photographic highlights 2022–23: part 2

…continued from Part 1.

I was walking along an elevated walkway near Sheung Shui station in January when I happened to look down:

This is a typical display by a street seller of fruit, which looks quite surreal when viewed from this angle.

The next photo shows the last bridge across the Ng Tung River before it disappears over the border into China. It is located immediately west of the main railway line into China, shortly after it is joined by the Sheung Yue River:

Although I wrote about a visit to North District Park last month, I walked through part of the park back in January, when I took this photo of a banyan. It is just one tree:

You may just be able to make out two trees in the background on the right with hessian sacking around their trunks. This is because they have been afflicted by brown root rot disease, which is caused by the fungus Phellinus noxius. The sacking has been impregnated with a suitable fungicide.

Paula and I were walking along the path out of Ha Shan Kai Wat, one of the most unfriendly villages I’ve visited over the years, when I spotted these ceramic figures by the side of the path. The figure in the foreground is a laughing Buddha, but I can’t identify the heavily armed martial figure, although it certainly isn’t Guan Gung (‘Old Man Guan’):

I’m constantly amazed by the unexpected. I took the next photo in a small park/sports ground next to Sha Tau Kok Road. My interpretation may not be correct, but the girl guide is holding two masks representing tragedy and comedy. However, I can’t explain why the boy scout is holding a coffee pot in one hand and a potted cactus in the other:

The road from Kwan Tei North to Ha Shan Kai Wat passes a large pond at one point, and I often see lotus leaves around the edges. This photo has a solitary lotus flower in the foreground:

You can see Queen’s Hill Estate in the background on the left, while the other high-rise blocks are private estates in east Fanling. The giant pipe across the pond carries water from China.

The previous photo was taken while we were looking for a possible short cut, and during this ultimately fruitless diversion, I also took this photo of a cute dragon on a grave in the same area:

The next photo was taken in our neighbourhood, in the independent (not established by the Tang clan) village of Shung Him Tong:

I don’t understand why all the figures here appear to be laughing. At first glance, the row of three figures in the background would appear to be the three immortals, who aren’t supposed to laugh, but the central figure, Luk, who represents power and influence, has been replaced by a second Sau, who represents longevity! Why?

The next two photos were taken in Tsuen Wan, an industrial area (originally) that is in the New Territories, although in practical terms it is part of Kowloon. The first photo, looking west, shows the first of three suspension bridges that we cross when we travel to the airport, with the island of Tsing Yi on the left. The second photo was taken from the same point, looking back towards the east, with the sun reflecting off one of the high-rise buildings and back onto the water:

While I was unable to ride my bike earlier this year, I investigated the paths that lead off Po Kak Tsai Road. I don’t consider this area to be part of our neighbourhood, although it is within walking distance of where we live. And I came across this brightly painted house on one of these paths:

One of the blocks of Queen’s Hill Estate can be seen in the background.

The path that passes this house eventually leads into the grounds of Lung Shan Temple, a modern multi-storey building at the end of Po Kak Tsai Road. When I decided to walk around a meditation pond, I spotted two ‘dinosaurs’ constructed out of irregular pieces of limestone:

Although the British administration initiated some imaginative schemes to resolve Hong Kong’s chronic water supply problems, nowadays most of the territory’s water comes from China via huge pipelines like these ones:

This is a view looking north, with the main rail line into China on the right. The pipe on the left is about 1.5 metres in diameter, but those on the right are slightly smaller.

All the photos of the Ng Tung River that I included in Part 1 were taken from a bridge across the river, but this one was taken from the south bank:

We never used to follow the track on this side of the river, but the Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road on the far side is now blocked by construction work.

Ho Sheung Heung is a large village on the west bank of the Sheung Yue River. It already had a village arch on the main road into the village, but this one, which marks the entry point into the village from the DSD access road, has only recently been completed:

You can tell that it has only recently been opened because of the red ribbons. It is guarded by two lions, and there are two dragons on the top. The fine details on the lower crossbeam are incredible.

What’s the next photo about? I don’t think anyone will guess:

As part of the preparation work for construction along our local river, large numbers of trees were cut down, including three splendid eucalyptus trees. However, what you see in the photo is these three trees regenerating. Bush today, tree tomorrow (hopefully).

