Hong Kong Rocks
Hana R. Alberts sets out on a geological tour of the New Territories. It’s way more interesting than you might think.
At first, Hong Kong was dry land, with a few rivers crisscrossing the arid landscape. A few hundred million years later, the terra firma on which we now stand morphed into a shallow, swampy sea. Fast-forward a bit more, and violent volcanoes spewed lava and rock everywhere. A desert followed—and, finally, the mountainous coastal environment we know today.
For geologist Bernie Owen, Hong Kong is paradise. A professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, he has devoted his life to studying rocks, from the sands of the beaches to the boulders of mountains. For Owen, it’s a way to understand the reason this place looks as stunning as it does.
“Geology and landscape are much the same thing, once you start reading it,” he says. “There’s a pattern to Hong Kong. Here in this landscape, we have hundreds of millions of years to play with.”
And play we did. Once a year, Hong Kong’s Royal Geographical Society taps Owen to share his expertise on a day-long boat tour; this year, the outing was in the far northeastern New Territories. The trip is usually oversubscribed, with a long waiting list. But on a gorgeously clear December Saturday, I was lucky enough to tag along with a couple dozen Jack Wolfskin-clad would-be explorers.
We set sail from Ma Liu Shui, quickly leaving blocky residential towers behind in favor of the open sea. Into the microphone Owen yells above the wind: “If we did this
journey 8,000 years ago, you’d just be going along a river!” The adventurers chuckle, and then resume the position behind their telephoto lenses.
After passing the Plover Cove reservoir, one of Hong Kong’s main water sources, we dock at Lai Chi Chong, located in a northern cove of lush Sai Kung West Country Park. Chock-full of stripy sedimentary rocks, the picturesque beach is clear evidence that this area was once an active volcanic lake. Some of the strata—created when moving water laid down layer after layer of pebbles, gravel and sand—became beautifully twisted and jagged when movements of the earth’s crust interrupted the normal deposit process before the sediments had hardened. “It’s a visual earthquake,” says Owen. “You can see the earthquake in the rock.”