brick-a-brac

The villages immediately east and southeast of Fanling are characterized by what I’ve often described as ‘rural sprawl’. Most modern village houses—those built since the mid-1970s according to a legal formula that defines maximum height and floor area—have been sited in an indiscriminate, higgledy-piggledy fashion that makes it impossible to locate where one village ends and another begins, unless, of course, you live in one and are therefore aware of your address.

However, there are some pockets of regularity, where the houses have been laid out in a rectilinear grid with narrow alleyways between individual buildings. This is the case with Tsz Tong Tsuen, or at least that part of the village immediately east of the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall, the largest ancestral hall in Hong Kong. Tsz Tong Tsuen is one of six tsuens (villages) and five wais (walled enclosures) established in this area by the Tang clan during the Ming Dynasty (1368–1644). The six villages lacked defensive walls, so it would have been natural to group the houses close together to make them easier to defend against marauding pirates and other ne’er-do-wells. Pirates were a constant menace in southern China for centuries.

In the case of Tsz Tong Tsuen, the present grid is made up almost exclusively of modern houses, but I conjecture that they were all built on the sites of older houses, which from my observations elsewhere are first abandoned, then are allowed to decay and finally are demolished and replaced.

I don’t usually walk through such places, but for some reason I decided to take a short cut last week via an east–west alleyway in Tsz Tong Tsuen. My attention was drawn immediately to the distinctive roof tree of a traditional Chinese house down an alleyway to my right (north):

Incidentally, I haven’t confirmed that these alleyways run precisely north–south and east–west, but the orienting of houses has always been important in Chinese culture (fung shui), and the layout is certainly close to what I’ve suggested.

Whatever lies behind the foliage on the left is of absolutely no interest, or so I thought, although a glance down the next alleyway to the left did appear to confirm that initial conclusion:

But I was wrong:

Although I may make erroneous assumptions, I will still look for confirmation. You may need to take a closer look at the brickwork on the left to see what I’m getting at:

The brickwork at the base of the wall is fairly conventional, but I have never seen bricks in a wall arranged in such a chaotic diagonal jumble.

But there’s more:

Of course, the brickwork on the corner of this building is fairly conventional, but there are two other things to note: the range of brick colours; and the variations in brick size. The first points to a range of different sources for the clay, while the second suggests that each brick was hand-moulded before being fired.

And if you want to see what the range of colours does to the ‘chaotic diagonal jumble’, look no further:

A point to make about the previous image is that although there is mortar between the bricks in the horizontal brickwork on the left, the main wall appears to have been built without, apart from occasional dollops here and there that I suspect are not original. In fact, if you look closely, small stones have been used to fill in some of the larger gaps!

This is what this wall looks like from the southwest corner. Note that the top of the wall is conventional brickwork, and the corner has been rendered:

This is a view down the south side of the building, looking east:

…while this is the view from the opposite direction:

There appears to be an inner wall supporting the chaotic outer wall, and the only way in is also visible, although I cannot believe that the building is still occupied. Would you allow such a creeper to obscure this much of your front door?

Incidentally, the traditional house that originally attracted my attention is derelict. I had hoped that there would be some painted friezes and polychrome mouldings to record. There would have been once, but they’re long gone.