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.