The Village At The Center of the World

By Larry Feign

Welcome to Wang Tong, a little village on an island in the South China Sea. No signs point there. Even the police can't find it. A place with no cars, but water buffalo traffic jams. A place where nothing seems to happen, yet which once might have been the capital of the known world.

Meet Ah-Po, the kindly old farmer and her toy animal exe

• Language: English
• Publisher: Earnshaw Books Ltd
• Release date: Sep 13, 2023
• ISBN: 9789888843251

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Advance Praise for

The Village at the Center of the World

Larry Feign paints a kaleidoscopic portrait of his rural home in Hong Kong that dazzles the imagination. With humor and empathy, this love letter to Wang Tong village will leave any reader wishing they lived there.

—Alec Ash, author of Wish Lanterns and The Mountains Are High

I’ve lived on Lantau Island for many years, the last few in Larry and Cathy’s first home in Wang Tong, so The Village at the Center of the World speaks right to me! It works on so many levels, understanding Lantau history and the true nature of the island—from insects and snakes to pigs—and of the people that bring it to life. And of course, all with Larry’s well-known observational humor. Obviously a ‘must read’ for not only the wider Lantau community, but also for anyone who has made somewhere else their home. Maybe it will inspire you to research in more detail where you live.

—Gary Brightman, owner of VIBE Book and Music Shop in Mui Wo, Lantau Island

Hong Kong is sometimes depicted as a heartless concrete jungle, and this collection of essays forms the perfect antidote. Larry writes with skill, warmth and affection of the beauties of nature, plus the pleasures, surprises and even the frustrations of village life in this lovely place we call home.

—Sally Bunker, Mui Wo resident and artist/author of Portraits of Trees of Hong Kong and Southern China

Larry Feign is a Hong Kong treasure.

—Shonee Mirchandani, Director of Bookazine, Hong Kong

The Village at the Center of the World

By Larry Feign

ISBN-13: 978-988-8843-25-1

© 2023 Larry Feign

BIOGRAPHY & AUTOBIOGRAPHY

EB188

For Annika and Ivan, natives of the soil

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in material form, by any means, whether graphic, electronic, mechanical or other, including photocopying or information storage, in whole or in part. May not be used to prepare other publications without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information contact [e-mail]

Published in Hong Kong by Earnshaw Books Ltd.

Where in the world?

No signs point to Wang Tong.

You can’t drive here or take a bus. The paths are wide enough only for pedestrians and bicycles. Those pathways have no names or markers.

Even the local police don’t know where we are. Their station is less than two kilometers away, but try calling them to report a missing bicycle or a downed tree blocking a path in Wang Tong village, and you hear a vacant pause.

So you tell them:

The village beyond the beach hotel—no, not along the beach, behind it—follow the stream, then around the bend after the green signboard...

Fifteen minutes later they call again, hopelessly lost, asking again which village you’re talking about. You tell them to start all over. Hotel. Bend in the stream.

Then you walk past the Toilet Bar...

The Toilet Bar

Yes, there really is a Toilet Bar. It’s located at the bend in the Wang Tong Stream where it banks sharp left to empty into the bay. It’s our local, sort of, well, pub.

This establishment has no formal name, it’s simply Granny Mak’s little shop. In fact, it’s her home. Poh-Poh (Granny) put a canopy over her front patio, brought in a freezer chest and a drinks refrigerator, and for years has sold cold drinks, popsicles, slippers, and beach mats to passersby. She lives in the back.

A number of years ago, a few people started hanging around there in the evenings. They’re a mixed crowd: English, South African, Indian, Eurasian, sometimes a Chinese or two, and even once in a while a woman. There were a couple fold-out card tables, some stools, and cold beer from the cooler for the rock bottom lowest prices on the island. It was outdoors, quiet, everyone knew each other. A modest place to hang out and have a chat and a pint—well, a can. Except for one thing.

It was directly across the footpath from the public toilet, which anyone could smell from a quarter mile away. I held my breath every time I cycled past on my way home. What kind of powerful camaraderie there must have been, not to mention dirt cheap beer, that would inspire people to hang out drinking next to a disgusting, putrid toilet!

Locals started referring to it sarcastically as the Toilet Bar.

A few years ago, the government replaced the old public toilet with a new, modern hygienic one. No more stench. But the name Toilet Bar stuck, by now an almost endearing title for a near-legendary institution. A few of the regulars tried out a new, classier name—though Café Latrine never caught on. It will forever be known as the Toilet Bar.

Poh-Poh has been gradually taking the Toilet Bar upmarket. First, she started stocking wine. Take your choice: white or red, both ice cold and cheap. Eventually she even bought some wine glasses, probably because someone told her they were slightly classier than plastic cups. She’s rummaged up an eclectic assortment of extra tables and chairs in the past few months, so it’s more comfortable to sit. But the pièce de résistance is that she now provides free wi-fi! Where else in the world can you enjoy a cool can of local Carlsberg or a chilled glass of Australian Merlot in alfresco tropical ambiance for under two US dollars? And a toilet conveniently located three steps away.

