According to Wikipedia, Hong Kong is the 4th most densely-populated territory or country on the planet. Incidentally, I've been to Macau (number 1) a few times, Monaco (2nd) on a family holiday many years ago, Singapore (3rd) airport a couple of times, and I've got a weekend away booked there next month, Gibraltar (5th) quite a few times and, well, I've been near to Gaza (6th), but I have no desire to enter the Strip. Within the top 10, Hong Kong is the largest in terms of area, by a significant margin, and it's not until Bangladesh at number 12 that there is an entry in the list which isn't a micro-, city- or island state/territory.
On the other hand, only 30% to 40% of Hong Kong is developed. There are various reasons for this - some political, some economic, some purely geographic, but it's a fact that huge tracts of land are green, even on Hong Kong Island, the Manhattan of Hong Kong. A significant amount of the undeveloped land is like that because it's 'mountainous' - vertical enough that it would take a significant effort to develop it, effort which is certainly not beyond the resources or ambition of Hong Kong property developers, but they tend to create new land horizontally rather than vertically.
The upshot of this is that where Hong Kong is developed, it's very developed, but where it's undeveloped, it tends to be green and pleasant. There are areas in the New Territories which are low-rise, but even here in Tsuen Wan, the 10 storey existing buildings are starting to give way to 60-storey monsters. Another factor, however, and one I will discuss more at another time, is that Hong Kong is, in general, a small town. In particular, in this context, it means that (with the possible exception of somewhere deep in urban Kowloon) you're never really far from somewhere green - or blue-ish, if you come to water before hillside. Again, here in Tsuen Wan, sitting in an office on the 10th floor of a building in an industrial area, I can see a clean green hillside on the other side of town from the window. I can see less of it now that I could when I started here a year ago, and it's partially obscured by cloud at the moment, but it's less than 30 minutes walk away. I haven't checked, but I would estimate that in less than 30 minutes in a couple of other directions, I would be at a waterfront of some type - maybe not a nice promenade, but a break from big buildings.
This green land is not parkland, in the UK style - it's not green space carved out from within the urban area. It's undeveloped land, has never been developed, and is not surrounded by developed land - the boundary is the boundary between the city and the 'country'. There are lots of walks, and areas like beaches and abandoned villages in the undeveloped regions, and they're easy to get to, by bus or ferry, depending on where they are.
So, people have an image of Hong Kong as an overdeveloped, densely-populated urban wasteland. It's true, and it's not true. Where it's urban, it's overdeveloped and densely-populated - but most of Hong Kong is simply not like that, and a few minutes walking (or a lot less minutes on public transport) will take to you open green land from almost anywhere in Hong Kong. Plus, we've got one of the best harbours in the world - not quite Sydney, but close - again, overdeveloped where it's developed, but 30 minutes on a ferry will take you to somewhere where you will only see green hills, brown rocks and yellow beaches coming out of the water. Oh, and the Lamma power station, but there's not much you can do about that...
This post was meant to follow a nice weekend, spending Saturday on an almost-empty beach, and Sunday up on the Peak getting lost. That was a couple of weeks ago and I'm a slow writer - so sue me.
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