journey to the west: the outer limits

I couldn’t do journey to the west last winter because of a succession of health problems, but Paula and I have already done this challenging ride together four times this winter. On the first occasion, we found that at one point the usual route was blocked. A new road had been under construction two years ago—a road to nowhere, it seemed to me—but it has now been completed:

The route we used to follow came down this road from a point just around the corner in the distance and then crossed the bridge over the storm drain on the right of this photo:

The road just left of the parked car was the continuation of the route.

We could have lifted our bikes over the crash barrier, but I thought: let’s see where this road leads to. I was right! It did lead nowhere, but just before it came to an end, there was a rough dirt road leading off to the right. It did seem to be merely providing access to a number of quasi-industrial sites, but you will never know for sure unless you check it out.

However, it wasn’t long before it too came to an end:

“Oh! look,” I said. “There’s a path”:

You don’t just assume that there are no forward options merely because motor vehicles can go no further (the path is directly in front of me in this image).

Because I’m left-handed, unless there’s a compelling reason to choose otherwise, I will always turn left when faced with a choice. However, the left-hand option merely leads to someone’s house; but the tricky right turn does provide an exit:

This is a strange path, with abrupt changes of direction that don’t appear to make any sense, although I’m sure there is a reason. At one point, there is a junction at which the obvious choice is ‘left’, simply because a right turn here points back towards the road, which suggests that it’s probably a dead end, because I’ve not seen any paths emerging onto ‘the road to nowhere’:

Soon after this junction, I recognized that we were approaching the narrow path that we recorded in YouTube video ‘journey to the west: narrow path #2’. The first two times we came this way, we turned right to follow that path, but then I thought that it would make a better ride if we turned left here instead and followed the original route backwards:

Unfortunately, the turn here is quite tricky, and when we tried to shoot a video, the first time we tried this option, Paula toppled over into the bushes on the left. She wasn’t hurt, fortunately, but the video of the incident will not be published!

However, we did manage to shoot a video last weekend:

It leads eventually to another cluster of quasi-industrial units, and there is a turn to a small village around 4:50 on the video, but it doesn’t lead anywhere else.

Close to where this video ends, I knew from earlier explorations in the area that there was a short Drainage Services access path running alongside a large storm drain, and further exploration seemed like a good idea. When this path came to an end, there was a rather broken path running across at right angles:

I opted to turn left here partly because turning right looked difficult because of the tight turn onto a steep ramp, even though it was probably heading in a more useful direction, and partly because I’d spotted what looked like a promising path on the other side of the storm drain. That path can be seen leading straight on in the following image, which is a still from the second video that we shot last weekend:

We usually shoot videos only of already established segments, but this path looked so good that I thought we might be able to record a first exploration of a new path. It didn’t work out that way. The path is indeed well made, unlike the broken paths that we more frequently encounter, and it goes a long way before reaching a fork:

The right-hand option is the one I chose on this occasion, but it eventually came to an end. A foray down the left-hand option had the same result. In both cases, an ‘organic’ farm was in the process of being established (I placed ‘organic’ in quote marks because I’m skeptical that any official accreditation will have been sought).

Because this attempt to record a first exploration of a new path ended in failure, it didn’t occur to me to try again with a straight-on run at the steep ramp mentioned above:

…but despite many paths and alleyways turning off the path that I chose to follow, which I ignored, eventually it reached a road, and we had established a new addition to journey to the west. This is the subject of the second video:

This video was recorded on only the second time that we followed this path, and I wasn’t sure, because of all the possible options, that I could repeat the route exactly. At some stage, however, I’m going to have to check out whether any of the paths joining this one lead anywhere useful. The main problem is that I will already have 35km on the clock when I reach this location, with a further 45km to get back to Fanling—if I include fish pond alley and the Tam Mei loop, both of which I consider unmissable—so my enthusiasm for further exploration in this area is likely to be quite dim.

another recently uploaded journey to the west video
This video follows the outward section of the journey from the summit of Ki Lun Shan Au (Saddle Pass) to the point where we stop to remove our sunglasses before passing through the PLA’s San Tin Barracks, just in case we arouse suspicion by continuing to wear them. The sharp left turn at the bottom of the hill is the start of accidental tourists, so named because when we attempted to shoot a video of a link path in this area, Paula missed the turn left at 3:09 (a right turn when coming in the opposite direction):

This section is an example of a surprisingly common phenomenon: a segment that we now follow in the opposite direction to that followed at the time of its original discovery.

hidden history

When I’m not with her, Paula frequently sends me copies of photographs that she has taken. This happened during the summer, when she sent me a couple of photos of a Hindu temple within walking distance of our house that she’d been shown by some of her cycling friends. I was incredulous. A Hindu temple in Hong Kong? Near our house?

