photographic highlights 2023–24: part 1

I shall be going back to the UK for the summer next week, and as usual, I’ve put together a collection of what I consider to be the most interesting photos that I’ve taken during the past seven months in Hong Kong. In fact, I’ve taken just one-third of the number of photos that I’ve taken in previous years, although this has only slightly affected the number of photos that I consider ‘interesting’.

Paula and I have started going to Fairwood in the Queen’s Hill Public Housing Estate for breakfast, and on the way there, I couldn’t help but notice these flowers next to Lung Shan Road, the only way into the estate for motor vehicles:

Although they probably weren’t the same ones, I kept noticing flowers here for several months!

We had also been in the habit of going to Sun Ming Yuen in Green Code Plaza for yam char (‘drink tea’), but this restaurant closed recently, and we still haven’t found a suitable substitute. The next photo is of a wool shop in this mall that I noticed after leaving the restaurant. Although knitting is quite popular in Hong Kong, I can’t explain why this window is full of quirky figures, few if any of which appear to have been knitted:

I attend the Fanling Clinic regularly, and whenever I do so, I always walk through Fan Leng Lau. The next two photos are of the crowd of ceramic figurines next to the village shrine

I took this photo (and several others) of our local goat herd back in October on the track running alongside our local river (Ng Tung River) that we now have to follow because of construction on the opposite bank:

I haven’t seen them since.

I captured this photo of a Chinese military helicopter in flight from our balcony:

One day, I was sitting in our living room when I suddenly realized that we have a great view:

There used to be a large tree covered in epiphytes that blocked the view, but it was destroyed in a typhoon a couple of years ago (while we were in the UK).

We often see large numbers of pigeons perched on the upstream railing of the first footbridge across the Ng Tung River downstream from where we live:

We don’t see them anywhere else.

There has been a running track in San Wai Barracks since British times, but the Tartan Track you can see here is a recent construction. When it was inaugurated, I thought that there would be a full athletics competition, but there were just a few 4×400-metre relay races:

Nevertheless, the entire garrison appears to have turned out to watch.

There is a café in Queen’s Hill called Lime Fish. We haven’t tried it yet, but I do like the neon logo:

Paula’s brother and his wife, who live in Canada, were visiting Hong Kong in November, and on one occasion we had dinner together. I’d never had this dish before, which is why I photographed it. All I remember is that it was delicious:

I don’t often go to Hong Kong island, but I had a medical appointment there, and I spotted this mural in a side street in Central:

I don’t know what it’s intended to represent.

Sunset on the Ng Tung River:

This is a view of Queen’s Hill estate from Po Kak Tsai. In the foreground is ‘the swamp’, and there is a good path running next to the trees, which we follow after breakfast in a roundabout way home:

Another sunset picture. This one was taken from our roof:

There is a line of bauhinia trees in the centre of our village (bauhinia is Hong Kong’s ‘national’ flower):

The flowers persisted for months.

I’ve probably photographed this artificial island several times. It’s located just south of Taipo, and we pass it when cycling south to Shatin:

It’s almost always covered in egrets.

This is this year’s disappearing perspective photo, a view of Taipo Waterfront Park:

The mountain in the distance is Ma On Shan, after which the new town that you can see at its foot was named (I can remember when the land occupied by the town was just wilderness). When cycling down south, we invariably detour to follow a very pleasant cycle track that runs through this park.

I included a photo of this creature in my account of the Tang clan festivities in December, but I felt it was so intriguing that I’ve included another photo here:

I included San Uk Sitting-Out Area in my recent account of such facilities in my neighbourhood, but this is what it looked like in December, when all the trees here shedded their leaves in a very short period:

Morning glory is a very common plant here, and I particularly like this one, which is growing over a temporary fence that demarcates what is currently the only public footpath alongside our local river:

…continued in Part 2 (link not yet active).

hong kong graffiti, 2023–24

I haven’t discovered any major new graffiti locations during my most recent sojourn in Hong Kong, but I have found new examples in old locations, especially in Fanling’s industrial zone. Unfortunately, much of what I’m recording in this post has already been painted over or washed off in a kind of reverse vandalism.

Just a day or two after returning to Hong Kong in October, I made a point of checking out the two subways that connect the residential area of Luen Wo Hui on the north side of Sha Tau Kok Road with the industrial area, because I’d seen quite a lot of graffiti on the walls of the exit ramps on the industrial side in the past. This is what I found:

The first image was painted on the wall of the side exit ramp of the more easterly of the two subways, while the second image was painted on the side wall of the straight-ahead exit ramp of the more westerly subway. Obviously, the two tags are identical, indicating that they were executed by the same person. The second image was soon washed off, but curiously, the first image survived for many more weeks before suffering the same fate.

