| Hills,
Mountains And Sea |
| The Adventure
Side Of Hong Kong |
| by Antonio Graceffo |
| December
2005
Trekking up
a steep knife-edged ridge, covered in late season grass, the slope gently
dropped off on either side. To my right, the green rolling hills were expansive,
filling the horizon with a never-ending panorama of undisturbed nature.
To my left, an easy bluff eventually gave way to a sharp drop of approximately
sixty meters, ending on a sandy beach.
Lazy blue waves
broke mildly against the dark jagged forms of age-old rocks. Further out,
fishing boat and sampans sailed along the point where sky and earth meet,
silently going about their business, as they had since time immemorial. |
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| A warm wind
blew across the soft peak, and with the exception of my mates, I was alone,
in a peaceful world, recovering from the stresses of modern society. Just
a few kilometers away lay the hyper-modern center of Hong Kong, with its
busy financial district and high-rise bank buildings.
Most visitors
to Hong Kong know the SAR as a shopping paradise, famous for fine dining,
luxury accommodations, and spending money. But Hong Kong is also a
tropical island, covered in green peaks and surrounded by a stunning ocean.
Sailing, ocean
kayaking, indoor and outdoor rock climbing, trekking and hiking, paddling,
running, cycling, orienteering, paintball, horseback riding, martial arts,
and some of the most developed gyms in the world, are just a few of the
active vacations available. The island offers an excellent alternative
for those seeking adventure, without sacrificing comfort. Imagine waking
up in a plush hotel, driving forty minutes to a day of rock climbing, and
then spending an evening at the theater, followed by a gourmet dinner,
and topped off by dancing in a first class night club. You could spend
the next day orienteering in the billowy foothills, and your evening sailing
in Hong Kong bay. |
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| If you are
on a tight budget, you would be surprised at the number of sport activities
that are available to Hong Kong tourists for little or no money. For this
particular trekking adventure, I hooked up with The Hong Kong Trampers,
a club with no administration, no applications and no membership forms.
Best of all, the Trampers is a club with no fees.
As they say
on their website, "We are a group of friends who enjoy exploring Hong
Kong's countryside on Sundays." Each week they go on a new trip. Interested
parties can go to their site at http://www.hktrampers.com
to find out the time and place. The trampers will meet up in a given MTR
station, and then head out to the hills.
For Hong Kongers,
a trip to the hills is a good way to get some relief from the constant
hustle of life in the economic tiger. |
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Offshore
Resources Gallery
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| With a population
of 6,898,686 people crammed into an area of only 1,042 sq km, Hong Kong
has one of the highest population densities in the world.
The population
is nearly 30% of Taiwan, but with only 3% of the landmass. To truly
appreciate how developed the SAR is, you need only to climb to the top
of Tai Mo Shan, at 958 m, Hong Kong's tallest peak. With a gentle mountain
breeze cooling your skin, you will feel free as a bird.
Apart from
the breathtaking scenery, trekking in Hong Kong can be a great fitness
activity, as well as a way of making friends. The day that I met with the
Trampers, we were hiking Yung Shue O to Hoi Ha, near Sai Kung Town. The
group was made up of fifteen people, ranging in age from eight to forty-four.
Our eight year-old was a star hiker, who loved going on treks with his
father. On this particular weekend, the regulars were discussing which
of their members had just completed the Oxfam Trail Walker, a 100 KM walking
race, through the attractive island countryside. Other members were training
for the Hong Kong marathon, while others had no experience at all. A group
of nice young ladies employed in a Kowloon bank told me that this was their
first time doing anything physical in their life. |
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| And, while
they needed a bit of patience and assistance to complete the 12 KM course,
they all made it.
The trails
in Hong Kong are well mapped and marked, with degree of difficulty readily
available. So, it is easy for you to find a rout and a distance, which
fits your level of physical fitness. Our trek began with a forty-minute
climb up the Jacob's ladder to Au Mun. This was a paved staircase, built
into the side of the mountain. It was extremely difficult, but hikers were
free to stop, drink water, or rest where needed. Not wanting to lose my
macho façade, I tried to keep up with the leaders. When I got to
the top, I was completely out of breath, and very concerned about altitude
sickness.
"Is it possible
to get oedema up here, like those people who climb Mount Everest?"
