she’s a big girl now

In order to preserve my fitness level since my bike accident back in November, when I sustained a hairline fracture in my wrist and was told by the doctor who treated me not to contemplate cycling until March, Paula and I have been going for much longer walks than we would normally do. During one such walk in the week before Chinese New Year, we walked to Ho Sheung Heung (‘village above the water’, the water in question being the Sheung Yue River). On the way back, via a different route, we happened to pass the Kung Chung Temple, a Buddhist temple close to Fanling station, which I’d noticed when travelling to the airport from Fanling and had made a mental note to visit sometime. Of course we went in.

Presumably because of covid-19 restrictions, we were unable to enter the temple itself, but I’ve mentioned this detour because we were given, without asking, two tickets for the Tsz Shan Monastery in the hills east of Taipo for a day last week. Some years ago, I’d cycled up a long and fairly steep hill to the entrance to this monastery, although this wasn’t because I wanted to visit. I was merely checking out all the roads in the area to see where they led to, but I did learn that you have to book online if you want to visit this monastery. So of course we took this opportunity to visit.

The central feature of the monastery is a huge statue of the goddess Guanyin, which you cannot fail to notice when cycling along Tin Kok Road to Plover Cove, which I used to do regularly before the start of the pandemic.

This was our first view of that statue when we entered the grounds of the monastery:

If we were to visit again, we would go up these steps:

…but we continued to the right because the statue seemed to be the main attraction, although I did notice that the guardians on each side of this temple didn’t appear to be the conventional lions or lungma that I might have expected (see below).

The statue grew ever larger as we drew nearer:

The next three photos give you a good idea of how tall and imposing it is:

And this is the closest view among the photos I took of the statue:

According to Wikipedia, it is 76 metres high, although I do think that this is an exaggeration (my own estimate was 40–45 metres). However, to Wikipedia’s credit, the entry on its pages has been flagged as ‘…contains content that is written like an advertisement’. I believe that my estimate is closer to the actual height!

The plinth upon which the statue stands is described in this article as a ‘lotus platform’, which you can see clearly in the previous photo. I took the next photo to show the elaborate patterns in the wall beneath the lotus platform:

The structure underneath the statue is a museum, and my main memory of it is that it was so dark inside—only the exhibits were illuminated, not brightly—that it took me 15–20 minutes to be able to see the floor. Most of the exhibits were of figures from the Tang (AD 618–907) and Ming (1388–1644) Dynasties, although whether they were genuine antiques or merely reproductions I’m unable to say. You can see the entrance to the museum in this photo taken by Paula:

And this is the first photo I took after leaving the museum. The monastery’s main temple is on the right:

There were notices prohibiting photography inside this temple, but I took this photo, which shows the three deities enshrined here, from a short distance outside:

You can tell that it was taken around the new year because of the kumquat bushes, which are a symbol of prosperity in Chinese culture. We also took a few photos along the side of the main temple, which you might describe as quasi-abstract:

Paula took the second and third photos.

The next four photos are general views of the area between the statue and a smaller temple facing the statue:

You might describe this as the ‘correct’ approach to the statue from that temple:

Paula also took this photo, which shows what I would describe as the equivalent of a cloister in a mediæval European monastery, leading away at right angles from the smaller temple:

…while I took this photo of the shrine inside the temple (before I noticed the small ‘no cameras’ icon on the right, which stopped me taking photos of the two figures, each about 6–7 metres high, on both sides of the shrine):

As I was coming down the stairs towards the main entrance, it struck me that it would make a good photo looking out to sea—if only there weren’t people in the frame:

But there were people, standing idly, in the frame (of the doorway):

However, I did eventually manage to get a clear shot:

Finally, here are photos of the two guards that I mentioned at the start of this report. Both have names and are traditional guardians of the Buddha. This is Naluoyan Jingang (on the left):

…and Miji Jingang (on the right):

And that was our visit to the Tsz Shan Monastery. Like the Ten Thousand Buddhas Monastery in Shatin, construction began in the 1950s, so it is not an historical site, although it is certainly interesting. According to the brochure that we were handed at the gate, the architecture here is a traditional style that was popular between the Tang and Northern Song (AD 960–1127) Dynasties, which probably explains why I didn’t see a single dragon motif anywhere, unlike, for example, Wun Chuen Sin Koon, a Taoist monastery on Ping Che Road, northeast of Fanling, which has hundreds of golden dragons adorning both the external and internal walls of its main temple. Although we enjoyed our visit, we’re unlikely to come here again, mainly because access isn’t easy. The minibus that we took from Taipo Market station merely passes the bottom of the hill that I referred to above.

