A more urgent reminder of other worlds may be had at the Tak Sau coffin shop, 252 Hollywood Road. Massive pine coffins, ordered in advance of the prospective occupant’s death and tailored to his physical dimensions, are stacked about in plain sight. An ordinary model, costing from $50 to $150, can be turned out by a pair of carpenters in about 20 hours. The larger boxes once required 16 men to carry them, but modern trucks have now assumed the burden. A millionaire’s coffin, lined with silk and elaborately carved, may cost $3,000 or more. To demonstrate their continuing concern for the departed, surviving relatives visit a nearby shop which sells notes written on the “Bank of Hell.” No one likes to deliver these notes personally, and so they are burned to assure the deceased that his credit rating will be maintained in the spirit world.
Most of the Western District may be covered on foot, but taxis are necessary for trips to more distant points, such as Stanley or Shek-O, particularly at night. Drivers often have only a sketchy knowledge of English, but the passenger can usually make his destination clear by pointing to it on a road map, or by printing the address on a sheet of notepaper; if the driver cannot read it, he will find a colleague to translate it for him. Taxis are about 25 cents for the first mile and 18 cents for each succeeding mile on Hong Kong Island. Kowloon taxis are slightly lower. Holders of valid drivers’ licenses from their home country, or international drivers’ licenses, may hire cars for $11.50 a day or $70 a week, plus gasoline costs. In the English fashion, all cars have right-hand drive.
Sightseers operating on a tight budget may cover almost every part of the island on its 18 bus routes. Most of these start from the Vehicular Ferry Pier and their routes are fully outlined on the reverse side of Jan Jan’s Map. Trams give smoother rides and more frequent service along the island’s densely populated waterfront, but the only low-cost means of visiting outlying places, such as Shek-O, Stanley and Sandy Bay—all worth seeing—is by bus. This transportation is not for the timorous or those with queasy stomachs; Hong Kong bus-jockeys are competent, but they slam and jolt their passengers about as they whirl through a never-ending succession of upgrades, downgrades and hairpin turns.
Foreign passengers unfamiliar with Hong Kong public transportation may be startled at times to hear their fellow-riders yelling at one another. What sounds to a greenhorn like a violent exchange of insults is nothing more than cheerful gossip. The Cantonese are naturally gabby and exuberant, and only the Gwai-lo (foreign devil) seems subdued and inscrutable.
Transportation to Kowloon, directly across the harbor from Hong Kong Island, is by Star Ferry for most tourists, although there are many other trans-harbor ferries. The Star Ferry terminal in Kowloon is the focal point of practically every kind of transportation on the peninsula. Most Kowloon bus lines turn around directly in front of the ferry terminal. The Kowloon-Canton Railway, which runs through Kowloon and the New Territories to the Red Chinese border, is situated next to the bus terminal. Taxis and rickshaws start from the same area—a big, multiple loop that keeps vehicles moving with a minimum of congestion or delay. The Kowloon side of the colony has no streetcars, but its double-deck buses are almost as bulky as trams.
The greatest concentration of tourist shops and hotels is in the Tsim Sha Tsui section at the tip of the Kowloon Peninsula and within a five-minute walk of the Star Ferry terminal. Nine-tenths of the Kowloon hotels and luxury shops are strung along Nathan Road, the central thoroughfare, and its intersecting streets. At its best, Tsim Sha Tsui is a tourists’ Happy Hunting Ground; at its worst, it is an outrageously over-priced deadfall.
The refugee resettlement estates spread across the upper end of the Kowloon Peninsula, several miles north of Tsim Sha Tsui. Visitors who want to see what has been done to help the colony’s refugees—and to appreciate how much must still be undertaken—should visit the resettlement estates and the remaining squatter shacks with either a guide or an experienced Hong Kong welfare worker. The terrain is too irregular and the estates too extensive to be covered on foot.
Visitors with an archaeological turn of mind may want to have a look at the Li Cheng Uk tomb in Sham Shui Po, about a mile north of the Kowloon-New Territories boundary. Workmen excavating for the Li Cheng Uk Resettlement Estate discovered the tomb in August, 1955. Its T-shaped chambers and barrel-vault roof containing pottery and bronze objects from the Later Han Dynasty (A.D. 25-220) and Six Dynasties (A.D. 220-589) indicate that the Chinese may have settled in Hong Kong and neighboring Kwangtung Province many centuries earlier than had been supposed. The colony government preserved the tomb by encasing it in an outer shell of concrete, built a small garden and museum around it, and opened it to the public in 1957.
A guided motor tour, probably the best way of seeing the New Territories, carries the visitor through the manufacturing center at Tsuen Wan, then west past the beaches and eroded hillsides to Castle Peak. The tour proceeds through some of the colony’s best farmland to the marketing and shopping center at Yuen Long.
Brown cattle and water buffalo are the only aids to human labor on these farms, and every square foot of land is fertilized, weeded, irrigated and tilled with unsparing diligence. Walled cities, such as Kam Tin, appear along the way. Once they were fortresses to protect the farming families against marauding bands; today they are packed with poor people living in cubicles.