the garden of earthly delights

I’ve often written about strange and unusual locations that I’ve come across as I explore the New Territories, and this post is about yet another place that fits this description, although in this case it’s a site that I’ve known about for some time. In fact, it’s located in my immediate neighbourhood, and I will have walked or cycled past it scores of times.

If you follow the unnamed road that runs past the Tang Chung Ling Ancestral Hall, you will eventually reach a dead end next to the walled village of Tung Kok Wai. There is a path that starts opposite the wai (‘walled enclosure’):

This path leads across a waterlogged area that I’ve named ‘the swamp’ to Po Kak Tsai (‘poke in the eye’), and the mountain that you can see in the distance is Pat Sin Leng (‘eight fairies ridge’). The high-rise blocks on the left of this photo, which weren’t there five years ago, form part of Queen’s Hill Public Housing Estate.

There are what I would describe as private gardens on both sides of the first part of the path:

…but the garden of interest starts here:

It doesn’t take long to get really interesting:

The next two photos provide a closer look at what you can see in the previous photo:

Further along:

There are several items in the next two photos, including the yellow plastic sunflower, that spin in the wind, leading me to conclude that they are there to deter birds, except that there doesn’t seem to be anything here for birds to eat:

You may have noticed what appear to be mini-concertinas near the top of the second photo. I first saw these in ghost alley—they are aluminium drink cans that have been split vertically around their circumferences. They’ve also been fixed to rotate in the wind.

This is the view a short distance further along:

I’ve deliberately enlarged a portion of the previous photo, because there is so much detail that would otherwise be missed, including a miniature lotus pond with a single flower:

There are three more miniature lotus ponds in the foreground of the next photo, with a single flower in the middle one:

The next two photos are views looking back the way we’ve just come. It should be obvious how they fit with the previous view:

Finally, this is what you will see first if you’re coming the other way:

I’ve not tried to describe everything in these photos, but if you spot something that looks interesting, do leave a comment, and I will endeavour to answer any questions.

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