The Toilet Bar

Dragonflies vs. Wasps

2010-11-10T11:19:00.009+08:00

Is it my imagination, or are we experiencing a particularly long and tempestuous dragonfly season? I associate dragonflies with the heat of summer, clouds of colorful buzzing insects as harbingers of thunderstorms. Yet this year we seem to have had more clouds of dragonflies than cloudbursts. Although now, deep into autumn, there are no longer thousands swooping and diving outside my window (as in the photo, taken a couple weeks ago), any time I open my window screens, one or two manage to dash inside and buzz furiously on the ceiling.

Wasps, too, have been invading my room for the past few days. Even with windows and doors shut tight, I'll enter to find four or five orange wasps tapping at the glass, trying to find a way out. How did they get in? I spent hours waiting in ambush before I discovered a machine-tooled hole in one of the aluminum window frames which they were obviously misinterpreting as the entrance to a nest, crawling through, and then finding themselves, like Alice, not in a world they knew, but the bizarre Wonderland of my home studio.

When I discover wasps or dragonflies trapped inside, I try to shoo them out. I slide open a window and try to help them to discover their escape route. These species have remarkably different tactics. A wasp will explore every corner of the window pane. When coming upon the opaque aluminum frame, the wasp will return to the glass to search some more. Left on its own, it might make two or three complete explorations of the windowpane before concluding the futility of getting through it. It will then fly around to look for another see-through opening. Eventually it finds the open window.

Sometimes I'll nudge it along, with a well-extended magazine, toward the opening. The wasp will resist, trying to remain on the transparent pane, but eventually give in and either follow my guidance or fly to another window. In either case, I see intelligence at work, methodically searching the glass for an escape route and, only after thorough examination, looking elsewhere. There is no hint of panic, no indication of fear. Even my nudging doesn't provoke a defense response. Wasps, to me, are frightening to look at, but worthy of respect.

Dragonflies, on the other hand, thrash around the room, buzzing noisily against ceiling panels, book cases and windows. If they don't immediately manage an escape through a transparent pane, they scamper off somewhere else, their wings beating furiously. A nudge with the extended magazine sends them into a terrified dither. There is no intelligence at work here. Their noise and frantic manner make me more nervous than venemous wasps.

Yet when it comes down to it, which one would I willingly kill? In the rare case of a stubborn or belligerent wasp, unwilling to follow instinct or instruction toward the open window, I've been known to reluctantly electrocute them with my battery-powered insect zapper. Yet I would never contemplate that with a moronic, irritating dragonfly. Why is that?

These dragonflies are a stunning day-glo electric blue. Their long, slender torsos and translucent biplane wings make them particularly elegant insects. To harm one would be like attacking a beautiful, innocent child, whereas to attack a sinister-looking hunchbacked wasp is akin to battling a shrewd movie villain. Yet trapped dragonflies are actually louder, more nerve-wracking and more likely to bump into you than trapped wasps. Why don't I hate the more annoying insect? I doubt that I'm alone in this gut response. Are we, on an instinctual, animal level, more willing to forgive beauty than to forgive intelligence?

On a human social level, we let pretty (and often genuinely stupid) female starlets get away with felonies with little more than a slapped wrist, while a young British university student I know, who has very dark skin (which, in the context of everyday Hong Kong racism, is not considered beautiful), was beaten by police and spent two weeks in prison for the crime of accidentally touching a woman behind him when he slipped on a rain-slickened steep sidewalk.

Only beauty prevails in this world. I resolve, in my own small way, to fight against that. From now on, I will be more tolerant toward wasps and lessen my regard for dragonflies.

Ode to Garbage

2010-11-07T16:35:00.001+08:00

"I've never seen so much garbage in my life!"

That was my mother's first response on her visit to Wang Tong a number of years ago. She'd envisioned it, from my letters and phone calls, as a picturesque rural idyll nestling in the arms of butterfly-covered hills and peopled by the Chinese equivalent of hobbits.

Until my mother's remark, it had never registered in my brain what a load of nonsense that was. Entering the village on foot, one passes a crumbling shack with a missing wall, stacked to the ceiling--no, that sounds too tidy--engorged with broken bottles, crumbling Styrofoam, rotten plywood, leprous cardboard boxes, corroded moon cake tins, and globs and pustules of unidentifiable debris that had probably been decaying there since the Tang Dynasty.

A few steps later you pass a "garden" of potted plants perched on overturned milk crates lurking behind a fence made from shreds of corrugated iron and chicken wire leaning against barbecue forks and umbrella skeletons planted in the ground, with empty LP gas canisters lending support.

I had walked past these places a thousand times, and never noticed. That's because when you live in a rural Chinese village, you develop special filters over your eyes which paint out the garbage. So when a neighbor, a relative newcomer to the village, suggested we organize a community cleanup day, I was skeptical.

"There isn't that much to clean up," I said.

"What about that nine-foot-tall cement mixer sitting there rusting in the center of the village for the past three years?"

"Oh yeah," I said.

"And those decomposed bicycles over there which probably haven't been ridden since the Japanese occupation."

"Hm." I blinked hard. Those garbage eye filters do a magnificent job. I should figure out how to manufacture them.

A group of us put up posters about the clean-up day, sent e-mails, slid notices into letterboxes and spoke to everyone we met on the footpaths. Obviously those same eye filters also apply to colorful notices affixed to lamp posts. Expressions of support were muted.

On the appointed day we laid out food and drink, cotton gloves and jumbo black garbage bags. The old-time villagers walked past as if their eye filters erased us from view. In the end, a dozen or so people showed up.

When you deliberately remove the filters from your eyes and search for trash, our village turns out to be a goldmine...or is that a cesspit? I'm amazed at how many industrial-sized rubbish bags one can fill with discarded drink boxes in just an hour. It's incredible how many toothless brooms, twisted bicycle wheels, 3½-legged chairs and sun-melted boots are strewn between buildings and along stream banks.

Most of the "locals"--families who have lived here for generations--watched with detached humor as these strange people spent a perfectly good horse racing day picking up litter. One resident was less amused when the mountains of trash in front of her door began to disappear. She tolerated the removal of a chest-high mound of broken Styrofoam from the stolen supermarket trolley chained to her gate. She muttered while her collection of maggot-infested plywood scraps vanished into black bags. But the cracked plastic bucket lid was the final straw. She grabbed it from my friend's hands and shooed us away.

A convoy of hand trolleys moved back and forth to the public rubbish collection facility half a kilometer from the village. Within three hours, six enormous dumpsters were filled to overflowing. Meanwhile, sinister pro-garbage forces alerted the authorities. As I wheeled in the final load, a man in blue uniform, silver kitsch attached to his shoulders, confronted me.

"Is this rubbish from Wang Tong Village?"

Rubbish? What rubbish? I was tempted to say. Wasn't he wearing his garbage eye filters? Instead I confessed: "Yes. Who are you?"

"Environmental Hygiene Department. You're not authorized to drop this here. This collection point is only for household rubbish."

"This is household rubbish," I said. "Which your department hasn't cleaned up for the past twenty-five years."

He stood his ground until I stepped closer. I must have smelled as awful as I looked. He backed away and closed his mouth, probably for fear of whatever was staining my shirt leaping into his nearest orifice.

The following day my wife was chatting with Ah-Po, the village's elderly sole remaining farmer, who gave a thumbs-up to the cleaning effort. So did Luk Suk, the old man who feeds the stray cats. Most others said nothing.

In the end, did it matter that we cleaned up? That we'd removed hundreds of pounds of debris which didn't exist in people’s consciousness? We may as well have played charades, carrying away bags of air. Even I don't notice the difference; that's how powerful my filters are.

Yet it was, strangely, fun. An anti-garbage insurrection that worked.

Next time my mother visits and complains about the trash, at least I'll know she's talking about my blog.

An expanded version of this piece appeared in Culture Magazine.

Rock Duty

2010-08-06T13:06:00.009+08:00

The garden taps sputtered dry. That meant the village reservoir had filled with sand again. Once more all of Wang Tong went into water hibernation, everyone waiting for somebody else to dig it out. Almost every household taps into the mountain water for their garden hoses. Some pipe it in for their toilets and several old folks in the foothills rely on it for all their water needs, bypassing the chlorinated--and not free--government water supply. But when the little reservoir fills with sand, as it inevitably does, especially this time of year when frequent rainstorms wash grit and pebbles down the hillside, we all wait for somebody other than ourselves to feel desperate or guilty enough to clear it out. Just like last year at this time, the denizens of Wang Tong hunkered down and waited.

One day.

Two days.

On the third day of blistering hot sun, Maribel, our gardener, reported some flowers beginning to wilt and our long beans shriveling up. My wife was one of the "wait for someone else to dig" faction, but I knew that I would never hear the end of it if her Zinnias turned to dust. Urgent action was necessary.

I recruited Maribel and Gaby, a guy who works for one of the neighbors, to join me in liberating the water. Armed with shovels and a bicycle basket (to scoop out rotten leaves), we cycled a narrow path up into the mountains behind the village, past abandoned banana plantations, beyond a derelict house and a couple isolated homes, into an overgrown meadow. From there we hiked the last distance up a muddy footpath through dripping, tangly forest. I was worried about snakes, until suddenly I felt my entire head wrapped in gauze. I'd walked straight into the web of a giant tree spider. Shrieking and dancing around to make sure the spider--larger than an outstretched hand--wasn't on me, I scraped what I could off my face.

A few meters later another tree spider web, two meters high and at least a meter wide, blocked the path, with the red and black owner doing sentry duty in the center. A few swipes with a shovel ripped a hole large enough for us to pass through.

Gaby and Maribel dig in

Six or seven spiderweb gates later, we finally reached the reservoir. It's a rock pool sealed off with a concrete dam, fed by two little streams which converge at that spot. We leapt in and got to work. To give you some idea how much sand and pebbles were in there, the water was knee-deep when we first went in, and shoulder-deep by the time we finished.

As we cleared out rough sand, pebbles, fist-sized rocks, and a few golf balls (the Discovery Bay golf course is way on top of the ridge), the water got deeper and as a result, shoveling ten or twelve pounds at a time up to and over the surface became an increasing strain. Yet it was strangely difficult to stop.

After fifteen minutes we uncovered the intake filter, a stainless steel box with holes like a pasta strainer. I suggested we just do another five minutes to clear more space around it and then quit. Twenty minutes later the three of us were still digging, digging, digging, no one saying a word, each entranced by the rhythmic motion. Dig, lift, toss. Dig, lift, toss.

I said, okay, no need to clear out the whole reservoir. Let's go in five minutes.

Another twenty minutes or so passed. Dig, lift, toss. Dig, lift, toss.

Finally I realized that the amount of sand and rocks per shovel load had decreased to the point of diminshing returns. We had reached bottom rock in most parts. I said, "Really, let's go now." The others nodded and agreed. Oh, just a couple more shovel loads, I thought. Dig, lift, toss. Dig, lift, toss. I was nearly neck-deep in my end of the pool.

The others climbed out. I got in two more shovels full before forcing myself up. Then the soreness hit me. Back, shoulders, biceps and triceps bulged like like He-Man, the Hulk and Captain America combined. I felt rather macho, posing in my clingy wet shirt. All for the sake of some pretty peonies.

I spat out bits of spiderweb all the way home.

The Ghost Tree

2010-07-12T11:19:00.027+08:00

The Ghost Tree is under threat.

I'm not sure how it got that name, but that's what local people have always called it. It's a rubber tree, at least 50 years old and possibly much older, located at the entrance to Wang Tong Village. It's a magnificent multiple cascade of roots and trunks, towering over the village like the Lord of Trees. No single photo can capture its majesty.

The Ghost Tree is home to countless birds and an enormous Burmese python who is occasionally seen swinging from its branches (and twice creeping through our garden!). The tree grows adjacent to the long-vacant house #1, whose last occupant apparently died there in the 1980s and no one has moved in since. Is that one reason for the tree's name?

Several months ago, six roots were chopped off to make room for a small drainage ditch. By the time anyone noticed, the deed had been done. When I had finished choking and hissing my outrage, the foreman assured me that no further work was necessary. The tree was safe.

That was the first lie.

A few days ago I cycled past the tree on my way to the post office. A crew of government contractors were swinging axes at its roots. They explained that they needed to extend the drainage ditch. Already they had severed one major root. The path they had marked made it clear they planned to chop off the single largest root and dig down several feet to pour concrete, killing whatever roots lay directly below.

My Cantonese becomes incomprehensible when I'm red in the face furious, so I called my wife to the scene. She's a born diplomat. Though this time her diplomacy skills were stretched to the limit.

She browbeat the crew into stopping work and demanded to speak to the engineer in charge. Half an hour later he phoned her. He lectured this mere villager, clearly a madwoman, about the necessity of drainage works to protect property from storm water damage (the property to be "protected" being nothing more than a 10-meter-long stretch of concrete footpath which is so close to the village stream that it drains naturally). When she objected that damaging the roots would weaken or sicken an ancient tree, he reassured her:

"If the tree becomes sick as a result of our work, don't worry. We'll be there within one day to cut it down."

Those were the wrong words to say to the world's most fanatic plantaholic. My wife's response is unrepeatable.

Our village is considered an inconsequential pip in a remote outlying district. Government engineers don't waste their time visiting such sites. Plans for everything from a minor drain to the repositioning of an entire river are drawn up from topographic maps in air conditioned high rise city offices. The engineer claimed he knew the site in detail. That was the second lie, as his subsequent description of the site made obvious.

He sunk himself deeper with his next remark. He would be willing to suspend the works under the condition that my wife sign a legal document in which she personally assumes all liability for any claims of flood damage that may have been averted by their drainage ditch. He may as well have declared war.

One of the hardest things about living in a beautiful place is the constant need to do battle with the sinister forces of ugliness, exploitation and concrete addiction. One of the best things about living in such a place is that there is a well-developed network of people willing to join a worthy fight. After a few e-mails, phone calls and stopping neighbors on the footpath, the Ghost Tree has become a cause célèbre.

The Ghost Tree is especially awe-inspiring and photogenic. It's easy to rally the troops on its behalf. I wonder how many less glamorous trees have died in the name of minor and unnecessary infrastructure projects. What will this world look like when the engineers have finished making the environment "safe"?

What's more important? The life of a tree that has lived on this earth longer than most of us? Or not getting our designer shoes wet on a small section of footpath next time there's a torrential rain?

The photo on the right clearly shows the six roots chopped off for the first section of the drain. The fresh earth in the lower right covers the latest severed roots.

UPDATE: In October 2010 we received a letter from the government, which said that, having conducted further studies (undoubtedly costing tens of thousands of taxpayer dollars), they determined that the planned drainage extension was not necessary, and therefore further works were suspended. The Ghost Tree will not become a ghost anytime soon.

Lychee Season

2010-07-01T11:50:00.011+08:00

Summertime, and the living is queasy. When we haven't had non-stop torrential rain and thunderstorms, the temperature has hovered in the mid-30s Celsius (90 - 95 Fahrenheit) with 99 percent humidity. The ground feels spongy and the air is so leaden you can almost see it coagulate into sweaty droplets before your eyes. Grey mold stains creep across walls, and mushrooms sprout from our wooden garden gate.

Is there anything pleasant about summer?

One thing, at least. The beginning of summer marks the start of lychee season. This morning our neighbor Mr. Tam brought us a big bagful harvested from his tree. On the other side of the village, trees lean over the stream, weighed down with clusters of eyeball-sized fruit. Unfortunately, our two lychee trees haven't been very generous. They were neglected for decades before we moved in, then went through the trauma of our house reconstruction and concrete additives irresponsibly poured onto the ground. We guess that they'll take a few more years of nurturing to completely recover. Mr. Tam must have felt sorry for us.

Or was he trying to unload them? There's a Chinese saying: One lychee, three torches. Meaning, lychees are a "hot" food, which can cause dry skin and burn your inner organs. Well, what do you expect from a fiery red bomb which heralds summer?

I don't care. Lychees are my favorite fruits of all, beautiful to look at, syrupy sweet, a unique flavor that makes a tongue want to pirouette. Obviously God made lychees to trick the rest of us into looking forward to the south China summer.

Roadblock

2010-06-15T08:31:00.004+08:00

The water buffaloes are back. Though their timing might have been a little better. My wife nearly missed the morning ferry because, as you can see, they didn't leave much room to squeeze past with a bicycle. A few dings of her bell, a couple friendly calls of "Psshh!" and the commotion of me running up behind her, wiping the humidity from the camera lens with my shirttail, convinced them to make a slow turn and regally sashay into the field behind the fence to the left. Everyone was happy: my wife made the ferry and the buffaloes discovered enough munchies to keep them occupied for the next half hour.

Not everyone likes the buffaloes. Some old-timers consider them a nuisance, detritus from a farming existence long past. Many of the garden fences in the village are there not to keep out human intruders, but to prevent buffaloes from grazing on their marigolds. More ominously, and maddeningly stupid, is the belief of our village leadership that water buffaloes, the most docile creatures you'll ever meet--which make even dairy cows seem like grizzly bears in comparison--are dangerous and frighten away tourists. A couple years ago our village Dear Leader arranged with the government to pack them into trucks and relocate them to some distant spot in the mainland New Territories. Most of the animals died in the process, from nothing more than the stress of the move, including the family of three which lived semi-permanently in the field behind our house. Many of us felt like making Dear Leader join them in heaven, a plan we called off when we realized he'd go to the other place.

Now, after several years of being left alone, the feral herds on the other side of Lantau Island have spread out and started filling the vacuum left by their departed cousins. Some mornings we've seen as many as six of these huge animals walking along the beach or swimming in the shallows. Now they're rediscovering Wang Tong Valley, with its rich pickings in the ginger fields.

Most people I know either accept the water buffaloes with a shrug or outright love them. Count my wife and me among the latter. Not just for the pastoral charm they add to the district, but for more practical, selfish reasons. Their poop is the best garden fertilizer on earth, lots better than Miracle Gro. We hope they keep coming back and leave plenty of souvenirs, as long as they allow a bit of room for anxious commuters to reach the ferry.

Wang Tong Prison

2010-06-14T10:39:00.007+08:00

How do I explain three months away, when I've been here all along? Was the removal of the ill-fated Welcome sign, the day after the deadline ran out, a signal to everybody to please shut up? Maybe in a way it was.

