HONG KONG'S WILD SIDE

Exhausted from an unexpectedly desperate paddle around the outer headlands of Sai Kung Peninsula, drawn shoreward by the enticing refuge of Tai Long Wan Bay’s sprawling white sand beaches, I had been caught inside a set of rogue waves that broke far offshore and was now being pummelled in heavy surf. As yet another wave slammed down, engulfing me in froth and ripping the overturned sea kayak from my grasp, I realized that in my impatience to reach terra firma I had answered the question that brought me to Hong Kong.

‘Adventure in Hong Kong? You’ve got to be joking!’ my friends laughed, eyes clouding with skepticism when I told them of my quest. ‘Good luck, you’ll need it. The most common escapades in that city are aerobic shopping, crowd combat, and dodging kamikaze taxi drivers’.

It was not hard to understand their reservations. To most, Hong Kong is the Manhattan of the East, Asia’s business capitol, the world’s busiest container port, home to the world’s largest airport, and one of the most densely populated regions on the planet. Not a place commonly associated with outdoor pursuits or ecotourism.

Indeed more than seven million people are crammed into the tiny peninsula and its surrounding islands, which collectively jut into the South China Sea. If spread evenly, this would equate to a staggering six thousand four hundred inhabitants for every square kilometre of land. (By contrast Canada is home to an average of only three people per square kilometre.) But steep and rugged hills confine Hong Kong’s masses to a handful of shoreline enclaves where overcrowding goes off the population-density Richter scale. It is estimated that a mind-boggling 200,000 souls are packed into every square kilometre of Kowloon’s walled city.

One can not help but be simultaneously awed, humbled, and daunted when they first stumble through these concrete jungles, where frighteningly thin and lofty skyscrapers spring up like weeds and the unimaginable congestion of dripping air conditioners protruding overhead block the sky while creating their own soft and constant rain. As I fought my way through throngs of persistent street tailors, ‘copy watch’ salesmen, and fortune tellers outside the Star Ferry terminal on the busy harbour front, my friends’ warnings harkened back to me. After two days of elbowing through crowded ‘wet markets’, where enormous fish were regularly lopped to pieces while still flopping about by half naked men, and past cages of long black snakes quietly awaiting their time in the soup pot, it was hard to imagine that another world existed beyond the freneticism enveloping the city. But largely by geography’s decree, only twenty percent of Hong Kong’s land has even been urbanized or developed. Driven by rumours of what lay beyond, I had come to explore the remaining eighty percent.

Just as my girlfriend, Christine, and I left our hotel to embark on a five kayak journey, a cold front arrived from mainland China, hitting the city like a slap across the face. Without warning hot hazy skies turned grey. Moments later the clouds opened, and for an hour it seemed as Hong Kong had been dropped into a giant washing machine. Then as quickly as it began, it was over. But chilly temperatures followed, as did a powerful northeast monsoon wind.

On a deserted beach beside the all-but-abandoned fishing village of Hoi Ha (only a 45 minute drive from Central Hong Kong) we stuffed our sea kayaks with locally purchased supplies & noodles, star fruit, and tins of pickled lettuce. Over our shoulders, whitecaps and wind lashed the steely waters of Tolo Inlet. Paul Etherington, a twenty five year resident of Hong Kong, paced the beach nervously. An ex-pat brat who stayed to pioneer adventure travel in the region, Paul was renting us the boats but had never seen them depart on an overnight journey before.

As we lashed the last of our gear to the decks, a busload of Asian tourists suddenly appeared, shepherded down quiet forest paths by an officious leader wielding a loudhailer and impatiently waving a pink flag. After a quick glance around and the perfunctory snapping of photographs, the group stampeded back to the bus and was gone in a puff of blue smoke.

‘That highlights one of my great fears,’ admitted Paul. ‘The government has launched a new initiative promote the wild side of Hong Kong, but the majority of the visitors right now are these quickie style tourists who never really see the land or develop an appreciation for it. Because there is an unflagging desire to tame nature, and make everything safe and comfortable, I suspect that the few remaining areas of pristine parkland will end up suffering. Already many quant and isolated pathways have been cemented over needlessly, just to fill budget quotas. And at trailheads, massive bus ports are being built and barbeque pits installed. It seems very hard for some people to let a good thing be.’

