the original lotus pond

The area of fish ponds between the frontier road and the actual frontier is rapidly being developed, and as a result, huge numbers of eight- and ten-wheeler tipper trucks have been using the frontier road to deliver their loads. One of the results of this exercise has been extensive damage to the road, which was never built to handle such heavy vehicles (it was part of the so-called ‘closed area’ until 2013). The result, from my point of view, has been that we don’t often cycle this way nowadays.

Another casualty of the development—or so I thought—was a lotus pond next to the old woman’s store, near the western end of the frontier road. I’d taken a few photos of lotus flowers here on several occasions, and I’d noticed that it was a popular site with serious photographers—there always seemed to be several perched on the banks of the pond armed with telephoto lenses whenever I cycled past. However, I thought that it had been filled in.

Yesterday, however, Paula and I decided that, having cycled west as far as the Tam Mei valley, we would return to Fanling via the frontier road. The western half of the road, as far as a police operational base, had been rebuilt, presumably to accommodate police vehicles, and was relatively undamaged. And there was a turn-off to the village of Ma Cho Lung a short distance further on, before reaching the most badly damaged section of the road, which I’ve likened to a rural cart track. We would follow that.

As we passed the site of the lotus pond, I glanced to my left to see whether anything remained of the pond and was astounded to see that it was full of flowers. Naturally, we stopped to take a few photos:

This is a closer look at the last of these photos:

One thing did puzzle me though. I’d posted photos of lotus flowers in a stream that runs alongside San Tin Tsuen Road, which is a few kilometres further west, in May, and I wondered why they were flowering here in November. Of course, when I checked these earlier photos, it was obvious that they were a different species. But both displays are equally impressive.

As a footnote, I’ve included a photo of a pond next to the Ng Tung River, which we’d cycled past at the beginning of our ride. It’s covered in water hyacinths:

This is a closer look at the area of interest:

One thing to note: whenever we’ve seen this display before, it’s been ephemeral, lasting no more than a day or two. We’ll probably cycle past it again tomorrow, and I expect all the flowers to be gone.