Moving to Hung Shing Ye

Harold the dog has a new jacket.

It is a slightly tatty cream and brown patterned rug which he wears with noticeable pride in the cold weather. I spotted him wandering back from the ferry pier unaccompanied, as though he had just been strutting around Central district with his distinctive ostrich walk and new coat.

I helped a man struggling with a washing machine up the flight of steps outside our garden the other day. He seemed very grateful and after brief introductions when I informed him of my profession, Vick urged me to contact Tom, a fellow Wang Long neighbour.

“He an editor of some business magazine” he told me “Employs loads of writers”.

“I can write about business” I offered, a little too eagerly.

“Don’t worry about that” said Vick.

 “Tom knows nothing about business. Thick as pig shit. It’s just re-hashing press releases, I reckon”.

I made mental note to give Tom a call.

Tom, it seems, is the loud Scotsman with a slightly flushed round face who phones home on Friday night from his top floor balcony and the entire village can hear his conversation as he growls and rants into his mobile phone for about an hour. There is no intrusion into Tom’s privacy because no-one around here can possibly comprehend his Glaswegian accent.

Having just settled in to Wang Long (I now know three people, all called Tom) we are moving up to Hung Shing Ye.  In Lamma terms this is equivalent of moving from Manhattan, or the Upper East Side of New York to say, Daytona Beach in Florida. Actually it’s probably more like moving from Ealing Broadway to Margate.  Either way, in reality, it is about 1km away.

There is a beach though. Quite a nice one actually, if you don’t turn your head too far to the right to take in the view of the power station.

And the flat has a nice terrace with tropical plants and a pleasing view through the smog to the bay beyond. The large Lamma dog next door only barks loudly from behind a fence when you first arrive and then soon settles down.  All in all, pretty nice.

The only down side, this being Lamma Island, is that the entire flat is only 350 square feet. For those not instantly au fait with flat dimensions this equates to a large fridge-freezer or small shed.

Lamma is a pretty egalitarian place in that 90% of the population live in two types of flat. The 700 square foot version, which is usually one floor of a three floor Chinese town house and barely adequate in terms of space. The 350 square feet version is usually half a floor of a Chinese town house and completely inadequate but of course, a lot cheaper.

We did see a nice 700 square feet flat in Wang Long but it was perched over a dirty swampy stream with a balcony overlooking a bicycle repair shop and some abandoned mouldy mattresses. Like a lot of Lamma Island, it lacked something in aesthetic appeal and we found ourselves lured by the tropical plants. 


So now we are condemned to living in a fridge freezer which no doubt converts into an oven in the summer months.