simply the best

My favourite floral displays of the year, firecracker vines, have been a little later than usual this year, and they’re fading now. And because I’m still unable to ride a bike, I’ve been restricted to areas within walking distance of our house, so I haven’t found many new sites. Consequently, I’ve decided to confine this post to a discussion of which of the many examples of firecracker vines that I’ve seen over the years is ‘the best’.

An obvious candidate is the car park on the eastern edge of Wing Ning Tsuen, which is a relatively short distance from our house but south of Sha Tau Kok Road. This is a general view of part of the surrounding hedge on the north side of the car park:

There is an alleyway behind this hedge, and the next two photos show part of the other side of the hedge:

There is also a path behind the hedge on the south side of the car park:

Finally, there is a short hedge that projects into the car park on the north side. I took this photo on 9th February:

…and this one on 15th February:

I don’t often walk through the grounds of Lung Shan Temple, mainly because it’s located at the end of Po Kak Tsai Road, which means that such a walk doesn’t lead anywhere, and I certainly hadn’t passed through during firecracker vine season before. However, I’d been exploring a new path that led into the grounds, and I took this photo next to the temple:

It doesn’t look particularly impressive, and as I was leaving, my view was obscured by the trees below the road. However, I did manage to take this telephoto shot through a gap in the foliage:

Although an unobstructed view of this vine would certainly be spectacular, and the car park vines probably have the most flowers in total, I think that the firecracker vine at the top end of the village of Fu Tei Au provides the most impressive view in a single shot. I took this photo while walking along Fu Tei Au Road on 6th February:

…and this one on 17th February:

To emphasize the quality of the display here, this is a trimmed version of the previous photo:

So that’s my nominee for ‘the best’. Next year, hopefully, I will have some new locations to photograph.

more photos of firecracker vines
Jeepers Creepers #4: Part 1

graffiti grotto: postscript

One day last week, Paula had things to do in town, so I walked with her into Luen Wo Hui, the district of Fanling that is nearest to the village where we live, where she could catch a minibus to the station. I continued westwards, with the intention of revisiting the area around the river system where we had discovered a lot of graffiti recently. The route that I chose to take took me through a pedestrian underpass, where there had once been a lot of graffiti that has subsequently been painted over:

This, as I’ve explained in several posts, is the eventual fate of graffiti in Hong Kong, where this form of artistic expression is viewed as vandalism. However, there was one graffito on the exit ramp from the underpass:

CREW is quite a common tag in Fanling’s industrial district.

I eventually arrived at the upper reaches of the Shek Sheung River, which I walked alongside until I reached a footbridge. I intended to cross the river here, because I wanted to take a closer look at the full length of the water pipelines that I described in Graffiti Grotto. I immediately noticed two graffiti on the concrete sidewall of the river:

I wondered whether I could get down to take close-up photos. Notice the ramp in the distance in the previous photo. There would be a gate at the top, but if it was no trouble to climb over, my problem would be solved. In fact, the gate was not locked, but the graffiti that I thought I could see in the distance had been painted over:

However, I was able to photograph the graffiti that I’d seen from the footbridge:

The first features the glinting-light motif that I’d often seen in Europe, while the second seems to me to be unfinished.

I finally crossed the river to the eastern side, where I took this photo to show where more graffiti had been painted over:

The footbridge on the left carries the recently completed cycle track that runs from Sheung Shui to Yuen Long in the far west. Even though I cycle to Yuen Long regularly, I don’t use this facility, the design of which is a dog’s breakfast, but that’s a discussion for another post, and here I will continue with a tour of the graffiti in the area.

I continued northwards along the Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road until I reached the point where the water pipelines disappear underground. There was a simple but elegant graffito on the concrete support for one of the pipes:

Notice the dark area at the top of the photo. When I took this photo, I suspected that this area was an overpaint of an earlier graffito, and my suspicions were probably confirmed today, when I repeated the route that I’m describing here with Paula. The graffito in the previous photo has now been painted over!

However, I ducked under the huge pipe and found a flight of stairs leading down to a road between the pipes that I already knew existed but had never walked along before. Perhaps I would find more graffiti along this road.

And I did, almost immediately:

Both FLG (twice) and RZa appeared in the graffiti grotto. And here are closer views of the two:

There was also a third graffito around the corner to the left:

I consider this to be one of the best examples of graffiti in this area. The stylized Chinese writing on the right translates as ‘delusion’ or ‘ignorance’ and is probably related in some way to Buddhism.

