feral cows in hong kong

Although I spent a lot of time hiking around the Sai Kung peninsula between 1974 and 1984 as part of my job as an instructor at the local Outward Bound school, I don’t think I became aware of the herd of feral cows that roams the area until the late 1980s, when I took Paula to Fung Head to do some rock climbing. This headland is so remote that it’s necessary to camp overnight—the walk in from the nearest road takes about three hours. I don’t recall that we actually saw any cows, but it was so cold that I remember thinking that lighting a fire would be a good idea.

The problem was finding stuff to burn. Sea cliffs are areas of erosion, not deposition, so driftwood was not an option, but there was a lot of dried cow dung around. I’d read that in many parts of the world, this is used routinely as a fuel, so I thought that it had to be worth a try. I was delighted to discover that once alight it glowed like coal, throwing out a lot of heat, although of course it didn’t last anything like as long. So that was my first ‘encounter’ with the feral cows of Sai Kung. I didn’t take any photos of cows, whether I saw any or not, because my camera weighed more than a kilogram, and I didn’t carry it with me when hiking.

Then, between 1989 and 2006, I spent no more than 12 months in Hong Kong, none of it in the countryside, but when we moved into a house in the village of Sai Keng in 2006, I was equipped with a lightweight digital camera that I carried everywhere. This is the first photograph I took:

I don’t know what the herd was doing on this shingle spit, because there clearly isn’t a lot to eat, but the photo was taken from the footpath linking the villages of Yung Shue Au and Sham Chung (Sai Keng is on the far side of the inlet—Kei Ling Ha Hoi—in this view).

We used to go to Sham Chung regularly to visit our friend Tom Li (and to eat his utterly delicious pan-fried noodles), and the next two photos were taken in the woods on the far side of the wetland area that makes this village so special. I think we must have alarmed these particular animals!

It looks as if someone has attempted to remove this poor beast’s tail, presumably to try to make oxtail soup:

The next photo was taken close to Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai, the first of the Shap Sze Heung (‘14 villages’; Sai Keng is number three). I think it’s obvious who’s boss here.

We often used to walk from our house in Sai Keng as far as the location of the previous photo after dinner, and occasionally we’d encounter the herd along the way:

The next three photos are ‘portraits’, but I cannot remember precisely where in Sai Kung they were taken. However, I do believe that the subject of the first photo was the bull I encountered once while cycling along the narrow path between Yung Shue Au and Sham Chung. I didn’t feel threatened, but I do remember having a problem persuading him to get out of the way so that I could continue.

All the above photos were taken in the Sai Kung area, but I did see a small group of cows in a drainage channel in the Kam Tin/Pat Heung area a few years ago when I was trying to extend the journey to the west bike ride. At the time, I thought they must be feral, but they wouldn’t have been able to gain access to the channel without human agency, and I’ve since noticed cows in the Sheung Yue River, immediately west of the main rail line into China, with collars around their necks, so although every cow that I see has been left to its own devices, there is a shadowy ‘owner’ somewhere in the background in some cases. I have therefore included this picture as being of ‘free-range’ cattle:

I’ve also decided to reprise two photos that I originally included in my ‘photographic highlights’ posts, from 2013–14 and 2015–16, respectively: The first photo shows two buffaloes, which I photographed in the Pat Heung area, while the second is of a head-to-head confrontation that I spotted close to where Bride’s Pool Road joins Sha Tau Kok Road.

Moo!