Conditions grew tougher as we paddled away from the sheltered beach and out towards open water, leaving Paul anxiously staring after us. Intermittent gusts ripped up sheets of spray from the water’s surface and threatened to tear the paddles from our hands. After two hours we had battled our way across Tolo Inlet to the Wong Chuk Kok Peninsula, but rounding its eastern tip and entering the protected waters and hidden islets of Crooked Harbour proved impossible. A concentration of heavy wind and waves funnelling in from Mirs Bay beat us back, forcing us to seek refuge in one the tiny coves along the peninsula’s southern shore.

Setting our tent amongst tall grasses crowning a rocky promontory, I found myself wondering if anyone had camped in the same spot before. Although it was possible, there certainly was no sign of it. Apart from a constant parade of patrolling Marine Police frigates & high speed Dutch Sea Stalker’s used to ‘outrun, outmaneuver, and intercept’ smugglers and illegal immigrants & and one angry looking black helicopter that circled overhead for a few minutes, we were utterly alone with a vast panorama of islands and sea before us. The isolation was an uncanny change from our hectic days of preparation amidst Hong Kong’s crowded markets. That night, huddled by a bonfire with fleece pulled close and water lapping at our feet, it was hard to believe we were less than twenty five kilometres from seven million people. Only a ghostly glimmer rising beyond distant ridge lines betrayed such proximity. The lights came from Sha Tin, an outlying ‘village’ lying at the end of Tolo Channel, and home to over one million commuters. Only sixty years earlier, Hong Kong’s last wild tiger was spotted in the woods by Sha Tin, but sadly such times have long since past. Around the world, there are constant reminders that the Eden we inherited has nearly been completely vanquished. Although the term should be absolute, there are now degrees of wildness I suppose.

The high winds had not abated when we awoke, so we turned and headed south, forgetting Crooked Harbour and chasing the breeze. It was Sunday, and at Tap Mun (Grass Island), the loudhailers and pink flags were out in full force, flocks of quickie style tourist groups arriving on quarter-hourly ferries. We stopped for noodles, and then followed the friendly masses along concrete paths that wound through abandoned villages, past a refurbished temple and through groves of traditional jinta graves arranged to look seawards, allowing maximum Feng Shui benefits for the deceased. Happy to press on, we paddled out into the open waters of Mirs Bay, camping that evening on a deserted beach below the shapely form of Sharp Peak. Not a sign of development could be seen on the hills around us. Songbirds darted through a thick blanket of tropical forest, and before departing the next morning, we hauled our kayaks back to a freshwater lagoon behind the beach, exploring narrow passages festooned with ferns and crawlers.

Although everything about the journey to this point had been enjoyable, it would have felt a stretch to classify our environs as stirring and remote backcountry. It was not until we ventured further, towards the rugged headlands of southern Sai Kung, and experienced our accidental shipwrecking at the beaches of Tai Long Wan that we came to realize what a glorious jewel still remained hidden in the wilds of Hong Kong.

Hong Kong’s twelve billion dollar (U.S.) tourism industry has been dealt three crippling blows over the last five years.

First came the Asian financial crisis, which not only stalled Hong Kong’s growth, but more importantly, tightened the pocket books of travellers in nearby countries. Eighty percent of the fourteen million annual visitors to Hong Kong come from the short haul market, and the effect of the downturn was immediate. It’s impact was exacerbated when reports surfaced that claimed many local hotels and restaurants had been grossly overcharging their Japanese and Korean guests, inflating bills by two or three times the standard rate, preying on the gullible. So the ‘gullible’ simply stopped coming.

Then came ‘The Handover,’ the long anticipated return of Hong Kong to Chinese rule after one hundred and fifty six years as a British Colony. Despite much anxiety and apprehension, very little changed in Hong Kong at the stroke of midnight, June 30th, 1997 as the last British Governor sailed into the sunset. Certainly the great red tide did not sweep over the border as some had feared. For all intents and purposes business continued as usual, no doubt influenced by the deal hammered out by the British assuring that all of Hong Kong’s social, economic, and legal systems would remain intact for at least fifty more years. While subtle changes are coming & both a slow and measured of absorption of Hong Kong into China, and of China into a free market economy & most tourists would be hard pressed to notice any differences. But with the transfer of power, Hong Kong lost a touch of its luster, especially to neighbouring Asian countries. No longer a romantic outpost of the once vast British Empire, it was now viewed as just another part of China. If short haul visitors came at all, it was often as a part of large package tours that crisscrossed the mainland, Hong Kong being one of five or ten stops on the itinerary.

