It's dusk on a muggy Friday evening deep in Sai Kung Country Park and the air is heavy with a coming storm. A rumbling of distant thunder reverberates across a huddle of old village houses isolated in a valley and surrounded on three sides by heavily wooded hills.
A cacophony of chirping crickets and clattering cicadas and the regular deep, loud and hollow moo of the bullfrogs provide the springtime soundtrack for what, from a distance, looks like just another deserted New Territories village.
As the sun sinks lower behind the hills, however, the wilderness sounds are broken by a trundle of wheels and rattling of metal. A teenage boy approaches on the narrow path leading into the village, pushing a trolley loaded with supplies for the weekend.
A few steps behind him follow a man and a woman dressed for the city. They chat as they walk, swinging bags of provisions, and seem oblivious to the incongruity of their appearance in this setting.
Over the next hour, more people arrive: another boy, this one in a school uniform and carrying a laptop, then a mother with a young daughter; and finally, when the last light has disappeared from the sky, a smartly dressed man emerges from the gloaming, carrying a torch.
As darkness envelops the village, it is possible to make out other sounds above those of the wildlife: children playing, voices and music. One by one, lights come on and the village is illuminated like a picture postcard.
The village of Pak Sha O could have died years ago, when the last of its indigenous residents moved out. A 10-minute walk from the nearest road, it is accessible only by a footpath that winds through woodland and abandoned paddy fields.