This is a photo that I took of this wall looking back as I started out along the road:

You can see the stairs coming down from the right.

And this is a photo of the road ahead:

The high-rise buildings in the distance are in Shenzhen, and you can see the railway into China on the right. The pipe on the left is close to 2 metres in diameter, and as you can see, there are no concrete supports on which graffiti artists can paint their tags. However, at the start of the road, I did find more graffiti:

…and another CREW:

When I came this way today with Paula, we found that all three had been painted over! This immediately made me wonder why the graffiti on the wall at the end of the road remained untouched. Answer: if you look at the photo of RZa above, you will see a small notice on the right. When I blew up the image, I could read that the slope on which the wall is built is the responsibility of the DSD, and the painted-over graffiti had been on parts of the infrastructure of the Water Supplies Department (WSD).

Today with Paula, I began to wonder whether the graffiti that I’d recorded in Graffiti Grotto would still be there.

However, on my visit last week, I took a couple of additional photos. I climbed up onto a WSD walkway to take this photo, which illustrates why I couldn’t get better photos of the graffiti here that I’d described as being in a cul de sac:

I was also able to find a way into the area where I’d been forced to shoot from distance for the image that I used in my earlier report:

It actually looks better from distance.

I should also mention that while I was here last week, there were several men walking about, seemingly aimlessly. My first thought was that they might be graffiti artists, and I could interview them about their work, but it soon became obvious that they were WSD employees. And they were merely milling around waiting for me to clear off.

Because, today, to my horror, we discovered that almost all the graffiti that I’d featured in Graffiti Grotto had been painted over. The only work to survive is the image in the last photo and the graffiti on the wall that was the subject of the first photo in my earlier report. I conjecture that this wall is the responsibility of the DSD, which, judging by its treatment of graffiti along the river, will probably wipe out the artwork on this wall once its existence has been brought to its attention. Bloody heathens. And I thought that the graffiti fraternity had found a safe haven for their work. I was wrong.

inside the forbidden zone

Ha Shan Kai Wat, which is located 5–6km northeast of the eastern edge of Fanling, is a distinctly unfriendly village. During the past three years, many of the villages that I pass through when cycling have displayed polite notices asking visitors to wear a mask, but Ha Shan Kai Wat has this:

This photo was taken from the end of an unnamed road that branches off Ping Che Road. I didn’t come this way until 2016, when I learned that the ‘frontier closed area’ status of a region to the north had been rescinded, and I started the development of a bike ride that I named ‘the final frontier’. The route that I initially worked out passed through this village, ignoring the ‘no cycling’ sign by passing to the right before reaching the sign and continuing across the front of the village to reach a good path that led to another road after about 200 metres.

However, another hazard that I had to contend with here was a psychotic dog that attacked cyclists, including me on several occasions. The village must have received complaints though, because after a while it was always tied up whenever I came this way. It was tied with a long rope, about 15 metres, and it would launch itself at full gallop towards me whenever I cycled through the village. Of course, I knew how long the rope was, and I made a point of being just out of reach. It may have been an out-and-out psycho, but it was also stupid. It must have been seriously uncomfortable to be pulled up by the rope, attached to its collar, when running at full speed.

Anyway, a couple of years ago, I worked out an alternative route that avoided Ha Shan Kai Wat completely. Not because of the dog, or the general unfriendliness of the villagers. My alternative, which involved a succession of narrow paths, was simply more fun! So why have I bothered to describe a place that I no longer cycle through? Well, as part of my attempt to maintain my fitness level while I’m unable to ride a bike, Paula and I have been going on regular long walks, and some of those walks have taken us through Ha Shan Kai Wat. And in addition to the road and the exit path that I described above, there is a third way into the village that brings you into the ‘private area’, with no sign that tells you to keep out.

And in order to reach the road if you enter the village from this direction, it’s necessary to walk along quite a narrow alleyway (the one behind the blue sign in the photo above). This alleyway has a row of three traditional vernacular houses, which still retain the traditional painted plaster mouldings that I’ve seen above the doorways and under the eaves of similar buildings elsewhere. Naturally, I took photos—surreptitiously, fully expecting someone to see us, although no-one did. The following photos were taken from right to left as we walked along:

Although this mural is in poor condition, it appears to show a traditional Chinese rural scene.