Finally, the tragic events of September 11th delivered Hong Kong its third and crowning blow, a global downturn in travel that stalled any attempts at recovery.

The new government responded quickly to the crisis, creating the Hong Kong Tourism Board and throwing $100 million HK towards alleviating the crippling shortfall of visitors. As part of its efforts, the nascent Tourism Board reinvented Hong Kong as ‘The City of Life,’ creating an array of glossy brochures that tout all the standard attractions. But a new tangent was added to the old strategy, the so called ‘Greening of Hong Kong’, an effort to highlight the region’s natural and wilderness areas. While everyone knows that Hong Kong will never become a prime ecotourism destination, proponents of the plan hope that long haul visitors from the Americas and Europe might be induced to spend a few extra nights if they are aware of the outdoor activities available in the region. And the effort is more about changing perceptions than infrastructure, for in 1973 the farsighted Governor Lord Murray MacLehose established twenty one country parks, preserving forty thousand hectares of land & a full forty percent of Hong Kong’s total area, a ratio higher than any other country in the world.

As one of the journalists invited to experience and report on what Hong Kong has to offer adventure seekers, my slate was completely open. Initially I found myself viewing the assignment with some skepticism, suspecting the concept of a wild Hong Kong to be nothing more than spin. In a decade of adventure travel, the journeys that I most treasured had carried me through remote and inaccessible landscapes. How could Hong Kong possibly compare? I had read Sunday Travel section articles about activities in the region; day hikes, horse rides, mountain biking excursions, even surfing and paragliding. While all of these are exciting activities, they are afternoon diversions, and not adventures.

Then the idea fell upon me. I would do what I always did. Just take the bare essentials & a tent, sleeping bag, and small stove & and head towards the blank parts on the map. Travelling by sea kayak, Christine and I would paddle the most convoluted and remote coastline I could find. Afterwards would throw on our backpacks and walk right across the territory, from one side to the other. For good measure, we would join a rope safety crew for a 1500’ (450m) rappel off Kowloon peak, a sheer face rising directly above the city’s core. There would be no rigid plans, no set itinerary, and no host or guide; just prearranged drop off and pick up points. Of course we had no idea what we’d find, but that is exactly what made the prospect exciting.

The Hong Kong Tourist Board, our unstintingly gracious and thoughtful hosts, had been so concerned over the requested itinerary that they implored Christine and I to carry a cell phone, and had alerted local police regiments as to our planned movements. Illegal immigrants, feral monkeys, and smugglers were just some of the dangers we were warned of. I was thrilled by such uncontrollable elements, but the Tourism Board did not see eye to eye. ‘No journalist has done such a thing before,’ their Public Relations Mangers whispered as we left their spacious downtown office, ‘We are all a little worried.’

Departing from our campsite on the third morning of the kayak journey, Christine and I continued eastward, towards Cheung Tsui Chau and the isolated outer tips of the Sai Kung Peninsula. Approaching the first headland, I could sense the ocean beyond was rough. Gales from the passing front had whipped the offshore waters of the South China Sea to a frenzy, and thick, meaty swells were now rolling in from the open ocean, ten feet or more in height and travelling fast. Enticed onwards by glimpses of a staggering coastline, we warily inched around the cape, our soon found our boats tossed and turned by the jarring seas.

