If you take a bus towards Shek-O, the semi-fancy beach town on the South East side of Hong Kong Island, you will pass numerous signs for small villages dotting the windy coastal road. These signs ignited my curiosity, so I jumped off the bus a few stops before Shek-O and made my way down a steep incline to the tiny village of Lan Nai Wan Tsuen.
An irrigation trail lining the coast led me past abandoned homes covered in Banyan roots and meagre spray paint. The only other people I saw was a group of men working for the irrigation dept. fixing a pipe and an elderly couple watching over the town temple – the only well-preserved building to speak of.
There were signs of a life left behind, surf boards and kayaks decaying beside the cracked cement docks, small buildings being taken over by Mangrove, the mattresses still inside the rooms. The place seemed to have been abandoned in an instant, yet a few simple houses across the bay were clearly still occupied – dogs on the roof, smoke coming from the backyard, and a flourishing garden irrigated by the nearby stream.
Viola Jean Photography 