Wang Tong, like most rural villages, is a quiet, unassuming place. The long-term residents here are taciturn, undemonstrative with their feelings, getting along with the neighbors not through community barbecues or displays of open-armed chumminess, but by adopting a live-and-let-live tolerance. We greet one another, swap vegetables and gardening tips, grumble about the usual things--weather, water supplies, dog poop. We keep an eye out for intruders when a neighbor has gone away. But Wang Tongers are not gregarious people. We don't raise our hands to wave at hikers and tourists or shout a cheery welcome. In fact, most of us--myself included--wish those holiday makers would pass through quickly; they tend to steal blossoms from our fence vines and talk so loud that you can hear them as far away as-- well, you can hear them. You wouldn't say that about most village locals, unless it's Ah-Po chasing birds out of her vegetable patch.

When you think about it, that Welcome sign was entirely out of character.

The government removed the sign from a strip of public land, not Mr. Tang, who owns the adjacent wedge-shaped empty lot. But just by coincidence, two weeks later he erected this hideous-looking fence, the very first thing anyone now sees when entering the village. People have started referring to it as Wang Tong Prison.

His family has owned that land for generations. He's never done anything with it before. Though I have heard him complain out loud when others, including our own building contractor, as well as any government department or utility company doing work in the village, used his lot as a convenient temporary storage dump. Click here to see how it looked. In the past few months it has also become the unofficial dog toilet for the region. So I can sympathize with his desire for a fence.

It could have been a boundary which blends in with the surroundings, like a bamboo trellis or something whimsical of cast iron. But nothing shrieks "Keep Out!" like steel grey chain link.

What was he planning? Did he intend to build a house there? Or simply pave it over with concrete to keep it neat and tidy? When I asked, he was, in typical village fashion, economical with words. In fact, only two: "Beautiful plants," he said, as he and his helper slashed and put a match to every leaf and blade within the compound.

Over the weekend, a row of banana trees appeared inside, plus two raised mounds of freshly turned earth with irrigation channels inbetween.

I suppose if I had the choice between a hideous dump littered with dog poop or a vegetable garden incarcerated behind steel, I'd choose the latter. As a first impression of Wang Tong, Mr. Tang's prison garden may not have the cheery warmth of a Welcome sign, but all in all, I suppose it's more honest.

No longer welcome

2010-03-07T13:31:00.015+08:00

A notice taped to the village "Welcome" sign says it has to come down. What it actually says, in true government-speak, is that pursuant to the Lands (Miscellaneous Provisions) Ordinance, in Chapter 28 of the Laws of Hong Kong, section 6, subsection 1, notice is given that under subsection 3 of the Ordinance, a structure unlawfully occupying public land without a licence must be removed or it will be demolished by an officer of the District Lands Office (Islands). Not only that, but whoever caused the infraction will be billed for costs incurred in its removal.

This is ironic because it was put there by our village's Dear Leader, in one of his rare acts of actually doing something for the benefit of the village and not just his relatives, without his being browbeaten into it. Originally there also were several directional signs, with inaccurate house numbers and awkward English translations, on laminated cardboard stapled to the pole, but the makeshift shabbiness only contributed to their rustic charm. The directional signs all blew off in various rainstorms, leaving a lone beacon of welcome for visitors to Wang Tong.

Ironic, too, that it is being forcibly removed by a government that is in love with signs. Even out here in the boondocks, official signs are everywhere, at ground level, eye level and administering overhead. Most government signs are authoritarian in nature: warnings, prohibitions, limitations, admonishments and directions. Beware of dangerous slope, along hillsides that people have walked beside for centuries; don't drink the water, no swimming, no dumping, get your flu jabs, empty your flower pot trays to prevent mosquitoes, cyclists dismount, this way, that way. The blurred green sign in the background of the photo warns against unauthorized entry to the slope maintenance staircase behind it. The whole island is cluttered with little metal badges identifying by number this slope, that tree, this drain. Worst of all are the brash, Stalinesque engraved steel plaques embedded in concrete pedestals, which self-congratulatorily proclaim credit to this or that government department for things that are actually part of their job. Will future generations continue to hail the Caesars responsible for a water pump, a public toilet or a bench? Irony of all ironies is a sign which boasts credit for putting up the sign above it.

And now they prepare to remove the only useful sign in the village, the only one which actually identifies us by name (in Chinese). Is this really just about a wooden pole which lacks a permit? By removing our collective identity, condemning an entire village to anonymity, and threatening to punish he who would dare stand up and shout the name Wang Tong to the world, by treating a warm welcome as a threat to its authority, is this government displaying its sinister true colors as a totalitarian regime?

Welcome to Wang Tong only until 10 March 2010. After that day, enter at your own risk.

The Starfruit Orchard

2010-02-23T15:32:00.009+08:00

Chekhov's Madame Ranevskaya had her cherry orchard. Our village has its starfruit orchard, located on the eastern frontier, between the last houses and the steep base of a hill. Like the Ranevskayas, the owners of this last undeveloped fruit farm in the valley left it behind long ago. As with all the other farm plots in the village--including the former lychee and longan orchard, part of which survives in our garden--it was likely abandoned thirty years ago.

The trees remain, dropping hundreds of fruit throughout the fall and winter, left to sit on the ground and rot. What an appalling waste, you think. Until you take one home, cut a slice and pop it into your mouth. Ptui! It's more sour than a cross between a lemon and a rotten chili pepper. That's what happens when no one cares for the trees. Some ambitious pruning, fertilizing and TLC would probably bring these trees back to life, producing sweet, refreshing, juicy bright yellow fruits. They're so popular during the mid-Autumn Moon Festival that many people even carry around traditional lanterns shaped like starfruit.

The current owners, wherever they might be, probably think that resuscitating these graceful, elegant trees and harvesting their cartoon-like fruit doesn't offer enough return on investment. They're most likely holding out until this land is zoned for development, so they can chop everything down and pocket some easy money. That's how The Cherry Orchard ends. I hope that the starfruit orchard manages to dodge that fate for another thirty years.

Lion and Tiger

2010-02-21T21:35:00.004+08:00

I heard the lion coming ten minutes before it arrived. Cymbals crashing, drum pounding, wood blocks clacking, the lion dance sauntered along the beach before the procession veered onto the path past the wetland toward Wang Tong. The musicians took a break and the lion decapitated himself to dry off some sweat, until they entered the village. Then it was back to work for the lion to herald in the year of its fellow cat.

The lion dance is part of the annual Chinese New Year tradition, put on by the neighborhood youth association. I suspect it's just a lovely cover name for the local triad gang. So whether your household offers lucky lai see money to the lion to honor tradition, or to ensure that your property isn't vandalized, either way it's about enhancing your luck. And at least they make a pleasing entertainment out of it.

When they stop at each household the lion does a little dance in front of the door before devouring a bouquet of lettuce, with lucky red envelopes inside, then of course spits out the lettuce afterward (lions aren't vegetarians). Some places had the lettuce hanging outside their front door and the lion had to reach up to bite it down, but in two homes the lion was invited inside the living room to collect his meal in front of the family altar.

This year I noticed that pure Chinese households received a bonus: firecrackers. Long strings of them, some lasting ten seconds or more, sending thick clouds of smoke through the air and leaving the ground littered with red blossoms (see the photo below).

Non-Chinese didn't receive the benefit of explosives. Don't we need to frighten away demons too? Are they implying that foreigners aren't vulnerable to demon attack? Or, wait a minute...maybe they're implying that gwailos (and the Chinese traitors who marry them) are the devils that need chasing away.

Next year I'm insisting on firecrackers.

Happy Tiger Year

2010-02-14T19:27:00.007+08:00

Wang Tong welcomed the Year of the Tiger at midnight with a barrage of firecrackers, followed by around an hour of barking from the frightened village dogs. Maybe they were especially upset because it's a cat year. More likely they were concerned for their own safety. A few years ago one of our dogs was so terrified by a New Year firecracker display during a walk to the beach that she ran away and didn't come back that night, or the next or the one after that. We were sure she would never return. She's black, and black dogs are a favorite New Year delicacy in traditional Chinese communities. Up until maybe ten years ago we were sure we heard the screams of puppies being readied for the cooking pot at this time of year in all the local villages. We walked for miles every day searching for our lost dog, asking every old-timer we met if they'd seen a black dog with such-and-such markings. The unspoken message was: "If you took her, give her back, preferably in one unbarbecued piece." Every one of them replied, "Oh, don't worry; nobody eats dogs for New Year anymore." Fortunately, they were right. Our wayward mutt showed up at the gate a week later as if nothing had happened.

The red banners on our gate were composed and painted for us by a well-known calligrapher from Cheung Chau, a neighboring island. As any Chinese person can tell, my wife's and my Chinese names are incorporated into the auspicious phrase (a tradition I never heard of until yesterday!). This is apparently a particularly lovely and meaningful piece of original Chinese verse, which is apparently impossible to render into English. Vaguely, approximately, it says: (left) "Stepping forth throughout the southern realm in search of truth..." (right) "...beauty and truthfulness radiate from your being." Or something like that. Anyway, it's good.

Happy Chinese New Year. Keep your dogs on a leash.

Wang Tong People: Our Postman

2010-02-06T11:55:00.010+08:00

It's a light day for Ah-Wah, the village postman. A couple weeks ago he was complaining about the phone company. They used to distribute their printed phone directories at the Rural Committee office in the next village. Everyone received a letter which entitled them to pick up a free Hong Kong & Outlying Islands White Pages and Yellow Pages in either Chinese or English (if you wanted the Kowloon and New Territories editions as well, you had to special order them). No one uses phone directories anymore, so there are no more White Pages, and the Yellow Pages is reduced to a thick wad of advertisements. It's still pretty hefty, though, and last time the phone company simply put them in the mail. The poor postman could hardly balance on his bike. As for making it up the steep hill to the houses at the top and just over the ridge, forget about it. For once he parked at the bottom and walked up.

He shouldn't complain. I assume that every year his job gets easier. No one sends personal letters anymore. Junk mail is giving way to online spam. It's mainly the old-timers who still receive printed utility and tax bills. Occasionally his basket is weighed down by a package containing someone's online shopping. He hardly ever stops at our door.

Today he had to stop. The other day he saw how well our pomelo tree was doing, and mentioned to my wife that he had planted that tree thirty years ago, as a favor to the farmers who originally lived on our lot. The tree was neglected by subsequent tenants, so for years it bore no fruit. But after careful pruning, fertilizing and tender loving care, it has been bursting with sweet, juicy fruit for months. Today she flagged down the postman and made him wait while she plucked a few to give him. Fortunately he had room in his basket. (I took the picture while he was waiting).

Tsui is his surname, but everyone knows him as Ah-Wah. He's been delivering the mail on Lantau for 31 years: 20 years in Tai O, the fishing village at the extreme other end of the island, and 11 years peddling the paths of Wang Tong and neighboring villages. Whenever I see him coming up the path, I silently wish that maybe he's carrying something for me. Instead today I watched him go, with three pomelos from a tree that's been a part of the Lantau scenery as long as he has bouncing behind him.

Dolomite Contraction

2010-01-28T14:41:00.018+08:00

I found this note in the mailbox today. At least it was something. In the age of e-mail and texting instead of letters, and junk calls (at 2:16 a.m. last night!) instead of bulk post, our home mailbox normally contains nothing but spiders.

The flyer perturbed me, though not because of its funny English. There are enough lowbrow blogs which rely on awkwardly translated English signs in Asia for a jab at cheap humor, and I don't do that. Though I'm not sure why anyone in crowded Hong Kong would pay for "Interior Contraction", and I'd surely like to know what Mr. Cheung means by "Dolomite Decoration". I love the Dolomites. I've hiked the mountains around Cortina, stumbled upon natural sparkling water springs deep in the forest and indulged in delicious Austro-Italian cuisine. But an Alpine chalet would be out of place in Wang Tong. Here they prefer fake Spanish villas. (Damn, I did do it. Sorry.)

What disturbed me then...? Well, did you notice something else about the language besides the grammar? No Chinese! It isn't even bilingual. Unless Mr. Cheung knows the nationality of each household in the village, I'm guessing that everyone got an English flyer. Is that what Wang Tong has come to? Has it reached the tipping point and turned into a white ghetto?

For the first 15 years that I lived here, the population of non-Chinese villagers remained pretty steady: a rotating population of Filipino renters and a handful of longterm expats, mostly English, plus this Yank, who all like to live tucked away far from the madding crowd. But in the last few years there has been a steady trickle of new houses being built and immediately sold or rented to young Caucasian families, who are attracted to the semi-rustic country lifestyle. There have been no Chinese newcomers. No Mainlander would be caught dead living in the countryside; too much a reminder of their recent past, and anyway, like crows, nouveau riche Mainlanders are attracted to shiny objects, like the brass faux Louis XIV kitsch and marble foyers of overpriced urban "luxury" apartments. Native Hong Kong Chinese would never move here from the outside; they're afraid of the trees (see this post). So the blanching of Wang Tong is, in the long run, inevitable.

I'm not some Lord Jim trying to defend my remote Chinese rural idyll from the ravages of western civilization. Change is unavoidable. Surely it can never go to the sickening extreme of other enclaves, such as Discovery Bay on the other side of Lantau, a dominion unto itself of such manicured Americanized suburban ambience that it feels as if a meteorite from Scottsdale, Arizona crash-landed there. Or could it?

Maybe Mr. Cheung just thinks that no Chinese would hire him, either because they have a cousin/in-law in the business or, more likely, he knows that no self-respecting Hong Kong Chinese would squander money on renovation that could be better spent on speculation in futures derivatives. For now, for the sake of diversity in one sleepy little village, I hope that's the message of the yellow funny-English flyer.

The Stream Diggers

2010-01-04T22:49:00.008+08:00

They're digging up the Wang Tong Stream. Well, that's a good thing. During typhoons and heavy rains a lot of coarse sand washes down from the granite hills, down through the village, and replenishes the beach a few hundred meters downstream.

Trouble is, ever since the government's ill-conceived "training" and concreting of the middle section of the stream for "flood control", storm water shoots through the channel like wild horses, without any natural streambed, plants or twists and turns to slow its course and catch some of the sand and then release it downstream gradually during more relaxed, normal river flow.

Just where the concrete ends there's a ninety-degree turn in the river. I don't understand the physics of liquid motion dynamics, but as the raging waters smash into the turn with a wallop, so apparently does much of the sand and, rather than turn the corner with the water, it simply accumulates. After a while, a miniature delta begins to form, narrow arteries of water cutting through sand islands. Garbage and various forms of ick and goo which are illegally discharged upstream get stuck there, and the sand islands crust over with algae. Yuck.

Cue the Drainage Services Department to come in every couple of years to dig it out. Look how much they piled up in just one thirty-meter stretch. Later they'll load it a bit at a time into that motorized cart on the left and haul it out to the beach.

The workers were naturally suspicious when they saw me walking around them taking photos. A gwailo -- foreign devil -- with a camera usually means one thing: an official complaint about something. Gwailos are always complaining, interfering with hard-working Chinese just trying to earn an income for their families, or to blow at the horse races, or maybe even both. I smiled and assured them that I merely found it "interesting" to watch them work. I'm sure they didn't believe me, but they smiled back nevertheless.

I understood their worry. Nine out of ten times when government workers creep into our village, it's usually for sinister purposes: installing unnecessary guard rails, erecting yet more nanny-like warning signs, concreting even more lush green hillsides "just in case" of mud slides, or building their odd little "temporary storage depots" for equipment, that they always seem to forget to take down. There is plenty to complain about.

As I left them, even I felt a sense of relief that this was a rare case of government doing something necessary, cleaning up after themselves, leaving behind no trace, and no complaints. It's as unusual as a blue sky in the smoggy Pearl River Delta. Strange, the skies were blue for much of the day as well.

A government project that makes sense and a blue sky. What an uncommon day it has been.

Nobody home

2009-12-13T21:59:00.009+08:00

I wonder whether one of those letters is for me. Yes, sometimes I still get mail there. I didn't risk finding out, for fear of contracting ebola or some other disease growing on them.

This was our first house in Wang Tong (a.k.a. Mang Tong or Man Tong). It's been vacant for years, and for good reason: it's falling apart and ought to be knocked down. The building was well past its use-by date when I first laid eyes on it eighteen years ago. Mushrooms grew on the inside walls and rusted steel reinforcement rods were warping their way down through the concrete ceilings. A disused well directly outside the front door was a mega-nursery for mosquitoes. In short, it was a dump. Of course, I didn't see it that way at the time. After five years living in a 500-square-foot habitation module (about the size of an average American living room) on the 24th floor of a characterless high-rise on Hong Kong island, this house was a fairy tale castle in the Emerald City. Who could have imagined such abundance in Hong Kong: a 3-story home with a garden for lower rent than our erstwhile shoebox apartment. We fixed it up and made it livable, turned the narrow strip of land around it into a flower arboretum and the flat roof into a vegetable farm; some of the best sweet corn I've ever eaten was raised on that roof. Our two kids spent the first years of their lives in that house, running up and down the tiled stairs dressed like Blackbeard the Pirate and Batgirl, shrieking and bickering and barging in on my top floor studio while I was drawing pictures.

When we moved out it became a dormitory for young Christian charity workers from around the world. Occasionally I'd wander by and they'd hand me a letter, mostly junk mail, but also a stack of monthly reminders that I owed a balance of zero dollars and zero cents to a long-distance call company. That company was obviously too stupid to pay attention to my change-of-address notices.

After the charity organization relocated to far-off Tuen Mun in the mainland New Territories, the house emptied out and stayed that way. The greedy old landlord, who had once attempted to quintuple our rent, couldn't find anyone sucker enough to live in his property. Being a typical Hong Kong landlord, he'd rather let it sit vacant and rot than sink a single penny into fixing it up.

By now it's beyond repair. One of these days it's just going to cave in under its own concrete. As much as I think it serves the owner right that no one is interested in his crummy building, and as much as I think it should be condemned, it makes me sad to imagine that happening. Every time I walk by--which isn't often; it's down a little side alley--I remember kids on the stairs, a color pallette of flowers in the garden, choi sum and potatoes growing on the roof. I'm not the nostalgic type, but I'm kind of glad that there's a place I can wander to pick up a sweet memory.