Slowly the door of safety closed behind us, winds and currents making a return to the shelter of our previous camp impossible. We paddled onwards, past a shattered curtain of orange sea cliffs marked with caves, arches, and gorgeous hexagonal columns of cooled lava a la Devil’s Post Pile in California. Sadly there was little time to appreciate the striking beauty, for we were constantly consumed in a battle to stay upright. The immense swells that alternatively swallowed our boats in their troughs and then perched us high on their crests were rebounding from the rugged bluffs at obtuse angles, breaking, crashing, and then rushing back out to sea, turning the waters into a confused cauldron. Great plumes of white spray were launched skywards as waves crashed against the craggy coastline. At times we were forced more than a kilometre offshore in order to bypass rocky islands completely awash with surges of foam and green water. The proximity of such destructive power gnawed at our nerves, and without a moment to slacken our grasp on the paddles or wipe the salty water from our eyes, our fingers soon ached and blisters began to form. Two hours later, tired and dehydrated, we limped into the relative protection of Tai Long Wan Bay.

‘Just wait here,’ I suggested to Christine outside the cresting breakers, her eyes as wide as saucers as we were tossed about. ‘I’ll inch in and see if there is some protection behind this rocky promontory. If there is, I’ll hold my paddle straight up. That means come in. I’ll give you a hand getting ashore.’

This was Christine’s second sea kayaking trip ever, and while she had risen heroically to the challenge, it likely was not what she had envisaged when I invited her to accompany me on a two week assignment in search of adventure in Hong Kong. Judging by our internet searches and a handful of glossy brochures provided by the Hong Kong Tourism Board, a few easy day hikes, a round of golf, and a tour of local temples were the most outdoor excitement one could hope for in the region.

Leaving Christine safely beyond the breaking surf, I kept a keen eye on the waves ahead. Marking in my mind the spot where the crests peaked and collapsed into foam, I carefully edged closer, studying the beach, searching for a place to land.

I don’t know what caused me to turn and glance over my shoulder & perhaps it was intuition, or maybe an unusual and eerie silence. But just feet behind me was an immense wave, dark and curling, the spray from its lip already starting to arch far overhead. There was only a split second to brace before it crashed, collapsing onto me with a thunderous boom, picking my boat up and throwing it violently forwards. Swallowed in a wall of foam, I felt myself flip over and over. And then I was swimming.

When I came spluttering to the surface, bits of gear were strewn about the froth. I grabbed at a pair of Teva sandals as they rushed past. A strong rip current dragged me seawards, and I struggled to grasp my boat as it was torn away. More huge waves rolled in, and behind me I saw Christine’s empty boat tossed about in the surf, pitch-polled nearly vertical by one swell. She must have been caught by the same rogue set I surmised, and searched the white waters for her before being engulfed again. Moments later I spotted Christine, wet hair was draped across her face, madly swimming after her runaway kayak. Both were being washed shoreward by the relentless surf. With a breath of relief I realized she was fine.

My feet bounced off the sandy bottom, and I staggered to gain footing. The water was warm and only chest deep. We were both uninjured. Getting ashore would not be a problem. Suddenly the severity of the situation melted away. High stepping through the ebbing waves, chasing a floating wine bottle and laughing aloud, I realized the answer to my question was ‘Yes.’ There certainly was adventure to be found in Hong Kong.

We set our tent high on the beach, and hung wet clothes out to dry. In one direction white sand stretched out interminably, disappearing into the mist of crashing surf. Apart from the tracks of a few passing hikers and an inquisitive herd of feral cattle, the fine white sand bore no prints. Christine and I had the beach all to ourselves. Behind us, a web of footpaths spread out over grassy hills that rose above the wave battered bluffs. One distinctive trail wound up a steep ridge on the pyramidal form of Sharp Peak. After a bite to eat, we scrambled to the summit and looked out over an untouched panorama of windswept coves and rocky coastline.

In the nearby hamlet of Ham Tin, we found two small food stands amidst a collection of empty and aging concrete huts. Sitting on the patio, eating a heaping portion of fresh chicken curry, looking out over the breaking surf, I realized this was about as good a get-away-from-it-all spot as one could possibly imagine. Dogs chased each other in circles by my feet, some obscure disco song was playing on the distorted stereo, and Christmas lights were strung from the rafters. A board of sun bleached photos seemed to show the biggest waves ever ridden out front and the biggest animals ever killed out back. Tacked beside a picture of a bloodied eight foot python was a black and white image of an old school surfer riding an eight foot breaker on a long board. The owner, who had just arrived with two mugs of steaming cocoa and a backgammon game, pointed to the beach beyond his deck and nodded affirmatively. The awesome photo was taken right there.

