A Kingdom from Above

I frequently can find some time for watching the English language channel of the CCTV – China Central, not closed circuit TV. The programme 'Around China' features individuals who are successful in one sense or another. It is interesting. Every now and then it tells the story of one who gets rich and becomes a millionaire quite so dramatically, by normally struggling very hard. I have an impression that the editors must be very fond of accounting, because figures of the money made and lost are always given.

At other times I watch the CCTV evening news repeated after midnight aired through a local channel. I never think someone can possibly get to know the Middle Kingdom by watching all that news on a daily basis. It does give an image of the nation in certain respects, but obviously not from the perspective and viewpoint of journalism as I know. I see a 'China from above' through the news, a China the authority wants the audience to have in their impression. Though I don't think things work that way, it does have a certain effect of enlightening on me.

China the Middle Kingdom is now still a regime that behaves more or less like a kingdom, a de facto true kingdom without a king. If a subject says something the Court doesn't appreciate, he or she is liable to arrest and punishment.

Now having tuned away from the CCTV, I have just watched a series of all 3 episodes of the BBC programme 'Britain from Above'. A bit surprisingly I found myself somewhat enlightened once again.

Britain is like China, also a kingdom without a king, in a different sense and not for long though. In the programme Britain is viewed aerially from the satellite, the aircraft, the helicopter, the parachute, the paraglider and the hand glider.

They even use the GPS tracker to draw the baffling patterns of movements of school children on their way home from school. This reminds me of my good old lucky school days without a single hour being wasted on meandering and loitering in the dull city streets.

The United Kingdom is a really old country in geological terms. Mother Nature has shaped the islands by flattening the mountains during the course of hundreds of millions of years. Though the Scottish Highlands were once colossal mountains of a Himalayan scale, by the time the human species emerged, the highest ones had already been reduced to an elevation of a little more than a thousand metres.

This island kingdom is also a very old country in terms of civilization. According to archeological findings, the oldest permanent human inhabitation appeared on the islands some 12 thousand years ago. From then on civilization has been shaping the landscape fundamentally and irreversibly, by eliminating most of its pristine flora and fauna, replacing them with many man-made structures, vast patchwork quilt farmlands, and also countless alien species of plants and animals.

These include a group of deer from the Far East, once introduced into the Kingdom as a cuddly pet, now roaming wild in a closed area of the Ministry of Defense. When the military helicopter with the BBC presenter on board flies over the land, the deer take shelter in the narrow tree belt. Through a heat sensitive video camera dangling from the helicopter, the lens captures a deer with her calf hidden under the thick canopy as two bright dots.

England was once heavily forested. Now almost every single square kilometre of it is urbanized, cultivated, or otherwise converted, leaving only small patches and strips of woodland in existence.

This kind of secondary woodland, together with most of the open uncultivated country greens, included in the common lands across England and Wales, is mostly privately owned, if not by the National Trust. Thus setting foot on it could be a trespass. Until the 'Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000' comes into force in a future time no one knows when, finding oneself in this type of land in England and Wales remains a civil wrong against the owners, and is subject to a lawful response, say, being asked politely to move on.

Due to the fact that every single acre of land has its owner, most people living in England and Wales, the landowners themselves included, do not have much freedom to wander about. Living on a vast flat land not being able to roam beyond roads and trails could be rather boring. I guess that is why some rich people erected structures without any useful function. They just wanted to decorate their land, which is so lack of features. People call this sort of structure folly.

A tower 32 metres high, as shown in the BBC programme, with only the top bit of which in Gothic design, surrounded by a small cluster of big trees, is one of these silly structures. This is the Faringdon Folly. Standing on its roof-top one can certainly look farther than through the window of a farmhouse. On a flat land without a thing like a hill, one cannot enjoy an open and far view unless he builds himself a folly like this. And I think this could imply some fengshui meanings just like digging a hollow under a modern high-rise in Hong Kong does.

Be it 'good fengshui' or bad, I cannot imagine living in such an over-cultivated vast flat land with very little topographical features. I would surely be bored to insanity climbing up a folly all the time, just to look 360 degrees around the same featureless farmland stretching all the way to the horizon! England doesn't have high and sharp peaks even in the Peak District.

Now I could imagine why the Englishmen would need to come all the way across the oceans to acquire some hilly bits of land like Hong Kong.

Thanks to history, the British rule, the rather young geology, and also the small size, in this extremely populous city of Hong Kong, though less than 1% of the area of England, I am able to enjoy venturing out for a brief wild camping during any weekend, if forecasted not to be disturbed by the elements, like those come with a typhoon, of course. I may set out by noon on a Saturday and, before sunset, pitch my tent on a remote scenic hillside after 3 hours' transport plus 3 hours' trek. There I will be seeing no man-made structure like a folly or a power pole sticking up from the greenery. With an additional day I may roam freely about the nearby hills or rocky shores making a loop trip, leaving at dawn and coming back in camp in the dusk.

In England, many scenic places on uncultivated land are privately owned. People are not able to enjoy the 'freedom to roam' on such land yet, if it has not been acquired by the National Trust.

England does have many beautiful places one would love to, and could roam about. For example, there are country parks, and there is the Broads of Norfolk and Suffolk. But these large protected land and wetland are anything but natural. The Broads consists of man-made inland waterways and lakes on an expanse of the flattest lowlands. The Broads is a by-product of peat diggings for fuel during the medieval time. Now there are tourist accommodations everywhere on the Broadland, and pleasure boats all over the tranquil water.

How about wild camping? Yes, and no. Yes, because one can enjoying camping there, if successful in booking for a pitch at the cost of some pounds sterling in a well managed tourist park with all kinds of home-like facilities including hot shower and clean toilet bowl. And no, because there is no wilderness left in the Broads, not in Norfolk and Suffolk, not in the whole East Anglia.

I prefer the Scottish Highlands. Thanks to the 'Statutory Access Rights' everybody enjoys under the 'Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003', it is now lawful to camp almost anywhere in the Scottish wilderness and uncultivated private land. But it is too treacherous for just hiking about in the Highlands, not to mention sleeping in a tent on the vastness next to the hostile North Sea. In one moment it may be perfectly fine with white clouds floating across the blue sky, but in another it could be replaced by thick dark clouds and rainstorms with destructive roaring gales.

Now I think I know how Sir Murray MacLehose, the late and previous Governor of Hong Kong, loved the then colony he governed on behalf of the Queen. He was a Scottish Highlander who liked hiking. Bearing in his mind must be the negative part of the English experience in ruining and then re-creating nature. So he came up with the idea of conservation of the Hong Kong countryside and wilderness, and he established the first country park for us, some 30 years after England had its first one.

For me, it is hard to imagine living in an English city, where no wilderness can be found nearby. If I were born in one, with the freedom to loiter about only the urban jungle, say, along the streets, to the playgrounds, football pitches, shopping malls, chateaus with a garden, parks with a lake, etc., during my school days, I would never have learnt to enjoy the beauty of the wilderness. I could be very much content with roaming even just about the terrain of the Internet during an extended holiday, confined to less than a couple of square metres for the computer and myself.

I am glad I live in Hong Kong.