Out and about

Tai Mo Shan ('Big Hat Mountain') - Hong Kong's highest peak, dominates the central New Territories and on a smog-free day is visible from Hong Kong Island. When seen from the north, along the Yuen Long plain, the mountain does resemble - with at least some imaginative licence - the shape of an old-fashioned bamboo farmer's hat.

Tai Mo Shan's summit is dominated by two enormous golf-ball-like structures mounted on towers, used for decades by the British as listening posts for China. At least one now has an airport-related radar function. The mountain-top can get cold in winter and every few years, around Lunar New Year, the winding road to the top is jammed with traffic, as city dwellers flock to look at the 'snow', as the hoar-frost is mistakenly described.

Chuen Lung, a rambling hillside village on the south-western slope not far from Tsuen Wan, has a lingering if tenuous connection to the tea industry, once China's principal link to the rest of the world. Several long-established tea-houses prepare varieties of wun-yue cha ('cloud and rain tea') from wild leaves picked by villagers from the surrounding hillsides and infused in water from spring-fed streams higher up the mountainside. Numerous urbanites trek up to Chuen Lung at weekends to enjoy the tea and superb mountain scenery. But don't expect anything ethereal about the tea-houses; all are glorified, rather basic, dai pai dong.

Disused tea terraces can also be found. The dry-stone walls of the terraces can be best seen from the northern side of the mountain, facing Shek Kong and the Lam Tsuen valley. According to historical accounts, these terraces date back almost 1,000 years.

In the 1860s - more than three decades before the lease of what became the New Territories to Britain was signed - local firm Gibb, Livingston and Co (later absorbed into the Inchcape Group) established tea plantations at Lam Tsuen, which only lasted a few years before being abandoned.

Camellia granthamiana (Grantham's camellia) was found growing wild on Tai Mo Shan in 1955 and named after Hong Kong's then-governor Sir Alexander Grantham. For some years, only one plant was known to exist in the wild. Other specimens were found on Ma On Shan and in Shenzhen, but this very rare plant remains a protected species. Camellia sinensis, the commercially cultivated tea bush, is a form of camellia - flowering camellias are known in Cantonese as cha yip fah (tea leaf flower) - and botanists have speculated that Grantham's camellia was a natural hybrid.