But I am not picking up the mail.

Dial-a-tomb

2009-12-08T19:06:00.007+08:00

The other day, while walking past the graveyard behind the village, I noticed this little stone plaque on the side of a family tomb. It's an advertisement for the local stoneworking company that built it.

Chinese graves consist of more than just a headstone. They're miniature architectural marvels, more like mausoleums, made of concrete and stone and usurping far more forest and covering more virgin hillside than any one person, especially a deceased one, deserves to. Nevertheless, the craftsmanship and elegant design of these local graves can't be denied, so who can blame the stone company for putting their contact details on the side? What if some passing hiker sees it and says, "Hey, that's a pretty cool grave. Think I'll order one!"

What interested me is that below their shop telephone number is their mobile phone number, as if someone might need an emergency tomb after business hours. "Help! My uncle just keeled over. Got to plant him before auntie finds out!"

Think of the ramifications of placing advertisements on burial sites. Ads are everywhere else these days, so why not here? Instead of visiting Ah-ba's grave twice a year and burning paper money for him to use in the spirit world, why not rent out one wall of the tomb to advertisers, who can pay their fees by directly burning offerings at their local temple? Ah-ba still gets his spirit money and his descendents are saved a bothersome trip. There are plenty of brands that might be interested. This death brought to you by Marlboro.

If you're going to spend all that money building a fancy grave, might as well make some profit out of it. That's the Hong Kong way.

The closer you get

2009-12-06T21:36:00.005+08:00

Wang Tong is not a very photogenic attraction. That's the conclusion I came to after looking at the picture I took today. It appeared so gorgeous from the hilltop: our little village snuggled between the reclining elbows of the surrounding hills, with the wetland and beach behind and the ferry pier in the distance. But in photo it looks less like a cozy, picturesque little hamlet and more like some careless god tossed a handful of random, worn-out dice onto a sloppy field...which pretty accurately sums up the planning that goes into local development.

It reminds me of the Clairol coloring shampoo slogan: "The closer he gets the better you look." Too far away and it's a disorganized collection of mismatched buildings. On the other hand, get too close and you can't help noticing the blemishes: leftover construction waste, corroded external plumbing, abandoned bicycles. But if you step back the right amount, adjust your field of vision to take in Mr. Tang's house and his majestic lawn, or the white house with the Vietnamese hardwood gate, the small field of canna flowers with Ah-Po's farm as a backdrop, then this village has its share of eye candy.

Aesthetics isn't much of a concern for most local residents. That can be a danger--there are constant battles, large and small, to minimize the desecration of the landscape. Yet the lack of pretension, right outside urban Hong Kong--possibly the shallowest brand-label and face-conscious society on the planet, where new residential developments are all histrionic displays of marble and gilt--is one of the village's special attractions. Sometimes you love something only because of a beautiful heart.

The Village Wins an Award

2009-12-04T21:38:00.012+08:00

News travels slowly out in the wild and remote hinterlands. There's a famous story of the Han Emperor Wu-ti sending an emissary to Central Asia in 139 BC. The envoy reached what is now northern Pakistan, settled down there, married and raised a family, then finally returned thirteen years later to brief the Emperor and, incidentally, inform him that there was an overland trade route to India.

It didn't take quite that long for the Fire Services Department to make it known that Wang Tong Village had received an award, but considering that we have, yes, telephones and even high-speed wifi broadband, it does seem odd that this laminated A4 sized certificate appeared on the village bulletin board only two days ago. It bestows upon Wang Tong Village the 2007 Award for the Absence of Hill Fires during that year's Chung Yeung grave sweeping festival.

Maybe it shouldn't surprise me. I hate to say it, but when there is a hill fire nearby, it sometimes takes the Fire Department nearly that long to get here and put it out. Maybe they're all too busy raising families in Chung Hau, the main village between here and the fire station.

I have to admit that I'm a little bit concerned. First Wang Tong becomes a tourist attraction, now this award. If we're not careful, the next thing you know, Wang Tong will actually appear on the map!

Chop Chop Tourism

2009-12-01T21:27:00.023+08:00

Wang Tong is a tourist attraction again!

In 1962 the restaurant on top of the hill behind the village shut down, signaling the nail in the coffin of the Cross-Lantau Footpath, once the main thoroughfare between south and north, but seldom used since the opening of the South Lantau Road in the late 1950s. Wang Tong pretty much fell off the map and has nestled in comfortable obscurity ever since.

Until now.

Sometime in the past week a couple of plastic boxes mysteriously appeared, each containing an ink pad and a rubber stamp. One is attached to a pole next to the ruins of the old restaurant gate; the other is fastened to the railing of the late Mr. Mak's sitting area across from his vacant house, overlooking the stream. I mean, river.

I tried the one at Mr. Mak's place. Now I can finally prove that I've seen the Wang Tong River. In Chinese it's more specific: "Wang Tong River/Mangroves". Though I can't tell whether the illustration is meant to be charred trees or mangled human bodies. Either way, perhaps the drawing is a not-so-subtle suggestion that raw nature is something ghastly, and wouldn't a housing development with proper landscaping better suit the view. If our village chief was the one behind these stamps, then I wouldn't be surprised if that's his intention.

I assume these are part of a campaign in which visitors are handed little Mui Wo passports and encouraged to run around collecting every chop in a scavenger hunt approach to tourism. Now people can properly "do" Lantau Island rather than simply walking around experiencing it. By approximating a shopping experience, the natural environment can be made palatable to Hong Kong city people.

I suppose if it causes visitors to stop just long enough to notice an actual river with real fish in it and some trees in which you can sometimes see pretty birds, in between the usual leaping off the ferry and rushing to the concrete barbecue pit outside their concrete holiday flat, then it's a good thing.

I just hope I don't find one of these chops outside my gate, saying "Big nose gwailo's house."

Sewers vs. Flowers ... continued

2009-11-30T18:55:00.008+08:00

Yet another visit from a government posse to talk sewers and flowers. I'm starting to consider these guys part of the family.

This time they brought a detailed survey map and diagrams to pinpoint exactly where they'll trample the flower garden that we planted while they install sewer pipes. Not that we have any leverage, since the flower patch in question is on a narrow strip of public land outside our garden wall. We even put in a white trellis fence to protect it from dog poop and unskilled, careening cyclists. By law they could have fined us for illegal fencing of government land. On the other hand, we own a piece of the public footpath further down (not near the flower garden, unfortunately) and, although they plan to take it from us by right of eminent domain, I could throw a cog in their production schedule by submitting a series of objections.

So they promised me an official memo, which limits how much of the flower garden they'll wreck, and states that it will be restored afterwards to pristine dirt - no concrete - though we'll have to do the replanting. In return they want me to withdraw my objection to usurping our sliver of land intersecting the footpath. Could be worse. They could be bastards about it instead, prosecute me, confiscate a substantial piece of our garden, and spew concrete right and left. Instead they're counting buttercups.

I find it rather charming - hopeful, in fact - that this government - which is preparing to wreck a huge green swathe of the New Territories and raze an entire village to put in a useless railroad to nowhere, and is about to devastate the remaining pink dolphin habitat, destroy a pristine area of Lantau coastline, and exacerbate air pollution throughout the Pearl River estuary, to build a Pharoah's wet dream of a bridge that will lose money forever - this same government is going out of its way to negotiate over a tiny patch of flowers in a little island village. There is some humanity at work in this world. Maybe not enough to do much good on a grand scale. But here in Wang Tong Village, a little humanity is all we ask.

The Art of the Scarecrow

2009-11-29T18:17:00.018+08:00

While Ah-Po uses the anti-Disney approach of a twisted Magic Kingdom to keep the birds away, the two other significant vegetable gardens in Wang Tong--Mr. Tam's and ours--employ more classical scarecrows. Though Mr. Tam's might be better described as post-modern or neo-primitive. His is an almost Jungian archetype of the human figure: four sticks wrapped in plastic garbage bags, with a little stuffing, and topped with a hat. The fact that it works is living proof that birds have a Gestalt perception of reality, and therefore might appreciate modern art more than I do.

Our scarecrow, on the other hand, is more contemporary pop style, all clean lines, bold vectors, and solid forms. Whatever, it fooled our dog. When he first saw the figure from across the garden, he barked at it as if it was an intruder. My wife had to walk over and put her arm around the scarecrow to reassure him that this was a friend. Unfortunately our Golden Retriever, who is not always the brightest candle in the menorah, sometimes treats new friends with excess affection...by humping them. He's barred from the vegetable garden.

I hope the birds continue their sophisticated interpretations of Mr. Tam's and our sculptural masterpieces, so that we non-abstract humans can all look forward to some hole-free cabbage and choi sum.

Teddy Bears versus the Birds

2009-11-28T13:24:00.012+08:00

Can a stuffed panda save the world from magpie devastation?

Magpies are considered good luck in Chinese tradition; they're harbingers of positive changes coming. That's great. I need all the good luck I can latch onto lately. I doubt it was a Chinese farmer who came up with that superstition, though.

At first we thought all the holes in our cabbage leaves were caused by snails, until one morning my wife looked outside and saw a black blanket of birds covering our mini-farm. After one loud hand clap, a hundred magpies lifted off and perched in surrounding trees, waiting for their next chance to attack. There are a lot of magpies around lately, and they make sure you know it. We don't need an alarm clock to wake us up in the morning.

Those little black and white birds may be pests, but they're also kind of cute. Maybe that's why Ah-Po is fighting cute with cute. Instead of using scarecrows, her farm looks like an execution ground for plush toys, as if warning avian intruders: "This could be you!" She has pandas, Hello Kitties, C3PO, Disney characters and several species of teddy bear, all gruesomely impaled on bamboo spikes or twisting in the breeze on nooses. It isn't a sight you'd want your five-year-old to see.

Where does she get all these toys? Does she snatch them out of the clasping arms of her own grandchildren? Ah-Po won't say. She claims they just kind of "show up". Maybe she's breeding them in a secret room, like factory farmed animals, raised for slaughter.

I actually believe that plush toys are capable of procreating. The 5000+ stuffed animals in my teenage daughter's room came from somewhere, and I sure didn't buy even a fraction of them. Yet every time I glance at her closet, there seems to be more adorable animals. Maybe we should put some of them to use protecting our food supply.

On the other hand, would you want your garden to look like a cutesy-wutesy slaughterhouse?

The Day the Village Didn't Burn

2009-10-26T23:11:00.009+08:00

I'm delighted--surprised, even--to report that Wang Tong Valley did not burn to the ground today as expected.

Today is the Chung Yeung Festival, one of two annual holidays to honor departed ancestors, sweep their graves and leave offerings. Unfortunately the preferred method of delivering those offerings is by setting them on fire, then turning around and leaving them to burn, while sparks disperse in the dry wind--it's always dry season around Chung Yeung--and standing back to watch entire hillsides burst into bush fires or, if the worshippers are lucky, a full raging forest fire.

Okay, I'm being cynical here, but sometimes I do wonder whether that's secretly the point, to orchestrate a grand performance like an emperor, to make sure your ancestors up in heaven will notice. It must be awfully difficult to make out one little stack of burning counterfeit money from way out in space, but a major forest fire? It'll warm old granny's cold dead heart to know that she's not only remembered, but more highly cherished than five dozen trees. To me, the flames resemble the fires of hell, which is where every one of those worshippers who leave behind burning debris belong, the sooner the better.

I worried all day today about the fires, even ran up to the hillside to check. Luckily there was nothing out of control, though there were plenty of people.

The footpaths of Wang Tong become nearly as crowded as a downtown lunch hour during Chung Yeung, since we have a popular graveyard on the hillside above the village. Long lines of family groups traipse up the hill all day long carrying bags filled with paper offerings, chickens, fruit, rice wine, and flowers. There's nothing somber about these outings. They're usually talking loud--really loud--and laughing, which is charming to consider. It's a celebration, a family reunion of living and departed. If only they carried fire extinguishers with them as well, so that us local residents would feel just as cheerful when they leave.

It isn't a fenced-off official graveyard, just a hill that apparently has the right sort of feng shui, and is pockmarked with concrete family tombs wherever there's space. I suspect that most of the people buried here have no connection whatsoever to Lantau Island, but simply gained permission from one of the local clans. Either way, the non-living population of Wang Tong well outnumbers the living. Plus they have the nicest views, overlooking the village to the bay and islands beyond.

Call me a curmudgeon, but I find it terribly audacious for human beings to regard ourselves so highly that after death we not only take up space that could be used for better purpose, including the choicest hillside real estate, but that our survivors would pollute the air and risk burning down beautiful trees, habitats for birds and other animals, to remind us twice a year how regally important are our bones.

When I'm gone, please don't come to Wang Tong or set a fire on my behalf. Sing a song or something. I'd rather hear music in the afterlife than get smoke in my eyes. I suspect that where I'm going, there'll be smoke enough.

Temporary Absence of Concrete

2009-10-24T20:50:00.004+08:00

One of Hong Kong's basic laws of nature is: Any open green space is just a temporary absence of concrete.

You see this law in action where they're reinforcing (meaning: pouring a concrete shell over) the hillside around #1 Wang Tong. They're doing a neat and careful job for their client. Meanwhile, all construction debris, broken parts and leftover concrete are deposited on the undeveloped lot just across the footpath. The area in the photo was overgrown with prickly bushes, small trees and broadleaf plants just two months ago. Its current condition will likely remain until the sun implodes into a white dwarf and the earth is sucked out of its orbit.

When we moved into our first rented house in the village, we found rusted winching equipment, a cement mixer and metal pipes which had been left in the garden when the house was built 35 years before. Numerous people had lived in the house between then and when we moved in, yet no one had bothered to move it. When we gathered some strong guys to help us carry the heavy debris to the garbage collection area, neighbors remarked out loud: "Why bother? Why don't you just leave it there?"

Today I stopped one of the slope workers as he tossed lighter bits of metal and plastic trash deeper into the bushes at the end of the lot. I pointed to the public garbage bin five steps to his left. He looked at the bin as if he hadn't noticed it in all the six weeks he'd been working there, and thanked me for pointing this out. But the expression on his and his colleagues' faces was "What's the big deal? It's just an empty lot and useless plants." An hour later I passed by again. The metal and plastic were gone. I checked inside the garbage bin. It was empty. But the bushes were decorated with wire mesh clippings and plastic bags that were too lightweight to sink through.

Chinese villagers and laborers have a pragmatic attitude toward life that is mostly quite admirable. Am I being a cultural chauvinist for thinking that sometimes pragmatism can be truly, horribly ugly?

Wang Tong is for Dreamers

2009-10-23T22:42:00.008+08:00

I think autumn, October in particular, is the favorite time of year for people who are dreamers, whereas pragmatists prefer spring. If so, then Wang Tong is for the dreamy type.

Spring is always metaphorically associated with fertility, lushness, perfume and lasciviousness. But you would change your mind about that if you visited Wang Tong in October, on any dry day just before sunset. The ginger blanketing the valley has been in bloom continuously for weeks, but as the weather has cooled, the ginger plants have turned their blossoming up several notches, as if squeezing out one last big push, like marathon runners in the last half mile, before gently closing down for the winter.

The ginger flowers spread across the field are so white that no details show up in photographs. That's why I want you to come here before sunset, so you can see them before the real treat begins.

About an hour after sunset, you not only smell it, but you can feel it. For reasons I've never learned, the ginger flowers turn up the fragrance tap after dark. That isn't to say there's no aroma while the sun is up. All day long I hear passersby through the valley remarking about the wonderful ginger smell, which I suppose I've become acclimatized to.

But in the evening a sudden crescendo of perfume pours through the open windows like an almost liquid wave of sweet, spicy, aphrodisiac scent, so heavy you can imagine scooping it into a spoon. Though the flowers are white, at night you'd think they were flaming red, lustful, sweating with passion and musk. It's an aroma both languid and erotic. It pulls your attention away from everything else, even the evening news, and makes you think of tigers and gigantic luminescent butterflies, of caressing bodies and melting butter.

Twenty or thirty minutes later it's gone, and all of a sudden you notice the news is over and your food has gone cold.

Is it any wonder that dreamers prefer October? Especially in Wang Tong.

Lunch with an Egret

2009-10-14T21:18:00.006+08:00

Feeling cooped up and agitated, I went out for a recuperative walk. Watching this Snowy Egret taking lunch in the stream, and playing tag with it to get a photo, took my mind off malfunctioning drawing pens and unwelcome correspondence. This angelic looking bird, standing three feet tall, was feeding itself in the part of the Wang Tong Stream which had been turned into a concrete ditch, and that cheered me up.

This section of the stream was once a creek meandering past banks of tall grasses, swarming with dragonflies, fish, crabs, frogs--and of course snakes--and was therefore a bountiful feeding ground for birds. Then the government turned it into a box-shaped channel of dead grey concrete. But nature proves its tenacity. Here and there twigs blow into the channel and catch on irregularities in the concrete. Leaves and other organic debris get caught on the twigs, rot, and turn into compost. Small aquatic plants start to grow, and algae blooms in the warm, slow-moving water. Then miraculously, from somewhere, guppies and tiny crabs appear. Maybe their eggs fall in the rain.

And then it's lunchtime for egrets, moorhens and the occasional Chinese heron.

A couple times a year some civil servant decides that all that messy mud and green stuff is spoiling his view of immaculate, unblemished concrete. So the cleaning crews come in with enormous brooms, sweep away the entire ecosystem, and the channel dies. But not for long. It takes only a couple months for the cycle to repeat itself, and the big birds return.

We've been seeing a lot more egrets and herons in Wang Tong. Their numbers have increased steadily for the past five years or so. They're often seen in trees or on tall bushes in the ginger field, probably stalking frogs and lizards. They used to raid our neighbor Kedo's carp pond until she finally gave up on restocking it. The birds don't nest here, but it's a cheerful sight to see them enter the valley in the morning, circle in holding patterns, then stretch their wings into a stall before landing straight down and spending the day.

I have mixed feelings about seeing egrets in Wang Tong. This isn't their ideal hunting ground. The stream fish are small, and the pickings in the field can't possibly match those of the mangroves and coastal swamps where they normally flourish. The fact that we're seeing more of them can only mean that they're losing better quality habitats up and down the China coast. No prizes for guessing why that's happening.

