They call it the Land Between, these
fascinating New Territories bridging the
old and new, a region of dramatic contrasts
between teeming Kowloon and the border
of mainland China. For those who live here
it is mostly farm country. For visitors, it is
one marvellous scene upon another. Ripe
for the pages of National Geographic are
the rice paddies worked by hand, the duck
farms, forested mountains and ancient
temples of rural China. And walled
villages, not replicas whose residents go
home to modern plumbing at night, but the
real thing habited now pretty much as they
were 400 years ago. It is also an area of transition, the old-fashioned
quaintness occasionally disturbed by jarring new towns; commercial, industrial
and residential communities designed to draw families from overcrowded
cities in the south.
They call it the Land Between, these
fascinating New Territories bridging the
old and new, a region of dramatic contrasts
between teeming Kowloon and the border
of mainland China. For those who live here
it is mostly farm country. For visitors, it is
one marvellous scene upon another. Ripe
for the pages of National Geographic are
the rice paddies worked by hand, the duck
farms, forested mountains and ancient
temples of rural China. And walled
villages, not replicas whose residents go
home to modern plumbing at night, but the
real thing habited now pretty much as they
were 400 years ago. It is also an area of transition, the old-fashioned
quaintness occasionally disturbed by jarring new towns; commercial, industrial
and residential communities designed to draw families from overcrowded
cities in the south.
