an echo of farming

When the ‘closed area’ status of the area northwest of Fanling was rescinded at the beginning of 2013, it was easy for Paula and I to check out the cycling potential, because we were already aware of warning signs on the Drainage Services Department’s access roads that run north alongside the Shek Sheung River from the last bridge before the river flows across the border into China. There is also a road that branches off Ho Sheung Heung Road about 20 metres from the bridge, and in earlier exploration of the area, I’d come across the same warning sign on this road 100–150 metres from the junction.

What we found was a quiet road with almost no traffic. It doesn’t go anywhere near the actual frontier—there is a wide area of fish ponds between it and the border—but we always refer to it as ‘the frontier road’ nevertheless. From a cycling perspective, there was only one drawback: the western end of the road joins Lok Ma Chau Road, which leads to a major crossing point into China and carried a lot of fast-moving traffic, so a ride along the frontier road was an out-and-back excursion that, at less than 30km, was unsatisfactory.

Things began to change in the area about two years ago, when work started on a science park, a joint venture between Hong Kong and Shenzhen, around the Lok Ma Chau Loop, an incised meander in the local river at the western end of the road. This location had been a long-running bone of contention between China and Britain since the signing of the 1898 lease for the New Territories—the British had insisted on including the area inside the meander as part of the leased territory, and now that China is calling all the shots, I suspect that the Hong Kong government has been strongarmed into accepting the joint venture even though the territory already has a large science park between Shatin and Taipo, which is a far more convenient location for such a facility.

This development has meant that large numbers of fully laden eight- and ten-wheeler tipper trucks have been using the frontier road, which was never built to handle such behemoths. The inevitable result has been extensive damage to the road surface, with huge numbers of potholes, which led me to decide last year that the frontier road was ‘off limits’. However, the frontier road has always been one of Paula’s favourite rides, and she cycled along it by herself when I was otherwise occupied; she reported that most of the road had been resurfaced, so it’s now back on the itinerary.

And Lok Ma Chau Road is currently a viable option because the border crossing point that I referred to above has been closed since the start of the pandemic, so the traffic is currently quite light. Consequently, the frontier road has become our preferred option whenever we cycle ‘out west’. Even though there is a new cycle track connecting Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, it is extremely disjointed along the section that the frontier road replaces, and construction of the Kwu Tung New Development Area, which is similar in concept to the disruptive construction in my own neighbourhood, has made matters far worse.

Anyway, when we started using the frontier road option again, I couldn’t help but notice a gaily painted building next to the only junction with another road (Ma Tso Lung Road) along the entire frontier road:

It was also thronged with people, and when I checked Google Maps, I discovered not only that it was identified as an ‘ecological park’ but also that it had attracted more than 100 reviews. There is nothing remotely ‘ecological’ about this site, but I concluded long ago that most people think that the word is somehow synonymous with ‘environmental’, which it isn’t. It apparently functioned as a café, and it had an area where people could pitch tents. I wasn’t interested in either option.

However, I did notice the paintings on the wall, and I resolved to stop sometime to take a few photos. And in recent weeks, the site has been closed, presumably because of the pandemic restrictions, so I did stop last week, when cycling by myself, to do just that. This is a closer view of the wall you can see in the previous photo:

The Chinese script reads ‘Ma Tso Lung’, which is the name of the village a short distance up the side road from this location. And I don’t think that this site qualifies as part of the village! The characters in coloured boxes read ‘nam uk tsai’ (tsai is a diminutive, and uk means ‘house’, but taken together they probably mean ‘hut’; nam simply means ‘south’, which puzzles me, because this hut is north of Ma Tso Lung).

This is a closer view of the panel on the right:

I did wonder what this site was like in the past, and it so happens that I shot a video of the frontier road three years ago, and this is a still from that video:

A lot of trees appear to have been cut down here, which isn’t exactly environmentally friendly!

This is a view of the side of the hut facing the road:

I couldn’t get far enough away to capture the entire wall in a single shot.

It’s worth taking a closer look at these images. This rather plaintive ox always caught my attention whenever I cycled past:

The job of this beast will have been to pull a plough.

The bench is real, but the backrest is part of the painting:

The wall of high-rise buildings in the background is Shenzhen, which is an impressive sight as you cycle along the frontier road. Mind you, this isn’t a particularly realistic representation; there are actually quite a few buildings that I would describe as futuristic, even from a distance.

The next photo is particularly interesting because it includes a poetic lament. Farmers are contemplating another disastrous flood and hoping that kind people from outside the area will help them:

This image makes me wonder whether the area was once extensively farmed, and the conversion to fish ponds was a sensible option given the unreliability of the weather. Nowadays, the only place under conventional cultivation is around the village of Lok Ma Chau, at the western end of the frontier road. Incidentally, I’ve never seen geese anywhere in Hong Kong, so whether this wall is an accurate representation of what the area was once like or merely the artist’s imagination running wild I cannot say.

Here are two photos of the far side of the hut:

This is altogether more fanciful, which I surmise is because it is the work of a different artist.

There is a small pond on the opposite (south) side of the road just before it reaches the painted hut, and this is another still from the video I referenced above:

You will notice that there is nothing substantial between the road and the pond, but since I shot the video, a low wall has appeared here:

Two things to note: all the buildings around the pond that you can see in the video have been demolished; and the wall has been painted in what I would describe as a frieze that changes every 3–4 metres. The following photos show the frieze in more detail:

I think it unlikely that any more artwork will be added to the main building, but the remainder of the concrete wall surrounding the pond may be painted in due course. If you want to see this site, the best way to reach it is by bicycle. I don’t advise driving there, especially if you’re not used to driving on single-track roads—and parking in the area is very limited. However, there is a minibus service to Ma Tso Lung and another to the village of Liu Pok, both of which involve just a short walk (downhill) along Ma Tso Lung Road. Unfortunately, I’ve no idea where in Sheung Shui they start—presumably close to the MTR station—or how frequently the service runs.