Friday 29 May 2020

photographic highlights 2019–20: part 1

I shall be heading off to the UK for the summer this weekend, and as I’ve done in previous years, I’ve compiled a gallery of the most interesting photos that I’ve taken in Hong Kong during the past eight months. And because I’ve selected more photos than usual this year, I’ve decided to split this collection into two parts.

As usual, I haven’t included any photos that I’ve used to illustrate other blog posts, and the photos appear here in the order in which they were taken. Clicking on a photo will bring up an enlarged version.

The first photo was taken in the grounds of Wun Chuen Sin Koon, a Taoist monastery in the Ping Che area, east of Fanling. It shows a dwarfed tree that has had a knot tied in its trunk!


The next photo was taken on the same day on a road that forms part of the final frontier bike ride. Clearly, some kind of quasi-religious ceremony has taken place here, but to what end I’m unable to say, although I’m guessing that the food has been provided to propitiate evil spirits in the area. The plastic cups will have contained rice wine:


There is a small park behind Wing Ning Wai, one of the five walled villages in my neighbourhood, and the photo is of a nondescript squatter dwelling directly opposite the rear entrance to the wai. In fact, the photo itself is nondescript, and I’ve included it here merely because of the sign:


In case you can’t read it:
GOVERNMENT LAND
NO UNLAWFUL OCCUPATION, DUMPING AND EXCAVATION.
OFFENDERS WILL BE PROSECUTED
…an empty threat, in my opinion. These signs are everywhere, but I’ve never seen any other instances of them being so blatantly disregarded.

The next photo was also taken in my neighbourhood, close to the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall. I take quite a lot of photos of flowers, but this is the only example I’ve come across of these trumpet-shaped flowers, for which I can’t provide an identification:


The purple in the bottom left and the red in the centre of the photo are provided by bougainvillea. Note that these are not the flowers, which are the tiny, cream-coloured dots in the middle of the colour. This is provided by modified leaves!

There is a large pond immediately to the west of the Ng Tung River, about 200 metres before it flows across the border into Shenzhen. You wouldn’t know it was there unless you looked, because it is surrounded by trees. On one occasion, the surface was completely covered by a type of floating flower that I’ve seen elsewhere and tentatively identified as ‘water hyacinth’. I took one photo from a distance, but I was able to scramble down to the shoreline to take a closer look:



I couldn’t decide which photo to use, so I’ve included both. This display was gone 24 hours later!

Whenever I cycle out west, my route takes me across the forecourt of the Sheung Shui fire station, and on one occasion, the firemen were washing the fire engines. Although I no longer publish posts dedicated to abstract photography, I think that this photo is a striking image:


You can suggest a title if you like.

Last year, I showed my friend Vlad how to get to San Tin by bike. At one point, I stopped to tell him that he might like to take a photo of the cluster of ceramic figurines next to a village shrine. However, a woman came rushing out shouting “No photography!” I took this photo on an earlier occasion:


It seems to me to be an entirely higgledy-piggledy arrangement, with examples of the three immortals, the goddess Guanyin and laughing Buddhas, among others. However, if the pots in the foreground containing spent joss sticks are any guide, then this collection clearly has some religious significance.

I’ve included just one photo taken along the frontier road this year. I took this one not just for its reflective qualities. Note the two piledrivers left of centre. This area is in the process of being comprehensively trashed to build a science park:


An environmental catastrophe!

It’s surprising what you can see if you keep your eyes open. Back in November, I spotted a carnivorous wasp that was in the process of devouring another insect on a concrete path close to my house:


The Tam Mei loop is a 3km diversion that we follow on the return leg of journey to the west. Because we cycle this way regularly, I was able to photograph this mural, with its heart motifs, soon after it was painted:


I’ve cycled through the San Tin fish ponds regularly since first coming this way in the winter of 2018–19, and on one occasion I spotted a large flock of cormorants in one of the ponds. As always happens on such occasions, the cormorants took off immediately they were aware of my presence. “Damn!” I thought. “Missed them.” However, they circled around several times—unusual behaviour in such circumstances—and it eventually occurred to me to get my camera out:


It would probably have made for a better photo if I’d reacted more quickly.

I often see cows in and around the basin of the Shek Sheung River, immediately to the west of the main rail line into China. I used to think that they were feral—there are feral cows in Hong Kong—but I’ve since seen the ones in this area being herded.

There is something of a story attached to the next photo. Several cows have scrambled up the bank on the right, but the next one in line appears hesitant. Meanwhile, the cow on the left is clearly having none of it and is storming off in the opposite direction, while three others debate whether to follow it:


When I took the next photo, I immediately earmarked it for inclusion in this collection. However, the next time Paula and I passed this way, we had a close encounter with a large group of wild pigs, and an image of a solitary pig didn’t seem quite so exciting. I’ve decided to include it here anyway:


Only in Hong Kong! There is a casual disregard for rules and regulations here that I’ve not seen anywhere else. To illustrate this point, I submit the following photograph, which I took just outside the nearby village of Siu Hang:


In case you can’t read the sign:
NO ILLEGAL DUMPING OF REFUSE
OFFENDER WILL BE PROSECUTED
The logo in the bottom left of the sign is that of the Food and Environmental Hygiene Department, so this is an official sign.

I must have cycled past the next sign, alongside the road leading to San Tin Barracks, dozens of times before I noticed it:


It clearly demarcates the extent of the military-controlled area hereabouts, but you may not be aware of its significance: Britain’s War Department became the Ministry of Defence in 1964! The Chinese inscription simply reads ‘military boundary’.

Village arches are not particularly common—there are none in my neighbourhood, despite the wealth of the Tang clan—but what struck me about the one in the next photo, taken in the area that marks the furthest extent of journey to the west, is that it’s in the middle of a field, with apparently no village anywhere nearby!


The name of the phantom village is Chat Sing Kong (‘seven stars mountain’). The fourth character, reading right to left, is simply the Chinese character for village, which is not part of the formal name but which always appears on village arches like this.

One glance at the next photo and I can tell when it was taken: a few weeks before Chinese New Year. The structure in the background is used to cultivate flower bulbs, bowls of which are much in demand in the run-up to the festival. They are brought outside around this time to induce flowering:


Incidentally, the path on the left of the photo is part of the eastern descent, and this section had just been rebuilt—and widened—a month or two before this photo was taken. I don’t know why this was done—it struck me as unnecessary—but there is a 1.5-metre drop off the edge of the path, and I wonder whether someone on a bike went over the edge!

I was cycling north along the Drainage Services access road that runs along the west bank of the Kam Tin River back in January. As I passed underneath the viaduct that carries the MTR’s West Rail line across the river, I stopped to take the following photo:


The reason for stopping should be obvious!

Paula had to visit her nephew, who lives in a housing estate in Shatin, to pick up some items relating to her sister, and she left me to keep an eye on the bikes. The brick paving here is simply a series of parallel stretcher courses, made slightly more interesting by the use of a second colour, and although I took several photos, I didn’t expect to be able to take one with no people in it!


Continued in Part 2.

2 comments:

  1. It is a PLEASING moment seeing the photos as we have experienced a chaotic year...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. A chaotic collection of photos for a chaotic year.

      Delete

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