It would be nice to think that the coastal environments which have been spoiled by industry, development and effluents might recover as robustly as our little stream. If the egrets stop coming to Wang Tong, I'll hope for the best.

On the other hand, I think I'd worry even more.

The Rarest Time of Year

2009-10-08T12:46:00.006+08:00

I couldn't tell you when Autumn arrived. Traditionally summer ends on the night of the Moon Festival, the weather changing almost abruptly, as if a glassy carpet of cool air unrolls across the heavens. That prediction has come true, I think, eighteen out of the twenty-one years I've spent in this corner of the world, the weather changing noticeably within 48 hours either side of mid-autumn night.

This year the change hasn't been so abrupt. More like a car descending a mountain on a series of hairpin turns. First, a day or two before the scheduled time, there was a faint hint of coolness in the late evening, like a drop of peppermint in a hot bath, and a touch less humidity. By the night of the full moon on October 3, the nights were cool, followed by pretty hot days. Since then the temperatures have see-sawed: one evening a bit warmer than the last, the daytime a bit drier and veering toward warm instead of hot. Today, it seems, the weather gods have made up their minds at last, and we're firmly into Fall.

There are no visual clues that Autumn has arrived. No leaves change, not until much later into the winter. The only hint is a few seasonal fruit, such as the pomelos finally turning yellow.

In temperate zones of the world, Fall signals the time to start battening up the hatches and preparing to retreat indoors. Here it's the total opposite. Autumn is the only time of year when it's actually pleasant to go outside. The only time of year when it's neither too hot nor too cold and damp, and the humidity is low enough that you can turn off the air conditioners and dehumidifiers and actually leave the windows open to sleep (if you live in a quiet place like Wang Tong).

Actually, there are some who prepare for winter. Ah-Po reminded us that right after the Moon Festival is snake season. This is the time of year when snakes are the most active, hunting mice, frogs and lizards, for one last gluttonous meal before they curl up somewhere and hibernate. She's had a couple venomous ones in her garden--though not cobras like our recent visitor--and another neighbor spotted a long one, which he identified but I can't remember, heading up the hill.

The Autumn weather lasts only two weeks, three if we're really lucky. I'm gulping it in like a refreshment, bloating myself in its splendor, trying to stuff in as much of it as possible before the long artificially heated and cooled hibernation until the next Moon Festival.

Red Flags Over Wang Tong

2009-10-06T11:53:00.011+08:00

October 1 was the sixtieth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic of China. There weren't any particular ceremonies to mark this event in Wang Tong, other than a few national flags on bamboo staffs fastened to the guard rails, presumably by our Dear Leader Mr. Wong. The flags are still there, a week after they were put up, and nobody seems to be in a particular hurry to remove them. Maybe they're meant to keep aflame the lingering afterglow of patriotic fervor.

You won't find much of that in Wang Tong. That isn't out of disrespect for the central government or the Communist Party, but because Lantau people's feelings have always ranged from total indifference to slight hostility toward anyone who claims to rule from a distance. The ruins of our stone watchtower on top of Butterfly Hill, built not by government but by a local clan, attest to people's long-standing determination to keep out intruders. In fact, this area has long been a place of refuge and resistance.

In 1277 the nine-year-old Emperor Duanzong, along with his six-year-old brother who succeeded him a year later as the last emperor of the Song Dynasty, fled to Mui Wo when the Mongols conquered China. No one has uncovered any artifacts or knows exactly where they stayed, but it might very well have been at Wang Tong, the fertile V-shaped valley at the end of the bay, with ample fresh water and easily defensible mountain slopes on both sides.

Lantau natives grumbled when the British took over in 1898 and were openly resentful when in the 1950s the government imposed modernity in the form of the island's first road, which nipped Wang Tong's importance as the starting point of the principal footpath across the island.

During World War Two, Mui Wo was one of the main centers of resistance against the Japanese occupiers, which resulted in a mass execution of 60 local men, including several Wang Tong residents, on the nearby beach. Mr. Lam, who was our village chief until he died a few years ago, was one of those lined up to receive a bullet, until he took a chance to slip away through the mangrove swamp.

The latest act of resistance happened on the night of the glorious handover of Hong Kong to China in 1997. Aside from some protests near the ceremony in the city, the only act of defiance anywhere within newly-Chinese Hong Kong was the desecration of several national flags strapped to a footbridge half-way between Wang Tong and the ferry pier.

There's no threat that these flags will be vandalized, except perhaps by birds. Nor will many people notice when they're taken down. If one day they're replaced by the symbols of some new, intangible, faraway dynasty, people here will probably just shrug their shoulders and go about their business as usual.

Village Wedding

2009-10-04T17:55:00.006+08:00

Mr. and Mrs. Suen's son is getting married. I was reminded of this when the pounding of drums reverberated around the valley and put an end to my attempted late lie-in. Peering through the curtains I saw the procession on the other side of the village. I quickly dressed and ran outside.

On the morning of a Chinese wedding, the bride is delivered to the groom's family obscured from view inside a covered sedan chair, preceded by a colorful parade of waving banners, a company of drummers and, in this case, a dancing lion. Traditionally the sedan chair is carried on the shoulders of four strong bearers. In the city nowadays they tend instead toward ostentatious German limousines. But this was the first time I'd ever seen a tricycle serve as a sedan chair. They did a gorgeous job outfitting the trike and, in a small nod to western tradition, it pulled two trails of cans in back.

The procession reached the Suens' home at the northeast end of the village, made their formal introductions, then went back the way they came, flags waving and drums pounding, bringing the bride to wait for the next event of the day, a mid-day barbecue banquet, to which my wife and I were invited. Most of the long-term village residents were there. It was casual by Chinese wedding standards; I was the only one wearing a tie. Ah-Po was seated at the VIP table, across from Wang Tong's Dear Leader, Mr. Wong. We were seated with other neighbors, and we soaked up more village gossip (and traded some of our own) in an hour than we normally learned in three months.

I suppose the main pomp was reserved for that evening in the city, where the ceremony took place followed by a formal traditional wedding dinner banquet.

It's been quite a ceremonial weekend in Wang Tong. First, the pathways lined with red flags for China National Day, then the lanterns and moon-gazing of the Mid-Autumn Moon Festival, and now the wedding. How long will it take the village to recover from all this excitement? Well, people here are pragmatic. Tomorrow it's sure to be back to quiet as usual.

Snake Power

2009-10-01T18:27:00.020+08:00

"Come here, quick! A snake!"

My daughter Annika was playing outside with the dogs when she spotted a black snake lying leisurely in the grass between our small wooden deck and the garden wall. Its head was hidden inside a bush, so all we could see was its tail and mid-torso, which was swollen and writhing. Obviously it was digesting freshly-swallowed prey. I ran inside to grab my trusty reptile identification book while my wife phoned the local police station. We're all too timid to challenge a snake; let the professional snake catcher come and take it away.

Trouble is, we were told by the officers who arrived minutes later, the Hong Kong Police's professional snake catcher is, inexplicably, based in the city, in Sai Wan district, which is about as far away as you can get from any of Hong Kong's rural districts where snakes commonly encounter humans. He needed to drive twenty minutes to the pier, catch whatever was the next public ferry, then walk to our house. It would be two hours before he arrived. Meanwhile, the two policemen would stand there and keep an eye on our visitor.

Based on the markings on its torso and tail, I identified it positively as a Wolf Snake, non-venomous but aggressive when caught. Probably it was best to chase it out of the garden and let it disappear into the surrounding fields.

We watched it for ten minutes while it lay there digesting, its stomach churning and twisting. At last it started to crawl away. Then it took a sharp right turn and headed into the hollow gap beneath the deck, which was the last place we wanted it to go.

My wife grabbed an umbrella and pounded on the wood. The frightened reptile pulled out and did a U-turn across the top of the deck. But we wanted it to head in the other direction, toward an opening in the stone wall. Cathy kept pounding. We weren't worried about some harmless non-poisonous snake. But we wanted it out of there.

Outside the garden a small crowd of passersby watched the action. Someone shouted out, "Need some help?"

When there's a snake around, it isn't surprising to find a local Chinese villager eager to assist, in return for taking away the bounty to make soup. But this voice--I still couldn't see who it was--sounded American.

"We've got a snake here," I said.

"No problem," the man replied. "I'll catch it for you. Do you know what it is?"

"A wolf snake."

"They're no trouble," he said.

I led him and his friend in through the gate and pointed across the deck. They were both Caucasians.

"That's not a wolf snake! That's a cobra!!"

A chill ran through me. Moments before we had been calmly moving furniture out of the way, and Cathy had been scaring it with the umbrella, just a step away from an aggressive, venomous species.

"You got any tools?" he asked. "A spade? Some garden shears?"

Cathy fetched them, and he and his friend went to work. Fortunately, the cobra had just eaten, making it less of a threat. He stood over the snake and, aiming the spade like a spear, pinned it down. His friend leaned over with the shears and snipped its head off.

"Thank you, Lord," the first guy whispered.

He introduced himself as Edward. I've encountered him once or twice in the area. He lives in another village and has caught numerous snakes on his property. His friend Craig was visiting from another part of Hong Kong. Craig is from the bayous of Louisiana and said he's caught more snakes than he can count.

"If they're non-venomous, I just want to chase them away," Edward explained. "Otherwise I pray first. If I get a message back that I have power over this snake, then I do what has to be done."

The police left, relieved. I picked up my snake book again and saw the mistake I'd made in identification. Wolf snakes are tiny and have different markings. This one was four feet long.

I don't believe in arbitrarily killing one of God's creatures. But perhaps it wasn't arbitrary that Edward and his friend just happened to pass our way at just that moment when we were noisily drawing attention to a snake which we thought harmless. He prayed for power over it, and received it. You can't argue with that.

Wang Tong People: The Garbage Lady

2009-09-27T14:11:00.005+08:00

Meet Miss Leung. She's our friendly neighborhood garbage woman. She shuffles past a couple times a day, sometimes pushing her trolley piled high above her head with fully-stuffed black garbage bags, other times just pushing a wicker broom. She empties the public trash bins, sweeps the footpaths and, crucially, scoops up errant dog mess. She also likes to stop to admire people's gardens.

This morning my wife and I happened to be outside the house admiring some of the colorful flowers drooping over our garden wall, when Miss Leung came along and started chatting with my wife about plants. I don't know what they were jabbering about because I don't know most of the flower names in Chinese. Miss Leung doesn't have a garden herself, but she sees a lot of other people's. With a wink she promised next time to bring over a cutting of some flower or other that we don't have.

For decades, the garbage lady industry in south Lantau Island has been controlled by a cabal from Tai O, the famous fishing village at the other end of the island. Apparently the government made some kind of deal, in compensation for relocating a few fishing families, promising them a long-term monopoly on the lucrative dog poop-scooping and leaf-sweeping labor market in Mui Wo. The other garbage lady in our village, whose beat is the east side of Wang Tong (where we used to live), is from Tai O. She's as cheerful as the chimney sweep in "Mary Poppins", calling out a hearty hello to each of her--what would you call us--clients?--every time she sees us.

Miss Leung isn't as gregarious. In fact, she's a bit shy. Maybe that's because she feels like an outsider, since she commutes here from Cheung Chau island. In 1997 the government stopped hiring new people to clean the village footpaths in our district. As garbage ladies retired or quit, their positions were filled by experienced women from other districts. When Cheung Chau's garbage collection was privatized seven years ago, Miss Leung was happy to take the government job in our village.

Her territory is the west side of Wang Tong, which has a lot fewer houses and trash bins than the east side, though a longer and steeper footpath to keep clear. This gives her time to stop and smell the flowers, and indulge in a little conversation now and then.

When's the last time you had a chat about peonies and zinnias with your garbage collector?

A Plague of Bureaucrats

2009-09-23T22:22:00.005+08:00

Like ants invading the kitchen, swarms of civil servants have been infesting the village.

A few days ago a government delegation visited me to discuss the bit of our property that they intend to usurp. As usual for government, they sent a platoon of nine people representing four departments, though only two of them actually had anything to say. They were there to talk about a five-square-meter piece of the public footpath which we happen to own due to a surveying anamoly, probably because one of the original surveyors made a slip of the pen when he mapped the lot boundaries back in 1903. I was naturally relieved that they have no intention to take over any part of our actual garden. A neighbor, who is a retired civil servant, walked past during the discussion, did a head count, and estimated that the meeting was costing taxpayers HK$50,000 (US$6410).

Every day since then, troops of between 4 and 6 people have been appearing on the footpaths, clutching topographic maps, pointing here and there, and drawing hieroglyphic symbols on pavements and trees. One day a group wandered around with survey equipment, though every time I looked they were in a new place, standing in a huddle and talking. I never noticed them actually setting up and using their hardware.

The next day I spied a small crowd of clipboard-carriers following a man with a camera. As if leading a dragon dance, every few meters he would stop and the others would stumble to a halt, consult their clipboards and nod meaningfully. Then the parade would begin again for another few meters.

Today a gang of four bearing marking pens drew pink triangles outside our gate and elsewhere along the footpath, then doubled back to inspect their artistry.

All this is in preparation for the laying of the sewer pipes. It will be the largest engineering project in Wang Tong Village history. When it's finished, I hope that along with the household effluent, all those nervous herds of civil servants will make a one-way trip out of our village for good.

Parallel Universe

2009-09-20T18:33:00.015+08:00

According to the many-worlds interpretation (MWI) of quantum physics, the only way to reconcile paradoxes found in the observer effect and the uncertainty principle is to believe in the existence of parallel universes. Here on Lantau Island we have one such example.

If you take a map of Lantau, place a spot of wet ink on Wang Tong Village, fold the map along the north-south axis of the island, then open it again, the ink would have made a stain on the opposite fold. Approximately at that point is Wang Tong Village. The other Wang Tong, that is.

To get to the other Wang Tong, you need to walk between 45 and 60 minutes westward along the coast, past an abandoned village and two apparently feral banana plantations. Situated on a tiny cove, it's a collection of seven houses, of which only three appear to be occupied. Yesterday when I was there the entrance to the last house was barricaded by a belligerent-looking Chinese god and an enormous (and real, living) spider.

How to explain two identically-named villages (yes, the Chinese characters are the same) within short walking distance of each other? Were the denizens of this other Wang Tong the offspring of colonists from the original village? Were they exiles, pushed out by an invading clan, who trekked into the wilderness and, clinging to their heritage, established a New Wang Tong?

The man who briefly poked his head out the door of the first house didn't look at all friendly, so I was hesitant to knock on his door to ask questions. I searched elsewhere for clues.

Unlike my Wang Tong Village, this other one had an official government sign. Did that imply that this was the original and I lived in a knock-off version of Wang Tong? As I searched further I noticed a name plate on the village's single electricity pole. It identified the pole as belonging to Wang Tong Tsai, which literally translates as "Son of Wang Tong", but idiomatically means "Little Wang Tong". Either way, it answers part of the question.

But why the same name? What's the connection? Is the duplicate name just a coincidence, a friendly homage, or the result of bitter exile? Or had I really walked through a space-time continuum into an alternate Wang Tong universe? Next time I'll come prepared with a bottle of cognac to ensure a friendlier reception and, I hope, a drop of enlightenment.

Home Sweet

2009-09-18T21:19:00.004+08:00

Returning to Wang Tong after more than two weeks away is like traveling through a time warp. Many of the things I'd been waiting for all summer were finally starting to bear fruit, literally.

For months--endless seasons, it seemed--I'd watched papayas clinging to the trees, hard and stubborn and a strict military green so remote from yellow that it seemed they'd never ripen. Every time I passed a window, or walked past a papaya tree jutting from our or a neighbor's garden, I'd turn to look, and it seemed that they hadn't increased in size and didn't show the slightest hint of softening in shape or color.

Then I went away.

Then I came back. The abundance I'd been waiting for was now waiting for me. The papaya trees were noticeably lighter, and ripe fleshy fruit had found their way to the kitchen counter. The sugar apple harvest was also coming in. Chinese call them 番鬼荔枝--faan gwai lai ji--meaning "foreign lychee", a sweet tangy fruit made up of squishy sections each with a mahogany-colored seed inside. The end of summer also means the fading of the lotus blossoms, so we can harvest the pods and seeds to boil in soups.

If only the rest of life was like that. If only I could go off somewhere for a couple more weeks and return to find that all the things I've been waiting to come true, those projects I'd planted and nurtured and fussed over, would have finally borne fruit. Maybe that's all you need, to turn your attention elsewhere, run to Georgia and back, and meanwhile your dreams and aspirations will have become ripe and soft and life would be sweet.

Gas Attack

2009-08-31T15:52:00.009+08:00

My eyes stung and I felt like spitting to rid my mouth of the tinny chemical taste. What was happening? From time to time you read about unexploded World War Two bombs still being discovered at building site excavations around Hong Kong. Had the crew working on the nearby slope perhaps unearthed an unreported World War One trench warfare site, and accidentally cracked open a can of mustard gas?

No, it was just Ah-Po next door drenching her farm with insecticide.

Her vegetables look gorgeous, and there's a reason for that. She pours insecticide on them by the bucket. This is not hyperbole or figurative speech. She actually pours poison on her plants with a bucket. Sometimes she uses an industrial-sized power sprayer strapped to her back, the kind you might use to paint the sides of a building. No gentle treatment here; she means total war.

By the time I took the photo, the chemical attack was over and she was tying bundles of ginger flowers, which presumably no one will eat.

Every time she sprays, all the bugs take refuge in our organic, pesticide-free garden right next door. We've pointed this out to her, as well as explained that if she raised organic produce, she would be able to sell it for more money. That piqued her interest for all of one afternoon. But old habits die hard.

I just wish that next time she'd warn us, so that I can take the day off to run into town and breathe in some nice fresh bus exhaust instead.

Heat Wave

2009-08-29T13:10:00.013+08:00

The Hong Kong Observatory announced yesterday that August has been very hot. Well, duh! It's the hottest August on record since 1974. If it gets any hotter, the earth's crust might melt back into magma. They didn't say the last bit, but that's how it feels.