I don’t hang out there, in case you’re wondering. Sometimes I stop to buy an ice cream bar, but I don’t linger. Ask any of the regulars about me, they’ll tell you: I’m an antisocial son of a bitch and worse—much worse—not much of a drinker.

Why would I start a book with such a place? The Toilet Bar is the gateway to Wang Tong, the place everyone must pass on their way to our village. I hope this chronicle will serve the same purpose for you. So suck down the last of that cold Shenzhen beer, wave goodbye to the lads, and stroll down the footpath in the lightest of spirits. You’re about to enter Wang Tong.

Welcome to Wang Tong

Welcome to Wang Tong, a little village somewhere on the southeast tip of Lantau Island in the South China Sea. That’s most of it in the photo. Wang Tong has between 60 and 75 buildings, depending on your opinion about where the village boundary lies. Only a few are single-family homes. The rest are split into apartments, others are almost permanently vacant, and a few exist as down-market weekend guesthouses for packs of teenagers.

How many people live here? I don’t think anyone ever counted. Even the government census lumps Wang Tong and a nearby stretch of beach front into one broad entity called Chung Hau South. But if I had to guess, I would say that the permanent population of our village hovers between 250 and 300.

Wang Tong is no Anatevka, Lake Wobegon, or Postman Pat’s Greendale (his van wouldn’t get through). You would never go out of your way to visit this place. It isn’t quite visible from the beach. You might stroll along its edge on your way to the Silvermine Waterfall, but you’ll hardly notice, your attention distracted by Mr. Tam’s fashionably dressed scarecrow and the valley full of ginger lilies separating you from the main cluster of homes.

So who lives here? Even in a village this tiny there are four distinct populations. Start with the so-called indigenous: descendants of the original, pre-British colonial era settlers of Lantau Island. Two clans predominate: the Tsangs and the Wans. Then there are the other Chinese residents, people who drifted here to save money or get away from the city. Until around 2005 only a small handful of non-Chinese people bought or rented homes in order to have the space that we foreigners seem to need surrounding us. In the past several years, we’ve seen a rising surge of incoming foreigners, including more overseas Chinese. And don’t forget the Filipinos. Since nearly every household employs a Filipina domestic helper and some have gardeners as well, Filipinos might in fact be the largest homogeneous group in Wang Tong.

I’ve lived in Wang Tong since 1991. My children grew up in its fields and streams and nearby beaches and hills. I’ve loved this village since around day three. Let’s get into the reasons why.

A Newspaper Full Of Screws

I was woken by a rap on the window. A woman with a face like a baked apple peered in and waved. For three days I’d been sleeping on a discarded mattress on the living room floor of my newly rented house while I gradually cleaned and painted the bedrooms upstairs. There were still no curtains, so I slept fully clothed. I got up, buttoned my shirt and let her in. She was there to deliver a bottle of LP gas for the kitchen cooker. She couldn’t phone me, since the previous occupant had left in a histrionic fit, cutting the telephone wires and inexplicably covering every light switch with grease, due to an apparent dispute with the landlord.

I’d ordered the gas the day before in a shop near the ferry pier, figuring it was up to me to pick it up. I hadn’t remembered giving an address.

How did you know where I live? I said.

Of course, everyone knows.

It was my third day in Wang Tong and already I stood out. In those days there were few non-Chinese people here and most locals apparently understood little or no English. Cantonese was the main dialect of Hong Kong and southern China, and I spoke it about as well as the average farm animal, which was at least better than 99.999 percent of other westerners in Hong Kong. That put me on the local map.

I put off having a shower and ventured into the main village to buy food and search for a pillow. I must have looked as rough as I felt, since I received stares from everyone, from uniformed school children to the garbage collection ladies in their bell-shaped rattan hats.

I stepped into the hardware store, a crowded little room stacked to the ceiling with every tool, fastener, wire, and tube imaginable. I had been to the shop two or three times as I put up shelves, replaced shower heads, and repaired various broken bits around the house. The shop owners, a couple in their 50s, recognized me as the new gwailo who spoke rudimentary Cantonese.

Here in Mui Wo, I learned, if you needed anything in a shop, you found it yourself rather than risk interrupting the permanent mahjong game going on in the back. I squeezed behind the counter and sifted through little drawers, boxes, and bags filled with screws and bolts. When I’d found the right gauge of flat-head metal screws, I poured out a quantity of them next to a screwdriver, a wrench, and several drill bits I’d selected, then called M goi!—Cantonese for excuse me.

No response, so I said it again. Apparently you needed to repeat a request a minimum of three times before a shopkeeper deemed it serious enough to warrant a break in their game. The owner flipped her tiles face-down, stood up with all the hurry of a drowsy cat, and dawdled over to the counter.

Without a word, she picked up a page of newspaper, folded it into a cone and swept the screws inside. She made some quick origami-type folds around the open end, producing a neat little packet, and weighed this in her hand.

Three dollars, she said in Cantonese. After this precision method of weighing and pricing, she looked at my selection of