photographic highlights 2023–24: part 2

…continued from Part 1.

Over the past few months, I’ve taken quite a few photos of the construction of the (unnecessary) Fanling North bypass along the north bank of our local river, but this is the best, mainly because there was no wind, and the reflection on the river provides perfect symmetry:

The track on the right is now the only way to get up and down the river.

This year was our first time watching the Chinese New Year fireworks since 2018 (they were cancelled due to the protests in 2019, and in 2021–23 due to covid; I was ill in 2020). Many of the spectators spent all their time trying to photograph or film the display, but I put my phone away after taking this photo of the view across the harbour to Hong Kong island:

During the 1980s, I worked in Aberdeen, on the south side of Hong Kong island, and I travelled with a friend who worked in the same area. One of our running jokes centred on the number of cars we saw with windscreens full of ‘danglies’. I was reminded of this time by a truck that parks in our village:

I would say that the driver’s view is seriously obscured.

I’ve written about cotton trees before, but this is the only photo I’ve taken of my favourite Hong Kong trees this year. It was taken from our balcony and shows Queen’s Hill estate in the background:

Cotton trees have two unusual features for broad-leaf trees: the flowers appear before the leaves; and, like conifers, they have straight trunks with several branches growing out of the trunk at the same level.

There is a central garbage-collection point in our village, and on one occasion someone appears to have tried to dispose of two full tins of paint. Unfortunately, the lids came off, and paint splattered everywhere:

Two wheelie bins are still covered in spilt red paint.

In March, Paula and I were cycling along the Drainage Services access road that runs beside the Shek Sheung River, which joins the Ng Tung River (our local river) on the other side of the main railway line, when I spotted what appeared to be two small islands:

This is a close-up:

In fact, they’re probably flotsam from somewhere upstream, but from where is anyone’s guess.

A small stream flows through ‘the swamp’, and where the waterlogged area ends there is a small pool. I’ve photographed this pool several times in an attempt to capture the abstract patterns of froth on the surface, and this is my best effort:

Since the new running track in the PLA barracks opposite our house was inaugurated, there have been all manner of mysterious (to me) goings-on. On one occasion, an enclosure was constructed next to the track, presumably to monitor some kind of competition. This enclosure was completely dismantled at night for four or five days, and of course I took a few photos. This is the most interesting:

See the line of soldiers standing stiffly to attention. They’re all dummies!

In my recent survey of graffiti that I’ve recorded over the past few months, I included one example that I saw during a rare visit to Kowloon. During that visit, I also came across this example of abstract street art:

As with the graffiti, I couldn’t guarantee to find this location again.

Although I’ve been aware of koels (Hong Kong’s noisy birds) since we first moved to Fanling in 2008, I’d never actually seen one until last month. I was sitting on the roof enjoying a cold beer when one appeared on a dead branch on the tree next to the house. Naturally, I went downstairs to get my phone and took this photo:

Unfortunately, it moved its position while I was downstairs, and this photo doesn’t convey just how big this bird is.

I wrote about ‘the garden of earthly delights’, located near the start of the path across ‘the swamp’, last year, but since my survey, it has been allowed to decline. However, I did photograph this bathtub lotus pond recently:

We had a lot of heavy rain last month, and after one such downpour, I noticed a small group of egrets in a large pool of water opposite our house. However, when I stepped out onto the balcony to take a photo, they all took flight:

There are six egrets in this photo.

Paula spotted this cluster of fungi growing on a dead tree stump as we were walking through Fan Leng Lau Pleasure Ground last month:

Paula and I cycled out west to the Tam Mei valley earlier this month. The intention was to follow the loop of roads up and back down the valley, which we hadn’t done for quite some time. There are a lot of murals to be seen hereabouts (Wall to Wall, Fish out of Water), but on this occasion we came across something new. There are murals on both sides of this gate:

The words on the flag wielded by the figure on the left read ‘out in safe home’, which is a classical Chinese chengyu, or four-character idiom.

I spotted this shop window in the Queen’s Hill Shopping Centre:

Don’t ask me what they sell here.

The ‘garden of earthly delights’ may be in decline, but it appears to have inspired the neighbour on the other side of the footpath. This gate leads into the garden:

…and this is a close-up of the top half of the gate:

This is another fungal discovery in Fan Leng Lau Pleasure Ground. It wasn’t visible from the path through the park, but Paula wandered off the path and found it. The stalk is at least 30cm long, and unfortunately it appears to have been broken off deliberately:

I’d been wandering through Fanling’s industrial district on the lookout for graffiti and flame trees to photograph. I’d stopped briefly in a small garden when I spotted this truck:

I’ve seen quite a few bizarre company names during my time in Hong Kong (dating back to 1974), but this takes the biscuit.

I go out routinely for a short walk as soon as I get up in the morning. A few days ago, I was walking back along the road to our house when I noticed what looked like a spectacular sunrise. The sun was illuminating small wisps of cloud high in the sky, but unfortunately I didn’t have my phone with me. When I got home, I took this photo from our balcony:

The sun is just behind the horizon at this point, so the small clouds are no longer visible.

And that concludes this year’s ‘most interesting’ photos. Look out for next year’s collection.

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 2022–23: Part 1
Photographic Highlights 2022–23: Part 2
Photographic Highlights 2022–23: Part 3

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…

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.