In Tai O, a fishing village on the southern end of Lantau Island, the streets are narrow. They wind along the general side of the water, and divide in places to curve back out to the more developed public housing towers just beyond the older streets. The walls are relatively high for such a village, often two stories tall, and the sense is of being inside a secret complicated urban web where cars and busses never enter. Aside from the piles of dried fish, octopus, squid, mussels, shark fins, etc. that sit in the hot shade of the markets, there are open-front shops and food stalls with small round stools for seating. Bicycles and children mingle in the open areas, groups of people play mah-jongg. But it’s not just the shops that open invitingly onto the streets, but people’s homes, interspersed erratically and without ceremony into the mess of small industry. They have no door, just an accordion-shaped metal divider, adorned with floral cut-outs, that closes for privacy or sleep. Though outside is dirt and the smell of drying fish, hot sun, the view inside these homes gives one an immediate sense of cool peace. The floors are all tiled, the walls mostly bare, the wicker and plastic furniture pushed neatly against the walls, a white ceiling fan at rest. In some cases, a small television sits in the corner, and another room (kitchen? bedroom?) lies darker in the back. In some cases, stairs lead up to a second floor. In other cases, the clean tiled floor of this room is all that’s there, ending with a dusty step into the street. Louis Kahn’s words rang in my head: “The street is a room by agreement…. Its ceiling is the sky.”
(More pictures of the Lantau day trip on Flickr.)
