the fun house

When I wrote about the witch’s house in 2016, I did so because it was a classic example of ‘strange and unusual’. I gave it that name because it reminded me of the house made from gingerbread that was discovered in the forest by Hansel and Gretel, who also found that it was owned by a wicked witch who liked to eat children.

However, the witch’s house may have been strange and unusual (I’ve used the past tense here because the last time we passed it, the house appeared to have changed hands, and all the external artifacts and ornamentation had been removed), but it certainly wasn’t unique.

A few days ago, Paula and I were walking through the village of Tong Hang, on the southern outskirts of Fanling, when we came across another strange and unusual house without the sinister connotations of the witch’s house, hence the name (Paula’s coinage). We used to pass it regularly when cycling ‘down south’, which we rarely do nowadays, and whoever lived there at the time was often outside and always offered a friendly greeting as we passed. We never noticed anything unusual.

This is what the house looks like now when approaching from Fanling:

…and this is the strange creature in the first of three windows that initially attracted my attention:

The following seven photos show the points of interest in sequence from left to right, with comments/explanations where necessary.

The first photo shows what appears to be just an ornamental plant holder, but notice the two tiny people, who appear to be surfing the wave in canoes—or are they just leaves?

The first thing I noticed about the walled flower bed in the next photo was the toadstools, but notice too the eggs, for which I can offer no explanation. And is that a gnome between the two toadstools on the left?

Of course, the inspiration for the toadstools is obviously fly agaric (Amanita muscaria), which is only ever red with white patches, but I’m not going to quibble.

The next photo shows a large owl perched on the house’s mailbox, which includes the name of the village in addition to the house number (a common practice):

It was only when I examined the photo that I spotted the lion to the left of the owl. There appears to be another on the far side of the door. Pairs of lions, obviously much larger than the ones here, are often seen guarding temples and other important buildings, but I’ve occasionally seen ones like these outside other houses, although they’re usually firmly on the ground rather than being mounted in alcoves above the ground, as here.

This is the door. Nothing strange here, apart from the two crescent wrenches that have been glued to it:

Personal shrines are common outside front doors, and the next photo shows this house’s version:

There is nothing unusual about the shrine itself, although I can’t identify the specific objects of veneration here. The fruit and the three cups of wine are offerings. However, notice the anthropomorphic plant pot on the top, the multi-legged creature alongside it—probably a prawn—another owl, and the two silly faces on the right.

Apart from the objects in the previous photo, there are just two points of interest in the next photo: the ‘insect’ on the left of the horizontal plant holder above the window, and the ‘snake’, which is a banded krait, probably the most common venomous snake in Hong Kong:

The object in the next photo may not actually look like a cat, but it’s decidedly feline in appearance:

Finally, this is a view of the front of the house, looking back the way we had just come:

As I’ve mentioned, we don’t often pass this way nowadays, but I’ll certainly be checking the house for new additions whenever we are in the area in the future.