'ONE TIME, I saw someone standing on the edge of the swimming pool having a pee,' says Reidar Jenssen in a slow, measured voice that is more incredulous than angry. 'Just standing there, in full public view.' He pauses, draws on a Marlboro, and continues in his strong, sing-song, Norwegian accent. 'This is not the type of person we want to see coming here. They make a hell of a lot of noise and leave a hell of a lot of mess.' The others sitting at the round marble table nod their heads in agreement.
Then Alice Lu takes up the saga of woe. 'One time, 30 of them stayed in one flat,' she says. Unlike the outwardly calm Jenssen, Lu is visibly angry. Her voice almost trembles with agitation. 'Thirty of them! They stayed up all night, playing loud music. In the end we had to call the police. It was terrible.' But it is far from the worst thing threatening the lifestyles of the six people around the table. Each owns a property at Sea Ranch, a self-contained 200-apartment community built in the late '70s and billed as a 'dream home hideaway' for the rich and famous. Its swanky seaview apartments, exclusive fine-dining restaurants, secluded gardens and the best sporting facilities, accessed by covered stairways and paths, are nestled behind a private, manmade beach on an isolated, roadless peninsula on Lantau Island.
Despite its 'exclusive hideaway' billing, most in Hong Kong will at some time have glimpsed this strange Asian Eldorado. Sea Ranch is that group of white buildings Macau-bound hydrofoils pass just after their high-speed slide through the channel separating Cheung Chau and Lantau. For a few seconds out of the right-hand windows, a small, seemingly out-of-place enclave can be glimpsed carved out of the enormous swathes of jungle. A deserted white beach, white picket fence and small sloping lawn and a row of big, neat white houses. It looks serene, if a little strange, and has changed little since it was completed in 1979. But beyond the picket fence things are far from utopian in this seaside Shangri-La. And it's about more than people peeing by the pool.
Someone has been buying up apartments and the handful of residents - the 'permanents' as they call themselves - are far from happy about it. They are suspicious of the motives behind the purchases which they believe could threaten their already tarnished village. 'The answer lies here,' says Lu, opening up a map of Lantau and pointing to the big, golden goose of Chek Lap Kok. Her finger moves south across the map to the Chi Ma Wan Peninsula, on the tip of which perches Sea Ranch.
'The road here is becoming wider and it already goes to Chi Ma Wan [Prison]. Someone has inside information on what will happen on this part of Lantau.' What she and the other permanents suspect is the Chi Ma Wan road may eventually lead all the way from the airport to a big, luxurious resort on a private beach: a dream hideaway for the rich and famous. But it won't be Sea Ranch. They believe it will be a hotel or condominium development just a half-hour drive from the international airport, situated on the very spot where we now sit.
SEA RANCH WAS a Hutchison brainchild. Conceived in 1974, it was unveiled at the 1975 Hong Kong Ideal Homes Exhibition. Hutchison was selling a lifestyle, a paradise designed 'to provide big spenders with a home away from home'. Wealthy punters were given glossy brochures to ponder. Sea Ranch would be a 'self-contained community with every luxury' where life would be 'gracious and serene', claimed the brochure. It would be a place where owners would become part of 'the most exclusive club in Hong Kong' and 'furnished with every amenity - intimate restaurants serving both European and Chinese cuisine, private dining rooms, a cocktail lounge, billiards room, library, games room, nursery, sauna ... from the Club's vantage point you look over a magnificent seascape with the swimming pool, tennis courts and Yi Long Beach stretching out below. The Club will be the social heart of the Sea Ranch.' Better than the gushing text were the full-page pictures of sunsets, hunks on water-skis, sumptuous buffets and 'gracious' living rooms (decorated in garish, state-of-the-art '70s style). Best of all were the pictures of busty blonde babes in miniscule bikinis frolicking in the Lantau surf. Prices ranged from $250,000 for a 650-square-foot 'park-side' apartment to $550,000 for a 1,250 sq ft beach-side apartment.