Naturally, I was keen to see for myself, but Paula told me that because the access path is overgrown, there are a lot of mosquitoes, so it seemed sensible to wait until it was too cold for these annoying little pests before taking a look. Last Friday, it was too cold for both cycling and mosquitoes, so I asked Paula to show me the temple.

I frequently cycle along Po Kak Tsai Road, and as with everywhere else, I looked down side roads and paths to see whether they led anywhere. Sometimes I would have to go down the road or path, but in this case, there didn’t seem any point:

This photo was taken when I visited the site, but it was a much more obvious dead end when I first passed this way. The figure in the distance here is emerging from a colossal building site, where a large number of high-rise residential blocks are being built. From the architectural style, these blocks appear to be intended for public housing.

And there is a path at the end of the original road:

The next photo shows the continuation of the path to the right of the temporary construction barrier seen in the previous photo:

The way is straight ahead:

It follows the fence line enclosing the building site and is both steep and treacherous underfoot (loose grit):

I found it necessary to hold onto the fence most of the time!

…and it continues upwards for quite some distance:

This, finally, was my first view of the temple:

It may seem from this photo that it’s a simple rectangular structure with a steeply pitched roof, but the actual floor plan is hexagonal, with doors on five sides. There is also a narrow, pointed window above each doorway:

…and there is a six-pointed star inset into the floor of the temple:

The next photo shows a raised platform on the side of the hexagon without a door:

It once housed the temple’s altar (the red wall/ceiling on this side of the temple is immediately suggestive).

Any means of access to the temple when it was still in use has now been reclaimed by the jungle, so, having seen everything there is to see, we proceeded to descend the steep access path, hanging onto the fence at every step.

However, between the second and third photos above, a concrete ‘road’ leads off to the left:

We couldn’t head off home without seeing to where it might lead! The twisted barrier on the left implies that this might have once been an entrance to whatever lies within, and there is still a security fence out of sight to the left.

We eventually came across three odd buildings, the purpose of which we could only guess:

Our guess is that they were once used to house animals, but they seemed much too small for those animals to have been horses.

And, despite its bizarre appearance, there is absolutely nothing that you can see now that identifies the temple as a religious building. However, there is a plaque next to the first doorway that provides some useful history. It was built in the 1960s (in reinforced concrete) for the benefit of the Gurkha regiment that was stationed here, because what I’ve described here is all that remains of the British Army base known as Burma Lines (formerly Queen’s Hill Camp).

The temple’s shape is intended to mimic that of the lotus, which represents beauty and holiness in Hinduism. The temple was dedicated to Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction, which somehow seems appropriate, given the nature of its patrons. I have only one personal experience of these hard-as-nails warriors. In the early 1980s, I used to take part in orienteering competitions organized jointly by the police and army. I can still recall a complaint by the then commandant of the Police Cadet Training School:

The [expletive] Gurkhas are running in straight lines again [on a compass bearing]!

I’d learned years ago that however tempting an apparent shortcut, you should stick to the paths because you would be ripped to shreds by the undergrowth. The Gurkhas never did. And they won every competition!

The temple has been accorded Grade 3 preservation status. The entire base was abandoned by the British Army in 1996, which may explain why it was never occupied by the PLA following the 1997 handover.

other posts in this series
Hidden History #2.
Hidden History #3.
Hidden History #4.
Hidden History #5.
Hidden History #6

banana republics

I imagine that most people will have some idea of what constitutes a banana republic. Countries such as Zimbabwe, which was ruled by a geriatric dictator for decades, or Venezuela, which despite huge oil reserves has seen a mass exodus of its population following the misrule of an incompetent demagogue backed by the country’s military, or Guatemala, where violent street gangs dominate the social landscape. There may not be a hard and fast definition, but an element of misrule would form part of that definition.

