Birdwatching amid farmland

One of my husband’s hobbies is photography - not the type to sit and wait for hours, the images Paul captures are happy circumstance and of judicious editing. Being out in nature is enjoyable in and of itself and we have gone on numerous jaunts in search of clear night skies, and birds. I’m quite happy just to document our ventures by taking unedited snapshots.

The other day we went to Long Valley. The name is a misnomer, for the area is neither long, nor a valley. It is a triangular floodplain of about 25 hectares where two rivers converge - Sheung Yue (aka Beas River) and Shek Sheung River. It has been a cooperative conservation area for the past twelve years between the Hong Kong Birdwatching Society and the Conservancy Association. Traditional wetland farming attracts numerous wild birds during migration times, and photographers as well.

We wandered in between vibrant green crops and around irrigation ponds on dirt and concrete paths, sometimes quite narrow, built just to keep the water in the plots.

Watercress (xi yang cai 西洋菜 or sai yeung choi) and water spinach (kong xin cai 空心菜 or ong choi) were being grown in some of the wet farming areas.

watercress

water spinach

Other areas were left to dry, or as weedy, marshy areas - I assume during crop rotation. We saw new rice and some of the grown stalks left behind from the last crop to attract more birds.

pigeons and egrets looking for food

new rice

old rice behind young lettuce

There were several varieties of lettuce, tomatoes, squash, cabbage, cauliflower, turnips, parsley in between the rows, basil, and mint in the dry farming areas. As long as you don’t traipse through the crops, the farmers will pay no heed. There were a few signs advertising vegetables were for sale and a produce stand that wasn't open...

ready to harvest lettuce

nice reuse of an old chair for tomatoes

cabbage

The area is yet another area of Hong Kong that will change - it is part of a development plan that includes more housing, but will remain as a nature park - perhaps similar to the Wetland Park.

Change - over the years, just in the areas near where we have lived and worked, we’ve bid adieu to Kai Tak Airport, Kwun Tong and Jordan Road Vehicular Ferries, have watched the landfill of Tai Kok Tsui get built up, the view across Tai Wai get blocked by apartment towers and even a whole new town - Ma On Shan - sprout up with more building in the works pushing east toward Sai Kung. I guess that’s what happens during one’s lifetime - thankful for the days!

new and old

  

I don't go to "the island" very often, but when I do, I like to wander through the old neighborhoods, and ride the Star Ferry across Victoria Harbour. It was the first cool wintery day here - about 14C/57F - that felt even cooler because of the rain and wind. 

After a morning appointment in Causeway Bay, I wandered through the market streets of Wanchai to the redeveloped Lee Tung "Wedding Card Street" where I found all of the old printers have gone except for one - the old street widened and replaced by shops and restaurants with luxury apartment buildings looming overhead. I didn't take many photos due to the weather, but these red crates of bottles were a bright spot in the grey.

I settled in a comfy leather armchair for an early lunch at Le Pain Quotidien, one of many, but the first in HK; a place originally founded in Brussels when the chef could not find good bread. I had the Farmer's Lunch set - an open faced sandwich, hummus, salad, and soup. I sat and read, and people watched. There were groups of young moms with nursing babies (yes!), some other older women who I assume had a few hours to themselves while their children were in school, a few singles working on laptops, and some couples. They served coffee in a bowl so I figured I would drink the soup the same way.

After my afternoon appointment, I walked through the streets made famous by The World of Suzie Wong on the way to the Wanchai Star Ferry - a sad sight on its own while the MTR builds its Shatin to Central Link. 

There was a Japanese fish market with shops and restaurants on the second floor of the ferry terminal that is currently closed due to lack of traffic due to the construction. A little shop selling wagyu remains selling well-marbled cuts of beef.

On the way to the ferry, the two trees at Central Plaza seemed paradoxical. The fancy new Marriott hotel The St. Regis also stuck out among the older buildings.

Once on the Kowloon side I walked along the waterfront past the Clock Tower and Cultural Centre to check out the HK Museum of Art, that had just opened after a four-year renovation, but found it closed.