Nobody is outside unless they have to be. Even this frog is desperately avoiding the sun in the perfect-fit shadow of a baby hibiscus.

The whole world of Wang Tong feels lethargic in the heat. Including the plants. Fruit on the trees--papayas, pomelos and sugar apples--haven't grown or shown any signs of changing color for the last couple weeks, as if the trees themselves are exhausted.

Which human ancestor, so greedy for real estate, came up with the idea of living in the unbearable temperature and humidity of the tropics? Which sadist--whose brother was probably a cement merchant--determined that all houses built on Lantau Island should be made from solid concrete, which rather than shielding occupants from the sun, soaks up its rays and redistributes the heat inside like a stone-bake pizza oven?

It's a choice now between the metallic-tasting breeze from an air conditioner, or asking that frog to move aside and share the shade.

Hanging Notice

2009-08-28T16:56:00.007+08:00

Like a corpse hanging from a noose, this government notice was discovered dangling from the guard rail today. It contained numerous pages and was laminated, which indicated it was a serious notice.

Indeed it was. They want to pave over part of our garden!

That wasn't the only thing mentioned in 14 single-spaced pages of English and Chinese, but to me it was the most significant.

At long last the government intends to bring a sewer system to Wang Tong. This is a good thing. Houses here rely on septic tanks, not all of which are well-maintained. And when you crowd six generations of a family, plus all their cousins and in-laws into a small house, which is pretty common in this part of the world, it can put a strain on a septic system, as can be seen occasionally in the form of mucky, oily filth leeching into the stream. Many houses rely on septic tanks only for their flushing water, so you can usually tell when certain households are doing their laundry or just finished brushing their teeth. In other words, it can get pretty disgusting. The fish and crabs in Wang Tong Stream, not to mention the human children who play in the brackish outflow where the stream crosses the beach, will live longer, healthier lives once the sewers are in.

But they want to slice off a piece of our garden! They'll need to remove a beautiful (and expensive) granite wall and self-designed cast iron sunflower fence. They'll pave over flower beds and adolescent fruit trees near the border. For what? Most likely just for the temporary purpose of allowing machinery through a narrow section of the footpath. This is government, so expecting them to put things back the way they were after the job is done is like asking Godzilla to clean up after himself when he's finished devouring the population of Tokyo.

Worse, this is the Hong Kong Chinese government. Worse than that, it's Hong Kong Chinese government engineers. Who live and work in the city. If you tell such people that their plans require paving over greenery and killing trees, their response is likely to be: "You mean... that isn't a good thing?"

I'm all for the improvement to the environment the sewerage will bring. But it's depressing that it may happen at the expense of a small but irreplaceable portion of my own environment. I've written a letter of objection and asked for a meeting with the engineers. Please, kind sirs, a stay of execution for our flowers.

Snail Breakfast

2009-08-26T20:52:00.007+08:00

I went out for a walk after breakfast to see what might be stirring in the village. It was already boiling hot: at least 30 degrees (86° F), with humidity so high I expected even rocks to sweat. When I exited the garden gate I was nearly run over as three or four cyclists dashed madly down the footpath, with just minutes left to catch the 8:05 ferry. Once their dinging bells faded in the distance, I found myself alone.

Well, not quite alone. About twenty steps away, in the middle of the path, was this enormous snail, tucking into his--or her (snails are hermaphroditic)--breakfast: a roll of bark from a tree branch. When I say enormous, I mean it. It was about as large as a bar of bath soap, its shell around 5 inches (12 cm) long.

We find a lot of these snails around here. They're definitely not welcome, since they wreak havoc on vegetation. When they turn up in our garden, they get a swift flight through the air into the ginger field. They're called Giant East African Snails (Achatina Fulica), and as you can tell by the name, they're not local. Some people think they were introduced to Hong Kong when they were imported as terrarium pets. More likely they hitched rides around the world in cargo containers. They apparently first arrived here during the Japanese occupation in the 1940s. Brought in as delicacies? No, that would have been the French.

I walked along the stream. The fish were again hiding away from the heat. After walking half the length of the village and encountering no one, not even a bird, and sweating madly, I turned around to go home. The giant snail was still there, finishing off the last bits of its meal. In under five minutes it had devoured a piece of bark as long as its own body.

What should I do with it? Squash it? Throw it in the stream? It could end up in our vegetable patch. It didn't belong in this part of the world. It was an unwelcome foreign intruder...which is probably what some of the indigenous villagers think about me.

That decided it. I left my fellow immigrant in peace.

You've got mail...if you're lucky

2009-08-23T20:14:00.007+08:00

This is how Wang Tong people collect their mail. You can buy your own mailbox--cheap!--at the local hardware shop. One size fits all.

If you live near one of the main footpaths you'll nail it up next to your front entrance. But people who live way uphill along narrow, winding lanes--in other words, where the postman won't bother--either hammer their mailbox to a tree near the bottom of the path or, in this case of neighborhood solidarity, find a plank of discarded plywood large enough to accomodate the entire block.

Some people paint theirs, but why bother? On a rainy day your letters are going to more resemble wood pulp than the bank statement or property tax bill they started out as.

Notice that Number 50 says "Mang Tong". Several houses in the village are officially listed that way. Where did the "Mang" come from? The Chinese name is clearly pronounced Wang Tong. My best guess is that someone not very proficient in English had to fill out a government form and wrote the W upside-down. Then others even less proficient copied him. (If you think that's funny, and you don't know Chinese, imagine having to fill out a written form in Chinese characters from memory.)

Our current house was originally listed as Mang Tong, so I did what I thought was the right thing and contacted the Survey and Mapping Department, explained the situation and convinced them to change it. They were supposed to send notices about the change to all the relevant authorities, but those relevant authorities must all have mailboxes nailed to trees, even in the city, and the notices were probably delivered during a rainstorm.

The Water Department refused to connect our water, since the existing water meter was registered in Mang Tong, but now my property tax bill, used as proof of ownership, showed Wang Tong. It took three angry months before we got the water connected. The telephone company claimed that our location was still listed in their records as Mang Tong. But since I'd written Wang Tong on the application, the installation crew assumed I meant another village on Lantau Island, also named Wang Tong, accessible only by a 40-minute hike on an unpaved trail. The phone company men called me from there, out of breath. It took nearly a year to get all the various addresses to match.

Now you understand all the reasons why I have my mail addressed to a post office box, the waterproof kind, inside the post office.

The Toilet Bar

2009-08-21T18:52:00.015+08:00

Yes, there really is a Toilet Bar. It's located at the point where the Wang Tong Stream makes a sharp left to empty into the bay. It's our local, sort of, well, pub.

Actually it has no name. It's simply Granny Mak's little shop. Correction: in fact, it's her home. Poh-Poh (Granny) put a canopy over her front patio, brought in a freezer chest and a drinks cooler, and for years has sold popsicles, cold drinks, slippers and rattan beach mats to passing tourists. She still lives in the back.

A number of years ago a few guys, mostly westerners, started hanging around there in the evenings. There were a couple fold-out card tables, some stools, and cold beer out of the cooler for one quarter the price of the pubs near the ferry pier. It was outdoors, quiet, everyone there knew each other. A pleasant, convenient place to hang out and have a chat and a pint--well, a can. Except for one thing.

It was directly across the footpath from the public toilet, which anyone could smell from a quarter mile away. I held my breath every time I rode past on my way home. What kind of powerful cameraderie there must have been, not to mention cheap beer, that would engage people to hang out drinking next to a disgusting, putrid toilet!

People started referring to it sarcastically as the Toilet Bar.

A few years ago the government replaced the old public toilet with a new, modern hygienic one. No more stench. But the name Toilet Bar stuck, by now an almost endearing title for a near-legendary establishment. A few people tried for a new, classier name--Café Latrine was suggested. But it will forever be known as the Toilet Bar.

Poh-Poh has been gradually taking the Toilet Bar upmarket. First, she started stocking wine. Take your choice: chilled white or chilled red, both cold and cheap. Eventually she even bought some wine glasses, probably because someone told her they were slightly classier than plastic cups. She's rummaged up an eclectic assortment of extra tables and chairs in the past few months, so it's more comfortable to sit. But the pièce de résistance is that she now provides free wi-fi! Where else in the world can you enjoy an ice-cold can of local Carlsberg or a chilled glass of Australian Merlot in al fresco tropical ambiance, with free wi-fi, all for under US$2.00? And a toilet conveniently located three steps away.

I don't hang out there, in case you're wondering. Sometimes I stop off to buy an ice cream, but I don't linger. Ask any of the regulars about me, they'll tell you: I'm an antisocial son of a bitch and, worse, not much of a drinker.

So why would I name this blog after such a place? The Toilet Bar is the gateway to Wang Tong, the place everyone must pass on their way to our village. I hope this chronicle will serve the same purpose for you. Pop open a cold can of San Mig and come stay a while at the Toilet Bar.

photo by Ivan Feign

A Most Expensive Gecko

2009-08-20T22:41:00.012+08:00

The light above our front gate is like a tapas bar for geckos. It seems that every known insect species on earth congregates there at night, so it isn't surprising to find five or six geckos gathered for an upside-down feast.

They're all over our house as well, on outside walls and within every room. I'm very fond of them. They do a great job of keeping the interior of our house insect-free, amazingly so, considering that we're surrounded by an enormous organic garden and a ginger swamp. Besides, geckos are cute. They pop up everywhere. Just a few minutes ago, a little baby reptilian head appeared on the top of my computer monitor. Its big bulging marble eyes charmed me. But it also has me worried. Here's why:

There is normally a constant breeze in the Wang Tong valley. When we're in the living room we keep the doors and windows wide open (with screens, of course) and with the help of a ceiling fan, we almost never feel the need to use the air conditioner. One particularly hot, breezeless day, my sweat staining the upholstery, we decided to turn on the air conditioner. It hadn't been used for around eight months, so we weren't surprised when, after a few minutes, the air blowing on us still felt warm. Probably it took time to get the freon flowing again through sclerotic copper pipes.

After ten minutes, it was still blowing hot air at us. Obviously something was wrong. The next day I phoned the repair service.

The technician climbed out my daughter's window and spent nearly an hour examining the machinery. The compressor fluid level was fine. The moving parts were all moving like they should. He fetched some special meters to test the wiring and electronics. At least two circuit boards were defective.

"How could this have happened?" I asked him. "We almost never use it."

He also wanted to get to the bottom of it. Was something leaking onto the circuitry? Had something melted in the summer heat? He disassembled more and more of the equipment to see what he could find. After 45 minutes of this, he climbed back in through the window and said he'd discovered the problem.

"Four legged snake," he said, in Chinese.

"What?" I said. I knew that was the Chinese term for lizard, but I didn't get why he'd mentioned it.

The repairman drew a picture of a gecko. Obviously one had made a home, or maybe even a nest, safe from predators, inside the sanctuary of our air conditioning unit. When we'd turned it on, the unfortunate gecko had been instantly fried and short-circuited the boards he'd probably been snuggling between.

The following week a repair crew replaced the circuit boards. Before they left, they handed me the damaged ones. They also gave me a plastic sandwich bag containing the dried corpse of a gecko.

I felt horror at what it must feel like to be curled up, snug and safe, then to suddenly have 240 volts of electricity surge through your body and turn you to toast. I hoped that it hadn't felt any pain.

Then the repair man handed me the bill, and I felt even more horror and pain. HK$1800 (US$230).

That was the most expensive gecko I've ever met.

I hope the baby hanging around my computer monitor doesn't try to go for the new world record.

The Glory of Concrete

2009-08-18T16:35:00.004+08:00

City bureaucrats who visit our area are scandalized. "There isn't enough concrete! These underprivileged country folks need more concrete!"

Any government inspector, untethered in Wang Tong, feels an almost primeval urge to "improve", the way that normal human beings feel the need for food or sex. It would be unthinkable, a confession of impotence, to return to their desk without at least one directive to concrete this slope, straighten that babbling brook, put guard rails where no guarding has been necessary since the earth's crust cooled.

So here they are, applying new concrete to the slope beneath house #1. The house sits on a ridge overlooking the entrance to the village, with a commanding view of the surroundings and sea, and has been vacant for, I believe, nearly twenty years. The locals say it's haunted. It still has an owner, and that owner was commanded by government to reinforce the slope.

It's fortunate that it's a private job, since they'll try to get away with the minimum work necessary. On government-owned hillsides, the bureaucrats get to decide what to do, and they always decide to carry out such projects to epic, Pharaonic proportions, laying on tens of tons of concrete where, for millennia, the roots of trees and shrubs held the earth in place with administrative edict only from God himself.

When the project is finished, maybe in two or three weeks, the civil servant will do the responsible thing and inspect his alteration of the earth and call it good, then return to the level of the angels on the 36th floor of some grey steel tower, lean back in his chair and shrug modestly at his own glory.

The Pig Sty of History

2009-08-16T20:36:00.017+08:00

Many people walk past this abandoned pig sty without realizing the pivotal role it played in Hong Kong history. It's tucked away at the bottom of the hill in the southeast corner of Wang Tong Village, visible only if you take the narrow pathway to the back row of houses.

In the old days Mui Wo was full of pig farms, largely supplying a flourishing local trade in preparing whole roasted pigs for banquets and other ceremonies throughout Hong Kong. Farm hygiene was achieved by draining the animal waste into the nearest stream or gully, which carried it the short distance to Silvermine Bay.

Silvermine Bay was for years possibly the most polluted body of water on Planet Earth. But the numerous weekend holiday makers wouldn't have known that, since the government routinely rated the water quality at around 4-minus-minus, which meant "just barely acceptable". Who knows what diseases people caught after simply dipping their toes in the water? Worse, children played in the mouth of the Wang Tong Stream, where it empties into the bay. One wonders how it affected their DNA.

Maybe some government official's kid came down with diphtheria or hepatitis after a day at Silvermine Beach, because in 1987 the Hong Kong Government closed the beach and declared the water off-limits. People stopped coming on weekends and local businesses complained loudly. Instead of blaming their neighbors (or, more likely, their own relatives) for letting the pig farms ruin it for everybody, they demanded that the government revise its water quality standards downwards!

A new water quality law was passed, and Silvermine Bay was the test case. In 1988 Mui Wo became the first place in Hong Kong where pig farming was banned. It was a significant turning point in the way Hong Kong viewed itself and its future. Pig and poultry farming were declared incompatible with urban development and recreation. It was as if, after three decades of breathless post-war development and urbanization in most of the territory, the powers-that-be took a look around and pronounced that Hong Kong was a great city now, breaking once and for all with its past as a sleepy enclave of fishers and farmers. Those two trades could continue, but from now on only under controlled circumstances and limited to a few places. It signaled a new mindset for Hong Kong, one which looks only to the future and disdains the past.

You would think that the new law would stir up huge opposition from the local farmers. If you think that, then you don't know a thing about Hong Kong people. Each pig farmer was paid off anywhere between 100,000 and one million Hong Kong dollars (US$12,800 - $128,000) to shut down their farm, which back then in remote Lantau was an emperor's ransom. Every penny was plowed into real estate, and every one of those ex-pig farmers is now a property millionaire.

By the way, the beach remained closed until 1989, when the last pig farms shut down. The beach water today is merely dirty rather than venomous. Local kids, including mine, build up antibodies and have never gotten sick.

Not many of the old pig sties remain around this part of the island. The few that haven't been redeveloped into houses have mainly crumbled beyond recognition. The pig sty in Wang Tong, being the closest of them all to the beach, was probably at the vanguard of the pollution problem, and despite its slowly being reclaimed by the forest, is still in fairly sturdy condition. For those reasons it ought to declared a shrine, where urban developers and property speculators bring offerings in gratitude. For here in Wang Tong began a small revolution, where Urban Man once and for all cut off his roots.

Dry Rain

2009-08-14T23:41:00.013+08:00

It's been raining so hard and so often that the sky must have used up all its water. That's why there's none left in the garden hose.

Actually, there's a better explanation. We've had torrential rain and lightning storms nearly every day for a month. Sometimes it drops down so hard it feels like hail on your shoulders, and it doesn't stop for hours. Normally tiny mountain streams become gushing torrents, dragging rocks and pebbles and uprooted plants down hillsides. And therein lies the problem.

Wang Tong has two water supplies: one is piped in by the government for drinking. The other is the village's own source of mountain stream water, which is supplied by a small pool halfway up a mountainside. Stream water fills the pool and runs through a mesh filter in the bottom, then into a pipe which supplies the village. Most villagers tap into the pipe for their garden faucets. Some use it for their home's toilet flush water and others, like Luk Suk, use it as their main water supply. Unlike the government supply, it's free.

Most of the time nothing collects in the pool other than some rotten leaves fallen from surrounding trees. But when there's a deluge caused by a heavy rainstorm, sand and silt and pebbles wash down the steep mountain gorge, fill the pool and block the drain with hard, heavy debris. Ironically, after prolonged heavy rain, Wang Tong suffers a water shortage.

It's at times like this when Wang Tong shows its real community spirit...or lack of it. Everyone waits to see who's going to trudge up the mountain with a spade and clear out the reservoir this time. I've done more than my fair share. I guess everyone feels the same as me. Luk Suk is getting a bit too old to do his share any more. Old Mr. Lam used to clear it, since he lived closest. But since he died a few years ago, it's become a waiting game of who can stand it the longest.

Oh, all right, I'll probably give in. It's good village politics when the foreign devil publicly does his bit.

Or maybe I'll wait just one more day and hope someone else gets the blisters...

Dragon Dogfight

2009-08-13T19:03:00.010+08:00

There's a war going on outside. In this case, it's World War One.

Enormous squadrons of dragonflies fly above the tree tops, darting back and forth, diving and climbing, hovering and dodging in every direction. From the vantage point of my upstairs window, it looks like a First World War dogfight. There must be fifty of them out there, at least. When they're in flight, dragonflies bear a resemblance to biplanes, with their upper and lower wings and long, tapered fuselage bodies. Somehow they remind me more of Fokker D-7s than Sopwith Camels, so I always associate dragonflies as being somehow Germanic.

I suppose they're simply picking mosquitoes out of the air, but I can't help imagining the drone of rotary engines and the rat-a-tat of machine guns. In somnolent Wang Tong, it makes for exciting entertainment.

