the wow! factor

If you were to ask me what I love most about Hong Kong, my reply would be that I never know what I might encounter whenever I leave the house. Of course, this doesn’t mean that I will see something strange or unusual every time I leave the house, but it certainly happened yesterday.

Paula and I were cycling ‘out west’ yesterday, and as we always do, we stopped at the point where we first reach the Kam Tin River, just upstream from the confluence of the river with a major (but unnamed) tributary. I always take a few photos—this is a typical estuarine environment, and at low tide there are always lots of birds. In addition to the usual complement of herons and egrets, I’ve photographed cormorants and spoonbills here too, and a couple of months ago, we spotted an albino cormorant in flight.

At one time, we never saw anyone else here, but it’s recently become a popular vantage point for serious wildlife photographers armed with 1,000mm telephoto lenses. There were three or four there yesterday, and while I was taking a few photos, something suddenly attracted their attention.

“Look!” said Paula, noting the bird’s long, narrow beak. “It’s a kingfisher.”

She had expected to see a gaudy display of colour, but this appeared to be just black and white. We often see kingfishers on our local river, but they are either just perching on an overhead wire or merely flying past. This one was hovering about 15 metres above the water, then, suddenly, it plunged into a vertical dive, pulling out just before it would have hit the water, presumably because the fish it had had its eyes on had disappeared. We saw this process repeated at least half a dozen times, and each time I could hear the motor drives of the cameras around me taking several shots each second. Paula did manage to capture the hover-and-dive routine in one short video, but the subject was too small for the video to be worth posting, although she was able to enlarge the video on her phone for us to watch and marvel at.

When we eventually got back home, I was able to identify this bird as a pied kingfisher (Ceryle rudis)—apparently, the hover-and-dive routine is ‘distinctive’ of the species.

Yet this was not the ‘strange and unusual’ experience of the day!

We continued upstream as far as the first bridge across the river, where we crossed to the other side to follow a Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road. Just before the river divides into two, we encountered a large crowd of photographers lining the bank. Although we didn’t stop, the focus of attention appeared to be large numbers of mandarin ducks in the shallow water.

Our focus, naturally, was on cycling, and we were heading for the village of Shui Mei, where there is a public toilet and a shelter where we could sit down for a few minutes. I’m still rebuilding after a four-week lay-off occasioned by a serious back injury, and our next objective would be the five ‘outer limits’ narrow paths. We had done paths #3 and #4 earlier in the week, but I wanted to add paths #1, #2 and #5 this time, because they present quite a challenge—and they’re a lot of fun to ride.

After we had returned to the resting point in Shui Mei, it was time to head home. There are three options from here to the cycle track that we follow for part of the way: the short way simply follows Shui Mei Road, an option that we rarely take, while the route we usually follow continues straight on along an unnamed road where Shui Mei Road turns left. After crossing a bridge over a small stream, there is a short alleyway that leads to the start of Sha Po Tsuen Road, which is a one-way road that carries little traffic and leads to a recently discovered subway under the main road hereabouts to the cycle track.

However, there is a longer option. If we continue along the unnamed road, we come eventually to Fung Kat Heung Road, where we turn right (east). This road does lead to some industrial premises, but traffic isn’t heavy, and after a short distance, we reach the start of a long sequence of narrow alleyways. This was the plan yesterday, partly so that I could continue to monitor how my back was holding up on bumpy paths and partly so that we could add to the overall distance of the ride.

Just before we reached the start of the alleyways, Paula, who was behind me at the time, suddenly shouted.

“Turn back!”

Oh dear, I thought, I wonder what the problem is. However, while I’d been focused on the road ahead, Paula had had time to look around, and when I’d backtracked about 20 metres, this is what I saw at the top of an embankment on the north side of the road:

The two white objects looked like skeletons, but how could we take a closer look? However, there was a way to scramble up to the platform at the top of the embankment:

Paula thought that the creature on the left was a hippopotamus, but when I climbed up to take a closer look and take a front-on photo—and discovered that there were two—I thought that they looked more like a couple of cats:

The ox has had one of its horns broken off:

It’s lying next to its left foreleg.

The subjects of the next two photos are a couple of Chinese lions. At least, I think so, although it’s difficult to make much sense of these images.

Paula thinks that the reclining figure in the next photo is Buddha, and I cannot offer any identification of the statuette in the background:

Nor can I be certain of identifying the next carving, which was simply lying on the ground, but I think it’s a scaly anteater, or pangolin:

The next photo contains a clutter of smaller items. The object in the foreground appears to be bookended by two fish, the symbol of longevity in Chinese culture, but I cannot identify either the mustachioed man with the skullcap or the bald old woman on the left. There is a bas-relief of Buddha behind the old woman, and a bas-relief carving of some kind of mythical beast behind the man, as well as what appear to be several empty plinths:

The final two photos are of what I’d thought from the road were skulls:

Both appear to be some kind of horrifying sea serpent. The second photo also includes more empty plinths.

There is a mystery to clear up here. I’d already conjectured that the objects that I’ve photographed here were some kind of salvage from demolished buildings, but where did they come from? And why did they end up on the top of a roadside embankment?

I have a theory. According to Google Maps, this road, which is a dead end, leads eventually to Po Kwong Monastery. A few years ago, I cycled to the end of the road looking for this monastery but was unable to find it. However, according to a review on Google Maps—the English auto-translation is somewhat garbled—it has been demolished. So that is a plausible answer to the first question, but there appears to be no way to answer the second. Nevertheless, this whole enigma certainly fits the description ‘strange and unusual’.

The remainder of the ride home was a bit of a slog, but we did record the longest bike ride of the winter to date: 83.7km.