I wandered instead to the artsy K11 Musea mall that houses the first MoMA Design Store in HK (temptation!) as well as other upscale shops and restaurants. The mall is part of New World Development's redevelopment of the area called Victoria Dockside consisting of office building, serviced apartment residences and luxury Rosewood Hotel.

Despite the Instagram friendly decor of the mall, I only snapped a photo of yet another "first in HK" place I happened to go to (I really didn't plan it!) The French bakery, Gontran Cherrier, has a restaurant, coffee and cakes counter, and a separate bakery takeout area.

Most of my friends love chocolate pastries, but I'm partial to almond, so before heading home, and noticing only a short line up to pay, I got a financier and an almond croissant. Yes, both were delicious!

Genealogy - Fong Cash Store est 1929

My maternal grandfather, Ping Fong emigrated to the U.S. and arrived Marianna, AR in 1929 then opened Fong Cash Store in Brickeys.  The family moved to Hughes in 1947 and opened another store there.

Ping Fong and wife, Seid Mei Yen Fong behind the counter, from right to left, oldest to youngest - daughters Carolyn, Ping Shong, and Hing, son Ping Jr. all went to Hughes High.

Hing and Ping Shong at your service

His daughter, my aunt, has a last remnant of the store, a countertop display jar for nickel bags of roasted peanuts. 

Bottom of the jar says Property of Tom Huston Peanut Company, Columbus, Georgia, but the lid was imprinted with another snack company's name, Lance. The lids seemed to have been switched with another jar. Maybe my Uncle Ping has it.

fr Wikipedia: Tom's Snacks was founded in 1925 and sold several times before Lance, another snack company founded 1913, bought Tom's in 2005. Lance merged with Snyder's in 2010 to become the nation's second-largest snack company. Snyder's-Lance is owned by Campbell's as of 2018.

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Genealogy post - Mom's family, some info on Dad's

Genealogy post - more on Dad's family

a year post Carr Fire

I love to browse through books, especially free books presented lovingly, often times in little shelved cabinets; these sharing libraries built to withstand the weather, alongside the home of the owner, who, despite loving owning books, has realized that they have acquired so many that they weed out those for someone else who may enjoy the read.

As it happened, I picked up a biography called "Shelf Life," the story of an avid reader, turned author, who found herself working part time for a year in a bookstore.

When she describes, in twenty some-odd pages, her childhood and grammar school reading habits, it reminded me of my own, and how I read and logged so much during a school readathon that I read everything in the school library and a good many at the city library enroute to winning, what else, but a book, a fat compilation of stories that was inscribed by the librarian with a message to continue thirsting and seeking knowledge.

The reason I recall this, this memory made more poignant, is due to the fact that I left that heavy volume at my parents' home, the home I came of age in, then left to go to college, work, marriage, and family-raising; the home that was destroyed in the Carr Fire a short year ago.

I had a chance to visit the property recently when visiting my mom who continues to live in the area. Familiar and not so familiar plants are sprouting from the land amidst chipped up remnants of the trees that did not survive. Among the green and golden plants were deer droppings and quartz stones, and small pieces of the concrete stucco that was the exterior of the structure that was lived in by our family for forty years. We picked up a few stones to save, the jagged surface and patterns reflecting life's meanders and a solid reminder to be thankful always.

The sloping tree was my favorite one to climb and lounge on. The actual limb I sat on reached toward the edge of the house so was cut off many years after I moved away. The fuel tank was moved there after the fire. 

Update 2020: The San Francisco Chronicle media project 150 Minutes of Hell: Inside Northern California's Deadly Fire Tornado was a finalist for the 2019 Online Journalism Awards, but lost out to another project on another devastating fire in November 2018. The Camp Fire tore through the Feather River Canyon and obliterated the town of Paradise, near Chico, CA. Chico was where my mother evacuated to and stayed with friends for a few months before moving back to Redding. She rented a studio apartment at Holiday Hilltop Estates, an independent senior living community.