There are other monasteries on Lantau, with the Trappist Monastery at Tai Shui Hang, in the northeast part of the island, perhaps the best-known. In the last decade its community of 22 priests, lay brothers and novices has planted and redeveloped its large farm acreage.
Tai O town, on the west coast of Lantau, is its largest settlement, with nearly 8,000 inhabitants. Tai O has a community of Tanka fishing people living in wooden huts raised on stakes over a muddy inlet. A regular ferry service brings hiking parties from Hong Kong Island to toil up the hillsides to Po Lin Chi. They stay overnight at its guest house and descend on the opposite side of the mountains to catch the ferry at Silver Mine Bay for the trip home.
For a completely different kind of scenery, the inquisitive traveler may visit Tap Mun Chau, an island at the eastern edge of the New Territories. The Kowloon-Canton Railway takes him to Tai Po Station on Tolo Harbor, where he may catch the Tap Mun Chau ferry. The boat nudges up to the foot of Ma On Shan, a craggy, 2,300-foot peak, unloads a cargo of pigs and a few Hakka farmers, and pushes east through Tolo Channel, bordered by round hills. Three Fathoms Cove is the boat’s second stop. It is just south of Plover Cove, the deep inlet from Tolo Channel which colony engineers propose to seal off, pump out its salt-water contents, and replace with a fresh-water reservoir.
Most of the stops along this six-hour run are made offshore, disembarking passengers reaching land in small sampans. The boat turns south at the seaward end of Tolo Channel and travels the length of Long Harbor between high, barren hills. Looking at these hills, the passenger may understand how easily Chinese pirates of the last century could slip out of this hidden harbor, pounce on passing ships and make their escape behind the sheltering mountains.
Villages are strung along the water’s edge at intervals, but their shallow harbors and small docks cannot handle the ferry boat. The usual sampan, sometimes adroitly propelled by a pair of half-grown boys, rows out to meet the larger boat. There is a dock-side stop at Tap Mun town, where the harbor is crowded with fishing junks, but the layover is too short to permit a walk ashore.
Darkness comes on slowly while the boat heads back, non-stop, to Tai Po, but there are bright patches of light along the water—fishermen using gasoline lanterns to lure their catch into a net spread between two boats. The stars look down from a cloudless sky, and through a gap in the bulky hills, the lights of Hong Kong Island glow in the distance. By early evening, the traveler has gotten his train and is back in Kowloon.
There is so much to see in this colony that no one can compress it into a single visit. Many tourists have returned a dozen times, knowing that each trip would bring some new revelation of unsuspected beauty, some fresh insight into the character of Hong Kong’s people.
No book, map nor brochure can tell a colony visitor exactly what to expect. He walks down a street and comes upon the unexpected every day. It may be a Chinese funeral procession with a marching band playing “Bye Bye Blackbird.” Or a professional letter-writer, taking dictation with a stylus at his sidewalk table. Or the clatter of Mah Jongg players as they slam the pieces on the table.
It may be a visit to Temple Street in Kowloon, with its odd restaurants and all-night bustle of activity. Or the Kee Heung Tea House at 597 Shanghai Street, Kowloon, where customers bring their caged birds and discuss them while they sip.
Even the hardiest tourist will be exhausted long before he has exhausted the sights and sounds of Hong Kong.