For 15 years, Wong Yu-hong has toiled mightily to create a floral wonderland at the entrance to the border village of Wu Shek Kok. The road into the hamlet is lined with gloriously flowering bougainvilleas and other shrubs.
A stream once choked with garbage now runs fresh and clean, providing a habitat for crabs and frogs. The effect is delightful.
Mr Wong is known as the 'cactus king' of the New Territories because of the many awards he has won at flower shows. His front yard is a unique display of scores of cacti of dozens of species.
Amazingly, the botanical delight created by Mr Wong is now under threat. Staff of the North District Lands Office recently put up signs warning people against 'cultivating' what would otherwise be wasteland covered with scrub. A spokesman for the office confirmed that this was directed against people who plant flowering shrubs; in other words, Mr Wong is the target of this official wrath.
The signs are seen as a warning to Mr Wong sparked by a village squabble. It's a microcosm of the sort of spiteful dispute so sadly common in many rural communities.
Wu Shek Kok is a Hakka clan village settled by Wongs more than 200 years ago. But Mr Wong is not an indigenous villager; he was born in Indonesia, studied marine biology on the mainland, suffered during the Cultural Revolution and came to Hong Kong in 1971. His professional qualifications were not recognised here, so he worked as a janitor. But most of his life was devoted to the study and growing of plants.
Since he moved into a village house in Wu Shek Kok in 1992, he has planted shrubs on unused government land alongside the entrance road - which is off Sha Tau Kok Road near the border roadblock. His voluntary work slowly won back land overgrown with uncontrolled vegetation. The transformation was welcomed by most residents, a mixture of indigenous Wongs, 'outsider' Chinese and expatriates.