You might expect me to compare the one in the photo with the Red Baron, its transparent wingtips looking like bullet-pierced canvas. But the dogfight combatants are mostly orange, while some have bodies which are luminous reddish-violet that fades to black at the tip. This magnificent red one was resting peacefully, far from the conflict, by the lotus pond.

What are you, red dragonfly: coward or conscientious objector?

photo by Cathy Tsang-Feign

A Crabby Visitor

2009-08-11T20:48:00.014+08:00

We had an unusual visitor this afternoon. My wife opened the front door and standing there, as if he had just knocked, was this crab.

No one knows how it got there. Nearly every day you'll see little fiddler crabs crossing the main footpath next to the Wang Tong Stream. They can be a road menace, as you try to dodge them on your bike. Those are about an inch across with an enormous bright orange-red claw. But this guy's shell was around three inches wide and less brightly colored, the kind you'd expect to find at the beach. And anyway, for a crab it's a long walk to our house from the main stream, and nearly as long from the little tributary at the far end of the garden. Maybe someone had bought him for dinner and he'd escaped out of the bicycle basket. Or maybe...

Had he come to deliver news about the missing turtle?

He didn't like it when we came too close, raising his claw threateningly in the air. He also didn't like having his picture taken. When he made this rude gesture...
...we'd had enough of his crabby manners. We picked him up and placed him in the lower garden, where he was last seen making his way toward Ah-Po's farm and the little stream.

photos by Annika Feign

Kidnapped!

2009-08-10T18:50:00.007+08:00

Scene of the crime: fish in the stream, but where's the turtle?

Ah-Po, the farmer lady next door, broke the terrible news: a turtle has been kidnapped!

A small colony of turtles lives somewhere out in the ginger field. Occasionally one or two of them appear in our lotus pond or lumber around our front garden. The most we've seen at one time is three. They're normal pond turtles, with shells around 9 inches long. No one knows whether they're native or, more likely, descendants of someone's abandoned pets. After all, Mr. Tang on the other side of the village used to have an enormous lotus and lily pond stocked with turtles before he covered it up with a lawn. I suspect those turtles used to be his. Whatever their origin, they seem quite content.

Ah-Po says they've been regular visitors to her farm for years. Rather than worrying about them grabbing a free dinner from her lettuce patch, she's genuinely fond of them. She claims she recognizes each of them by their shell color and pattern.

We were alarmed when she told my wife the news. Her son had been walking on the public footpath next to the Wang Tong Stream. Down below him someone lifted a turtle out of the water and ran off with it. He's a bit shy and wasn't sure how to confront the person. He claimed to recognize that turtle.

It must have swam down the little tributary which passes through our garden and Ah-Po's field into the main stream. Two other turtles were inside her farm. She immediately picked them up and placed them in the sanctuary of our lotus pond, hoping they would rather hang out there than follow their ill-fated relative.

What would happen to the unfortunate hostage? Was it about to become soup? No, Ah-Po said. The person who took it lives in the area, though not in our village. They probably wanted the turtle as a pet.

Outwardly Ah-Po laughed it off. But we could tell by her quick rescue actions that she's quite affectionate to the wild friends who occasionally drop in on her down on the farm. I wonder if turtles feel the same way about each other. Or get lonely.

Wang Tong People: Mr. Mak

2009-08-08T18:37:00.013+08:00

Mr. Mak just finished putting in a garden for a house on the east side of the village. He built the wall and did the landscaping.

His own garden is not a great advertisement for his services. He lives in one of the tiny old-style village houses overlooking the Wang Tong Stream. Clipped to his chain link fence is a hand-scrawled sign on a piece of driftwood, in Chinese and English:

Lantau Horticultural Society
Garden Design

Inside the fence is a scattered hodge-podge of plants and short trees, some in pots and some in the ground. The misnamed Horticultural Society which he presides over is really a bonsai club. Once or twice a year the group puts on a public exhibit of their miniature trees and fantasy Chinese landscapes, many of which are elaborately beautiful. I wish I could say the same for Mak's own garden. He's done a nice job for his client, though, a foreigner who bought the house last year.

Mr. Mak grew up in Wang Tong, the son of his father's Hong Kong wife (the China wife still lived across the border in Guangdong). When Mak was seven, his father ran off to South Africa to work in a Chinese restaurant, and married his third wife there. Mak and his two brothers stayed behind with their mother in Wang Tong, living off the meager remittances his father sent back.

When he was seven his mother died, and his father sent his South African wife (of course she was Chinese) back to Lantau to care for the children. Several years later his father returned, with enough savings to buy land around Mui Wo and provide a more comfortable life for his family.

I knew his father, a jovial old guy who always sat outside his little pink house overlooking the stream and handed Chinese candy to any kid who walked past.

I was surprised when the president of the Lantau Horticultural Society cut down the entire lovely bamboo grove next to his father's house right after he died. He must have his reasons. Some Chinese believe hollow plants like bamboo provide refuge for ghosts. Maybe he didn't want other ghosts hanging around his dad's place like spirit vagrants. Or maybe the bamboo was just too wild and unkempt for a bonsai enthusiast. We never discuss it. Which ever way you look at it, he's a gardener, and gardeners deserve respect.

To the City and Back

2009-08-07T22:56:00.005+08:00

Sometimes I need a day in the city. Usually it's because I have to, but sometimes I simply need a change of pace. Too much calm can drive you crazy.

I go into central Hong Kong maybe once every two weeks. It isn't that far away: a five-minute bike ride to the pier (unless I'm running late and I can do it in three), then a 30- or 55-minute ferry ride, depending on whether it's a fast or slow boat, followed by a six or seven minute walk into the heart of the central business district, where I can hop on a tram, bus or the MTR subway train.

I feel like a tourist every time I go into town. It's like entering the midway of a carnival. The Impressionist-like splatter of colorful signs, crowds, taxi horns, pile drivers, gigantic outdoor video monitors blaring incomprehensible nonsense, all excite me. Sitting in a cafe with people jabbering all around me is stimulating. When I need to write, I'm sometimes more productive in a noisy, hectic environment than at home, where the only sturm und drang comes from birds running and fighting on the aluminum roof my home studio.

When I go into town so infrequently, a lot of chores have stacked up, so I run around to one shop after another, picking up parts and supplies and spices, browse a book shop, and save a little time to window shop--though I'm always disappointed. Hong Kong is hell for men to window shop. 99 percent of all stores are mind-numbingly boring women's clothes, shoes and cosmetics.

By the end of the day I've had enough. I'm exhausted from running around, the noise and hyperactivity overload my senses, and the air pollution makes my lungs hurt. Why do I do this to myself? I don't have to be here! My attitude sure has changed in just a few hours. I return to the ferry, drained.

Coming back into Mui Wo, I could almost hug my bike I'm so glad to be back in a truly civilized place, where the air doesn't make you sick, people nod and say hello, and the loudest noise is the ding of a bicycle bell.

As I lead my bike down the home walkway, seen in the photo, the dogs bark with pleasure. I come in the front door and take off my shoes. I won't be wearing them until my next dose of the city, though I can't imagine going back. I've had my fix for the next couple weeks. I'm glad to be back home in my house and village.

Rain Cycle

2009-08-05T17:42:00.010+08:00

Wang Tong is located between 22°16'14.20" and 22°16'21.60" north latitude, which puts us just south of the Tropic of Cancer. That means three things: heat, humidity and rain. I'll gladly trade in the first two. The rain I don't mind, though we've had an awful lot of it this summer. Tropical Storm Goni is wandering by slowly, like someone peering in a window, while continuing to drench the universe in and around Wang Tong Village.

In this community one thing people never get tired of arguing about is how to avoid getting wet while riding a bike. If you have to ride home, you can wear a vinyl poncho, which inevitably comes unsnapped and blows behind you like a cape, sparing only your shoulders from being dripping wet when you walk in the door. Unless it's gotten caught in the spokes and you limp home with a bruised knee.

Some people ride with one hand while grasping an umbrella in the other, like the poor guy in the photo. It's picturesque, but also the surest way to wreck an umbrella and lose control of your bike at the same time. Two seconds after the picture he nearly had a collision with some urban tourists, who are by definition incompetent and inconsiderate cyclists.

Some hapless people use the rain as an excuse to ride their road-hog tricycles, most of which have canopies. If only rain fell straight down in a tropical storm, then that might work. Tell the rain gods to switch off the wind first.

I've never understood the fear of getting rained on. It's only water. It isn't all that uncomfortable, at least in the warm tropics. We bathe and wash our clothes in water, so what's the harm if our bodies and garments get an unscheduled rinse? I think the struggle against rain comes from a human instinct to master the elements. Getting rained on is not a matter of getting wet, it's being defeated by nature. That's why we so fruitlessly fight it.

The only sure way to avoid getting soaked is to not go out. Or move to the city and stay in covered walkways and subway tunnels. Either way you miss a chance of having a little bit of heaven drip on you.

Mormons in the Garden

2009-08-04T16:51:00.009+08:00

Living next to Butterfly Hill, it isn't surprising that we have a lot of butterflies in the valley. One survey put the number of butterfly species on the hill at 40. Butterfly Hill is 90 percent covered in dense forest and is theoretically a conservation area (government departments differ on this).

Today I took a break in the garden, in between rain bands provided by Tropical Storm Goni (it has a name now) and saw at least five butterfly species, all competing with wasps and bees for spaces on the flowers.

The queen of them all is the Great Mormon, or Papilio memnon. At a distance you might mistake the female for a small bird or a bat. Her wingspan reaches 14 cm (5 1/2 inches). Rather than a demure coquette fluttering from blossom to blossom, the Great Mormon dashes and dives around in the air, through trees and under bushes, like a demented swallow.

It must be their mating season. In the photo, a female--the black-white-and-red one--is playing hard to get with a male--the dark blue one. She was doing a back loop before diving for cover beneath a flowering bush. When she emerged a few seconds later, two other males joined the pursuit. Funny, I'd expect a butterfly called a Great Mormon to have three females chasing a single male.

All four flew around the densely flowered side of our garden for two long minutes of aerial courtship. Talk about a femme fatale! One male dropped out. The three remaining butterflies landed on a bed of flowers, only to be chased off by irritated wasps. I ran too when the wasps rose in a defensive swarm. When I was safely away I watched the female, now down to a single suitor, soar over the fence and back toward the sanctuary of Butterfly Hill.

The rain started coming down again in big fat drops. I ran to my own sanctuary inside the cocoon of my house.

Lightning Strike

2009-08-03T18:27:00.012+08:00

After a morning even hotter than yesterday, the afternoon sky suddenly went dark, the wind arrived like a cannon shot and lightning flashed in the distance. The outer tentacles of the unnamed tropical storm gripped Hong Kong and tossed bolts of lightning directly onto Wang Tong Village.

Before the storm actually reached the village I ran around the house unplugging things. No matter how much our electrician swears that our house is properly grounded, I won't take any chances. In other Wang Tong houses I've lost two fax machines to lightning strikes and a friend of mine had two fried computers in a row. Any time I hear thunder less than ten seconds after seeing a flash, our house goes into lightning drill.

"All computers off!" I shout, usually to responses of "Aww! Why??" Well, if my kids want to risk their computers because they can't tear themselves away from Facebook, it isn't my problem... until they ask me to pay for repairs.

"Because I said so!"

The kids are out this afternoon, so no screaming necessary.

I rush downstairs to disconnect the TV antenna, then pull the phone wire from the back of the broadband modem. Out here in the countryside the phone lines all dangle through the air, often tangled in trees. A direct strike on any telephone pole in the village would wipe out every electronic phone, fax and computer in the valley.

Just in time! A blinding flash, followed two seconds later by rolling thunder, send the dogs into a panic. Let them inside, quick.

Another flash, total white-out, almost instantly followed by a deafening boom. The entire house shakes. An electric flash bursts behind the bookcase on the middle floor, where a fusebox is located. Lamps and appliances go dark. There's a sour burning ozone smell behind the aroma of sugar cane boiling on the stove.

The rain doesn't arrive for another two minutes, then it makes up for lost time. The view through the window is a blur, liquid static across my field of vision.

Fifteen minutes later the worst is over. The arm of the storm has swept past. Dragonflies dart like sparks outside the window. At least the air is cooler now.

White Sky

2009-08-02T15:53:00.007+08:00

It was 33 degrees (93° F) by nine o'clock this morning and the air felt like someone in heaven was bearing down with a plunger. Glancing outside at the white sky and bluish haze in the hills brought premonitions of heavy weather. The usually steady breeze through the valley was reduced to a few puffs. The birds seem nervous; there are more inside the trees, bickering with each other, than flying around or pecking seeds out of the ground. The only things active are squadrons of red and orange dragonflies. This is how it always feels before a typhoon, like the whole world has dug in its claws in anticipation.

I checked the weather satellite photo. There's an enormous spiral of clouds between here and the Philippines which they're calling a tropical depression. Heavy rain is predicted for the middle of the week. It's a normal August, the height of typhoon season.

In the rest of Hong Kong hot and stormy August is the month when traditionally, since colonial times, everyone who can leave does leave. It's still true among most of the expatriate community and the Chinese upper crust. But here in Wang Tong, nobody I can think of has gone away. Maybe it's just too nice a place to rush away from. Who needs the Thames or the Seine or the Hudson River when you've got the Wang Tong Stream?

Wang Tong People: Uncle Six

2009-08-01T17:45:00.012+08:00

Luk Suk (literally "sixth uncle") and I are friends, but we are divided on a significant point of ideology: cats. He loves them, while I wish they would go away.

Luk Suk is a gentle, kind-hearted old man who lives in a small two-room house on the slope above the east side. His family name is Wong, but everyone calls him Luk Suk (pronounced "look sook"). I don't know a lot about his story. Even when I've asked him, he says little about himself. I don't know where he got the name Uncle Six. He moved to Wang Tong from somewhere else around fifty years ago. He maintains a neat little flower garden outside his home. He sometimes walks up the valley to check the village water tank for problems or vandalism. But his main pleasure in life is communing with cats.

He makes two or three rounds of the village each day, pulling a small trolley filled with plastic bags, which are each stuffed with a mix of rice, meat and other food scraps that he feeds to stray cats. There are several way stations where he's set up bowls and trays. He reaches into a bag and deposits a fistful of morsels into each. The cats of course adore him. No matter where he walks in and around Wang Tong, they come running, rubbing his leg and mewing.

He's been making these daily rounds every day for the 18 years I've lived in this village, and who knows how long before that. You can tell when Luk Suk isn't feeling well: small gangs of feral cats pace around empty feeding bowls, crying all day.

I used to adore cats. Cats were my closest companions as a kid, sharing my room all the way through to adulthood. After I graduated college, my cat followed me back and forth across America several times. It deeply broke my heart when, after I got married, he mysteriously disappeared.

I started changing my mind about cats when we moved to London for two years. Our children were small and we decided to get them a pair of kittens. When the cats started bringing dead birds into the house, naturally we put bells on their collars, but one of them was clever enough to learn how to adapt to the bell, and the killing continued. I read a newspaper article there about a study which found that housecats killed an estimated 275 million small animals each year, including 55 million birds, just in England, Scotland and Wales. In the United States, the number of birds killed by cats every year is in the hundreds of millions. I've never looked at cats the same way since.

Wang Tong Village and all of Lantau Island is a rich habitat, teeming with wildlife. Besides the numerous native birds, we're fortunate to have a mangrove swamp on the edge of the village which attracts seasonal migrating birds. The bushes and footpaths are crawling with long-tailed lizards, skinks and fiddler crabs. Frogs are everywhere. Snakes too, as you know.

If it's a choice between wild birds and reptiles versus domesticated cats, I'll choose the wildlife. Cats don't belong here. I'll tell you about our own battles with stray cats to save generations of bulbuls some other time.

The colonies of feral cats that Luk Suk takes care of don't belong to anyone. A local group of animal lovers occasionally catches them, brings them to the SPCA for desexing, then releases them right where they found them, but enough cats avoid capture that the stray population keeps going up. They argue that Luk Suk's feeding makes it unnecessary for the cats to hunt birds and small animals. I think the feeding just encourages them to sit around breeding like the worst caricature of welfare recipients, meanwhile hunting fresh meat between meals of mostly rice.

I've never spoken to Luk Suk about it. He doesn't even know my feelings. He finds pleasure, meaning and peace with himself by feeding and communing with his beloved cats. That's something I would never want to spoil either.

Abandoned House

2009-07-30T20:40:00.009+08:00

If you walk through the Lower East Side, take the right fork at the little dam and uphill another 500 meters along the steep slope of the valley, down below on your left you'll see this abandoned house.

There are abandoned houses all around Lantau. There's even a whole abandoned village along the coast just 40 minutes walk from Wang Tong. No one remembers who owns most of them. Somebody once claimed these homes, which makes me wonder why, in property-investment-mad Hong Kong, no heirs have come along to reclaim any for redevelopment. Maybe they were squatters to begin with, without title.

This house, though deep in a glen and obscured by dense forest, is in a lovely location next to the stream, with enough level area--if you cleared the trees--for a substantial garden. It's a single-story bungalow with a loft, made of whitewashed brick and concrete. There's a barn of sorts, possibly a former pigsty, in the back. The house is still intact; only a bit of the barn has collapsed. It would make an ideal artist's retreat.

One day I was walking with Uncle Six (whom you'll meet later) to do some repair work on the village water tank upstream. He's getting pretty old and though not native to Wang Tong, has lived here almost forever. I asked him whether the house belongs to anybody.

"I don't know anymore," he said. "Used to be a couple named...I don't remember...I think Chan. They were very old. I think their children moved away. When they died, no one came to take over. No one lived there since."

"When was that?"

"Oh...thirty, thirty-five years ago. Before the pipe." He was referring to the water pipe which leads from the water tank halfway up the valley down into the village.

Uncle Six shook his head. His expression looked sad. Those were the old days, I guess, when people worked hard to live off the land, and came and went without much notice.

The house remains, populated only by ghosts.

Lotus Eaters

2009-07-29T19:13:00.010+08:00

Is it a lotus or a water lily? There's some disagreement over whether Nelumbo nucifera is part of the water lily family of aquatic flowering plants. This particular flower is in our lily pond... make that our lotus pond. It's the sacred flower of Buddhism, which might explain why the pond at the end of our garden is crying out for a Buddha statue. Its roots and seeds are edible, and its stems and leaves are widely used in Chinese medicine.

