Catharine had recommended Cheung Chao for its "real Chinese flavor." The tourist guides concurred that the outlying islands were well worth the journey. So I was on my way.
The ferry ride gave yet one more dazzling perspective on the Hong Kong skyline. We drifted further and further from its bustle until it was just us, some fishing boats and barges, and the sea.
Then came land. Cheung Chao's harbor was skirted by steep hills crammed with quaint, colorful houses. The fishing boats' pastel paint had cracked and peeled with age, but had lost none of its bright hue.
The guide's promise that no automobiles were allowed on the island was broken only by one ambulance, a golf cart for shuttling the island's elderly, and tiny scooter-driven flatbeds, employed by construction projects. While these vehicles were obviously at a premium here, I noticed that they went back and forth only partially filled. In India, these carts would have been packed six-feet high each way with entire families hanging onto the edges. Here there was a leisure that was hard to find in Hong Kong Central.
I strolled around the village, allowing myself to get lost in the maze of alleys, fish shops, and gaming parlors. I found a seafood lunch at a restaurant that boasted "we speak English." Then I took a walking tour of the island, as mapped by the Lonely Planet guide.
The first part of the tour took me through the center of the
village, where, as promised, most of the men could be located by the clacking
of Mah Jong tiles, gambling away their afternoons, years, and lifetimes.
The few people working either lazily attend to their shops or lug handtrucks
and heavy carts around (those few gas-powered vehicles I had seen remained
out on the island's one main drag). It's hard to imagine that this place
has changed much in the past several hundred years.
Next the walking tour took me up into some gorgeous residential areas. The island narrows so that neighbors can nearly see opposite coastlines from their houses.
Silence enfolded the rest of my walk, except for a few critter noises from the brush. I found a monument to a dead poet--it was a serene, secluded shrine in the middle of the forest, very much like the A. A. Milne monument I'd visited a couple weeks ago in England.
Then, as I came near the end of the hike, I found a series
of graveyards. The array of tightly-packed headstones look over incredible
views of the shoreline and sea; perhaps Cheung Chao's most prime real
estate--occupied by a bunch of urns. Good for them.
I found several of the stones adorned with photos of the deceased. More used to timeless, faceless tributes to the dead--like etching in stone--I found this a little odd, if unsettling. I pondered over the swarm of photo faces, headstones, and flower offerings. Then I turned my back, feeling their lifeless eyes at my heels as I strode back into the land of the living.
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