neighbourhood graffiti

Although I’ve seen quite a lot of graffiti in Fanling, until yesterday I’d never seen any examples in my immediate neighbourhood, which I would characterize as semi-rural. However, whenever we go to Queen’s Hill for breakfast, unless we intend to do a long walk, we always follow the same roundabout route home (we go there by the most direct route). This route home includes a footpath that connects the large area of standard village houses in Lung Yeuk Tau, the domain of the Tang clan, with the independent village of Hak Pai Tsai to the east.

This is the view of the path, looking east towards Hak Pai Tsai:

…and of course I spotted the graffito straight away.

This is a closer look:

I didn’t think whether there would be any more graffiti around the corner, but there were:

These three graffiti are considerably more complex than most of the examples that I’ve seen in Fanling’s industrial district, and the differences in style are so pronounced that they are clearly the work of different artists. In fact, I’ve not seen these styles anywhere else in Fanling, so these graffiti could be the work of outsiders.

I’m not sure precisely when we last came this way, but it was certainly in the past week, and there are spaces on this wall for more graffiti. There are other walls nearby too, so I expect more graffiti to follow in the near future. Not many people come this way, so I don’t expect any graffiti painted here to suffer the fate of much of the graffiti that I’ve photographed elsewhere in Fanling, which is to be painted over or scrubbed off. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s next.

I used to cycle along this path quite frequently years ago, but I stopped when the ‘owner’ of the land behind the wall decided to build the wall, right up to the edge of the path, which made it too difficult to stay on the path without striking my handlebar on the wall. It’s gratifying to discover that this otherwise annoying wall finally has a useful purpose!

across the border

Paula recently discovered that, as Hong Kong residents, we could apply for a card that would give us unlimited access to mainland China without having to carry any other form of identification, including a passport. Of course, we still need our Hong Kong ID cards to exit and re-enter Hong Kong.

A few days ago, we visited Shenzhen for the second time under this system. On both occasions, we’ve caught a bus on Sha Tau Kok Road, a five-minute walk from our house, which terminates at Heung Yuen Wai Port. On our first visit, we simply took the Shenzhen Metro to Lo Wu, the northern terminus of the MTR’s East Rail Line, which is just two stops from Fanling. However, on our second visit we wanted to start exploring, which is what we did. While there, I took quite a few photos, which I present here, with occasional comments.

I couldn’t resist taking the first photo, which shows Burger King and McDonald’s next door to each other, immediately upon exiting the Heung Yuen Wai immigration centre:

I was surprised to see two competing brands set up so close to each other.

We then took the Metro, just four stops to Grand Theater, one of the few stations on what is now an extensive network with an English name. Incidentally, because we are both over 65, we get to travel free on the Shenzhen Metro. All we need to do is show our Hong Kong Octopus cards, which include a photo ID, to a member of staff who is manning a separate entrance gate for seniors.

We didn’t see any signs of a theatre when we reached street level, but I was immediately impressed by this pointy skyscraper behind what appears to be a residential block:

I took the next photo partly because of the cotton tree (these trees have been flowering profusely in Hong Kong this year), although the building immediately behind does look interesting:

I took this photo because of the red projection on the side nearest the camera of what appears to be an office building:

I can’t help wondering what lies behind the blue windows.

And this is a hotel:

Quite a posh one too, I would guess.

Another odd-looking building, with the projecting bits near the top:

The main buiding in the next photo appears to be an upmarket residential block, but I took the photo because of the building closer to the camera, which appears to have had one of its upper corners broken off:

The next photo shows what I conjecture is a high-speed train, given the obvious streamlining:

I didn’t do a good job when taking the next photo. The object in the foreground appears to be some kind of avian creature, but I would like to have captured more of the building in the background (I cropped off quite a large area of featureless concrete at the bottom, and I would like to have captured more of the building in the background, the face of which is much more extensive than you can see here):

I’ve no idea what this artwork represents, but I had to take a photo:

By this time, we’d reached another Metro station, but before we headed home we thought we might as well walk around a little more. We’d spotted what appeared to be a traditional Chinese building in the distance:

As you can see, there appears to be quite a lot of construction taking place here, and what we’d thought was a traditional building is probably a modern shopping mall, judging by the McDonald’s sign on the roof.

This is a view of the same building from a different side:

The intended subject of the next photo is the tradional Chinese bell, but I had to include the building in the background because of the unusual shape of its windows:

And then we boarded a Metro train to Lo Wu. However, we needed something to eat before heading home, and we opted for a Chinese restaurant in a nearby hotel. This is the view from the restaurant that we enjoyed while eating:

After we had enjoyed our lunch, we went through immigration again and caught a train to Fanling. I’ve no idea where we will go the next time we cross the border, but the general plan is to take the Metro to a random station and simply walk around, much as we did on this occasion.

egrets in our local river

Yesterday afternoon, Paula and I went for a walk down the Ng Tung River, which I usually refer to casually as ‘our local river’. This isn’t as straightforward an endeavour as it was a few years ago, largely because the construction of the so-called ‘Fanling North Bypass’ blocks progress down the one-time Drainage Services access road that once ran alongside the north bank of the river. We were on our way home when I spotted a large number of egrets through the space underneath one of the footbridges across the river:

You probably can’t see anything on this photo, so here is an enlarged version of the relevant part of the picture:

I took the next photo from the footbridge:

…followed by a series of shots as I walked along the makeshift temporary road that runs along the south bank of the river:

That was yesterday, and this morning, when walking back home from Luen Wo Hui, I reached the temporary road slightly further downstream than usual and saw another spectacular gathering of egrets:

The bridge that you can see in this photo will eventually carry the ‘bypass’.

And this a closer view of the concentration of egrets in the bottom right-hand corner of the previous photo:

I walk along the river frequently, but most of the time I don’t see any egrets, or at most two or three. Where do they go when they’re not in the river? Surely they need to feed, and there are a lot of fish in this river. I hope to find out the answer to this conundrum eventually.