Hong Kong Travels: Cheung Chau

Cheung Chau has a unique feeling. Lamma Island feels like you are dipping your toes into the wilderness via a slow-moving roller coaster through topical tundra. Peng Chau feels like you are visiting your grandparents for the day. Cheung Chau feels like it drifted away from Kennedy Town. The first reason for this is the foot traffic on Easter Sunday. The ferry, main town and shops were packed to the brim. Secondly, the mixture of gentrification and local community, often opposite each other in narrow alleyways, replicates some of the distinctions you find between seafront Kennedy and Side Street Kennedy, a blend of oil and water that was much larger than I had previously thought. 

This was of course, most clear in the area surrounding the ferry pier. I was one among legions of visitors that day. You could feel the boat sway with the transference of 100 bodies off the ramp when we arrived. If you were not careful, you would be caught up in the wave and trampled by young families and western tourists. The first thing you notice is the length of the queue hoping to board the boat. It stretched far down the street and frustrated the cyclists to no end. The second, and I would argue the most iconic things are the bicycles. Cycling in itself is not unique to Cheung Chau. Most use that as their main method of transport as the streets are too small. But cycling in Cheung Chau feels like a pilgrimage. It is the island where you learn to ride. And many children were trying to dodge between the foot traffic. 

Similar to most other areas of Hong Kong by the sea, rows of blue boats huddled in the harbour. Cheung Chau has a healthy appetite for seafood representative in the rows of restaurants promising shellfish of every kind. At the same time, the central part of the town is dominated by food stores and coffee shops. Fish balls and frozen fruit on sticks were especially popular, and Cheung Chau was the only place I have yet visited to offer twisty potatoes. That part of the island is the perfect place to escape from the city without losing any of the amenities and gaining a small stretch of beach at the same time.  

It was also a shallow experience for most of the visitors there. The difference in pedestrian congestion between the main streets and the streets behind them is stark. It also was being taken full advantage of by the locals, who used it as their main throughway. Here was where the deftness of local cyclists was most pronounced. They each passed each other at speed and around oblivious bodies, tutting and shaking their heads as if they were forced to pause. Another sign that I was back of house was the laundry of 100 houses hanging over balconies or drying on racks by the front doors. Old wood and spiked semicircles separating the properties were ever present, as well as large overhead signs, predominantly Chinese only.  

Yet only one alley away, one could be confronted with authentic Italian ovens and Colombian coffee beans, English always ahead of Chinese. Such was the effect that one moment you could be eating artisanal sourdough and then walk by a bowl of pork belly defrosting outside the door. Oil on top of water.   

This could even be seen in the street signs. Hak Pai Road sits above the sign for the Cheung Chau Lifesaving Association. The order of languages is reversed between the older and newer signs, which I always have assume as a signifier of a pre- or post-handover time frame.  

Despite the heat, or maybe because of the heat, few people were at the beach. The small bay seemed enticing enough, more so from the balconies of any of the salt-stained apartments overlooking it. Yet only a few were brave enough to enter the water. Even the lifeguards sat together under the eaves of the station rather than in the exposed towers.  

A reasonable time then to accidentally hike around the rest of the island. The Little Great Wall is a coastal walk that follows the Northern cliffside. The entire walk was paved and never strayed more than a little into the tree line. Because more sensible minds prevailed, I was almost alone for the entire duration. Birdsong and butterflies were my main companions, although I was told by signs how many rocks there were about the path. They had names like Far Peng, Eagle Rock, Zombie Rock, Rock of the Ringing Bell, and Reclining Hound Rock. One of those I did make up, but there really are many leaps of imagination when putting the names to the stones. I could not see the resemblance of any of them having to their namesake personally, even more so because most of them were hidden in the undergrowth.  

You have opportunities regularly on the walk to duck out to the cliffs, a favourite spot for fishers. The sheer contrast between the sun-bleached rocks and the rolling ocean instantly made me feel a world away from the streets of the city. The cooling breeze that reached the top of the cliffs was not enough to dry out my shirt. But altogether, that moment of calm removed from society was wonderful. If I had looked a little further, though, I could see the power station on Lamma Island. A reminder that Cheung Chau is still only a small part of a much wider whole. 

Someone had added ropes to help the descent as I worked my way down to the water. Their presence suggested aid, if not encouragement to explore, which I took full advantage of by the water. The mystique of the ocean was replaced by the reality of pollution: polystyrene, broken wakeboards, endless cans and bottles, and an empty gas tank all made their nests there, some having settled far up into the cracks. It was disappointing but not unexpected, and I left after a short time.  

The final stage of the visit was through a small section of Lung Tsai Tsuen, one of the residential areas of Cheung Chau. It once again showed a different side of island life, one separate from the chaos of the pier and noise and the bodies. Even having visited a few times before, I had managed to miss the entire section. One man not dressed for a long walk waved back to me as I passed before turning into the wood to enjoy the quiet. After the school children huddled limited cover their next to a grand athletics track. Like Sai Kung and the three flagpoles, the missing flags were conspicuous in their absence. 

In that part of town, you could leave your bike parked against the wall without locking it. Houses bobbed up and down with the hills. The feeling was that Cheung Chau had a more youthful image reflected in not only the population, but the buildings too. There seemed to be something more proactive about the island. The houses that were abandoned, of which there were some, had a notice of demolition.

As I moved more into town, street cleaners were spraying the slope with water near the sea. A small spectacle of a religious ceremony was being held, complete with drums and chanting. The crowd was rather large, and I could understand it was a celebration from the flower wreaths by the temple front, though I could not grasp the specifics. Finally, a group of musicians played together in a performance tucked away in the grounds of a unit, hosted by an enthusiastic MC. 

Cheung Chau has an energy all its own. This would be clear from the bicycles one might argue. But unlike Peng Chau, which is too sleepy, or Ngong Ping, which is too artificial, Cheung Chau has found a way to authentically express itself without being subsumed by souvenir shops. The carnival is contained to the strip between the ferry and the beach, leaving the rest for the residents and the rock formations. An excellent place, as the hundreds of visitors can attest.