Backwards (This week's Photo Hunt theme)

When out hiking in Hong Kong, one sometimes can feel not so much that one has gone back to nature but that one has gone backwards in time. This is because many a hiking trail doesn't just lead those who follow them out of -- and at times above -- the concrete jungle into the countryside and country parks but also sections of a more traditional, rural Hong Kong bordering, crisscrossing and surrounded by such areas.

Some of the villages close by to or through which certain hiking trails pass look to be still thriving while others look to have been completely -- and sometimes suddenly, inexplicably -- abandoned. Even in quite a few of those that are still inhabited though, one sometimes gets the sense that even if they are not stuck in time, time passes by more slowly there than in other parts of the territory and world!

These are, after all, sections of the Big Lychee where doors often are left open, never mind unlocked -- where ancestral photos are proudly displayed and ancestral temples still looked after, where people have and continue to tend to their vegetable gardens and fields, where fung shui woods still are to be found (and undoubtedly utilized), etc.

Those who aren't into hiking but wish to view and visit traditional villages in Hong Kong can do worse than go along the officially designated Lung Yeuk Tau Heritage Trail up in the North District or Ping Shan Heritage Trail located between the "new town" of Tin Shui Wai and bustling market town of Yuen Long out in the west. However, I have to say that the most interesting villages (including the fabled Lai Chi Wo and Sha Lo Tung) are those encountered while out hiking -- a pursuit that I think that those viewing this Photo Hunt entry realize can give one tastes of culture as well as nature, at least here in Hong Kong. :b