The old fishing village of Tai O on Lantau could not have seemed further from Hong Kong if it had been halfway across the world. As we walked down the streets, listening to the clack of mah jong pieces as women played in houses with open doorways, garnering curious [maybe friendly, maybe not...impossible to tell] stares from the locals, watching stray dogs wander lazily about in the oppressive heat, smelled the odor of the sea which permeated everything, it was difficult to believe in the existence of the whirling, gleaming city only a brief ride away by train and bus.

We had been invited to come by Ting's boss, the head of the HK Art Centre, to view a newly-opened exhibit of local art at the Catholic elementary school. There we met one of the artists, a painter who had taken up residence among the fishing people of the island, who lived directly over the water in a seemingly impenetrable maze of shacks on stilts, with small boats moored along the canals between them. He had his studio in one of those very shacks, knew his neighbors, and met them all with smiles. When he led us through the maze, we did our best to smile, too, although the entire time I squirmed at the thought that I was a foreign intruder, clumsy and ignorant and undoubtedly unwanted.

Sometimes the route our guide took led us directly through people's homes, where we'd see laundry hanging next to drying whole fish and live chickens peering out at us from tiny cages. Women paused in the midst of cooking to look at us; an old fisherman continued mending his nets as if we presented no real disturbance. Although I could not preceive any overt hostility from the people, I felt horribly out of place, an aberration. The way they went about their lives seemed to assert quietly, "We know what we are doing here. We belong. Do you?" I was not sure I did.