No visit to Hong Kong is complete without a visit to the worlds largest outdoor seated bronze Buddha (The Tian Tan Buddha, named after the Temple of Heaven in Beijing, on which its base is modelled) at Po Lin Monastery on the Ngong Ping peninsula. Although fairly easy to get to by MTR and taxi, by far the most satisfying way to reach the Monastery is to go at least part of the way by ferry, arriving at Mui Wo (Silvermine Bay for those with no wish to learn local place names) and taking a taxi or bus from there. My first stop today, however, before moving on to Ngong Ping, involved taking a bus from Mui Wo to Tai O, a small fishing village sitting on it's own island of the same name which has become something of a tourist attraction in itself and is sometimes referred to affectionately as "The Venice of Asia". I think it's quite fair to say that you won't find anywhere quite like Tai O anywhere else in Hong Kong, in fact you probably won't find many places like this anywhere in the world any more. Upon arrival, the first thing you wonder is where all the buildings are - and then somebody points out that the rows of large wooden blocks stacked up at random angles like piles of abandoned cardboard boxes are the houses; the tin plates hammered into place acting as protection from the rain. Metal stilts have been hammered into the seabed and do-it-yourself constructions of wood, cardboard, anything that comes to hand seem to have been propped up or supported on them to create makeshift living spaces which are little more than squats and can do little to keep the occupants warm on a cold winters night. A few years ago, the only way to get onto the island from the mainland of Lantau was via a raft which was pulled across the narrow strip of water on the end of a length of rope. This has now been replaced in the light of increased tourism by a modern bridge over which a sign welcomes you to Tai O, in my mind the first step towards destroying one of the last truly traditional places in Hong Kong.
Walking through the village, I saw elderly men sitting outside their squats, smoking or playing Mah-Jongg without a care in the world. As I passed, they would either smile politely or stare me daggers in equal measure - for every person here who sees tourism as the future of their village, there is another who would rather shoot me dead than allow westerners to intrude upon their traditional ways. And who can truely look at a place as wonderfully untouched by the west as Tai O and not understand completely? Tourism has transformed the lifestyle of Tai O from that of a simple fishing community to one almost wholly subsistent on visitors. Modern society has made it almost impossible to eke out any sort of existence based on fishing alone, and most of the people who live here either do so because they have nowhere else to go or because they quite rightly don't wish to see their traditions and lifestyle trodden underfoot and forgotten about. It was a sad, but educational, start to the day.
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In July 2000, a major fire destroyed much of the village and pretty much put an end to what was already a dying fishing community. The local rope bridge has been replaced by modern steel, and many of the fire-ravaged stilt houses patched up. Tourists still flock to Tai O and the locals take them out on their boats to look for the Chinese white Dolphins and make enough from them to barely exist from one day to the next, but the fishing lifestyle is all but gone. In addition, a recently reported attempt by the Hong Kong local government, resisted by the Tai O residents, to clear some of the residents out and make them go and live in modern high rise apartment blocks on the grounds of health caused a stir for a while. For the time being, Tai O remains a quaint old fashioned Chinese fishing village in name only, and some say it is only a matter of time before it becomes another casualty of modernisation. The current plan, and this just defies belief, is to build a major theme park on Tai O - needless to say, this hasn't gone down too well with the locals who rightly question how their already worn away lifestyle will survive living next door to such a place.
