photographic highlights 2022–23: part 3

…continued from Part 2.

The last three photos in Part 2 were taken on a bike ride ‘down south’, and four days later I was cycling there again, this time with Paula. The cycle track between Taipo and Shatin runs close to the shore of Tolo Harbour—yet another silly toponym assigned by the British during their rule of Hong Kong—and we stopped next to a small artificial island close to the shore that was covered by hundreds of egrets:

Further on, we stopped at a convenient ‘balcony’ overlooking the Shing Mun River, which flows through Shatin, for a short rest (there is a convenient bench here). From there, I took this photo of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum on the opposite bank of the river:

From the resting place I’ve just described, our route took us to the most southerly point on the cycle track network in Shatin, from where we returned via various cycle tracks on the opposite bank of the river. I don’t remember why we stopped, but I took the next photo, of the way we’d just come, when we did:

The river can be seen on the left, and the pedestrian walkway is on the other side of the railings. No motor traffic anywhere in the vicinity!

When I wrote about The Garden of Earthly Delights in April, I noted that the gardens on the opposite side of the footpath were ‘conventional’, and I took the next photo, of a cluster of unidentified flowers, on that side of the path:

There are three bottle-brush trees in our village, and this is what one looked like in full bloom:

I think you can see how this tree got its name.

When I was looking through the photos that I intended to use in this collection, I couldn’t remember where the next photo was taken, but a short time later, Paula and I were walking along the top road when I happened to glance down a side road. Ding!

The bamboo on the left creates a quasi-tunnel effect.

The next photo is of a Longan lanternfly (Pyrops candelaria):

This individual is about 5cm long, including its preposterous proboscis.

The bike ride that I call ‘the final frontier’ (because it passes through an area that was part of the ‘frontier closed area’ until 2016) follows an unnamed road between the villages of Leng Tsai and Tai Tong Wu at one point. Running alongside the road is a gigantic water pipe like the ones that I featured in Part 2, and to my surprise I spotted some graffiti on the pipe. They’re unlike anything that I’ve recorded in Fanling, so I’ve included them here:

The tag on the left looks as though it should be turned through 90 degrees clockwise.

Fanling Wai is an interesting historical site in the centre of Fanling. Although wai is Cantonese for walled enclosure, nothing remains of the walls, apart from the gatehouse that you can see in the following photo, which is a view of the north side:

Did I say that nothing remains of the walls? All the houses that you can see on each side of the gatehouse have incorporated parts of the walls in their construction. Notice that there are no doors. These are all on the inside of the wai. Incidentally, the houses inside the wai are packed extremely close together, and I certainly wouldn’t want to live there. Almost no daylight. The pond in the foreground is full of tortoises—you can see some along the water’s edge in the photo, which also shows some ancient cannons to the right of the gatehouse.

‘The final frontier’ follows a path out of the village of Chow Tin that eventually reaches a dirt road. The original route turned left here, but when I recently decided to see whether turning right was a better option, I came across this mural:

I get the impression that it’s unfinished, so I will have to check it out again next winter. The mountain in the distance is in China.

I included a photo of a flowering shrub in A Grand Day Out #4, and this is a close-up of one of the flowers:

Part of the redevelopment along our local river has involved replacing shrubs with flowers that I’ve described as ‘red pom-poms’ along the river bank with these rather dull purple flowers:

I preferred the red pom-poms!

After I’d written an account of a walk around North District Park, I went back with Paula to show her what I’d seen there. And that is when I took this photo of three tortoises on the edge of the park’s ornamental lake:

More flowers, this time on a tree:

I simply cannot remember where I took the photo, although other photos taken on the same day are of subjects in my neighbourhood. And I’ve not seen any other tree like it anywhere.

I don’t know how I’d never seen this mural before, because it’s located in the entrance to an underground car park that is part of Regentville, one of three private housing estates on the eastern edge of Fanling that I walk through regularly:

I think I was trying a possible short-cut to the local bus station. The three towers in the mural are clearly the buildings that comprise Regentville.

The only reason I took the next photo, of a shop in Maritime Square, a spectacular shopping mall adjoining Tsing Yi MTR station, is because you would never see a shop with such a name back home:

Paula and I attended a trade expo next to the airport in April, and when we’d seen everything, we decided to take advantage of a free bus to Tsim Sha Tsui, from where we could walk along the waterfront to Hung Hom to catch a train home. I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this bear on the waterfront, constructed entirely from Lego:

The village of Shek Wu Shan is just a row of houses along a rough path that runs parallel to the Ng Tung River, but it does have a ‘tin house’ temple. I took the next photo in front of the temple’s entrance:

The pot in the foreground is a miniature lotus garden with two flowers, flanked by two porcelain elephants with pagodas on their backs, with a laughing Buddha behind.

Sau is the immortal who represents longevity, but this figure, which I photographed next to the path that runs alongside the Ma Wat River, doesn’t look very happy, perhaps because he was alone:

He usually holds a peach, also a symbol of longevity, in his right hand, but what he’s holding here in his left hand doesn’t look remotely like a peach! By the way, this figure is almost a metre tall.

Many of the graffiti that I wrote about in Graffiti Grotto back in February were painted over shortly afterwards by the Water Supplies Department, but the graffiti on the Drainage Services Department’s wall remained untouched. However, when I checked the location, between the main railway line and the Sheung Yue River, last month, to see whether there had been anything new, I found that the ‘1812’ graffito had been replaced by this one:

I can’t interpret it, but I do like it. Does the lettering spell ‘wisdom’?

I took this photo of an Asian long-horned beetle (Anoplophora glabripennis) recently in our neighbourhood:

I took the photo of the Hong Kong Heritage Museum above from the convenient ‘balcony’ on the opposite side of the river, but when Paula and I stopped at the same place on a bike ride ‘down south’ last week, I was surprised to spot this engraving of egrets and bamboo on pink granite as I sat on the bench there:

I’ve no idea how I didn’t notice it on our earlier stop here.

For our last bike ride before heading off to the UK for the summer, Paula wanted to check out a lotus pond that we’d discovered just outside the village of Ha Wan Tsuen, at the western end of the frontier road. We both took several photos, and this is the best of mine:

previous highlights collections
Photographic Highlights: 2015–16
Photographic Highlights: 2016–17
Photographic Highlights: 2017–18
Photographic Highlights: 2018–19
Photographic Highlights 2019–20: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2019–20: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2020–21: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2020–21: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2021–22: Part 3