The atmosphere in the two restaurant village rivaled guest houses in the Himalaya and beach huts in remote Malaysia. A true dyed-in-the-blood backpacking style haunt. I never expected to find such escape here. Christine and I immediately settled down to spend a second day.

The concept of switchbacks has never been imported to Hong Kong, and footpaths in the region reflect the local people’s exemplary work ethic; straight up and straight down, for mile after mile, passing range after range of serrated hills. Consequently, our three day, seventy five kilometre hike traversing the New Territories from one coast to the other was a grueling affair.

The last of Hong Kong’s original forest cover was lost during the late seventeenth century, when the agricultural Hakka people immigrated to the uplands, carving terraces from the hillsides. With the arrival of Europeans in the nineteenth century came large scale reforestation, but sadly the effort was for naught, as every hillside in the territory was stripped for firewood during the Japanese occupation of WWII. Today large stands of forest have grown back, and the region boasts an unexpected diversity, with more that two thousand five hundred species of flora. Many have sprung from ancient groves that indigenous villagers once established to protect their homesteads and harmonize their surroundings following the principles of Feng Shui.

Hiking in Hong Kong is an experience laden with change and contrast. Passing through a spectrum of landscapes, the views constantly changed, from dry, rolling grasslands to scrub covered plateaus, from tropical forests to rocky mountain ramparts. While walking Gin Drinker’s Line, a continuous curtain of peaks that ring Kowloon to the north and confine its expansion, we faced an unsettling barrage of noise. The city spreading out below us reverberated with jack hammers, horns, engines, and a constant banging of construction. Although it was early, we could already see smog rising and sunlight flashed from windshields of cars and buses that congested every road. But just a few strides later we passed to the backside of the peaks, and entered idyllic stands of ivy tree and big-leaved acacia where only lilting birdsong broke the thick silence. Descending to lower valleys, we traipsed amidst groves of paperbark and swamp mahogany where colourful butterflies flitted amongst blooms of sweet magnolia, gently alighting on our shoulders whenever we paused.

Emerging from the sanctuary of the thick woods, we darted across four lanes of speeding traffic before beginning a long and laborious climb upwards along a paved track running beside Kowloon reservoir. Here we found ourselves plagued by mobs of persistent Macaque monkeys in search of handouts. Scratching their inflamed derrieres, howling, and baring sharp teeth, the frenzied primates were intimidating. Luckily they focused most of their attention on taxi cabs full of locals that tossed grain and dried fruit out the windows.

Only a few hours later we were once again in complete isolation, wandering along the barren, upper ridges of Tai Mo Shan, Hong Kong’s highest peak. To the west an orange sun sank into a thick soup of humidity and haze. After setting our tent on a lonely buttress, we ravenously wolfed down a dinner of cheese and crackers. Suddenly a flock of black-eared kites appeared from the swirling mist, silently soaring past us and disappearing towards the summit. Far below, we could make out strips of high-rise apartments sprouting up like mushrooms, and as darkness descended a sea of orange and white lights spread at our feet. No one down there knew we were up here (quite likely we were breaking some rule to be camped where we were anyways), but being able to see the homes of almost three million people made the silence and isolation of the high mountain even more poignant, letting us see just a whisper of what we had escaped. We lounged out on the rock before our tent long into the chilly night, looking out over tranquil luminescence, watching the lights of tugs in the harbour and planes land at the distant airport.

Days later, Christine and I wandered through the tranquil bamboo forests of Lantau Island, awaiting a night flight home. Lingering at a hidden monastery, I wondered how to capture in words all I had seen in our two weeks jam-packed with action.

More than anything else, Hong Kong is place of contrasts. While it remains Asia’s gateway to the world, a busy, congested, noisy, hectic, and polluted city, the region is also home to some extraordinarily beautiful and wild places. But how long can these sanctuaries of nature survive I wondered? The burgeoning population has a deeply ingrained entrepreneurial spirit, making free space in Hong Kong one of the most precious commodities. There is unceasing expansion taking place, and new means to generate wealth are constantly sought.

