Hong Kong stargazer on his love of night skies – he caught the astronomy bug young and he’s been passing it on ever since
- Savio Fong built his first telescope of cardboard and he’s been making them ever since, in observatories across Asia, including one of world’s highest in Tibet
- ‘Tibet is beautiful. No light pollution, no air pollution. The sky is so clear,’ he says, and wishes it were so in Hong Kong, where street lights dim sky views
Savio Fong’s fascination with all things celestial started when he was a child, watching television in his parents’ flat on the south side of Hong Kong Island.
“I was about seven or eight years old when a cartoon on TV – I can’t remember the name of it – showed a father making a telescope for his son. I was fascinated and from that moment I wanted to get a real feel for the stars,” says Fong, now in his 40s.
But Fong’s working-class parents could not afford a telescope, so he made his own. And in the pre-internet age, that meant countless trips to local libraries to dig up information on how to build one. His efforts resulted in a home-made contraption comprising a lens and rolled up piece of cardboard. The device cost him HK$20. “That was a lot of money back then – I had to save my allowance for a long time to buy it,” he says.
From his bedroom’s balcony, Fong would aim his “very raw, very basic” telescope at the sky. But he was often left frustrated. “I could see the moon and some features on its surface, as well as a few moons around Jupiter, but I couldn’t see the rings of Saturn. I wanted more.”
His love affair with the celestial had begun, and so had his flair for making telescopes. He became resourceful, finding scraps to construct his instruments.
One place he sourced material from was Tseung Kwan O, in the southeastern New Territories. Today it’s a densely populated residential area, but from the 1960s until the mid-1980s, the district was known for its shipbuilding and ship repair industries. To Fong, it was a treasure chest.