I panted, while I emptied an entire water bottle down my parched throat. |
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Offshore
Resources Gallery
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| Francis, the
leader, was probably both the oldest and fittest of the men in the group
and had already run to the top and back down several times, to check on
the stragglers. He assured me that although I felt we had just climbed
to the sun and would melt, like Inheres, in actuality, we had only ascended
five hundred meters.
"Maybe I am
a little out of shape." I said, diving into the kilo of chocolate cookies
I had planned to eat for lunch.
The group was
worried about the bank ladies, who had fallen way behind.
"Do they have
GPS?" I asked.
"As long as
they stay on the stairs they can't get lost." Said Steven, an American
student studying Chinese at the university.
"Maybe I should
still leave some cookie crumbs for them to follow." I suggested.
Francis
asked for a volunteer to hang back and help the bank ladies. Of course,
I jumped at the chance. Not only did this mean that I could go as slowly
as I wanted to, without looking like a weakling, but I got to spend the
day with some very beautiful girls. Sham, a Singaporean computer technician
on holiday also volunteered to help. So, I loaded him down with the girls'
backpacks, leaving me free to fraternize.
Once the stairs
were behind us, the way became much easier. At times the trail took us
along a ridge, with a beautiful view of valleys below. At other times,
we walked through the forest, under a canopy of green. We crossed streams,
and skipped from stone to stone. There were grassy peaks where we waded
through waist-high grass. By the time we made our final descent, we had
gotten some much needed exercise, made some new friends, exchanged phone
numbers, and most importantly, we had seen a side of Hong Kong most visitors
would never know.
Trekking with
the trampers was just the first in a long series of adventures I had planned
in Hong Kong.
Book Review
of Antonio Graceffo's The Monk from Brooklyn
Antonio Graceffo
is an interesting author. Italian-American from Brooklyn, a former investment
banker, martial arts expert and writer, The Monk from Brooklyn (ISBN 1-932966-10-2,
Gom Press, 2004) chronicles his life in the Shaolin Temple in China, which
is apparently the birthplace of Kung Fu.
In essence,
the book is a diary that revolves around Graceffo’s time spent at the famed
Shaolin temple in China, to learn their secrets in martial arts. These
are the Shaolin monks that have amazed the outside world with their super-athletic
feats displayed by their Kung Fu abilities, and to study there was Graceffo’s
ambition.
Graceffo writes
in a fairly laconic ‘hip’ style, with twists at the tail. “The novice and
I hit it off right away. He is 25 years old and a good guy. Also, in the
couple of hours I have been there, he hasn’t tried to steal from me.”
Author Graceffo
is good at observing the Chinese culture as seen in the Shaolin temple
(and as exhibited by visiting Chinese families) and examination of the
reasons behind the apparent differences between that culture and his own.
For example, the Chinese produced no trash, whilst Graceffo did. ”Everything
they eat comes out of the ground. There is no waste at all. I have a pile
of trash next to my bed and don’t know what to do with it. There is no
mechanism for disposal of trash here.”
Very early
in his training, Graceffo looks at the Chinese students with him and writes,
“I keep wondering what is the point of all this. For me it is a diversion.
I am here to lose weight, improve my health, and learn some kung fu. This
program will add to who I am. But for the regular students this program
is who they are.”
During this
time of self-exploration for Graceffo he deduces one of the cornerstones
of capitalism. “We Westerners derive much of our personal power from
material wealth. In fact, we confuse purchasing power with personal power.”
And a few pages later, “The power of money is amazing. But in the end,
it is just a talisman. It is not real, though widely believed to be so.”
However, by
half way through his three months training, Graceffo begins to see the
realities of living in this Chinese enclave, the tawdriness, the dirt,
the intrigue and the deliberate lies. The onset of the SARS epidemic is
the final blow, as truths and half truths are manipulated to attempt to
exonerate Beijing.
For me it was
a very telling book, not so much explaining the intricacies of Kung Fu,
but one that showed the chasm that exists between Eastern and Western philosophies.
Whilst Antonio Graceffo did eat, sleep and work with the Chinese in the
Shaolin temple, in the end, he was just a Chinese-speaking foreigner, as
he points out in the epilogue. There are many lessons to be learned from
Graceffo’s immersion in Chinese culture that can be applied to us here
in Thailand, but not to the extremes, as experienced by this author. This
is certainly no Lonely Planet travelogue!
The following
are the previous articles that Antonio wrote for the magazine:
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Article
Index ~ Hong
Kong Index ~ |
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