This is the moulding above the right-hand door:

The dirty area above the images appears to be a poor attempt at repair, so I’m pleased to have captured this before it deteriorates further.

The next image appears to be a mixture of painting and moulding (the trees on the right are definitely moulded):

The three-storey building appears to have been painted over a group of horsemen.

And this is the wall above the central doorway:

It is clearly in much better condition than the mouldings above the other doors, and the wall below has been plastered and overpainted with fake brickwork.

The third mural is in a poor state, although I can still identify a small building at the top, left of centre:

The left-hand doorway also shows the signs of a clumsy repair job:

…although the painted images are still in quite good condition.

And that’s the hidden secrets of Ha Shan Kai Wat. I don’t expect to find myself venturing down any more alleyways here, although there could well be more traditional houses elsewhere in the village.

graffiti grotto

As I noted in Blessing or Curse?, graffiti are widely regarded as a form of vandalism in Hong Kong. In that post, I also mentioned not having seen graffiti here that matched the sheer quality of graffiti that I recorded a few years ago in Cologne and Manchester. That opinion was upended quite dramatically recently.

Because I’ve been unable to do any cycling recently, Paula and I have been going on long walks, and the week before last we followed the Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road that runs alongside our local river (Ng Tung River) to the point where it reaches the main railway into China, where there is a tunnel under the line (followed by one of the most difficult ramps to negotiate on a bike). From the top of the ramp, the path passes underneath four gigantic pipes that bring water from China to Hong Kong to reach the DSD access road that runs alongside the Shek Sheung River, which the Ng Tung River joins hereabouts.

I just happened to notice what appeared to be some kind of artwork through a gap in the concrete supports for the water pipes, and of course I wanted to take a closer look. To my surprise, and delight, I discovered a wall that was covered in what I would characterize as ‘proper’ graffiti:

I should point out that we no longer cycle this way nowadays—not because the ramp is difficult, we simply found a better way ‘out west’—but none of this graffiti can be seen from the DSD access road that we now follow from its start. Given the attitude in Hong Kong towards graffiti, this is therefore a perfect location for graffiti artists, free from the certainty that their work will be washed off or painted over, sometimes within days of its execution, although the hidden nature of this location deprives them of an audience.

Unfortunately, although their work isn’t being destroyed, it is being defaced, possibly by other graffiti artists. Several of the tags here have had deeply offensive sexual insults sprayed on them. I’m not going to provide any translations, but if you can read Chinese, you may not want to continue reading, although I’m posting the few images of thus damaged graffiti because I don’t want to censor the work of the original artists.

The wall in the photo above curves outwards, so I wasn’t able to include the first tag on the right:

I’ve no idea what the significance of ‘1812’ is to the original artist, although Tchaikovsky wrote his 1812 Overture to commemorate Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow in that year. The turquoise and yellow lines are clearly part of the design and have been damaged by mindless vandals, but it is the white Chinese characters that I find especially annoying, and not just because they represent the worst insult that you can utter in Chinese. The dickhead responsible has ruined a beautifully executed graffito! The next photo also shows a vandalized graffito:

I interpret the overwriting as a gay slur directed at the artist, who is probably known to the person responsible for the slur. This tag is not particularly imaginative and is not among the best works here, although the red body colour appears to have been brushed with white rather than sprayed, which is unusual.

Written Chinese provides some interesting possibilities, as the next photo illustrates:

It reads ‘spray the wall like a crow’, which I interpret as an ironic comment on the process of graffiti creation. It has the glinting light motif that I’ve seen frequently in the graffiti of Europe but is unusual here. I would have liked to have seen this when it was first painted, because black mould has seriously damaged the colours.

The next photo also shows a graffito that has been damaged by black mould. It would have been quite striking when created:

I was surprised to discover that the next image along was a rather fine line drawing of a tree:

The next photo shows an extremely imaginative design:

Unfortunately, although the light and dark orange and white highlights have not been affected by the mould, the blue body colour probably wasn’t applied thickly enough and is now much the worse for wear.

