q – 37

In case you’re wondering about the quasi-algebraic title of this post, it is based on the original meaning of the word ‘quarantine’, which derives from the French word quarante, meaning ‘forty’. This is a reference to the ultimately futile attempts to prevent bubonic plague crossing the Bosphorus into Europe in the Middle Ages during the ill-conceived Crusades and is the number of days that returning Crusaders were compulsorily isolated. The idea of enduring 40 days of quarantine fills me with horror, so it is with relief that I can report that Paula and I had to endure 37 fewer days confined to a room on the 36th floor of the Nina Hotel in Tsuen Wan, from where I took a lot of photos and shot several videos, which I present here in sequence from left (south) to right (north).

You will quickly notice that many of the photos/videos cover similar areas, but I’ve decided to include them all anyway. I would welcome any comments that compare the similarities and differences between different images. This is the general view looking south (sideways to the left from our window):

Compare it with this view, which shows more of the buildings left of the six-lane urban highway:

…and this one, which was probably taken very early in the morning, judging by the paucity of traffic on the highway:

The first thing to draw my attention in these views was the large car park next to the highway, which I assumed was temporary. However, Paula, who is more familiar with the area than me (members of her family live close by), assured me that it has been there for years. This suggests that some kind of financial skullduggery is in play here, because this is a prime site for a large commercial building.

And this is what it all looks like after dark:

This photo was taken at 1.28am, which explains the low level of traffic and why there are so few lights on in the high-rise blocks behind the highway.

This is a short video of the same scene:

The foreground of this video provides just a hint of what I’ve often described as one of the minor delights of Hong Kong, although you won’t find them mentioned in material targeting tourists: its urban parks and gardens. This one, which is known as Discovery Park, is located directly below our window:

I also shot two videos around the time of the evening rush hour. They’re very similar, and I couldn’t decide which one to leave out, so I uploaded them both to my YouTube channel:

You may notice that a football match is being played on a sports ground in the distance.

Moving left, this is a view of the two apartment blocks that you can see on the right of the first photo above:

…and this is a similar view showing more of the area of water behind:

This is the Rambler Channel, which separates Tsuen Wan from the island of Tsing Yi on the far side. Incidentally, 50 years ago, this channel was lined with industrial premises on both sides and was known, rather facetiously, as ‘the Tsuen Wan Riviera’. There is no industry here nowadays, just residential estates, but the old name is preserved in the name of the estate that you can glimpse behind the sports ground to the left of the two towers: Riviera Gardens.

Here are four night-time views, moving progressively rightwards from the two towers:

Next are three views looking west along the Rambler Channel:

…and this is a video that I shot of the same area. Most of the ‘action’ takes place on the water, so it’s probably accurate to describe it as being ‘in slow motion’:

Other things that you can see in this video include double-decker buses entering and leaving a covered bus station in the middle foreground; and the line of urban (red) taxis on the opposite side of the road, waiting to pick up passengers from the ferry pier. The large stationary vessels in the middle of the channel are at anchor.

It isn’t unusual for the various blocks in a housing estate to differ slightly in height, but the estate that you can see on the far right of the first photo in the last sequence has four blocks, each of which differs by around 10 storeys from adjacent blocks. This is a night-time video of this estate:

You can also see part of one of the suspension bridges that I mentioned in According to Plan?, the one that connects Tsing Yi with the mainland New Territories, in the second photo of the sequence.

And this is a night-time photo of the same general area:

The Nina Hotel is linked by a bridge at the 40th floor to the Nina Tower, which at the time of its construction was the tallest building in Hong Kong (it isn’t now, of course):

I believe that the eponymous Nina was the wife of the local property tycoon who built the tower, which puts on quite a light show every evening:

Unfortunately, I was probably too close to get the optimum view. I couldn’t read much of the Chinese zooming upwards at two points in the video, apart from the words ‘seventy-three years’, which is how long the Chinese Communist Party has been in control of China, suggesting that this display is a hangover from celebrations of Chinese National Day on 1st October!

Finally, what was the food like that was delivered outside our door in the Nina Hotel three times a day? This is a photo of our third evening meal:

…and this is the third lunch, which we would have missed if I hadn’t tested positive for covid-19:

One of my favourites: sweet and sour pork! Ho sik (‘good eat’), as we say in Hong Kong.