then and now #2

There are many reasons why I like Hong Kong, why I keep coming back year after year, but one of the most compelling has always been that it keeps changing. When I came here to work in 1974, once you moved away from the main entertainment and upmarket residential districts, Hong Kong was unmistakably a third-world city, but three decades later, I wouldn’t have hesitated to describe it as a twenty-first century city, an exclusive category the members of which you can count on the fingers of one hand.

Of course, not all the changes I’ve seen over the past 47 years have been good ones, and this post documents three changes that I would have preferred not to see.

I featured a large area of star-shaped yellow flowers in Starburst last November:

I didn’t use this photo in my earlier post, but I was horrified to learn, when I cycled this way a couple of weeks ago, that this is what it looks like now:

This is a view from the opposite direction that shows the full extent of the clearance:

I don’t know why this entire area of flowers has been cleared, but I would guess that new houses will appear here in the coming months.

The ‘frontier road’ was in the so-called closed area until 2013, when it was opened up to casual visitors like me. Near the western end, there used to be a lotus pond where I often stopped to take a photo or two:

This photo was taken in January 2019, and here are two close-up photos that I took on separate occasions a month earlier:

However, this is what the pond looked like three months ago:

Aargh! This is just one, albeit particularly egregious, example of the environmental devastation that is being wrought in this area as a result of the construction of a new science park that is a joint venture between Hong Kong and Shenzhen. And while stands of star-shaped yellow flowers are relatively common—I included photos from several locations in my November post—lotus ponds are a distinct rarity (I know of just one other lotus pond, and the last time I passed that way, I learned that the area was slated for ‘development’, so the lotus pond there may no longer exist either).

Finally, this is a view from our balcony that I took in 2009, shortly after moving to our present residence:

The mountain is Lung Shan (‘Dragon Mountain’), although it is marked on Ordnance Survey maps as ‘Cloudy Hill’. However, I take a dim view of what I contemptuously refer to as ‘gweilo toponyms’. I saw the resident dragon once (photo at foot of page).

And this is a view slightly to the left that shows Pat Sin Leng (‘Eight Immortals Ridge’)—try identifying the eight summits—that I took two years later:

However, as I’ve already pointed out, things are always changing in Hong Kong. This is a recent shot of approximately the same view:

Judging by the architectural style, this will be public housing (the Hong Kong equivalent of council houses). I can no longer see the Pat Sin range, and I don’t expect to see the dragon again, but I do still have a decent view if I look in the other direction:

see also
Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes