Life is either a daring adventure – or nothing. – Hong Kong

By Melissa Leong, winner of 2002 Student Journalists Hong Kong Fellowship

Never having been there, these were the things I thought of when I pictured Hong Kong: concrete, skyscrapers and bustling streets. When I first arrived, these things amazed me. Roads teeming with bodies and tall buildings packed together. The island cityscape at night was amazingly beautiful from Kowloon side. The water was the colour of 
hematite and the buildings looked like they were encrusted with gems.

But now, when I remember the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, other things come to mind first.

I remember the whisper of reeds, the stretch of water and the mountains. I remember the green, the birds and the mangroves.

“When we talk about Hong Kong, people think of concrete and high buildings but country parks represent 38 per cent of our total land area,” said one of my tour guides. “ It’s not just for shopping.”

Hong Kong has 23 country parks. It has four marine parks and one marine reserve designated to preserve the habitat of different protected species, including the Chinese White Dolphin.

My companion, Winnie Siu, and I spent a day at Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park, a sheltered bay at the northern coastline of the Sai Kung Peninsula. We sailed on a small boat, saw stony coral and the little lights of swimming jellyfish. We felt the rough surface of a starfish with each arm resembling a snake’s tail, and watched fishermen cast their nets.

We also visited Mai Po Nature Reserve, the Yin to bustling 
Hong Kong’s Yang.  It was like stepping into Chinese scenery. The sky was hazy.  The open, flat land was still. White egrets with their long graceful necks strutted around a pond. It was quiet except for the rustle of leaves and a random squawk, quack or twitter.

It was high tide and the mangroves looked like bushes floating on the water. We watched about 40 endangered black-faced spoonbills fishing for food. The large white birds were bent over, sweeping their flattened bills from side to side in fluid arcs.

“Beautiful,” Siu said.

I wrote in my travel diary: “If I breathe enough fresh Hong Kong air, maybe I’ll take it back with me.”

We walked down a thin wooden floating path. I reached out and touched the green walls. Mangrove leaves are thick like pea pods. Field workers were pulling roots out the ground, trying to get rid of climbers (which compete with the mangroves for sunlight).

I remember how the leaves swallowed the field workers and the face of an old woman who hugged an armful of grey roots.  She looked like she was carrying large crispy chow mein. Her galoshes sunk into the mud and her face was tanned, her forehead and eyes wrinkled deeply.

I’ll never forget her smile and how she said, “Thank you,” after we took her picture.

And I’ll never forget the beauty of the land. 

(Editor’s note: Melissa was in Hong Kong for a week in January 2003 and published a number of stories about her visit in the Toronto Star. She applied for and won the 2003 Dateline Hong Kong Fellowship organized for working journalists by the Hong Kong Economic and Trade Office and the Canadian Association of Journalists. She will visit Hong Kong again in late February/early March 2004.  Congratulations, Melissa! )

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