The next photo was taken from a footbridge over the railway a short distance south of the location of the photo of water pipes above:

I don’t know where the fifth pipe came from (there are just four further north).

During the covid-19 pandemic, I never cycled ‘down south’, because although any ride in that direction is entirely on cycle tracks, it involves close contact with people, especially when passing through Taipo, but I’ve started cycling there again. This photo is of part of the wall surrounding a school in the Tai Wai area:

The entire surrounding wall is like this!

And this is a mural that I came across on the wall of a nearby cycle track interchange:

Whenever I cycle ‘down south’, I always detour away from the main north–south cycle track around the area known as Providence Bay, an area of upmarket housing estates. I stopped to take this photo because of the bougainvillea, but you can also see that the cycle track is completely isolated from traffic on the road:

…continued in Part 3.

photographic highlights 2022–23: part 1

I shall be heading back to the UK for the summer in a few days, and as I’ve done for the past several years, I’ve compiled a collection of what I regard as the most ‘interesting’ photos among the more than 2,000 that I’ve taken over the past eight months in Hong Kong. As usual, I’ve not included any photos that I’ve used to illustrate other blog posts.

My first photo is one of several that I’ve taken along our local river (the Ng Tung River) this winter (see below). This one was taken in late afternoon from the first footbridge that we encounter when heading downstream from our village:

Although there are light-controlled pedestrian crossings at regular intervals on Sha Tau Kok Road, the only road out of Fanling to the east, this is a view of the only footbridge across the road. I like the receding tunnel effect:

There is a footpath in our neighbourhood that leads from Tung Kok Wai, one of five walled villages hereabouts, to Sui Wan Road. The reason for taking this photo is the spectacular bougainvillea, but there is also a story attached to this section of the path:

A couple of years ago, I was cycling along this path. The handrail wasn’t there when I discovered the path, but now, in order to avoid it given how wide my handlebar is, I had to cycle close to the edge on the right. Suddenly, the sun shone in my eyes and…. You can guess the rest. I went over the edge on the right into a small nullah (storm drain). I wasn’t hurt, but the nullah was full of untreated sewage, and I stank as a result. My phone and camera were both buggered.

Here is another photo of the Ng Tung River, taken much further downstream. The high-rise buildings in the distance are in Shenzhen:

The next photo was taken from the same footbridge as the first photo above. You might be able to make out the construction work where the totally unnecessary ‘Fanling North Bypass’ will eventually cross the river:

Another ‘receding tunnel’ effect, this time near the end of Tunafish Road. The point I would make here is that on the right it’s Hong Kong; on the left it’s China, although the roads on both sides do continue for a short distance before encountering the border fence:

When Paula and I visited M+, a new visual arts museum in West Kowloon, back in the autumn, there was a point where we passed a large window with views of the harbour. Everyone was taking photos of the view, but I thought that this view, looking in the opposite direction, was æsthetically more interesting:

Because of pollution that originates north of the border, we don’t often see nice sunsets, and this photo, taken from our roof, was the best I could do:

At the point where we rejoin the Sheung Shui to Yuen Long cycle track after following San Tin Tsuen Road whenever we cycle ‘out west’, there is an underpass below the expressway that leads to the village of Shek Wu Wai, where I saw this artwork on one of the walls:

I’ve seen other works elsewhere in a similar style.
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We were walking along our local river on one occasion when I spotted what is essentially a makeshift shrine. The glasses probably contain rice wine—as an offering to the gods—while the Chinese note translates (approximately) as “Covid has lasted three years, this road is still closed, so you must stop here to enjoy the flowers and the wine, crying miserably for another year”:

We don’t often cycle out to Plover Cove, a British-era attempt to resolve Hong Kong’s chronic water supply problem in the 1960s, but when we did, I took the following photo after cycling along the dam (on the left):

The mountain on the right is Pat Sin Leng (‘Eight Fairies Ridge’). You can count the summits correctly here, but from other angles, there appear to be either seven or nine summits. You can also see, in the distance on the left of the photo, the 76-metre tall statue of the goddess Guanyin in the Tsz Shan Monastery.

I could title the next photo ‘Sunset on the Ng Tung River’:

There is a small park immediately north of Fanling station, and on one occasion, I was walking along the elevated walkway/cycle track that leads away from the station when I spotted three groups practising forms of kung fu. Naturally, I took a photo:

Although you often see groups practising tai chi, none of these are doing so.