One of the weaknesses in the ordinance that governs Hong Kong’s Country Parks is that zones of exclusion have been built around the abandoned villages which dot the protected lands. The government grants rights for landownership and dwelling development in these areas to anyone who can prove indigenous ties to the land. This strategy was meant to encourage the return of local villagers who left during the exodus of the sixties & a migration that saw ninety five percent of rural sustenance farmers and fishers abandon their homes to work at burgeoning factories in Hong Kong. But there is a loophole, and rather than moving back, many of the long-departed villagers are now trying to make a quick buck and sell their property rights to hungry real estate developers.

Nowhere is the slowly mounting conflict between development and preservation more clearly demonstrated than at the beautiful beaches of Tai Long Wan. I had seen a rusting bulldozer languishing under a sheet of tarpaulin behind one of the huts, and heard rumors that a greedy developer’s unauthorized land clearing operations had only been stopped when a concerned group of citizens shoved potatoes in its exhaust. Nearly everyone I talked to mentioned one infamous Hong Kong landlord who was incessantly pressuring the government for permission to build a Club Med style resort along with rows of condominiums. ‘She will never give up,’ they whispered. ‘And if a paved road is built over the hills, there will be no turning back.’

Encouragingly, the Hong Kong government has so far been firm in preventing such development from occurring in their country parks. Several years ago, an unauthorized access was cut straight through pristine forest on outer Sai Kung, and foundations laid for resort style dwellings in the abandoned village of Pak Lap. It took over six months before anyone realized what was going on, but instead of turning a blind eye, the developers were turfed out, the road torn up and reforested, and the foundations left to mold and crumble. But I imagined it would not be long before someone tried again.

‘It’s a never ending battle, Keith Noyes confirmed. A nine year resident of Hong Kong, Keith is the organizer for a series of adventure races and trail runs across Asia. We met later than night atop Lantau Peak as he was marking a race course and we were taking a few last photos before heading to the airport. ‘The speed of development around here is absolutely mind blowing. Look at what happened to Lantau!’

Ten years ago, the outlying island of Lantau existed in relative isolation. A handful of fishing villages were sprinkled along its coast, a few monasteries sat in quiet bliss amidst the steep, forested hillsides. Since then the top of a nearby island was lopped off and dumped in the ocean, creating a 1250 hectare platform on the north coast of Lantau where the $20 billion (U.S.) Chek Lap Airport was built. Over two kilometres of suspension bridge were constructed, connecting Lantau to the mainland and bringing a constant stream of trains, buses, cars, and taxis. Years earlier the Chinese Space Agency had built an enormous seated Buddha (weighing 202 tones and 26m tall) and plunked it atop an inland plateau. Today it draws hordes of visitors daily. There are plans for a cable car & cutting right through the quiet valley we hiked up & to make access to the Buddha easier. Tung Chung, once a sleepy village, is now home to a sea of high rise apartments housing airport workers. The controversial construction of Disneyland is underway, filling an entire southern bay. An immense freight terminal along with several more luxury resorts are slated for the north. And to top it off, Tia O & a tiny fishing village built on stilts which is the last unexploited nook on Lantau & is now being considered for the terminus of a twenty nine kilometre bridge across the Pearl River Delta to Macau. All this in a decade!

Hong Kong in many ways is a distillation of the challenges facing the entire world & the push and pull of a burgeoning population packed into a limited space. In Hong Kong, the conflict just happens to be occurring on a digestible and understandable scale. One can reasonably walk it all on foot, and appreciate what the loss of a single valley or hillside of forest means in the net equation. Elsewhere on the planet it is more difficult to appreciate how quickly we are tearing through our last remaining frontiers, for the scale is incomprehensible. Decisions become impersonal.

As the last rays of sun turned the steep grassy hills of Lantau a rich gold, I found myself wondering if society’s collective and insatiable desire to build and grow economies can ever yield. Can the planet’s last remaining wild places be preserved? It is a tough and sometimes disheartening fight, for it takes only one ‘Yes’ after a hundred ‘No’s, and the bulldozers rumble in.

‘Lantau used to be incredible, it was the bastion of Hong Kong’s wilderness.’ Keith reminisced as another jumbo jet rumbled past us on approach for landing. Far below us the headlights of hundreds of packed buses returning from the gimmick Buddha filled the darkening valley. ‘If Sai Kung goes, that’s it. There is nothing more left.