The following has
appeared on the Hong Kong history site Gwulo in
the last day or two. I`m following it up. Flying Snake is now
out.
Hello
Richard,
Back in the 1950s,
the Colony was still wildlife everywhere except the city districts. We didn't
need Hollywood
to brighten up our storyline.
Once having Dim Sum
lunch with my family elders after a storm, we saw a very large snake swimming in
the river by Sha Tin's mudland and everyone were excited and amazed to watch
from a safe distant, for a quarter hour, as it seemed to struggle against the
angry downstream current rushing to the seawater. It must be more that ten feet
long.
Once on a hot day
ferrying back to Cheung Chau island from Hong
Kong, a school of dolphins were chasing the ferry from behind. Those
day, the rear of the ferry's upper deck was like a open balcony and soon all the
passengers were aroused to enjoy watching the happy chasers. In minutes the
dolphins passed us on the left and made lots of noise and splashings along the
course. They surely won the race and screamed wild in
victory!!
But the most famous
or notorious events were the sighting of South China Tigers in the New Territories. They were being spotted on
various parts of the New Territories causing nerveous incidents for
not only the Chinese and the British but also the Japanese in WWII. Few were
captured or shot dead or unmercifully slaughtered for tasty reason or trophy of
selfish glory, near Kowloon's city outskirt by the Shing Moon
Reservoir area or remote hillside forests in Tai Po, Yuen Long or Fan Ling
...etc area. Yet most of them left the New Territories without a trace, holding the
population in fear for long while.
We liked to read the
news updates when the Colony's safety was shaken really hard by some lost-minded
beasts.
As to jackals, I
think on the Lantau island's terrains, folks hunted on a kind of popular small
wild dog known as Wong Gann (means Yellow little Jackal). Occasionally the poor
unlucky animals were being entrapped and were brought to the street market for
the highest bidder as a choicy rarity meat.
There was also an
unexplained sighting of a strange long-eared wild man jointly acknowledged by
the children of the CLCY village. In our adulthood, some of us did talk
about our own sightings on the same subject as a real bizaare experience.
Will report mine's later.
Real
funny!
Tung
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