Opinion | Preserving Fanling golf club’s natural beauty must be a priority in housing debate
- Too many of Hong Kong’s environmental and cultural assets would be lost if part of the club grounds is given over to flats that would make only a modest contribution to solving our housing problem
All through my almost five decades of working in Hong Kong, one simple rule of thumb has helped guide me a lot: if you don’t know for sure, go and see for yourself. It served me well as a reporter on The Star newspaper in the early 1970s, then as an investigator in the Independent Commission Against Corruption, and in various positions in the government from 1980 onwards.
What’s wrong with the freshwater stream serving Mui Wo? Go and investigate together with an engineer from Discovery Bay development. What’s the problem with the street lighting in a Lamma village? Go and look with some local villagers.
After all, I am not a member of any golf club, and I do not play.
And at first blush, the Fanling club does not seem naturally deserving of sympathy. After all, its image for a long time has been of an old-fashioned sports venue with a whiff of being something of a colonial relic, a game played mostly by wealthy foreigners. And even if more locals are now engaging in golf, it’s still mostly for the rich elderly, right?
