The Chinese grave site

I resided in Kowloon and worked on a construction site in the New Territories almost on the Red Chinese border when the main road from Kowloon was being upgraded from little more than a track to a two lane highway. Part of Tolo Harbour had already been reclaimed by lopping off the tops of nearby mountains, and the new Sha Tin racecourse on the northern side of Lion Rock tunnel was nearing completion. The widening of the highway at this point to six lanes or more meant the removal of large amounts of mountain side in the immediate area of the northern Tunnel exit. This unfortunately had been one of the favoured burial grounds of the locals for countless generations, overlooking as it did the expanse of the original almost landlocked expanse of water.

In the period that I was there, we passed the general work sites twice each day, and it was interesting to note that in the early stages, dozens of previously unseen grave sites were suddenly becoming obvious with lavish coats of new red and white paint, and the area surrounding each grave was cleared of overgrowth and rubbish. Suddenly virtually the whole side of the mountain was exposed, and it was common knowledge in Kowloon that the government was negotiating considerable sums of money to buy up the family plots and ensure that the ancient bones were relocated at some other suitable and necessarily expensive area.

There were stories of huge cash settlements, but as work progressed it became obvious that the large earthmoving operation had turned into a cutting operation around behind a solitary brightly painted grave site about 30 metres or so high up the mountain side! Each morning and evening as we passed back and forth to our work site near the Chinese border at Sha Tau Kok, we watched with interest as tons of mountain were carted away and it became apparent that the grave site was soon going to be perched on the top of what remained of the mountain side.

By this time the story was going around that one family had steadfastly refused to consider the relocation of the grave, and any financial inducements had met with no success. Whether this indicated the family's concern, or they were just determined to hold out for the highest price was never known to us, but the law of the land was such that the grave could not be violated except on agreement. So the stalemate continued and the excavations pushed on until it became apparent that the contractor had cunningly removed so much earth and rock that the first rains would disintegrate the fragile spire of soil. It must have been at this point that the grave's owners could see their negotiations were in danger of becoming little more than a no-cash clean up job in the very near future with the monsoonal rains being imminent, and so it was, that suddenly the already disintegrating peak was no longer there, having been removed in hours once a settlement was reached.
There had been stories of huge sums of money being negotiated in the early stages but the moment the contractor made the decision to cut around behind the grave site, the negotiations must have changed, because at one stage it looked to us as if the grave would be left to melt away in the middle of the multi lane highway!

In the same area of highway improvement we were to observe another interesting fact of local life. You have to understand that with the high salt content in the humid air and neglect, new cars were prone to become rust buckets in a couple of years. As second hand vehicles they had little value in the area, the financial gap between the local rich and poor ensured that the second hand market barely existed! In any case the average local was not in the least bit interested in owning a car, maintenance costs were outrageous as was the initial purchase price, there were no parking areas and the number of driver's licences was restricted by the simple expedient of making it almost impossible to pass a driver's test, but at odd times some sort of a deal was made and someone signed up for a second hand car.

The problem was quick to surface, a quick weekend trip out of Kowloon into the small area of countryside and wild burn-ups by the new owner and his mates, found cars abandoned for mechanical reasons or possibly just out of petrol (very common in Hong Kong). The new owner would just melt away into the local population and it would take time for the dealer and/or financier to find the owner of the car, if he was lucky enough to locate either! So it was that three cars we had noted seemingly parked at the roadside – a late model Ford, a Citroen and another I can't recall, were suddenly surrounded by banks of earth from grading and bulldozing operations. We watched fascinated as daily the earthmoving operators edged closer and closer until there came the day when each car in it's turn tilted slowly onto it's side, then a few days later it vanished into the soil at the roadside! The same thing happened to a Jawa motorcycle that miraculously remained upright on it's stand till the moment when it too disappeared from sight!

All this was par for the course for some second hand vehicles. Motorcycles were off the sides of roads and down hills (probably by joy riders) lay there and slowly disintegrated, any sort of interested reporting and recovery just didn't appear to exist. Cars were left parked in streets covered in parking notices until the council workers came around on a somewhat irregular basis and carted the offending vehicles off to a compound on Hong Kong Island where, after a period, they were sold by tender or went into landfill. Motorcycles on the other hand were mostly stored and parked illegally under the numerous overpasses. These areas were closed in by high mesh fences but a hole was soon cut in the mesh and the area became a secure garage for as many motorcycles as the owners could cram in!

These illegal parking places appeared to be ignored to a certain extent – abandoned bikes would soon be stripped of wheels and other parts and the remains built up in corners of the fenced in areas. But eventually the council would suddenly act and contractors employed by the government would move into these spots and any bikes would be loaded into a truck together with sundry remains, and the unlucky owners would have to pay a stiff fine to get their often quite damaged property returned. The fences would be repaired, but in a few days the hole in the netting would be open once more and slowly the overnight parkers would return, but it appeared that the blitz was always anticipated and very few unfortunates would be penalised having found some other storage place for a few days. I was tempted to annex a late model Vespa scooter that sat with flat tires outside our apartment and appeared to have been there for months, but as I had the use of a company car and that was enough of a parking headache, I forgot the idea. Several months later it vanished in a street clean up. I visited a motorcycle graveyard where one of these removal contractors had motorcycles piled dozens deep up to a height of six or seven metres, and I have a photo of a lovely Norton twin sticking out of the bottom of that same pile, but endless negotiations by myself and others failed to pry it away from the proprietor.