The last of Hong Kong’s original wooden junk boats is still afloat

(CNN) — You might not know what a junk boat is, however odds are excessive that you’ve got seen one.

These vessels are generally depicted on postcards, retro journey posters, keychains, T-shirts, ceramics and even the brand of the town’s tourism board. But relating to discovering a junk in present-day Hong Kong, you will must look so much more durable.

Dukling is the last remaining Hong Kong junk boat out there for public use. In her first life, Dukling was inbuilt 1955 and was house for a seafaring native household.

She is 18 meters lengthy and weighs 50 tons, providing locals and guests alike an opportunity to expertise Hong Kong’s man-made and pure magnificence from the water.

It might be straightforward to neglect that Hong Kong is not a single island — it is an archipelago. While getting out on the water is a good way to really feel the wind in your face on a sizzling day, it is also a option to perceive the form and scope of this wildly diversified metropolis.

Like so many vacationer sights world wide, Dukling is in danger of closure as a consequence of low customer numbers amid the pandemic. Currently, she is solely out there for personal charters as a consequence of Hong Kong’s virus restrictions.

Before coronavirus, there have been three sailings a day on weekends with a most of 40 passengers every. The Saturday itinerary made a number of stops in Kowloon together with Tim Sha Tsui, whereas Sunday’s went from Central to North Point. The night crusing was timed for watching the Symphony of Lights, a nightly present the place skyscrapers alongside the harbor gentle up their home windows in enjoyable designs and colours simply after nightfall.

When the harbor was full of purple sails

As not too long ago because the Nineteen Seventies, many Hong Kongers lived, labored, ate and slept on board these wooden boats, periodically pulling into hurricane shelters or docks alongside the town shoreline to promote their wares and replenish on provides. Beginning within the Nineteen Seventies, many locals traded of their boat properties for residences in Hong Kong’s now-famous tall housing property blocks, giving up their lives at sea for extra reliably paid work in factories or workplaces.

But how did junks develop into synonymous with Hong Kong?

Chan says it began when Westerners first got here to the Pearl River Delta — invariably, they arrived by sea.

“The first group of people who met traders were boat people. You can see lots of depictions of boat people in a very beautiful way by Western artists. Starting from that day, the junk became the logo of Hong Kong.”

Even the identify “Dukling” is a combination of trendy and traditional Hong Kong. Her Chinese identify is Ap ling ho: Ap means duck, ling means soul or spirit, and ho is a approach of indicating a “the” in entrance of a reputation. So a tough English translation might be “the holy duck.” Her original proprietor thought the entrance of the boat appeared like a duck’s head.

However, If you google “junk boat,” you get pages upon pages of footage of vessels coated in trash. Search “duckling” and you will get cute pics of downy child geese. “Duck boat” conjures up these hybrid water-land crafts that vacationers take by means of San Francisco and Seattle.

So the current proprietor, native businessman Hazen Tang, opted to deliberately misspell the identify Dukling as a way to higher sport the search engine machine.

Restoring a historic vessel

Dukling’s historical past parallels that of Hong Kong’s.

The boat’s original house owners, native shrimpers, bought her to a Frenchman who used the boat for recreation, not full-time dwelling. Next, the Frenchman bought Dukling to a British expat who ended up transferring again to his homeland and abandoning the boat, the place she sank throughout a hurricane in 2014.

Rescuing Dukling from the South China Sea was an advanced, multi-year ordeal. First, the town needed to observe down the erstwhile proprietor within the UK and get permission to convey her up. Then she was repaired in Zhuhai, which required extra permits as the town is half of mainland China. The subsequent step was discovering carpenters and repairmen who still know how you can take care of wooden boats.

Current proprietor Tang is a Hong Konger who was eager to get her again into native fingers — and into Victoria Harbor. His enterprise, HS Travel International Company Limited, is a tourism firm based mostly in Hong Kong however with workplaces all through Asia.

The completed product is an exquisite, dwelling piece of historical past that started plying the waters for vacationers in 2015. Charlotte Li, director of enterprise growth for Dukling’s mother or father firm, says that 80% of the boat is original.

The original wooden wheel is still used to steer the boat, but it surely’s so heavy that crew members can solely function it for 2 hours at a time earlier than getting drained.

Dukling’s makeover did not solely lengthen to infrastructure. It seems that the well-known purple sails aren’t so purple — they’re truly an orangey-brown coloration that appears extra purple within the vibrant Hong Kong daylight.

There is still a small shrine to the ocean goddess Matsu close to the entrance of the boat that crew members bow to and put incense in entrance of as a way to want for a fortunate voyage, however on this period ladies are allowed to enter this entrance part of the vessel, whereas in fishing occasions it was strictly forbidden.

Besides Dukling, guests to Hong Kong might spy two comparable boats in Victoria Harbour.

Aqualuna is an area tourism firm that constructed two reproduction junks, each of which can ferry guests up and down the harbor a number of occasions per day, most notably at sundown when skyscrapers alongside the waterfront gentle up their exteriors for a present.

Though the 2 firms may see one another as competitors, Li insists that there is no rivalry because the house owners of Dukling and Aqualuna need the identical factor — to protect the town’s maritime heritage.

“They have the heart and they want to keep junk boats in Victoria Harbour,” she says. “There is no ‘real’ or ‘unreal’.” Li notes that Dukling is solely succesful of carrying 40 passengers at a time, whereas each Aqualuna boats can every match as much as 90.

Where to seek out boat tradition at this time

But whereas many Tanka individuals moved onto land, there are still traces of their approach of life all through the town that complement a journey on Dukling.

Hong Kong’s identify means aromatic harbor, which was impressed by the purple incense burned in temples devoted to Tin Hau, the goddess of the ocean. (She and Matsu are interchangeable — Matsu means “mother of the sea.”) To today, dozens of Tin Hau temples dot the islands of the Hong Kong archipelago.

In some neighborhoods the place Tanka individuals resettled — like Tai Po within the New Territories — it is still doable to see bits of the “old way” of life at main occasions like weddings and funerals. Many boat individuals communicated by means of conventional songs, recognized in English as saltwater songs.

“The dialect of the boat people is different from Cantonese, but they have some overlaps. It’s a very old dialect. It’s a very complex sound and it’s easy to sing,” says Chan.

Some songs had been about navigation — finest routes to take to keep away from storms, for instance — whereas others had been about courtship or household. “It’s part of our intangible heritage,” Chan provides.

The Maritime Museum has been in a position to movie some aged individuals singing these songs and speaking of their dialect as a way to guarantee this “intangible heritage” is not misplaced ceaselessly. It’s half of the everlasting assortment of the museum, which is situated — appropriately — at Central Piers on Hong Kong Island, the identical place the place you may board ferries to Lamma Island and Cheung Chau.

Despite all of the adjustments which have taken place in and round Victoria Harbour, the waterway still has room for conventional junk boats — so long as there’s water to sail on, Dukling plans to sail on it.