Awe and wonder at Kadoorie Farm

Caribbean flamingos, far from home

Some time ago now, M and myself made the trek out to Kadoorie Farm and Botanical garden, a place I'd been reading about since we first came to Hong Kong. What little I knew was that it was an organic farm, with some walking trails, and a small restaurant attached.  Well, it turned out to be so much more, and I hope my terrible iPhone photos do it some sort of justice.

First of all, the setting is stunning, as so many places in Hong Kong seem to be. We wended our way out along the West rail line to a station called Kam Sheung Road  (錦上路站), and then took a bus that would eventually stop at Kadoorie farm. So our classic Hong Kong double-decker took us up into the hills and dropped us in front of what turned out to be an almost vertical farm. I don't know why I should have been surprised by this - the only flat land in Hong Kong is that created by human beings, whether through levelling hills, or filling in the harbour. So from our point-of-view outside the front entrance, much of the farm complex was laid out in front of us, up a steep hillside, and it looked like there was much to explore.

Ox carries pig! What next?牛馱豬

One of our aims for the day was to do a bit of walking. Don't ask me why, because this was August, the height of summer in Hong Kong, which means mid-thirties temperatures and high humidity, and on this day, more sunshine than we could really deal with. Fortunately most of the walking tracks were through areas with plenty of tree cover, so it was possible, though the steep hillsides made it probably our sweatiest experience in Hong Kong so far.

Before heading on our walk we stopped in at the farm shop and museum, which is where I caught up on the history of Kadoorie farm. It turns out that it has a fascinating history. It was built in the 1950s, in the heyday of agricultural triumphalism, as an experimental farm to assist the poor farmers of the New Territories (新界, some of this week's vocabulary). So there were some great pictures and stories of these early days. I was most fascinated by the cattle and pigs being used as pack animals on the steep hills (Who knew pigs could or would carry loads? I thought they were too smart for that), with the best picture being the pig being carried by a cow. Love it! And was that a bamboo structure it was being carried in? Almost certainly.

These days it has morphed into a multipurpose environmental centre, with more strings to its bow than a whole orchestra. Amongst the things we saw were herb gardens, flower gardens, orchards, vegetable gardens, the museum and farm shop I just mentioned, a cafe, homes for all sorts of lost non-farm animals, a pig-breeding program, a huge collection of chook breeds, reptile enclosures, a tea plantation and many different sustainability educational centres (definitely my kind of place). It will certainly be worth a return visit on a cooler day. The 'lost' animals are a quirky aspect of the place. Apparently there is quite a lot of exotic animal smuggling transiting Hong Kong, and so when these are discovered (liberated?) they sometimes need a home to go to. Kadoorie farm seems to be one of those homes. So as well as actual Hong Kong wildlife, it also has such exotic delights as Caribbean flamingos, and South American caiman. The flamingos were a sort I'd never seen before - a gorgeous orangy-peach colour - much more exciting than the relatively drab pink ones in our local Kowloon park.

The walking tracks, which if you make it there, can take you right up to the summit of one of the hills, called Gun Yan Saan (觀音山) in Cantonese, which will be more familiar to English-speakers as Guanyin mountain, named after the Buddhist 'Goddess' of compassion. This has apparently been a sacred spot for many hundreds of years, but we didn't make it there on this visit, given the steepness of the slope and the heat of the day. We weren't the only ones crazy enough to be walking, but there would have been no more than a handful of others. It was beautiful, as I hope you can see by the photos of some plants that I took. The highlight for me, though, were the insects, of which we saw many, including some fantastic dragonflies. Mind you, you don't have to go to Kadoorie farm to see those (we saw stunning hot-pink dragonflies around the ponds in Hong Kong park just last weekend). Apart from the insects, I think most creatures were hiding from the heat. We saw a few lizards, but they were so hyped up by the temperatures, they were gone in a flash.
It is excursions like this that make me wonder how much there is out there to see in Hong Kong, if we just keep looking. Such a small place, but so so much to see.