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Tai
O,
Lantau Island, Hong Kong
"Tai O, a fishing village on Lantau Island"
©2001 photo Elroy Christenson
Tai O is one of the last remaining fishing villages on
Lantau Island.
The island was mostly noted for the Buddhist monastery which
occupies
nearly half of the island and contains the largest seated
bronze Buddha
in the world. The island was long isolated and only
accessible by
ferry. Tai O village fishermen still sun dry fish using very
old
traditional techniques but the old ways are quickly
changing. Fishing
has long been a dying craft here replaced by smuggling
goods, including
refrigerators and VCR's, up river to mainland China. In the
1990's the
Hong Kong government decided to build a new airport and
picked this
area for development. Here it leveled an ajoining island,
built a
beautiful bridge with highway and rail connections and
created one of
the world's largest airports. The next change will come with
Hong Kong
Disneyland to be constructed at the opposite end of the
island.
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