the bridge of signs

I may seem to be dogmatic in some of my opinions, but in fact I do like to discover that I’m wrong about something. Take this example, from my recent post about graffiti in Fanling:

I’ve not seen anything that matches the complexity of graffiti that I’ve seen in European cities…

Since writing this generalization about graffiti in Hong Kong, I’ve discovered a location where the graffiti can legitimately be described as ‘art’. It happened like this:

A couple of days ago, Paula and I decided to visit Wun Chuen Sin Koon, a Taoist monastery on Ping Che Road, northeast of Fanling. We had been there over the Christmas period, but when we discovered that the car park was full of tour buses, we turned away—this is a place that is best visited when there aren’t many people.

Although bus and minibus routes pass the monastery, we chose to walk there, because there are plenty of paths—if you know about them. We were walking along a footpath that connects Kwan Tei North and Ko Po North, two ‘villages’ that, judging by their names and the absence of houses built according to the 1972 Small House Policy, are overspill from the main villages south of Sha Tau Kok Road.

On this path, there is a point where another path branches off to the left, and that is the path we should have followed, but Paula was leading the way, and I decided to see where she was planning to take us, so I said nothing when she continued straight on. And we eventually arrived at Sha Tau Kok Road. Whenever I cycle along this dual carriageway, I follow a cycle track on the south side of the road, so instead of backtracking, I thought it might be useful to see whether there were any paths leading off to the north.

After a short distance, we crossed a canalized river, and on the far side I spotted a locked gate bearing this sign:

Drainage Maintenance Access

No Entry

The Drainage Services Department (DSD) often has access roads to the rivers and storm drains for which it’s responsible, so I simply stepped around the side of the gate to see if we could get anywhere. Paula followed, reluctantly at first, but was the one who spotted this painting of a mouse on the bridge abutment opposite:

If this had been all there was to see here, I would probably have been happy with this photo, but I noticed that there appeared to be more artwork under the bridge. I wanted to take a closer look. However, getting down to the bed of the river didn’t seem remotely straightforward. Climbing straight down from our position was clearly not a safe option, but there was a ramp leading down from the gate to provide access to the river bed for DSD vehicles.

So we were able to take a closer look, and this the close-up that I took of the mouse:

…and this is a closer view of the artwork under the bridge that we could see from the top of the bank:

The next two photos separate the two discrete designs located nearest the camera in the previous photo:

The first image may be another mouse, while the second has echoes of the geometric designs that are typical of much of the graffiti I’ve seen in Europe, although they don’t appear to be spelling a word.

Further left, there are two shapes that appear to represent whales:

To my surprise (and delight), there was more art on the other side of the bridge support:

This is a closer view of the creature nearest the camera in the previous photo:

This is definitely my favourite image here, although I can’t even guess what kind of creature it is intended to represent.

There are more geometric shapes immediately to the right:

Once again, I don’t think a word is being spelled.

And there is another ‘whale’ further right:

I suspect that the black letters next to some of these designs are the initials of the artists responsible, but I can only guess that the regular appearances of ‘21’ are a reference to the year the designs were created.

Although there is clearly room for more art, that’s all there is here at present. However, about 50 metres downstream there is a tunnel about 35 metres long. There was a pack of dogs at the far end, so I didn’t venture far down the tunnel, but I noted that the walls are clear, apart from this abstract design next to the entrance:

At least I thought that it was a purely abstract design, but when I examined my photos, I realized that this is actually an abstract representation of the Chinese characters for ‘Hong Kong’, reading right to left.

It may seem strange to find such detailed artwork in such an out-of-the-way location (you can’t see anything from the main road), but in my last post (Blessing or Curse?) I reported how much of the graffiti I featured had already been scrubbed off or painted over, sometimes only days after they appeared. The artists responsible for the work here obviously didn’t want that to happen, which is why they chose a location that few people will see, let alone complain about. However, I feel that the art here deserves a much bigger audience, which is why I’ve written this post. And I’ll be back a few months later to see if it’s been added to.