photographic highlights 2024–25

I’ll be heading back to the UK for the summer in a couple of days, and as usual, I’ve compiled a collection of what I consider to be the most interesting photos that I’ve taken during the past seven months in Hong Kong. Also as usual, the collection does not include any photos used to illustrate other posts on this blog.

Many years ago, I was wandering around Luen Wo Hui, the area of Fanling nearest to the village where we live, when I suddenly felt hungry. And I fancied a plate of one of my favourite Chinese food dishes, Singapore noodles. I picked a typical cafe at random and went in. Nowadays, whenever I fancy a plate of Singapore noodles, I still go to the same cafe, and this is a photo of the last plate I ate there:

Several years ago, I went into a Chinese takeaway in Penrith, not to buy anything—I never eat so-called Chinese food in the UK—but I was accompanying a friend who didn’t know any better. While he was placing his order, I browsed the menu on the wall, and my attention was drawn to ‘Singapore noodles’. So I asked the Chinese man behind the counter what kind of noodles they used in their Singapore noodles.

“What do you mean? Noodles!” he replied.

My guess is that he didn’t know that there are four types of noodle in Cantonese cuisine, and the correct answer should have been mai fan (rice noodles). The noodles in chow mein are made with wheat flour.

On one of our rare visits to Hong Kong Island, we somehow ended up in Wanchai (we were supposed to be going up the Peak). And I couldn’t miss seeing an extensive mural featuring lotus flowers. This is one of several photos I took:

On the same visit to Hong Kong side, we also went into Pacific Place, an upmarket shopping mall in Central, and I couldn’t resist taking a photo of the men’s toilet:

I don’t think I’ve ever seen such a luxurious toilet anywhere else.

Sunset on the Ng Tung River (our local river):

A few years ago, I posted a collection of photos of elaborate gates leading to otherwise nondescript houses under the title The Gates of Delirium. This gate certainly belongs in that collection:

The next photo shows a shop in Green Code Plaza, a shopping mall in Luen Wo Hui:

The extraordinary thing about this display is that the shop only sells knitting materials, not dolls.

A sunset picture that I took from our roof:

…and another sunset picture looking down our local river:

And a telephoto that I took from our roof to show the progress that has been made in the Fanling North New Development Area (NDA):

I can no longer take photos like this, because the owner of the roof directly in front of the camera has built a structure that completely blocks our view to the west.

I came across this dragon in the forecourt of Belair Monte, a housing estate in Luen Wo Hui, during Chinese New Year:

I took several photos of a particular morning glory when walking past the construction site down our local river, but this one shows the most flowers:

I don’t often come across firecracker vines, which flower in January, that I haven’t seen before, but I found this one in Ko Po North, a sprawling village east of Fanling:

There is only one location in my neighbourhood where I can see pigeons, the gardens in front of Union Plaza, yet another housing estate in Luen Wo Hui. However, pigeons are almost always mob-handed here:

I can’t remember where I took this photo of a monitor lizard on he edge of a footpath. Notice how long its tail is:

Sometimes when we cycle ‘down south’ to Shatin, we stop for a rest in places that look like pleasant spots to sit for a while. We stopped once at what I would describe as a balcony that projects out over the Shing Mun River, directly opposite the Heritage Museum. I couldn’t help but notice this granite plaque, with its engraved plant motif, set into the floor of the balcony:

A few years ago, I posted a description of an outlandish garden at the start of the path across the Swamp under the title The Garden of Earthly Delights (Hieronymus Bosch would have approved). There is an equally bizarre entrance to a garden on the opposite side of the footpath that I’ve only recently got around to photographing:

My favourite bike ride, ‘the final frontier’ (so named because it passes through an area that was designated a part of the frontier closed area until 2016), passes a temple near Ping Che. On a recent ride, we noticed that there appeared to be some kind of festival in progress, so naturally we stopped to take a few photos. I particularly liked this statue:

Be sure to click on the photo to see the intricate detail.

The only way to cross Sha Tau Kok Road, the main road east out of Fanling, between that road’s junctions with Ma Sik Road and Fan Leng Lau Road, is via one of two subways. I’ve photographed graffiti on the walls of the more easterly subway before, but it was washed off long ago (the walls of the subway are tiled). I was therefore surprised to see this quite impressive tag recently:

I don’t expect it to still be here when we come back to Hong Kong in the autumn.

Nowadays, Paula and I go regularly to Queen’s Hill Public Housing Estate for breakfast. In addition to seven 40-storey residential blocks, there are two secondary schools here, and after breakfast we always have a walk around the public areas of the estate, which is why we happened to notice that one of the schools was conducting a fire drill:

Back in Green Code Plaza, I took the following photo of the central atrium from the mezzanine floor. The bright light source is an amusement arcade that calls itself CHECK POINT, and I was struck by the fact that the word ‘CHECK’ reads correctly even though it’s a mirror image:

Two days ago, we were riding along the cycle track through Taipo Waterfront Park when I spotted what looked like an interesting mural. Naturally, I stopped to take a few photos; this one is of the full mural, which appears to be anti-drug propaganda:

And that’s the highlights of my most recent sojourn in Hong Kong.

neighbourhood graffiti: update

Since I posted Neighbourhood Graffiti last month, I’ve walked past the location that I described in that post several times because I expected to see more graffiti here. I did see one example a short distance further along the path:

…but it lacked the artistic flair of the earlier examples:

However, Paula and I came this way earlier today after eating breakfast in Queen’s Hill, and we were in for quite a surprise. The top of the wall on which the earlier graffiti had been painted is at about eye level, so I’d never made an effort to see over it, but today as we approached the wall I noticed that a mechanical digger was in the process of clearing land, so I did peer over the wall, and this is what I saw:

In fact, the first of these two photos was taken from inside the walled area (see below), because it’s a better image than the photo I took over the wall.

Paula, meanwhile, had walked on ahead, and when she reached the entrance to the premises enclosed by the wall, she found that the gate was open.

“There’s a ;ot of graffiti inside!” she shouted back.

And so there was. What follows is an image of every graffito that we found here. The first four images are of graffiti on the inside of the wall past which we walk on the outside.

Because it was so sunny, I couldn’t see the images on my phone screen, so I inadvertently chopped off the right-hand side of the first two graffiti:

I’ve seen the word ‘SHOCK’ used in several locations whenever we cycle ‘down south’, and it clearly has some significance in the graffiti artist community, but none of the other examples I’ve seen have this level of flamboyant artistry.

I’m not sure whether the section on the right is part of the same tag, because the colours don’t quite match, but I’m assuming that it is.

And I’ll be back to take better pictures to replace the ones posted here in the next day or two.

The next graffito is a little more subdued than the previous two examples, but it shares their complexity of design:

I imagine that it was probably the artist’s intention, but the next example is beautifully framed by the trees on each side:

The design is completely unlike any other graffito above.

And this creation is on the opposite wall of the enclosure:

I think the word is ‘DEUS’, although I can’t see any religious significance. You can see the top of the mechanical digger over the wall.

The last two tags, towards the end of the walled enclosure, are extremely basic, but I’ve included them for completeness:

If you check the first photo above, you will see that there is an even taller wall on the right of the alleyway, which I thought was ripe for graffiti, but it may be that future additions to the collection here will be restricted to the internal and external surfaces of the walled enclosure on the left. There is room for more.

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!

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.