I found just one new example of ‘FUK1’, which was in a different style to earlier examples:

This photo shows its location relative to that of the first tag above, which was located at the bottom of the ramp:

It too has subsequently been washed off. This wall was once covered in graffiti, from top to bottom.

The next four graffiti were discovered on the walls of an underpass on the Drainage Services access road that runs alongside the Shek Sheung River:

They don’t reflect the styles of anything else I’ve photographed in the past, which may be due to the fact that this access road was located in the so-called ‘frontier closed area’ until 2013, and I suspect that not many people pass this way even now, making it much less likely that graffiti here will be quickly removed.

The next five graffiti were found on the wall that a few years ago was the scene of the most impressive graffiti that I’ve recorded in Hong Kong (see Physical Graffiti):

Although these three tags are stylistically similar, two have different signatures. I’ve seen ‘XEME’ before in other locations. The next two are almost certainly by the same artist. The colour schemes are similar, and the signature, ‘HBS’, is the same:

The next graffito is the only one I’ve seen on the walls of a subway crossing Sha Tau Kok Road on the residential side:

It still hasn’t been scrubbed off after several months.

This graffito appeared on the wall of an industrial building on Sha Tau Kok Road just last month:

I spotted these graffiti during one of my rare visits to Kowloon. I doubt that I could find the location again:

Whenever we cycle out west, we normally follow the cycle track that runs alongside Sha Tau Kok Road, but the cycle track between the Lung Yeuk Tau turnoff and the junction with Ma Sik Road has been consumed by major construction work as part of the Fanling North New Development Area. There is still a through path, but it isn’t a lot of fun to ride, and in any case we are supposed to dismount and push our bikes. Needless to say, however, we have a perfectly acceptable ride-around, and the first time we followed this option, I spotted these two very basic tags on an industrial building:

If I’m in the area, I invariably stop for a short break in On Lok Tsuen Garden, which is located next to Sha Tau Kok Road (On Lok is a ‘ghost’ village—it no longer exists, but the name is preserved in the names of roads and this small park). On one such rest stop, I spotted the next graffito on the wall of an industrial building adjoining the garden:

Although it appeared just a couple of months ago, it doesn’t seem to have weathered particularly well.

Most of the graffiti that I’ve seen in the industrial zone are on the walls of cross lanes, but the next graffito is on a corrugated fence on On Kui Street, a major thoroughfare through the area:

The final four photos in this collection show graffiti in a cross lane behind the camera in the previous photo:

The robotic face is a common motif that I’ve seen in several locations, but I particularly like the skateboarder:

I’ve photographed graffiti on this wall before, but like the two previous images, these are new:

And that concludes my survey of graffiti that I’ve seen during the past seven months in Hong Kong. However, Paula and I will be going to Toronto in August for a family wedding, and I will be on the lookout for graffiti there during our visit.

cycling in the sticks

Yesterday, Paula and I cycled down to Shatin, where there is an extensive network of dedicated cycle tracks. The plan was to check out some of these tracks that we’d never cycled along before, but I also wanted to photograph a mural that we’d cycled past last week without stopping. This photo was taken from the northernmost bridge across the Shing Mun River that carries a cycle track:

It isn’t obvious from this photo, but there is a cycle track running along the riverbank here. The existence of a major highway directly behind the cycle track is indicated by the road sign.

It isn’t possible to get far enough away to capture the entire mural in a single photo, so I’ve arranged the following photos in order from left to right so that you can get some idea of the layout of the imagery.

This is the left-hand section of the mural:

…and this is a closer view of the left-hand end:

I didn’t notice the waterfall and lake when taking the photos, and I have no idea of the intended purpose of the vertical columns, whether they are supporting the sky or the highway above and behind the mural.

This is the central section:

It may not be obvious, but there are two monkeys in the background that are also riding bicycles. I did think that they could have been intended to be bears, except that there are no bears in Hong Kong, while macaques are indigenous, although I haven’t seen one for quite a few years. This is a closer look at one of them:

This is the right-hand section of the mural:

…and this is a closer view of the right-hand end:

Notice that the ‘columns’ extend all the way to the corner where the mural bends forward towards the cycle track, which isn’t the case at the left-hand end.

I imagine that this mural is intended to celebrate cycling in Hong Kong, although when we cycle along this track there isn’t a lot of traffic. However, we never come this way on weekends and public holidays nowadays, because based on our experience more than a decade ago, when we used to cycle to Sham Chung on the Sai Kung Peninsula, all the cycle tracks hereabouts are literally clogged with cyclists, and it isn’t a lot of fun to have to navigate a way through.