Roadblock

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.

Hummers of the Footpath

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.