Hikers scaling Cloudy Hill along the Wilson Trail are greeted by an incongruous sight: nestled among the mountains is a suburban outpost of Spanish-style villas with terracotta roof tiles.
Hong Lok Yuen (which translates as 'happy healthy garden' or 'leisure garden') is a large-scale development of standalone homes built on land once owned by Li Fook-lam, a Guangdong military general after whom a Tai Po sports centre is named. The mountains behind Hong Lok Yuen apparently give it some of the best fung shui found in the New Territories and are particularly auspicious for generating money and power.
It seems to be working. The development is home to many doctors, dentists and other professionals. But the prevalence of cross-border licence plates indicates many of the biggest homes - up to 3,500 square feet, some with sizeable gardens - are owned by factory owners whose plants are just a short hop across the border.
The estate, just north of Tai Po, was developed in the 1980s by Clifford Wong Chun-fai and Canadian Overseas Development, the company behind the earlier Fairview Park, near Yuen Long. Hong Lok Yuen has 1,150 houses built on roads that demonstrate a distinct lack of imagination: they are numbered 1st Street through to 28th Street.
The village is known both for its 'unauthorised building works' - lavish entrance gates and Greek columns - and its many resident stars, such as actress Cecilia Cheung Pak-chi, who no doubt appreciates the privacy given the rumours of her impending divorce from Nicholas Tse Ting-fung.
Wong died in 1987, soon after the first phase was completed. In 1991, Sun Hung Kai Properties took over management of the complex and its public areas. Pick the right Sunday and you'll be greeted by German shepherds and jackbooted security guards securing a perimeter for one of the Kwok brothers as he enjoys dim sum at the Hong Lok Yuen Country Club.