The next photo is a view of the Kam Tin River with the Tuen Ma Line viaduct, which I stopped to take while cycling along the riverside:

This is a view of the river further downstream, with an unnamed tributary coming in from the right:

As you can probably guess, the Kam Tin River is tidal, and this is a view at low tide. There are a couple of egrets on the water’s edge, but there are often many more birds here. I wrote about the round holes in the foreground in The Mystery of the Holes, as a result of which I learned that they are created by a fish called tilapia.

This is another view of the Tuen Ma Line viaduct as it crosses the river, taken a week later:

Whenever we go for a walk in our neighbourhood, Paula and I often pass along Po Kak Tsai Road, and on one occasion we noticed this strange collection of objects next to the minibus shelter on Lau Shui Heung Road:

Notice the discrepancy in spelling between the two signs on the right of the photo. The lower sign bears the logo of the regional council, but on its sign in the actual village, the spelling corresponds to that of the road sign. Somebody clearly screwed up!

We don’t often see egrets in our local river, but as a result of the construction here, the water level is often unusually low nowadays. All the birds in this photo are lesser egrets:

This is a gate leading into a small cultivated plot in Po Kak Tsai. I will leave readers to form their own opinions on what the images represent:

Shortly before the border was reopened earlier this year, Paula suggested that we visit the Peak before it was flooded with mainland tourists. In addition to shooting a video of two juvenile wild boars on our circuit of the mountain, I also took this photo of Hong Kong’s harbour (Kowloon is on the far side):

While I was unable to cycle earlier this year, Paula and I did some long walks out east of Fanling. I spotted this mural of a lion, which I’d probably cycled past several times without noticing it, on the road between the villages of Tai Po Tin and Sheung Shan Kai Wat:

…continued in Part 2.

a grand day out #4

Since resuming cycling in March following a 14-week lay-off as a result of an accident in which I fractured a bone in my wrist, I’ve been getting out quite regularly, but our first ride last week was the longest—and toughest—to date.

Because of construction along the Ng Tung River, nowadays we follow the cycle tracks through Fanling whenever we ride ‘out west’. We used to take the cycle track that runs next to Sheung Shui station in order to cross the railway and expressway, but the sheer number of pedestrians—and their tendency to step out onto the cycle track without looking—means that we now take an alternative route that follows a flyover further south. This flyover does carry a pedestrian walkway in addition to the cycle track, but we don’t see many pedestrians—or cyclists for that matter, because the first half in both directions is quite a steep climb.

Anyway, once we’ve negotiated the flyover, we simply follow the various cycle tracks on the west side of town until we eventually reach the village of Tai Tau Leng on the west bank of the Shek Sheung River. From there, we follow the Drainage Services Department (DSD) access road northwards until we can cross the river and continue via the DSD access road on the east bank. We eventually have to cross back to the west side, from where we usually follow the DSD access road further north. This section used to be part of the ‘frontier closed area’, so we never ventured further north here, but this status was rescinded in 2013.

There are two large ponds on the west side of the river, and on this occasion the more southerly pond was choked with water hyacinths. Naturally, despite the treacherous nature of the descent to pond level, I scrambled down to take a few photos:

This is a closer view of the flowers:

After taking these photos, we headed south to the village of Ho Sheung Heung, where there is a so-called ‘rest station’ (and a toilet) for our first sit-down rest of the ride. We have been following the new cycle track to Yuen Long from this point, but last week I decided to follow the frontier road (also part of the ‘frontier closed area’ until 2013) when out cycling by myself. We had been avoiding this road, once a pleasant excursion, because its use by fully laden tipper trucks had turned it into a cart track (it was never designed to carry heavy traffic). However, it has been resurfaced, and there still isn’t much traffic on the road, so I suggested to Paula that we go this way this time. It would certainly be a better option than the cycle track, which is extremely disjointed along the section that the frontier road replaces.

