Return to Tung Lung Island (重回東龍島)

I used to live at a part of Hong Kong island which overlooked Tung Lung Island. For a really long time, I would gaze from the balcony of my flat at that island rising above the sea of gold glittering with diamonds in the morning sun or during holidays, at sunset and sometimes even during typhoons and I formed the notion that one day I really must go down there to see what's on it. I didn't find out how to go there until a couple of years ago. Since then, whenever I got the time, I would trek along the steep coast there just to see the waves crashing upon the shores and to listen to the sloshing sound they make as they do so, waves after waves , something which seem to have a wonderfully calming effect upon my mind.  I went there again Sunday. It was not sunny. But having no sun is not all bad: I don't have to wash a stinky towel after a couple of hours there.

This must be the new passenger liner terminal in the mist, seen from the back of the ferry to the island. I don't recall having seen this the last time I took the ferry.

The ferry pier

The sea weeds washed upon the shore to one side of the ferry pier.



Gentle waves coming in to bathe the sea weeds

On the way, I found plenty of this kind of flower, called variegated Shell Ginger (花葉艷山薑) (thanks to Pok Lok)

I have never seen their buds open. Ah, now I know what they look like when they do!

Another one such flower as it opens up

But I know that this one is called hibiscus

I also found lots and lots of these tiny star-shaped flowers on the way to the cliffs

An also these rose Myrtles (桃金娘/崗稔).(thanks to Pok Lok again) which were dotting the hillside everywhere

Outside of the stall at an intersection of the mountain paths, I found this strange looking flower. The stall owner told me that even he did not know what it name was!

This is a most peculiar flower. At the lower end of its stem, I discovered this tiny yellow flower-let, completely different from that at the top.

My first view of one of the headllands. The sea was shrouded in mist. One couldn't tell where the sky actually met the horizon of the sea.

A Spanish family on the way to the headland

The waves are coming in

Waves crashing against some reefs, sending a little shower skyward

Waves breaking over the reefs, all force spent.

More waves breaking over the reef

Sprays over the reefs

More sprays

You can feel the power of the waves as they swish and slosh around the edges of the rocks

Waves breaking over the shore

You can see the line formed by the wave head

See how high they shoot into the air

Some waves break before they reach shore

There were some fairly deep  sea caves

There were also wave pools close to the shore

One of the coves

When one goes higher up the hill, one gets a panoramic view of the way by which one came

In the distance, you can see the Clear Water Bay Club just across the narrow strait. The orange spot to the left of the photo is a young man edging his way as close as possible to the rim of the stiff cliff face but was so afraid that he had to do so crawling on his belly.

High up on the hill, I found this thistle

On the way down, I found this orange mushroom

The hillsides were also lined with these white flowers, Hundred of them on every tree: the profligacy of Nature! How many of them will survive to bear seeds?

A close up of one of them. So slender!

An arbor on the path. When shall I walk the same round the island trail again? The Indian philosophers, the Egyptians, the Stoics and Nietzsche all say that in an infinitely long time, everything which has happened is bound sooner or later to repeat itself in some form again and hence there'll be an "eternal return" of the same, like the waves of the ocean. But the recently deceased contemporary French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would say "yes, but the "eternal return" will relate, not to repetition of the same" but the eternal recurrence or repetition of "difference": difference between one thing, one phenomenon, one event and another and even difference within the same thing, phenomenon etc within itself in time, in place and in nature. Who is right? Who is wrong? Who is closer to the truth? What truth? Whose truth? Where? When? Which?