I'm not the flower fanatic in the family. All I know is it's pretty and seems to know it. Out of the thousands of flowers in our garden, the lotuses seem to almost vocally demand attention, like floral divas. They're at the very end of the garden like the mistress at the head of the table, sticking their long skinny necks up and distracting your eye even at a distance. They're not as colorful as the cartoony bird of paradise, as exotic as the blossom of our dragon fruit, or as flashy as the bushes full of ruby chili peppers. There's something regal about the lotus instead. It commands you to pay attention.

Maybe this haughty sense of majesty intimidated Mr. Tang, on the other side of the village. He had a lotus pond as large as a swimming pool right in his front garden next to the public walkway. It was so big that it still appears on the topographic maps of the village. In the summer it was covered from one end to the other with waxy pink lotuses and floating water lilies. He had carp and a lot of turtles too, who stuck their heads up for air between the lily pads. Talk about Buddhist blessings, he had it in spades. Probably good feng shui too. Then a few years ago he filled it all in and converted his garden into a suburban American-style lawn. Now his grandchildren can run around playing football (soccer) when they visit, but I think he did the whole village a disservice.

My wife gets crazy pleasure from her flowers, and the lotus is the queen of them all. I'm not as nuts, though if they bring us Buddhist good karma, all I can say is, I need all I can get. Long live our lotuses.

The Ugly Side: The Stream

2009-07-28T10:58:00.015+08:00

These are not exactly before and after photos, but they could be. Actually, they illustrate government ineptitude and local idiocy and greed. And a shameful chapter in our village history.

Both are pictures of the Wang Tong Stream which, as you can see, is a shallow trickle of a brook. The section in the first photo runs along the south side of the village. It's a rich habitat for several species of fish, small reptiles, crabs, freshwater shrimp and aquatic insects. Which also makes it a popular hunting ground for egrets, herons, kingfishers, moorhens, as well as frogs and the water snakes which feed on them.

The section in the second photo, right around the corner a few meters upstream, used to look like that until the government, goaded by a few local residents, decided to "train the river" for so-called flood prevention. Well, it's true that every three years or so a week of torrential rains would cause the soil to become so waterlogged that the stream couldn't handle the runoff and numerous gardens would flood. In 1997 the government decided to fix the problem by turning an 800-meter section of the stream into a concrete channel.

At the sound of the word "concrete", many of the old-time residents stood up to cheer. Some even had messy wet dreams, in love with concrete. Concrete is modern. Concrete is clean. Concrete keeps out trees, which as we all know are the cause of mosquitoes. More concrete, they reasoned, would make property values increase. And concrete lines the pockets of our village leaders, who are all in the construction and building supply business.

So in came the government engineers. Well, not right away. They used topographic maps to design the channel without once ever visiting the site. There was no public consultation, and obviously not even an intelligent geological survey. Hey, it's just some puny, out of the way village. Who gives a crap?

Our esteemed village elders kept the project secret. In fact, the first that anyone else learned of it was thanks to my son. He was six years old at the time. I brought him to play in the swimming hole above the little dam at the end of the village. He heard some workers nearby speaking in Chinese, which he translated for me: "Daddy, they said they're going to concrete the river."

Oh, come on. That was too ridiculous. Why would anyone do that? Little boys make up all sorts of fantasies. But I phoned a local environmentalist, who made some inquiries, and discovered that it was true.

Thus began the largest civil unrest ever to hit Wang Tong Village. Numerous residents protested to the government, demanded meetings with the engineering department and explanations from local leaders. At least the engineers had the guts to respond. Local leaders, our very own neighbors, locked themselves behind closed doors. The engineers were adamant. Once a government project is put into action, it is impossible to stop.

We tried anyway. A defacto organization materialized. We occupied the site, placed posters everywhere and rallied the rest of the community for support.

But the bulldozers and excavators arrived. Enough steel reinforcement was laid, with so much concrete poured on top, that not even a nuclear bomb would crack it.

We still tried to stop it. Several of us organized local children to help us vandalize the site with a fun day of spray painting the concrete and equipment. That got us television coverage, and the issue of government destroying the landscape for spurious reasons became a matter of wider public controversy.

My family and others received threats from local triad gangsters. Another woman and I were marked as the ringleaders by one of our village Dear Leaders (not true; it was very much collective) and the police threatened us with prison unless we personally restored every item that had been painted. Which we did, under the gloating sneers of many locals.

Although the anti-concrete organization was two-thirds Chinese people, the fact that many foreign residents were involved turned the entire matter into a racial conflict. People would meet me on the footpath, point at themselves and with belligerent expressions shriek in my face: "I'm Chinese!!" Yeah, so what, I thought. The implication was that westerners were against progress, against honest hard-working Chinese people making as much money as possible and screw the environment. Of course that wasn't true, and the fact that Chinese outnumbered westerners among the protestors was ignored.

We won and we lost. The government agreed to stop similar plans in neighboring villages. But ours was too far gone to halt.

By the way, the flooding problem worsened after they put in the channel. Pouring so much concrete had actually raised the stream bed and decreased its volume capacity. Without plants and rocks along the bed and banks providing friction, storm runoff sped many times faster down the channel and bottlenecked at the end, spilling over onto neighboring land. And with impermeable concrete walls, the natural wetland on either side could no longer drain underground into the stream, making flooding even more inevitable.

Years later, a few of the original proponents of the concrete, including the man who set the police after me, admitted that it had been the wrong thing to do. Today, twelve years since, I've mended fences with nearly everyone. Nearly. There's still one woman who looks like she'd rather spit at me than say hello.

Meanwhile, Wang Tong is left with an 800-meter scar of sterile reinforced concrete where fish and frogs once flourished, and a social scar of a tiny community once bitterly split apart.

Wild Night in Wang Tong

2009-07-26T23:12:00.005+08:00

Things are hopping in the old village tonight!

Something about puddles brings out the impresario in frogs. After several downpours during the day left behind lots of puddles on top of already-saturated ground, the frogs have come out singing with such bombast as if Wagner himself was conducting.

First are the altos, whose song sounds like the squeak of rubber soles on a marble floor, repeating over and over and over. A basso continuo is provided by bullfrogs in a syncopated wail which sounds something like a rubber squeeze horn with a stomach ache. In the middle is an improvisation of tenors which sound like a cross between kazoos and people spitting, not sticking to any rhythm. It's like an off-key jazz opera which goes on all night, at a volume that can make you too crazy to sleep if you pay attention.

On top of the frogs is a sonic blanket of the trill of crickets; it's summer, after all.

Then the dogs start barking. One neurotic mutt on one side of the valley might bark at a cat, and then every other dog in the village feels obliged to comment like drunks in a bar. Some dogs seems to be quite unpopular among their peers. Any time the guy at the end of the Upper West Side takes his three dogs for a midnight walk, every other canine along the way, including ours, bursts into insanity.

If you're lucky you'll hear a barking deer, a miniature deer native to south China. Not that it's a pretty sound; it's a mournful bay like a moaning dog. Yet it's nice to know they're there. Not so far tonight, though. In this hot weather, perhaps the barking deer have moved to higher altitude.

Humans contribute little to the noise: the rattle of air conditioners and the occasional ding of a bicycle bell.

If you're looking for a wild and noisy night out you might consider the bars of Wanchai or Lan Kwai Fong. Or you might pay a visit to Wang Tong Village.

Death of a Tree

2009-07-25T14:26:00.007+08:00

I regret to report the sad news of the death of an old and stately tree. It's called a rose apple, though I don't recall ever seeing any fruit. It's a gorgeous creature, a muscular tangle of fibrous trunks and branches overhanging an abandoned house and, incidentally, is located directly across the footpath from the entrance to my house.

I'm always suspicious when a government department announces that a tree must be removed. This is a government which views trees as nothing more than nuisances which get in the way of roads and buildings. Ever since a tree in Stanley collapsed after a rainstorm, tragically killing a teenage girl, all trees are viewed with suspicion: potential killers unless proven innocent.

Local people in Mui Wo aren't much better. Trees are simply overgrown weeds. Trees cause mosquitos. Yes, cause. Not "harbor", not "attract"; mosquitoes are spontaneously generated from trees, according to Hong Kong Chinese belief. In some of the other villages they're regularly chopped down or, if they're in a particularly conspicuous spot, poisoned by drilling holes at the base and injecting drain cleaner, to artificially widen footpaths so that people can illegally drive cars there. Sympathy for trees is not in wide supply.

So when we saw the notice pinned to the village notice board regarding the rose apple tree, Cathy and I phoned the number to ask questions. We were given another number to call, then another and another. I wrote a letter of objection. Finally Cathy spoke to the tree inspector himself. He explained that this tree was severely damaged by termites and, being on the side of a steep slope, was in danger of collapse in the event of a typhoon or heavy rainstorm.

But can't they just treat it? Maybe trim the higher limbs to make it less top-heavy, and use some sort of medicine to kill the termites?

Not advisable in this case, he said. The main trunk was so rotten inside that it was beyond saving. He assured my skeptical wife that killing a tree was a last resort measure, not first. But he promised to come take another look and see whether there were any remedial measures. Which he did a couple weeks later. I met him and he showed me in detail why the tree had to go. Even if they treated it, he said, the termites would simply move to the next tree up the hill. Best to remove it entirely. It broke my heart to admit he was right. It overhung our entrance and a public pathway. It posed a genuine danger.

Okay, so we accepted that it's a danger. Go ahead and remove it. Months went by and no one came even to look. Again Cathy phoned number after number in this department or that. "Next Wednesday," they said. Wednesday came and went. Actually, many Wednesdays came and went. It started to get infuriating.

From wanting desperately to preserve this magnificent tree, we were now anxious for them to do their terrible deed.

Here they are today, cutting it down a branch at a time. Euthenasia is never pretty.

Rest in peace, beautiful tree.

Wang Tong People: Ah-Po

2009-07-24T17:09:00.013+08:00

I smelled smoke. Looking out the window I saw the old lady pulling dried banana stalks onto a small bonfire in the middle of her farm plot next door. I went out to the balcony and called down to her in Chinese.

"Ah-Po, so much smoke."

"Is it going in your windows?"

"Yes."

"Just a little bit to burn. I'll do it quickly." She smiled and waved. I waved back and said thank you.

I couldn't blame her. We were the newcomers in Wang Tong, only 18 years. She's been farming this field for over 30 years. In fact, I just learned that she's the one who introduced ginger to the valley. Meet Ah-Po, the last remaining farmer in Wang Tong.

Her family name is Lai, but everyone knows her only as Ah-Po, which means Granny. She and her husband moved from the Guangning region of Guangdong Province to Hong Kong and somehow ended up settling in Wang Tong. Back then, she remembers, there were hardly any houses. The valley was a patchwork of rice paddies and small farm plots. She remembers Yuen Fat, the previous owner of our land, planting his fruit orchard. The surviving trees are old and knuckly now.

Ah-Po and her husband supported themselves doing odd jobs on construction sites all around Lantau, including some of the first buildings in Discovery Bay. But one day they had the idea to plant ginger. All around Hong Kong you'll find old women sitting on the sidewalks holding wicker baskets filled with pungent, aromatic white ginger flowers, often with safety pins attached to sell as instant corsages for a dollar. If they could supply these women, they could make a good profit. So they planted a patch of ginger, then another, then more in neighboring villages. It was all open land; nobody knew who owned it, and even if they did know, the owners mostly didn't care. Every May the couple took leave from construction work to harvest the flowers. Ah-Po says it was indeed very profitable. Ginger needs no maintenance. In fact, it's almost impossible to get rid of. As the rice paddies went fallow, the ginger marched in like an army. The vast ginger fields of Wang Tong and neighboring Luk Tei Tong are her legacy.

She still harvests ginger, but most of her energy goes into her vegetable farm. She raises bananas, squash, bak choi... well, whatever's in season. That's her new taro crop next to her in the photo.

We weren't always so friendly with Ah-Po. To irrigate her vegetable farm she used to block the outflow pipe in the small dam at the upper end of the village so as to divert more water into a tributary running through the ginger field and into her farm. That left the main Wang Tong Stream deprived of water. Back then we lived on the Lower East Side, next to the stream, and it annoyed us to see it dry up like that. We sent the kids after dark to unblock the pipe. The next day it would be blocked again.

When we moved in to our current house and marked the borders of our land it turned out that it overlapped the corn section of Ah-Po's farm, which prompted intense negotiations. We had one or two arguments about ginger that our construction workers damaged. But once she saw what a plantaholic Cathy is, and how intensely serious Cathy was about creating a substantial vegetable garden, we gained respect in her eyes. Now she's Cathy's farming mentor, passing on her knowledge, and occasional seedlings, to another generation, not so young but eager nevertheless.

I don't know how old Ah-Po is. I pray that she's around for a long time to come. Some occasional banana leaf smoke in the window is a small price to pay for the beauty, the food and the link with the land that she provides for our village.

Feng Shui in my Window

2009-07-23T15:55:00.015+08:00

This is the view from the window of my home studio on the top floor of our house. In front of me is a small seldom-used house owned by a church, then the neighbor at #15 and a coastal wetland. Beyond that is Silvermine Bay, with tiny Hei Ling Chau island in the distance. I enjoy watching the fishing boats and ferries coming and going, and at this time of year when the storms all come in from the south-east I sometimes get panoramic, apocalyptic lightning displays.

Many years ago, when we lived in another house in the village, not far from where are now, I had a similar view, though out of a much smaller window. One day I was listening to the radio and they were interviewing one of the most famous feng shui experts in Hong Kong. He said that in Hong Kong, speaking in general terms, the most auspicious location for a room was facing east-south-east with a view overlooking water. I rushed down to the bedroom and searched through the miscellaneous-whatever drawers until I found what I was looking for: a small keychain with a compass. I brought it back up to my studio and checked: exactly east-south-east, overlooking the bay! Well, I couldn't deny that things were going pretty well for me. I had an excellent marriage, two healthy young children, and simply the greatest job anyone could have in the whole world.

Around six months after that radio show, a developer built a new house directly in front of ours, obscuring my lucky view. It was like one sailboat blanketing another: getting in the way of its wind. Two days after officially completing the building, packing up their equipment and clearing out the site, I was unexpectedly fired from my job in the most humiliating way possible--by fax. My firing touched off an enormous scandal which still to this day haunts my life. You betcha, I became a firm believer in feng shui.

Many people treat feng shui an entertaining and harmless superstition, but I'll put my money on it. In fact, I did. We bought the plot of land directly in front of our house so that no one will ever be able to build there and get in the way of our east-south-east sea view.

Hummers of the Footpath

2009-07-22T15:22:00.015+08:00

There is a growing menace on our thoroughfares, crowding out smaller vehicles, devouring parking areas, blocking traffic and endangering pedestrians. They're heavy, as clumsy as tanks and ridden mainly as status symbols. Yes, that's right, I'm talking about tricycles.

Most of Mui Wo, which includes four main villages, several minor ones and a few square miles of open fields, small farms and hills inbetween, is closed to motor vehicles. The 3000 people of the district get around on bicycles and foot to commute to the ferry pier and shops. Here in Wang Tong we have three narrow--and unnamed--concrete paths inside the village which all feed into one main track along the Wang Tong Stream (seen in the photo).

Kids here grow up on bikes. They ride in wicker baskets mounted on the crossbars of their parents' bicycles until they're old enough to ride their own. All are expert cyclists, without training wheels, by age 3. It's amazing how much a normal bicycle can carry. I've been known to carry a week's worth of groceries dangling from the handlebars, a new plastic deck chair tied to the rear rack, and several potted plants in the front basket, while talking on my mobile phone.

In the mornings there can be bicycle traffic jams as hundreds of cyclists from around Mui Wo converge to catch the morning ferries. There are occasional accidents, almost all caused by inexperienced cyclists--by definition, tourists from Hong Kong's urban areas. But otherwise things have been pretty harmonious along the cycle paths.

That is, until a couple years ago, when one of the local bicycle shops had the bright idea to start selling tricycles. They're completely impractical for Mui Wo. They take up most of the width of the pathways. When two approach each other from opposite directions it leads to standoffs while all other traffic, including pedestrians, comes to a halt. Heavily built, the driver's seats welded on too low for comfortable riding, with impractically small wheels and a single gear, they're torturous to ride up even a mild slope, and that's without a passenger. This leads to traffic pileups behind them as they strain their way forward. At the bicycle parking lot near the ferry pier, already overflowing by nine o'clock every morning, each tricycle takes up two spaces.

But what bothers me most about these Hummers of the bike path is what they represent. As you can see in the photo, this perfectly fit Chinese gentleman, wearing sunglasses like a pop star, is being chauffeured by his Filipina maid. And that's the point. People don't buy these because they need them. They'll say, "Oh, it's for shopping." But really it's the local equivalent of owning a limousine. I've watched, disgusted, as two neighbors in Wang Tong, both fit adults who used to ride their own bicycles, stand with impatience burned into their faces, while the maid fetches the tricycle and pulls up in front to let them get on. They can't even be bothered to walk ten paces to where it was parked. They don't care how strenuous it is for their petite maid to deliver them to the pier and pick them up later in the day. They don't care that a trip which takes 5 to 7 minutes on a normal bicycle now takes 15 minutes of hard labor... someone else's hard labor. They aren't bothered by the selfishness of impeding traffic and hogging parking. All they know is that they are Very Important People, too important to use their own legs.

If you live in a place where idiots in SUVs and snobs in Mercedes drive rudely and choke the roads, count yourself lucky that you're not stuck in a rainstorm, just trying to get home, cycling behind a huffing and puffing, creaking and crawling fat-assed tricycle.

Nothing Happened

2009-07-21T20:22:00.011+08:00

It was hot. 33 degrees (91° Fahrenheit) by ten o'clock in the morning. The ground all through the village was still so gorged with water from the typhoon that it shed moisture upwards like a simmering pot. As soon as I opened the door my forehead started drooling sweat.

Cathy was at work in central Hong Kong. One kid was out for the day and the other was, like a typical mid-summer bored teenager, sleeping in until at least noon. Our housemaid was in town to renew her visa. I was alone in the house.

