a poke in the eye

Whenever we do any cycling, we almost always ride along Po Kak Tsai Road at some point. If we cycle out east, then we start by doing a circuit of the villages of Lung Yeuk Tau; there is a good path leading across ‘the swamp’, where a lot of wild ginger can be seen at this time of year:

…from the walled village of Tung Kwok Wai to the road in question. If we cycle out west, then we finish the ride by following this same detour. In each case, we ride along Po Kak Tsai Road from west to east. However, we frequently walk this way too, and if we do, we approach Po Kak Tsai Road via Lau Shui Heung Road. And this is what I couldn’t help but notice at the point where we turn off Lau Shui Heung Road onto Po Kak Tsai Road:

Rural roads in Hong Kong are frequently named after the place they lead to, and Po Kak Tsai Road is no exception. However, North District Council has erected many directional signposts in its area of responsibility—that’s its logo on the lower of the two signs—and you will notice a discrepancy in the romanization of the second word on the signs. But notice too that the Chinese character is the same on both signs, so one of them must be incorrect! But which one?

I noticed this discrepancy years ago, but I’ve only recently decided to investigate further. Unlike in England, where there are signs on all roads entering a village that proclaim the village’s name, the only way to identify a village in the New Territories is to look for the public toilet—every village has one:

And in this case, the name is clear:

Po Kak Tsai! Lau Shui Heung is a larger nearby village.

There is only one other identifying sign along the road:

I’ve included this photo to show the remarkable concrete bastion. I can’t imagine the locals building it as a slope stabilization measure—it looks more like some kind of military installation, and the remains of the old British army base known as Burma Lines lie close to the toilet. And this is a close-up of the sign:

So the district council can’t make up its mind! However, ‘Po Kak Tsai’ does seem to be the correct romanization.
At this point, I foolishly decided to consult Google Maps:

Not a smart move. Google seems to think that it’s ‘Po Kat Tsai Road’. I’ve notified them of what is a certain error, although it won’t be corrected in a hurry, unless confirmed by someone else.

I thought that if I ran a Google search for ‘Po Kat Tsai’, I might find more information on the subject. Unfortunately, at the top of the page was a map segment at a much larger scale that identified the village as ‘Po Kat Tsai’. Not only this, but on the Google Map, the second Chinese character is also incorrect!

There are other problems with this second map, on which the red circle indicates where the path across ‘the swamp’ (see above) joins Po Kak Tsai Road. First, ‘Po Kak Tsai’ should be moved about 100 metres north. Second, in my Google search, I came across a reference to ‘Po Kat Tsai, Kwan Tei’. While it is common practice for smaller villages to have the name of a larger nearby village appended—note the sign on the toilet—there is no direct connection between Po Kak Tsai and Kwan Tei, even for people on foot. And Kwan Tei is in the wrong position on the map anyway. Although it is impossible to demarcate the precise boundary between Kwan Tei and Fu Tei Pai given the amount of house building that has taken place there in recent years, Kwan Tei lies north of Fu Tei Pai, which is marked in the correct position. Third, there is no sign whatsoever of any kind of village in the area marked as ‘Tai Wo Ping Che’. And Ping Che lies about 3km northeast of this location anyway, so I can’t understand why its name has been appended to this nonexistent village in the first place.

Perhaps I should have stuck with my initial conclusion. It is Po Kak Tsai Road, and if it hadn’t been for the misleading double sign at the start of the road, I wouldn’t have given the matter a second thought.

related posts
Signology
Mission Impossible

update
Although I didn’t expect a quick response to my notifying Google of its error, I received an email yesterday informing me that my report had been published. Here is the amended version:

I shall have to see whether I can get any more of the many errors I’ve noticed on Google Maps in my local area corrected.