This is a video of the frontier road that I shot before construction began here:

The video ends just as it reaches the village of Ha Wan, where we could take a break in a small garden at the end of the village, just before the road through the village joins Lok Ma Chau Road. This road leads to a border crossing point and carried almost no traffic during the covid-19 pandemic, when the border was closed. However, it’s now busy again. Shortly after joining this road, we stopped to take some photos of a lotus pond:

This is a close-up of some of the flowers:

When the border was closed, we used to cycle along this road as far as its junction with Castle Peak Road, but both heavier traffic and construction along the road now make this a dangerous option, so we turned off through the villages of Pun Uk and Chau Tau. This option eventually reaches Castle Peak Road at a light-controlled T-junction, and on this occasion there were two cars waiting on the side road. My intention had been to bump up onto the pavement on the left and use the light-controlled pedestrian crossing to reach the cycle track on the far side, but as I came up behind the second car, the lights changed, so we simply followed them until we reached the crossing, turned abruptly right and reached the cycle track without even stopping. A favourable omen for the remainder of the ride?

We followed the cycle track through the San Tin Public Transport Interchange, which had been quiet while the border was closed. During that period, we used to follow the pavement on the opposite side of the road, because there were no pedestrians, but that is no longer a practical option. However, we still needed to recross Castle Peak Road, because we always follow San Tin Tsuen Road nowadays—if we’d continued on the cycle track, we would have had to negotiate an extremely busy light-controlled junction. And this is an exceptionally scenic road, with fish ponds on both sides, that loops around the northern perimeter of the mega-village of San Tin, provides breathtaking panoramic views of Shenzhen and carries very little traffic, so it’s clearly the better option.

When we reached the end of this road (its junction with Castle Peak Road), we merely had to wait for a gap in the traffic on the latter before bumping up the kerb on the far side and rejoining the cycle track. A short distance further on, there is another official ‘rest station’, where we always stop for a short break. And it really was a short break on this occasion. Paula is very susceptible to mosquitoes, but these pests were also biting me, so we continued on our way.

The next section of the cycle track includes an up-and-over hill, but it’s one of very few hills on this route, so it isn’t a problem. However, at the bottom of the hill on the far side, the cycle track crosses San Tam Road, and the next section is extremely disjointed, crossing several roads—there’s even a significant gap where there is no cycle track. So we’ve started following San Tam Road instead. This road runs parallel to the expressway here, and it carries some high-speed traffic, but it’s quite wide, so overtaking vehicles can give us plenty of space, and we feel perfectly comfortable cycling on this road. When we reach the junction with Ngau Tam Mei Road, there is a convenient subway under the expressway, and when we emerge on the far side, all we need to do is cross Castle Peak Road (again) and rejoin the cycle track.

Before the cycle track was opened a couple of years ago, we used to follow the DSD access road from this point to the Kam Tin River, but the cycle track runs parallel to this road, so we follow that now. We’ve always stopped at the point where we first reach the river, and I’ve taken some great photos here in the past, but on this occasion there was nothing to see, so we continued northwards along the river. During the pandemic, the authorities built a community isolation facility along this next section, which meant that part of the cycle track was blocked, but there isn’t much traffic here, so it isn’t a major problem. However, I do wonder whether the cycle track will ever be restored. I’ve also been amused by the publicity surrounding this new cycle track, which touts the ‘great views of the river’ here. The cycle track is well below the level of the DSD access road, and you would need to be a giraffe to even see the river here!

Anyway, at the end of the road, there is another official ‘rest station’, this time without mosquitoes, so we stopped for a short break. Our next objective would be a bus shelter in the village of Kam Hing Wai. There are several diversions that we could have taken on the way, but I specifically wanted to detour via ‘the hospital path’, because Paula had recently bought me a new mountain bike, and I particularly wanted to see how it would handle a tricky hidden ramp:

Verdict: easy!

The hospital path eventually debouches onto the cycle track, which we then followed in reverse to reach a three-way interchange that allowed us to cross the main road and continue back towards the Kam Tin River along a cycle track on the opposite side. When we reached the river, we bumped our bikes down a flight of stairs to reach Ko Po Road. This road runs alongside the river, and although there was absolutely nothing to see on this occasion, I’ve shot several videos of egrets in the river from here, like this one:

Incidentally, at one time we used to follow the road on the opposite side of the river when heading home, but it’s quite narrow, and I found it dangerous (note the speed of the blue truck in the video). We now follow a different route (see below). The elevated railway is the West Rail Line, now renamed the Tuen Ma Line (because it links the new town of Tuen Mun in the west with Ma On Shan in the east—it didn’t originally.

