Purchase Getting to Lamma
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What Is Lamma?
Lamma is an island cosmically alienated from Shanghai, and even from Hong Kong, the port metropolis that is 50 minutes away by ferry. The ferry runs like a commuter train from nowhere, and Lamma-ites who party late on Hong Kong and miss the midnight ferry back are stranded. To be factual, the ferry now runs at 12:30, and those who it can hire a sampan and float through inky sea under a pitch black sky. But more often it is a ploy, to miss the ferry and wander back into the city lights.
The most famous native son is Chow Yun-Fat, the star of action films including Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
In the main village, Yung Shue Wan, which means Banyan Tree Bay, small-time gangsters sit in the cafes. On Hung Shing Ye beach Canto-pop music blares from boom boxes; in the plantain jungle you hear construction hammers. Early in the morning roosters crow and metal market doors clang open. Farmers plant rice, and lawyers handling joint venture contracts stream to the 7 a.m. ferry, freelance photographers still stagger from the party last night, on their way to catch a plane to Kabul, then return home three months later on the midnight boat if they don’t bump into someone and get stranded while still unwashed.
Lamma is an island for people who have just come back, with footage and notes, from places where tanks surround the palace or elephants trample. Not many get to Lamma and stay there.
But it’s a good place to meditate during that crucial life-phase when you’re hoping to command your own fate. You might sell Indian jewelry on the narrow path through Yung Shue Wan village for a very long time. In that case, the villagers will remember your name and give you all the stray kittens they find – do be aware there are hundreds of stray kittens on Lamma. Or you might get widely published, buy a pastel house on the hillside and sell it for a killing before you find your way back to London or New York or the shark tank that is Hong Kong proper.
What should you take as souvenirs when you leave? If capital gains elude you, try rocks and photographs.
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