The next work should have been painted on canvas and hung in a modern art museum:

I couldn’t get a good picture of the last image on this wall because of the water pipe, but I suspect that it was created by the same artist as the previous image, because the colours used are almost identical:

This is the isolated graffito on the concrete pipeline support that you can see in the first photo above:

As you can see, this well-executed graffito has been badly defaced. The repeated four-character phrase is a claim that the perpetrator has slept with (presumably) the artist’s wife. And who is Calvin? Clearly an arrogant sod, given that he has plastered his name repeatedly across someone else’s creation.

There were a few more graffiti on other concrete pipeline supports nearby. This one, also defaced by Calvin, and possibly by other people, appears to read ‘SHaK’:

This graffito, which appears to show the sun rising behind a figure in a sleeping bag, has also been defaced:

The three graffiti in the next photo may have been created quite recently, because the colours remain vibrant. I was surprised to find FuK1 here, although it is not an attempt to be rude. As I pointed out in Blessing or Curse?, fuk is Cantonese for ‘blessing’, and this tag has appeared half a dozen times in the Fanling industrial area recently, where the ‘1’ is an integral part of the design rather than an afterthought relegated to a speech bubble. A stylized version of the character for fuk appears in the bubble below. But why has the artist overwritten part of the graffito in the middle (Rza)? I consider this to be disrespectful, especially as Fuk1 appears in two other locations hereabouts, so it’s not as if there’s a shortage of space here. FLG also appears again (see below).

I like the gradual fade from purple to pink, the orange clubs and the way the artist has separated off parts of the lettering at the bottom of this tag:

The next image was probably created by a novice, and it would be interesting to see how the artist’s style develops, although I don’t expect to witness that:

Finally, I’m not sure what this graffito is meant to represent, but every time I look at it I think that there are two turn valves set into the structure:

*  *  *

Last week, I decided to revisit this location, because I thought that I might have missed something. I had.

The first thing I did was to take another look around the original wall. There was an obvious cul de sac to the right of 1812, and when I went down it, I discovered four well-executed graffiti. They were difficult to photograph, and all but the first of the next four photos were taken after I had climbed up onto the pipework here, using the ladder that you can see in the second photo.

I think that the artist responsible for the first tag is identifying himself as being from the UK:

All the FuK1 tags in the Fanling industrial area use the same lettering style, but this one is different, with its three-dimensional effect, which may indicate that ‘FuK1’ is some kind of motto for the entire graffiti artist community here, and this example was painted by a different artist:

If my conjecture that ‘23’ refers to the year of its creation is correct, then this (and the other graffiti next to it) are very recent.

It was impossible to take a better photo of the next graffito to the right, because of the cramped location:

The final tag here appears to be someone’s (presumably the artist’s) name in Chinese), although it’s almost impossible to make out precisely which characters are depicted, a property that it shares with graffiti artists who use the roman alphabet:

The squiggly lines may be intended to represent paint running, although the execution is quite crude compared with some of the graffiti I saw in Manchester.

While I was on top of the water pipe, I also took this photo of a graffito some distance away:

I’d seen it from the top of the ramp described above, but it was too far away to take a meaningful photo. This photo is also from distance, and the next time I pass this way, I will certainly look to see whether there is a way through the concrete jungle, not least because if I can locate such a passage, there may be more graffiti here.

Returning to the path, I couldn’t help but notice another FuK1, with other graffiti, about 20 metres to the south. Paula insisted that it had been there the previous week, but I’m not so sure. As I walked towards the graffiti I could see from the path, I spotted a few more graffiti under the pipe on the left. First, another UKER:

This one could have been intended to represent a lotus flower, or the element ‘fire’:

I can’t tell whether the two sides of the next photo were executed by the same artist, but the right-hand part is an imaginative rendition of the Chinese surname Man constructed to resemble a man:

And this is the wall that I could see clearly from the path:

As you can see, there is a second FLG and a third FuK1 here. I won’t attempt to read the tag in the middle, which is something new, although it looks as though some sweat was involved in its creation:

The FuK1 here may also have been created by a different artist. The standard lettering style has rounded corners, but here the corners are angular. And it’s also standard to use the same body colour throughout, although in Fanling I’ve seen different colours being used in different examples. Here, however, both light and dark blue have been used together:

And that’s the ‘secret’ graffiti gallery that I discovered a fortnight ago. I don’t expect the work here to be whitewashed by the authorities, but nature (the black mould) will reclaim these walls in a year or two. Meanwhile, this is another location, like The Bridge of Signs, that I will be checking from time to time, hoping to see new work.