Cheung Chau Island
Part 1: Cheung Chau Village

    On one of our free days in Hong Kong, Kelly and I decided to take a trip to one of the many islands in the area. We chose Cheung Chau because it offers, according to the guide books, a quaint fishing village with about 25,000 people, no cars, and a small-enough size (one square mile) for you to walk around most of it in one day. So we took the bus and subway to the appropriate dock in Hong Kong, bought return tickets to Cheung Chau, and took the 10:00 boat.
    The day was beautiful but hot and humid. (You can see the blue skies in these pictures.) The ride took about 45 minutes. Unfortunately, we had one of the older, smaller ferries that didn't let us see much. The photo below shows our boat docked in Cheung Chau just after we disembarked.

    As soon as we cleared Hong Kong Harbor, we were amazed to see the many steep islands all around (235 in total around Hong Kong, only four of which are home to enough people to merit ferry service) . The one in the background of this photograph is typical. They are steep, rocky, and plunge straight into the water without any beach or gently area near the shore. It then because obvious to us that they are just tops of submerged mountains and hills. No wonder most are uninhabited! Then we realized that Hong Kong and vicinity are no different. The government is constantly filling in (as for example when they built the new airport a few years ago) because that's the only way they can get land to live and work on.

One expects to find many boats in a fishing community, and we were not disappointed. Here you can see the small ones that take you to the big ones. Some of the fishing boats are in the background. (More pictures of the fishing fleet appear in Section V.)

Another view of the little boats, including a couple of white pleasure craft.

Since there are no cars on Cheung Chau Island, there are all sorts of bikes.

    You leave the ferry at the part of town called the "Praya," which is Portuguese for "Square." If you turn left there and walk a few short blocks, you come to a little playground, behind which is Pak Tai Temple. Here is Kelly standing in front of its main entrance. It was built in 1783, and is dedicated to the "Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heaven." No, it has nothing to do with Darth Vader—it's an old Taoist god of the sea. We had a look around inside, which features a statue of Pak Tai and a five-foot iron sword thought to be 1000 years old.

The top of the little temple is adorned with dragons and a little village. Not your average temple!

Just outside one of the side doors of the temple is this little sanctuary, with a three-dimensional tiger coming out of the wall.

Cheung Chau village is very small. Other than the main street, which runs along the water, its street are more like passageways than anything else. You can see how close the balconies are to those across the street. Lots of little shops sell almost anything the tired or hungry tourist could wish. Kelly is up ahead.

To Part 2 of Cheung Chau
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