So we reached the bus shelter, and it was time to decide what to do next. We could have headed home, but I wanted to do something extra before doing so. That would mean following Chi Ho Road eastwards, and as we cycled along, Paula spotted some graffiti on the other side of the river, which at this point is much narrower than it is downstream. And there is a convenient footbridge, which we crossed so that I could take a few photos:

The graffiti here are nothing like the graffiti that I’ve recorded in the Fanling area (see A Grand Day Out #3), and I conjecture that it’s all the work of a single artist. I love the various facial expressions.

And then it was back to Chi Ho Road and the start of a path that leads to the original path I discovered when I first started exploring this area ten years ago. This is a video of the first path:

Nowadays, we don’t follow the original path exactly. I was exploring a path that starts further east along Chi Ho Road a few years ago, and to my surprise I found that it leads to the original path just before it comes to an end. So that’s the way we go now, because this additonal path is quite exciting. This is a video of the complete segment:

The turn onto the additional path occurs at 5:35 on the video. If you watch until the end, you will notice that I turn left, but that’s because when we shot the video, we would then have been going to ride the five outer limits paths. However, on this occasion we turned right and simply followed Chi Ho Road back to the bus shelter in Kam Hing Wai.

Having mentioned an unsuitable homeward route above, I can say that we now follow Shui Mei Road. However, if we follow this road to its end, we would have to negotiate a busy junction to cross Castle Peak Road, so we turn right onto Mei Fung Road and head north for a short distance, until a path leads off to the left that leads us through the village of Sha Po Tsuen.

If we’d been doing the complete ride, instead of following Shui Mei Road we would have followed a series of dirt roads that lead, eventually, to a long series of alleyways that I’ve named ‘alley ballet’. However, we can still do part of this exciting sequence, which crosses Mei Fung Road, so we did:

The video shows just the last part of ‘alley ballet’, but the end seen in the video coincides with the end of the first alley, and on this occasion, instead of turning left we crossed the road diagonally to the right to ride through the second sequence of alleys before heading to Sha Po Tsuen. The advantage of coming this way is that we can cross Castle Peak Road via an underpass that I didn’t even know existed for many years!

The general plan was to follow the route that I’ve described above in reverse (except for the frontier road), but when we stopped at the rest station next to the Kam Tin River, I asked Paula whether she fancied riding through the fish ponds. This was one of my first additions to the basic ‘journey to the west’, but partly because there are so many other additions now, this is one we hadn’t done for quite a while. This is the video:

And then we were really homeward bound. However, as we approached the earlier mosquito-ridden rest stop, Paula shouted that she didn’t want to stop. So we continued along San Tin Tsuen Road until we could detour into San Tin, where we already knew there was a convenient place to sit down:

Did I mention that I have a new bike? That’s mine on the right. Paula’s is also new.

I took this photo of a flowering shrub to the right of the benches that I’d never seen before anywhere else:

At the end of San Tin Tsuen Road we would normally turn right, but Paula wanted to see whether there were any flowers on the water hyacinths that clog a small river that runs parallel to the road hereabouts. So we turned left onto Tunafish Road. We did see quite a few flowers, but they were too far away to take any worthwhile photos.

A word about the name of this road: its real name is Tun Yiu Road, but yiu is Cantonese for ‘fish’. You can guess the rest. It’s just like Psycho Road, which I wrote about in The Road to Nowhere and which runs parallel to the river on the other side. Its real name is Sai Kwo Road. You can guess the rest.

In order to avoid the major construction work along the cycle track, which is disjointed through Kwu Tung even without this added nuisance, we always use a footbridge to cross the expressway a little further on and follow Kwu Tung Road, which doesn’t carry too much traffic. Because of this diversion, we’ve recently been riding through ‘oriental garden’, an entertaining alleyway, quite frequently. We could continue on the road, but ‘oriental garden’ terminates on a road that runs parallel to the expressway and is a dead end, so we never encounter any traffic:

The flyover that we negotiated on the outward journey is a tough ask late in a ride, but we managed. And everything is flat from that point to home. A cold beer (or two) was extremely welcome. We’d clocked 85.7km for the day’s ride, so we were well satisfied.