I've worked at home for over 25 years, wherever we've lived. People always say "How lucky! You get to work at home!" On a day like today I think: How lucky they are. They have people around they can talk to and have lunch with.

Usually I crave the solitude when I work, but sometimes it gets to me. It's the irony of the artist everywhere: in order to create the words or pictures that we hope will connect us with other people, we need to be alone. Back in 1989 I begged the editor of the newspaper I worked for as a cartoonist to let me have a desk. When one finally became vacant six weeks later his secretary called me. I moved in with a supply of drawing materials and discovered that I was utterly unable to work in such an environment. I learned that journalists spend ninety percent of their day chatting and gossiping. A bit of that was entertaining, though I often didn't know the person over in Business or Special Supplements they were sneering about. As soon as I said excuse me, I need to concentrate and do my drawings, people took it as a slap. After two weeks I surrendered my desk. That was the last time I ever worked in someone else's office.

At times the craving for company is excruciating, especially on a day like today when I was all alone in a big house in a tiny village where no creatures were moving. Even the few birds were just passing through, high overhead. I felt like the last human being after the plague.

I went for a walk to see who might be around. I left the house for the main footpath, turned the corner for the more densely developed Lower East Side of Wang Tong, hoping I might run into somebody. Someone I could photograph and introduce you to on this page.

Not even the rubbish collection ladies were around, and I really want you to meet them. The Wang Tong Stream was clear and empty. The fish were hiding out of sight in the shadows, away from the heat.

I kept walking, heading inland, past our old house, which the new owners had painted white. Across the stream Mrs. Suen waved to me before disappearing inside and shutting her door. I walked all the way to the little dam at the end of the village. Sometimes you find kids splashing around or fishing in the little swimming hole formed by the dam. Nobody.

On the way back a woman I didn't recognize passed me on her bicycle. All the way home she was the only other person I encountered.

Sometimes Wang Tong Village is my Paradise on earth. Sometimes it feels like a gorgeous prison.

The photo above tells it all. The sign at the top says in Chinese: "Welcome to Wang Tong Village". Welcome...somebody...anybody!

Wang Tong Archaeology

2009-07-20T15:11:00.013+08:00

When we lived in our previous house in the village, we hired men with shovels and a jackhammer to dig deep and turn the soil in the garden. To our amazement they discovered pieces of porcelein dishes, clay pots and several old bricks buried deep in the ground. We called a neighbor, an archaeologist whose job is to examine building site excavations for signs of archaeological treasures. He gathered some of our samples and brought them home for examination. Could they be remnants of some ancient Ming Dynasty settlement? Or at the very least maybe they belonged to someone who had farmed this spot a hundred years ago? They were down pretty deep; they must have been quite old.

The next day we learned the result: they were cheap dishes like you could buy at any Chinese department store. Most likely there had been a house on that spot which, along with all its contents, had been demolished and the rubble mixed into the soil before building the new house back in 1980. Oh well.

Wang Tong does have a few sites of historical interest, though. There's a disused traditional Chinese style pigsty left over from before pig farming was banned here in the 1980s. There is the watchtower on top of Butterfly Hill. And then there's the old restaurant.

When you walk toward the waterfall, at the top of the steepest part of the path, on your right are the remains of an entrance gate, which you can see in the photo. Some of the original green paint is left. The red Chinese characters are still readable and say "Sea food snack restaurant". My wife thinks the tree on the left was deliberately planted to frame the gate in a beautiful and auspicious manner. Walk through the gate and about 50 yards up the hill all you'll find left of the restaurant is part of its foundation.

Locals think the restaurant opened in the 1930s. Back then all of Lantau Island was a forgotten, remote backwater which may as well been the far side of the Moon. There were a few small fishing villages and nothing of much interest to tourists. The only way to get here was by a slow, infrequent ferry. Until the late 1950s there were no roads anywhere on the island. The main thoroughfare between the north and south of Lantau was a footpath which passed right through Wang Tong. It was paved with cobblestones, some of which can still be seen along the edges of the current footpath. The restaurant was likely a stop-off point for travelers at the end of the long hike.

Picture what it must have been like back in 1950. You just walked for two or three hours from Tung Chung, a cluster of tiny villages where pirates once lived. The cobbled path led you along the coast, up into a long valley and over a steep pass. Just one more hill to go and you'll be in Mui Wo. At the top of that small hill is an little seafood restaurant offering fast food and a view. What a nice place to have a little meal before trekking the last mile to the ferry pier and the end of your journey.

It would have been a stunning location. Today the hilltop where it stood is covered with dense forest, but in fact that wasn't the natural state of things on Lantau Island. Most of the island had been deforested by local inhabitants for fuel and building materials and from hill fires accidentally set by ancestor worshippers in various hillside cemeteries. So chances are that the restaurant patrons had a view unobstructed by trees. On one side they would have been able to see the Silvermine Waterfall. On the other side they'd have had a panoramic view across Wang Tong valley, likely covered with small farms, over Silvermine Bay, of the harbor and other islands, with western Hong Kong island in the distance. Judging by the quality of workmanship on the pillars, it must have been an elegant restaurant, probably a great place to linger over a bowl of noodles and a pot of tea.

In the late 1950s the government put in a paved road connecting the north and south of the island, which terminates at the ferry pier about a mile from Wang Tong. The old cobblestone footpath was no longer a vital throughway and the restaurant would have lost most of its patronage. So it isn't surprising that it closed in the 1960s.

No one knows who owned it and the site has never been put up for sale. There have been no restaurants in Wang Tong ever since. If you want noodles, you need to walk about a third of mile outside the village to the Sun Lok Restaurant, whose dishes are probably about as old and cracked as the ones we dug up from our garden.

Typhoon Victim

2009-07-19T12:44:00.012+08:00

Last night we had a direct hit from Typhoon Molave, which struck Hong Kong at midnight. 140 km/h (87 mph) winds flattened the ginger fields and uprooted plants. We prepared by supporting our most vulnerable trees with rope attached to the garden fence. One papaya tree nearly fell over, and some of those almost-ripe pomelos dropped like bombs, but otherwise we escaped damage.

We also escaped burglary. Burglars often choose nights like these, with no witnesses out for midnight strolls and the the deafening noise of wind and driving rain covering the sounds of breaking locks and crowbarred windows. At 1:15 a.m. our housemaid got up to get a drink and saw two men in black coats just outside. They saw her, leaped over the fence and ran away. This morning the police told us a house on the other side of the village wasn't so lucky. The thieves got away with a horde of cash.

But the one who had the closest call last night was this baby bulbul in the photo. I found it on the ground beneath a tree, motionless, its wings askew. Cathy thought it was dead, but then we saw it breathing. It had obviously been blown out of its nest. But from which tree? We weren't aware of any nest in the tree directly above, but knew there was a bulbul nest in a tree around 20 yards away. How to return it there? And what if it didn't really belong to that family?

Fortunately Cathy remembered there was an abandoned nest in a bush elsewhere in the garden, comically constructed from twigs and white nylon packing twine. She put on some gloves, fetched the nest, then gently lifted the protesting baby into it. She placed the nest in a branch of the tree below the other bulbul nest.

The photo shows Cathy holding the nest with the baby in it. Note the white nylon twine the birds wove around the nest, as neatly as a birthday present.

An hour later we went to check. The baby was standing and crying on a branch next to the nest. Across the garden we saw adult bulbuls chirping and hopping around on the fence in an agitated manner. Having watched countless generations of bulbuls produce families outside our windows wherever we've lived in Wang Tong, we thought their behavior looked very much like upset parents.

Another half hour later the baby was back on the ground. Concerned, Cathy got her gloves and was about to pick it up again when the baby spread its wings and flew away.

We're no longer worried. Maybe this baby had to leave the nest prematurely, but we're sure it will find its way in the world.

I hope it comes back to visit. I hope those burglars don't.

Yellow Skins

2009-07-18T12:57:00.008+08:00

Ha! You expected a racist joke. Let's talk fruit instead.

Wong pei (黃皮) are in season all around the village. The name translates literally as "yellow skin", though the dictionary claims the English name of this berry-like fruit is wampee. They're about the size of large grapes, with thin leathery skins.

They're not my favorite Chinese fruit mainly because the skins are hard to peel, so you're supposed to just pop them into your mouth and spit out the skin later. I know some people do that with grapes, but I've always found it to be more effort than it's worth.

However, it is worth the trouble with wong pei. The flesh inside has a satisfying squishy texture a bit more rubbery than grapes and just as juicy. Once you bite down your mouth is knocked awake with a sweet, tangy flavor like sugary orange-lemon-lime punch.

Wong pei are native to southern China and they're one of the most popular fruits among local people, so it isn't surprising to find the trees in many gardens and in the wild. Each tree will give you many hundreds of fruit. Our current garden was once a small fruit orchard, and we've kept as many of the original trees intact as possible. We have lychees, longans, sugar-apples (known as faan gwai lychee: literally "foreign devil lychees"...they're not native to China), and pomelos, but the original farmers knew their market and planted mostly wong pei. We're reaping that abundance right now. The tree in the photo is next to our front gate.

Like I said, they're not my favorite. That's Western tastebuds for you. I can't wait for the syrupy-sweet lychees to ripen later this summer.

Wang Tong Geography

2009-07-17T09:15:00.008+08:00

Wang Tong isn't exactly in the middle of nowhere. But it isn't in the middle of somewhere either.

Imagine a right triangle. The right angle sides, on the east and south, are bounded by the Wang Tong River (actually a babbling brook) as it emerges from a razor-cut gap in the hills, cuts a straight path along the foothills, then veers sharp right just as it strikes a line of trees bordering a wetland. The river passes another hill on its way to a mangrove swamp and the sea, leaving Wang Tong behind.

The hypotenuse of the triangle is formed by Butterfly Hill on the northwest. It got its name from the reputed 200 species of butterflies that have been reported on its flanks. Butterfly Hill is densely wooded, its only structures being a few houses at its ankles and the ruins of an old watchtower on its crown. Hong Kongers being notoriously uninterested in any history longer than the 3-year profile of a stock's selling price, no one is exactly sure of the age or even the purpose of the old watchtowers which are found all around Lantau. Some say they pre-date the British, erected by local chieftains to guard against pirates. Others claim they're from the 1930s, built when Lantau was still a backwater as distant as the Moon. The rest of Butterfly Hill is an informal conservation area--one government agency says it is one, while another agency says it isn't. It's home to eagles owls, rare barking deer, the even rarer Romer's Tree Frog, and that Burmese python I mentioned yesterday. I've seen kingfishers darting in and out, presumably to build their nests, as do bulbuls and many other local resident birds.

The majority of the human part of the village is along both sides of the first section of the river, literally Wang Tong's Lower East Side. The Upper West Side, where I live, closer to Butterfly Hill, has only a few houses built before zoning put a limit on development.

Most of Wang Tong Valley is blanketed by an unbroken stretch of ginger fields mixed with tall grasses and broadleaf shrubs. It isn't the kind of ginger you can eat. But, man, its flowers! They're whiter than snow, loose waxy petals which give off a intense spicy fragrance. Twice a year when the ginger is in bloom, its perfume saturates the valley, intoxicating anyone who passes through. This is one of those times of year.

The photo above shows the ginger field in bloom directly behind my house, framed by our pomelo tree, almost ready for harvest.

The valley is also a wildlife haven. There are dozens of insect species I've never seen before in my life. Baby praying mantises often land on your shoulders and dragonflies which look they were painted with blue, red, and purple fluorescent marking pens dart in and out of open windows. Hidden in the brush are turtles, frogs, snakes and skinks, many of whom provide food for the egrets, herons, moorhens, curlews, coucals, grebes and other funny-sounding birds who visit during the day.

The area's main attractions are beyond the village in opposite directions.

If you take the footpath past Butterfly Hill, it leads you up a steep incline, through a gap and into the next valley, which contains a single farmhouse and a forest of bauhinia trees. Another five-minute walk beyond that brings you to the spectacular Silvermine Waterfall and the abandoned silver mine which gives the area its English name.

In the other direction, south of the village, I mentioned a wetland and a mangrove swamp. It's a small mangrove, too small for the government to declare a Coastal Protection Area according to their stubborn regulations, but it's stuffed full of creatures: mudskippers--fish which walk on land, covered by thick coats of slime which serve the same purpose in reverse as air tanks for human divers--fiddler crabs with enlarged right claws, fluorescent blue kingfishers, snowy egrets, Chinese herons, and a rotating population of migratory birds.

Beyond that is Silvermine Beach, a sandy beach framing Silvermine Bay, whose water is, well, if you grew up here like my kids and develop the right antibodies, potentially swimmable.

I'll bring you to some of these places in more detail later. But right now my eye is distracted away from the keyboard and toward the panorama of the ginger field in exuberant bloom outside my window.

Snakes in the Garden (again)

2009-07-16T09:12:00.012+08:00

Our gardener phoned me. "Sir! Snakes in the lily pond!"

Did she say snakes...with a second S?

At the end of our garden we built a small pond and planted water lilies. The pond is fed by a little trickle of a stream at the edge of the property, entering through an opening in the back and exiting through the side, where it flows into the vegetable farm next door. The pond quickly became home to scores of tiny fish and, within a few months, was filled with tadpoles. Usually you can find frogs of various sizes hanging out on a lily pad. One day we discovered two large turtles chilling out in there; the next day they had moved on. But this was the first time we'd had snakes in the pond. I called the police to send the snake squad and ran downstairs (unfortunately forgetting my camera; I took the photo of the pond this morning, mainly because a gorgeous lily had just opened)

Nothing brings out the primeval gut feeling that we humans are just animals than when you face a snake. Fear, revulsion, the urge to flee and an urge to kill all well up inside and the skin tingles with adrenalin. I've been face-to-face with a brown bear and armed muggers, but the fight-or-flight response is never so intense as when there's a snake in front of me. In this case, not one but two slender dark brown snakes were curled up in the pond, their narrow heads breaking the surface. One rose up and looked at us curiously. Then the other.

And then they started to dance. They curled around each other, uncurled, then curled again in the other direction. Were they playing? Was it a mating dance? Do snakes mate in the water? Whatever they were doing, I couldn't help but think that they looked like they were having fun.

The police snake catchers arrived. They said it would be difficult to catch them in the water, since they couldn't be pinned down, and in any case they looked like non-venomous water snakes. My wife arrived home early from work and joined the crowd. Just as we were discussing whether they might be rat snakes (also non-venomous), one languidly crawled up over the edge of the pond, turned away from us, then calmly crossed the stream and disappeared into the farm next door. The other must have snuck out the water inlet hole, because there was no sign of it.

In the year and a half since we moved into our new house, we've had numerous snake visits. During the construction, a Burmese python ("The biggest one I've ever seen in my life" said one of the construction workers, who grew up in the countryside), passed right through our future living room. After we moved in, one morning a rat snake, easily nine feet long, was resting in the shade outside the kitchen door. When it saw me it lifted its head and indignantly traveled across the garden, over the wall and into the wild ginger field on the other side. We've had several black cobras pop their heads out of holes in the wall. Those are the ones I really hate. They're poisonous and short-tempered. I've had more close encounters with cobras than I can count in my 18 years in Wang Tong.

The oddest snake incident occurred one evening when Cathy, my wife, ran in from watering the garden. "I nearly stepped on a snake!" She grabbed a flashlight and our snake identification book. Next to a papaya tree was a muscular snake curled up like a garden hose. It had a stunning pattern of black and white rings around the length of its body. It turned out to be a banded krait, uncommon in this part of China, and so venomous that its bite will kill an adult human in 8 hours. The police sent over a brilliant snake catcher, who used a flashlight and a bamboo stick to actually hypnotize the reptile. He then stunned it with a tap on the head, and did something I'd never dare: he picked up the living but woozy snake and tossed it into a bag. Kraits are a protected species, so he had no intention of killing it. It would be taken to a remote spot and released.

Lucky for those snakes I'm not Chinese and my wife isn't a snake eater. In our previous house on the other side of the village, whenever anyone shouted "Snake!" several local men would come running with sacks and bamboo sticks. They could name instantly the species of the snake, as well as the price per pound of its meat. Their goal: catch whatever it was alive, carry it home and drop it into a pot of boiling water.

When the two snakes scurried away after their brief romp in our pond I actually felt kind of touched. They'd enjoyed a refreshing mid-summer-day swim, perhaps a little afternoon delight, and gone back to work. Live and let live, even snakes.

The News From Wang Tong

2009-07-15T09:32:00.001+08:00

Welcome to Wang Tong, a little village somewhere on the southern end of Lantau Island in the South China Sea. That's most of it in the photo. Wang Tong has between 60 and 75 buildings, depending on your opinion about where the village boundary lies. Only a few are single-family homes. The rest are split into apartments, others are almost permanently vacant, and a few exist as down-market guesthouses for braying packs of teenagers.

How many people live here? I don't think anyone ever counted. Even the government census lumps Wang Tong and its neighboring villages into one broad entity called Mui Wo. But if I had to guess, I would say that the permanent population of our village hovers between 150 and 180.

Wang Tong is no Anatevka, or even Lake Wobegon. You would never go out of your way to visit this place. You can't drive to it; there are no roads! It isn't quite visible from the beach. You might stroll along its edge on your way to the Silvermine Waterfall, but you don't have to. There isn't much to see except a field of wild ginger, a few nice gardens and the one remaining vegetable farm.

So who lives here? Even in a village this tiny there are four distinct populations. Start with the so-called indigenous: descendents of the original, pre-British colonial era, settlers of Lantau Island. Two clans predominate: the Tsangs and the Wans. Then there are the other Chinese residents, people who drifted here to save money or get away from the city. Until around 2005 only a small handful of Caucasian and other non-Chinese people bought or rented homes, in order to have the space that we foreigners seem to need surrounding us. In the past several years, we've seen a small surge of incoming foreigners, including an increasing number of overseas Chinese. And don't forget the Filipinos. Since nearly every household employs a Filipina domestic helper, and a few have gardeners as well, Filipinos might in fact be the largest homogeneous group in Wang Tong.

I've lived in Wang Tong since 1991. My children grew up in its fields and streams and nearby beaches and hills. I truly love this village. I'll tell you more about it in this chronicle.