This leads me to what may, at first glance, seem like a mere trivia question: what is the world’s largest banana republic? I nominate the United States of America! This may appear to be an utterly outrageous assertion, but take a closer look. The following table presents a hypothetical situation, but it is an attempt to explain what is happening with increasing frequency in states where the Republican Party controls the legislature:

In this hypothetical ‘state’, which returns ten members to the House of Representatives, there are 1,000 eligible voters, 600 of whom habitually vote for the Democratic Party and 400 for the Republican Party (first row). However, the way district boundaries have been drawn—and redrawn—78 Democratic voters have been located in each of four districts (second row). This leaves just 288 voters to be divided between six districts (48 per district), while there are 312 voters, 52 in each of the six districts, who will vote Republican (fourth row). The result is that the Republican Party has six representatives in Congress, while the Democratic Party has just four. And a map of the congressional districts looks like a colony of sea urchins on steroids. There’s a word for this: it’s called gerrymandering.

If this sounds outrageous, it is. But there’s more. Poor people are more likely to vote for a Democratic candidate, so polling stations are frequently located in places that are not easy to reach by people who don’t have a car. Also, in order to make it more difficult for poor people to vote, Republican-controlled states often require potential voters to produce ID such as a driving licence or passport, both of which poor people are disproportionately less likely to possess, before being allowed to cast their ballots.

And what about the most extreme form of ‘voter suppression’? Several Republican-controlled legislatures have recently approved the practice of combing through the electoral rolls and removing names that sound similar on the dubious grounds that they are probably the same person. This practice deliberately targets Black and Hispanic names, the bearers of which are more likely to vote for the Democratic Party. And there appears to be no oversight of this process.

Of course, it is perfectly reasonable to redraw district boundaries to reflect demographic changes, but to leave this task to politicians invites abuse. In the UK, such redrawing is the task of the Electoral Commission, a non-political body, although that doesn’t stop accusations of gerrymandering. However, such charges are without merit, because the changes involve moving constituency boundaries wholesale a few hundred metres in one direction or another, not being deliberately selective as is the case in the hypothetical scenario I’ve outlined above.

And I haven’t mentioned the most egregious aspect of American banana republicanism. Although it had never happened until 2016, the electoral college system was always an accident waiting to happen, because not all votes cast by the public have equal value—the number of electoral college votes wielded by a state is determined by the number of representatives it has in Congress, not by its population, and each state returns two senators, regardless of population. Thanks to this lop-sided system, a mountebank like Donald Trump becomes president despite obtaining three million fewer votes nationwide than his opponent.

I have no hesitation in labelling Donald Trump the worst president to hold that office during my lifetime. But don’t just take my word for it. In February 2018, the New York Times commissioned a poll of 170 US constitutional historians in which they were asked to assign a mark from 0 (failure) through 50 (average) to 100 (great) for all 44 American presidents. The average mark for Abraham Lincoln was 95 and for George Washington 93, while Donald Trump scored just 12, which placed him bottom of the list. Even Republican scholars placed him in the bottom five.

It’s easy to see why. Instead of owning up when he makes a mistake, which he does with alarming frequency (cf. the Central Park Five, or his insistence that Barack Obama wasn’t born in the United States—a requirement for anyone who wants the job), he invariably blames an imaginary ‘deep state’ conspiracy to unseat him, or laughs it off as ‘fake news’. From loudly denigrating war heroes such as John McCain to pardoning war criminals, from pardoning friends who have been duly convicted of criminal offences to actually offering pardons to the friends of potential campaign donors, from appointing members of his family to important jobs in the White House, despite their lacking both experience and qualifications, to appointing campaign donors with no prior diplomatic experience as ambassadors around the world while criticizing foreign service professionals who actually know what they’re doing, his oft-stated mantra of ‘America first’ should be restated as ‘me first’.

And if you think that he’s doing a great job, just ask him:

In less than two years, my administration has accomplished more than almost any administration in the history of our country.

Speech to the 2018 United Nations General Assembly.

