inspiring

The weather forecast wasn’t inspiring yesterday. The chance of rain, according to the Hong Kong Observatory website, was ‘medium’, which pretty much guarantees rain at some point. Paula said that she didn’t want to do any walks in our neighbourhood—we’ve exhausted all the possibilities here—and she suggested that we travel into town and climb Victoria Peak (‘the Peak’) from Central, which is effectively from sea level. Accordingly, we walked into Luen Wo Hui to have breakfast at the Fairwood branch there, after which we could take a minibus to Fanling station and thence a train to Central.

However, just as we were finishing our breakfast, it started to rain. Heavily.

“Change of plan,” said Paula. “Let’s take a bus to Tsing Yi.”

Tsing Yi is an island northwest of Kowloon. It used to be an industrial centre, but nowadays it’s an important residential area with a forest of low-end, high-rise apartment blocks. And we wouldn’t even get wet going to the bus station, which is located directly underneath the Regentville housing estate (Fairwood is located in the shopping mall that forms the bottom two storeys of this estate).

Naturally, I concurred, especially as we would have a grandstand view of everywhere we passed through en route, unlike travelling by train, from which you can see almost nothing. I was actually wondering about the route the bus would take, and to my delight it took a round-the-houses route through the eastern part of Fanling and Sheung Shui before hitting the expressway. I was delighted because although I’m completely familiar with all of Fanling east of the main railway (the East Rail line), I’ve rarely ventured west of the railway, mainly because there doesn’t appear to be much to see, apart from Fung Ying Seen Koon, a Taoist monastery that I have visited; Kun Chung Temple, which I’ve also visited; and North District Hospital, where I’ve been a patient on more than one occasion.

I’d been wondering which route the bus would take, but I was taken aback when the bus hit the expressway, heading north! I shouldn’t have been surprised though, because shortly after passing through Sheung Shui, the expressway bends westwards and is thus the most direct route to Tsing Yi.

Another surprise as the bus cruised westwards along the expressway: the skies were slowly clearing, and it began to look as though we’d seen the last of the rain. So we eventually arrived at Tsing Yi station, but there didn’t appear to be much of interest in the immediate vicinity.

“Let’s take the train to Disneyland,” suggested Paula.

“I’m not going to Disneyland!” was my peremptory reply.

However, Paula didn’t have an actual visit to Disneyland in mind either. Apparently, there is a scenic park close to Disneyland that we could walk around (Paula had been before). So that’s what we did. Unfortunately, Paula couldn’t remember the exact location of the park, and we ended up walking all the way around the outside of Disneyland. This unplanned diversion, along roads named Magic Road and Fantasy Road, took us past the entrances to several hotels, and I couldn’t help but wonder why anyone would want to stay here. Yes, the location is convenient for visiting Disneyland, but it’s far from ideal if you want to go to almost anywhere else in Hong Kong. Anyway, we eventually reached the park, and almost immediately I noticed that it contained quite a large lake:

I was amused to discover that this is named Inspiration Lake!

The plan was to walk around the lake in a clockwise direction, and as we did so we encountered very few people. I took photos of the lake at various points along our walk.

I couldn’t help but notice the large number of loose boulders along the shoreline, which led me to conjecture that this is an artificial lake.

This photo was taken looking back the way we’d just come. It shows just how well the path that we followed is paved:

The next photo provides more evidence of the artificiality of the lake:

What is shown here is not a natural feature.

We stopped briefly at some convenient benches to enjoy the view:

The lake contains an island, which you can see in the previous two photos, although it was not until we reached this point that I realized that there was an island here:

Continuing on:

What appears to be some kind of jetty in the next picture is actually the second such structure on the edge of the lake:

Although we didn’t actually stop here, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of this rather quaint gazebo:

And this is the last photo I took in the park:

I just liked the tree.

Almost immediately after we left the park, we needed to cross a road, but there was a convenient pedestrian underpass:

…and this is a view of the exit from that underpass:

We still had some distance to walk, but we eventually reached Disneyland station. While we were waiting for the next train, I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the platform:

I just liked the ironwork, which makes this station unlike any other on the MTR network.

When we boarded the train to Disneyland, which is on a branch line with no other stations, I couldn’t help but notice the Mickey Mouse windows and the upholstered seating, which is not like the hard stainless steel seats on other MTR trains. There were too many people in the train on the outward journey, but I took this photo as we waited to depart on our way back to the real world:

I suspect that Disney had a say in the design of the trains here. They may even have paid for them outright.

We did consider taking an alternative route back to Fanling, but in the end we opted to take the same bus. So did we find the day inspiring? Not really, but we did enjoy it.

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.