Nobody home

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.

Abandoned House

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.