame. The Avenue is actually on the Kowloon side, right by the river (like Brooklyn-Manhattan, but if you want a geography lesson, here's a map), so you can get a nice view of the Hong Kong skyline. When it's not foggy and overcast, that is.
The Avenue consists of a bunch of stars set in cement squares, featuring names of famous actors, actresses, producers, and directors who've worked in Hong Kong cinema. Some of the squares even have hand (or other) prints, like the Hollywood walk.
Some of the stars were mainlanders who are/were big in Hong Kong movies (e.g., Jet Li, aka Li Lian Jie here), while others were Hong Kong born and raised (e.g., Chow Yun Fat). But the biggest, of course, was an American citizen.
What with all of the people surrounding this statue (the only one on the walk) to get pictures, I didn't actually see whether Bruce had a star, but even if he didn't, it seems pretty clear that they love him here.
Then I went to Hangzhou (a small city about 1.5 hrs from Shanghai by train, and by "small" I mean "only 2 million people within the city limits, with another 4 million in the suburbs"), where I came across this restaurant. I'm not entirely sure what the liberal use of Bruce here is supposed to connote (our food is as fast as Bruce? more likely just flagrant idolatry, I suppose), but his picture is supposedly on everything, even the spoons they use inside. My mother didn't want to eat here, so I can't vouch for that myself.
Anyway, last night my uncle, who's in town every few weeks for business and checks on me to make sure I'm doing ok, that my apartment's not flooding, etc., stopped by to drop off some stuff for me. Usually this means that he has some English-language newspapers or magazines, maybe some paperwork, new gadgetry, or some tasty goodies from Singapore. So imagine my surprise when out of the plastic bag he hands me I extract.... Bruce! My uncle apparently likes this chain and figured since he was there, he'd get one for me to try too.
Unfortunately, I was already cooking dinner when he came by, so I didn't get to sample Bruce's beef and rice dish while it was "fresh." It's possible that something got lost in the reheating process, so I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt, but overall, I'm afraid to say that it tastes like fast food. The rice was nicely done (I appreciated the packaging, wherein the beef sits on top of the rice in a nested container, so as not to make the rice soggy before you actually eat it), but the beef was pretty salty. Not surprisingly, it was also clearly fast-food quality beef -- edible, but fatty, and not Grade A. I would eat it in a pinch, but I don't see craving it anytime soon; for now, I think I'll limit my Bruce consumption to movies.
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