On the Waterfront

I once joked to a friend that I didn’t think I could live I a place that didn’t have access to some sort of major waterway. In the years since that seemingly offhand comment was made, I have yet to stray from it, with exception of two summer stints. Hong Kong has made it reputation as one of the great ports of the world, linking China with the rest of the world.

I live along a little section of waterfront in Tsuen Wan, which neighbors the main shipping terminals, but thankfully, local leaders saw fit to finish off the area surrounding the city’s lone ferry pier with a park. In a fit of developing largesse, the main section of the park was completed concurrent with the city’s tallest building, yet it stretches along the waterfront for a good two or three miles via a jogging/bike path and isolated stretches of grass.

Tsuen Wan's waterfront shares a certain ubiquity with most modern harbors: a jogging path, outsized granite boulders used as a seawall, plaques honoring former city councils, etc. As I walked along the path, a few bourgeois types jogged past in running kit, interspersed with dogs on walks and elderly people engaged in the slow methodical walk, hands clasped behind their hips, one sees frequently here. Along the pier and at another deep part of the waterfront, fishing is the activity of choice, reel or not. It came as a surprise to see four people plying the waters with only fishing line anchored to a bucket or the railing. The more endowed and industrious fishermen stuck plural poles in the granite crevasses and reclined nearby.

The harbor itself is merely an elbow of channel between the main peninsula and Tsing Yi, one of the most developed of Hong Kong’s islands, housing a portion of the container terminals and new residential developments. Not surprisingly, the harbor is a parking lot for tugboats of various sizes and superfluous ferries.

In the background is the famous Tsing Ma Bridge, notable as the longest bridge to carry road and rail traffic. The bridge’s main span is 1,377m (4,518ft) long and exceeds all but six in the world, including the Golden Gate Bridge.

The last place I lived had a waterfront with multiple historic markers, commemorating the settling of the region via the coast’s natural harbors. The Tsuen Wan waterfront was little more than swampland a generation ago, but for the moment it possesses all the requisite pleasantries for this water-bound dweller.