easter island

In concluding my recent overview of our regular Saturday bike ride, I knew that I was tempting fate when I wrote the following:

I don’t expect to be able to add anything else to this ride, but I’ve thought that in the past and been proved wrong, so who knows what the coming winter will bring….

It hasn’t taken me long to find something new to add. Well, ‘something new’ may be overstating the case, as I will endeavour to explain.

What we now call ‘the frontier road’ was part of the so-called ‘frontier closed area’ until the beginning of 2013, which meant that ordinary members of the public, such as Paula and I, would have needed a permit to enter. It was an instant hit with us: the scenery is delightful; and there is almost no traffic (this remains the case). However, there are two drawbacks: it is too short to do by itself; and having reached the end of the road, it is then necessary to go back the way you’ve just come.

To tackle the second of these objections, I tried to find an alternative way to return to our starting point (or to reach the end of the frontier road by an alternative route, then follow the frontier road backwards). I succeeded, but it was never a popular option because it involved an extended portage section, and I haven’t cycled that way for quite a few years.

However, because I wanted to see if I could add anything more to the ride, I decided to take a closer look at that original alternative last week. You will see from the map that it isn’t possible to travel any further west after following the frontier road because there is a major crossing point into China. It isn’t merely a case of a casual cyclist being afraid to brave the traffic here, because both sides of the roads leading to the crossing are marked by impenetrable fences, and to circumvent this obstacle it is necessary to travel south to the extremely busy roads marked on the map.

I cycled through the village of Chau Tau on the aforementioned alternative, although I doubt that I would have noted the name (tsuen merely means ‘village’ and is not part of the formal name), so I wondered whether a tour around that village might be a feasible option. There is one slight problem. Lok Ma Chau Road does not carry a lot of traffic, but what there is (taxis and minibuses mainly) travels at high speed, so it is safer to ride on the pavement (sidewalk), something that I’m usually reluctant to do.

However, you are as likely to encounter a motor vehicle here as a pedestrian, and the distance is very short. This sequence of photos shows what is involved:

After about 450 metres, a side road is reached that leads into the village:

Unless you are familiar with rural Hong Kong, or with Chinese culture, you probably won’t know what this photo shows. It is an ossuary. Each of these large ceramic jars contains a human skeleton. I’m not going to go into how a skeleton can be fitted into such a small jar, because I don’t know, and to be honest, I’m not interested in finding out.

The next photo shows the first houses in the village:

Surprisingly, though, only a tiny part of the village is accessible to motor vehicles here, although there is a clear path for pedestrians and bikes:

It even begins to look like countryside for a short distance:

The cars in the second photo must negotiate an extremely devious route to reach this position, while the houses in the next two photos are not directly accessible by car:

The path eventually widens to become a narrow road:

An interesting feature of the next photo is the brown plaque next to the gate on the left. The three large characters proclaim the name of the premises (the leftmost character is universally known as ‘double happiness’), while the smaller characters translate as ‘Chau Tau village no. 278’. You probably think that there is nothing out of the ordinary in this, until I point out that village houses are usually numbered in the order they were built rather than in a scheme based on their relative positions—a nightmare for a new postman, or for anyone else trying to deliver items to a particular house!

The continuation of the road in the next photo is in fact the only way into the village for motor vehicles. This junction is marked by the blue circle on the map:

The turn to the right, Chau Tau South Road, is a one-way road:

I never cycled along this road when I passed through the village in the past, which is probably why I never spotted this:

Archways like this are not common, and this may be the most impressive I’ve seen. They usually mark the entrance to a village, but the road running beneath here is a dead end, except for pedestrians. And you shouldn’t make the mistake of thinking that this is some kind of historical monument. It was built in 2006, according to an inscription on one of the side pillars, and it commemorates auspicious events in the village’s history.

The bas relief mouldings on the crossbeams are definitely worth a closer look:

The top panel features two phoenixes, while the bottom panel has two dragons facing off against each other. The central panel appears to be a general scene of nature.

The reverse side of the crossbeams has a similar set of mouldings:

The main difference in subject matter is that the middle panel shows cranes in a lotus pond. I can’t provide an explanation for the pagoda between the two dragons in the bottom panel.

Unsurprisingly, the archway is guarded by two lions, which I’ve placed together in the following image to emphasize their ferocity and intimidating appearance:

Something that I’ve never understood is the significance of lions in Chinese culture. The range of Asiatic lions never extended so far east in historical times. And there’s an even more puzzling anomaly. Chinese lions ignore the sexual dimorphism of real lions: both the animals in my photo have manes, yet one is female (and one is male). Can you tell which is which?

Chau Tau, like many isolated villages, had its own fish pond (although it is no longer used for that purpose):

The red ‘flowers’ are bougainvillea.

The final photo shows the approach to the junction marked on the map by a green circle. The next road, Chau Tau West Road, is also one-way and thus doesn’t provide access to the village from Lok Ma Chau Road:

However, one can turn left here and follow Lok Ma Chau Road back to the frontier road.

Incidentally, the red X marks the correct location of the village of Lok Ma Chau, which is also the name of a station on the MTR network (see map) and a border crossing. Google locates the village about 150 metres south of its correct position, but that is merely Lok Ma Chau police station. Lok Ma Chau police operational base is several kilometres to the east along the frontier road.

Confused? You will be when I explain the title of this post. ‘Chau Tau’ is Cantonese for ‘island head(s)’, and of course I thought immediately of the island that is known for its stone heads. Sorry I mentioned it!