The New Territories

  Tai Po, Hong Kong
Monday, July 23, 2007

Day 29

Since my time here is almost up, this weekend I decided to head up North to the New Territories.  I heard there were many places to go to but I decided to head to the Tai Po District.  This District was said to date back to the Tang Dynasty.  There are traces of a modest town here but now it's been transformed into something more.

                   

Using the MTR and KCR train system, it took a little over an hour to get there.  One of the main places to see there was the Tai Po Market.  The market wasn't what I expected.  It was all in a huge mall-type building.  The first floor was fresh meat and fish.  The second floor was fruit and vegetables.  The next floor had clothing kiosks.  The top floor was like a food court but it wasn't your typical food court.  It didn't have your regular Haagen-Dazs or McDonald's fast foods, these were all rice and noodle cafes and it smelled great!

                   

After lunch, I walked around a bit and it was nice to not have the crowdedness of Hong Kong in the streets.  I read there were a few places to travel to in the area so I took a bus to Lam Tsuen and Tai Mei Tuk.

Lam Tsuen was known for the Wishing Tree and the beautiful countryside.  Parchments of paper (or paper offerings) were tied or thrown on this tree and a wish was made.  Unfortunately, as the years went by, the tree began to weaken from the weight of the paper and old or dead branches began to crack and fall.  A few years ago, the preservation authority discontinued this tradition in order to save the tree.  Right now, they have a bracing system in place to nurture the tree back to health and hopefully someday start this tradition again.  As for the parchments, they devised an alternative to help keep the tree healthy.  They built fences/wooden racks to hang the paper offerings.

                   

The last part of my trip was Tai Mei Tuk.  This area was near Plover Cove Reservoir.  You can fish, boat and even have family BBQ's here.  It's a very pleasant place to visit and you can even rent bikes to ride along the pedestrian path, which I did!  Riding a bike around the area was great, so I'm glad I found the place.  Along the path, you can see all the new development of communities they have in the area and they also have small patches where they preserved old traditional buildings too.

I was dead tired by the time I got back to the flat but it was worth the trip out there.