His administration has certainly succeeded in obliterating environmental and consumer protections, not to mention withdrawing from the Paris climate accord and the Iran nuclear deal, but all these were driven by Trump’s deep hatred of his predecessor, who, incidentally, was placed eighth in the all-time list in the NYT survey I cited above with an average score of 71. And to describe any of these as accomplishments is downright laughable, which is the response he received from his audience at the UN when he made this ridiculous boast.

And I would also like to enquire: when is he actually doing his job? Sounding off incessantly on Twitter, where he plays the role of the classic playground bully, or watching Fox News for hours, or playing golf almost every weekend, doesn’t count. And neither does conducting campaign rallies for the 2020 election, which he has been doing since the early months of his presidency, something that no other president during my lifetime ever did. Some of these rallies have been truly disgusting. As an example, I would cite the time when he encouraged the crowd to chant ‘lock her up!’ about the poor woman who testified that Brett Kavanagh, Trump’s clearly unsuitable nominee for the Supreme Court, had sexually assaulted her when both were in high school.

Mention of the Supreme Court reminds me that the Republican Party refused to even consider Barack Obama’s nominee for the court, simply because it could. Now, in the current impeachment inquiry, Republicans are claiming that the president ‘did nothing wrong’, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Not only did he seek to gain a political advantage by pressuring Ukraine into investigating a political rival, he also compromised American security by withholding military aid, which would have been deployed against Russian-backed separatists in the east of the country. Some Republican lawmakers have even complained that none of the witnesses in the impeachment inquiry are elected officials, as if this somehow invalidates their testimony.

Vladimir Putin clearly knew what he was doing when he authorized interference in the 2016 election, which Trump has persistently and without evidence blamed on Ukraine. However, I’ve written previously that Vlad the Bad is a shrewd political operator, which Trump is not. Far from ‘making America great again’, he has been gradually turning the United States into an international pariah, which, after all, is the ultimate definition of a banana republic.

another bloody accident!

For the second time in a month, I’ve failed to identify a potential hazard while out riding my bike, this time with potentially catastrophic consequences. Fortunately, however, I sustained only minor injuries, and although it seemed prudent to abort the ride, I found no problems on my way home, a distance of 11–12km.

On Friday, I was out for a ride with Paula, and we’d already done the frontier road, with its added ‘attractions’, ‘way of the dragon’ and Liu Pok Hill. My accident in serendipity #4 at the end of October had resulted in that way being blocked, and I thought it likely that the blockage hadn’t been cleared yet, so I decided to try another way of navigating the maze of alleyways here.

These are two stills from the video that we produced in October:

The first image shows an early stage of the route that I originally worked out, in which I’m riding past a T-junction. The route involved looping back via #4, then turning right onto #5 at the junction (second image).

This is a closer look at the junction:

In order to avoid #4, I’d come back to the junction by traversing #5 backwards. The turn right did look quite tricky, with quite a drop off the path on both sides, so I was focusing intently on the path. So what was the potential hazard that I failed to take into account? Take a look at the following photograph, which I took once I’d got back on my feet:

Still not obvious? This is a close-up of part of the previous photo:

I’d assumed that the bougainvillea was just a mass of thin, drooping branches at head height, which I could happily brush through, but the way the plant had been pruned had left a solid stem 5–6cm in diameter. My head hit this lump of wood, and I was thrown violently into the drain below the mural. My shoulder slammed into the wall, and my forearm probably hit the edge of the path. I landed upside down, with my bike on top of me!

Paula has since told me that she was relieved when I shouted to her to “pull me up”. I’ve no idea how I might have managed to extricate myself without her help. At this point, I would like to record my heartfelt thanks to the lady who lives in the house behind the wall. Her dogs had kicked off on hearing the commotion outside the wall, and she had come out to see what was amiss. Once she had seen what had happened, she went back into her house and came back out with a selection of cold packs and dressings for my forearm, which had sustained a small but bloody gash. My only other injury was some minor abrasions to my shoulder.

My head was unharmed, because I was wearing a helmet. I never get on a bike nowadays without one, and I simply cannot understand the vehemence with which some cyclists protest that such an obvious safety precaution is unnecessary, usually on the grounds that it won’t help if hit by a fast-moving car. It does help though when hit by a stationary bougainvillea!