Dragon Garden recce

Despite the best (or worst) intentions of developers, Hong Kong still manages to surprise me by revealing fabulous heritage and historical locations for filming.

One such place is Dragon Garden, which is a stunning 1940s era summer holiday home made famous internationally in the James Bond film, Man With The Golden Gun.

Dragon Garden is an 8-hectare private heritage garden located in the backdrop of Sham Tseng in the east of Tuen Mun district in the New Territories. It has survived the brutal forces of development and was at one stage offered to the HK government for the pleasure of the public, but the Government turned it down because it didn't want to foot the bill for maintenance. This astounds me in a city that almost by day is having its cultural heritage dismantled in the name of development profit.

Dragon Garden was created by Dr Lee Lu Cheung and features amazing architecture and design from the Song, Ming and Ching dynasties.

It was featured in the Bond movie in 1974. You can see about 20 minutes of Dragon Garden in the various scenes shot at Wing Fat’s mansion, where James Bond pretends to be Scalamanga (the bad guy) and is ready to take a plunge in the huge swimming pool with the naked maiden (a very risque scene for this era). You can even get a glimpse of the quiet environment of the Castle Peak Road back in the 70’s, unlike the widened highway it now is. http://dragongarden.hk/blog/?page_id=18 ( movie clip).

The garden has been the scene of a modern day David v Goliath battle between the grand daughter of Dr Lee Lu Cheung and developers who have tried every trick in the book to acquire the land, knock it down and replace it with tiles and concrete.

We were given a private tour of the gardens recently and every aspect of it that is visible in the Bond film, including the fabulous pool, is still there today. The house itself is like walking into a time machine. A fantastic old LP record player remains in the living room with a Bing Crosby album still on the turn table. Old 60s couches, lamp shades and tattered rugs give evidence of a fabulous by-gone era.

We were treated to a fabulous turkey lunch by Taryn, who brought the food from a film shoot she had finished for her company, Relish Kitchens, earlier in the day.

The gardens feature very rare and very valuable Buddha trees. These trees are so valuable and so rare that each is individually numbered and protected by law.

The architecture of the Dragon Garden symbolizes the unity of man and nature. Following Chinese feng shui tradition, the order of nature is maintained in the garden so that it does not look wild or chaotic. The landscape is a miniature of the natural landscape with hills and valleys, bridges and rivers, winding paths, rock gardens and plants. The roofs of the ancestral hall and the pavilion are curved with the four corners pointing upward, which imitates the contour of nature. The wide and flat architectural design contrasts with the tall and slender buildings of the West.

In July 2006, Dr. Lee Iu Cheung's granddaughter, Cynthia Lee Hong Yee founded the Dragon Garden Charitable Trust after the garden was saved from being bought over by developers. Instigated by the preservation of the garden, the Trust aims to "preserve cultural and heritage property in Hong Kong, for public benefit."

Cynthia is now in the process of commissioning a documentary on the Garden and its restoration to its former glory. It is my new favourite place in Hong Kong and it deserves as much support as everyone can muster to preserve it. The government here needs to be told in no uncertain terms that these sorts of projects must be placed on high priority. We can do without another pink tiled residential complex, but once places like Dragon Garden are bulldozed, they are gone forever.

You can find out more information at http://dragongarden.hk/

xx