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.