The Camphor of She Shan Tsuen

Ten adults linking arms cannot fully encircle this camphor's trunk, and the tree they would be hugging predates every building in the village it half-hides. She Shan Tsuen's feng shui woodland, 5.7 hectares the government protected as a Site of Special Scientific Interest in 1975, exists because villages across Hong Kong's New Territories deliberately left a strip of hillside forest standing behind their houses, believing an intact wood at a settlement's back shielded it from bad fortune and worse weather. Camphor trees anchor most of these feng shui woods, chosen centuries ago for their size and longevity rather than planted at random, and She Shan's has grown into one of the largest examples in the New Territories: a 32 metre crown, seven storeys of glossy waxy leaves, and an age historical references put between three and five centuries, most often cited at around four hundred years. Government inspectors have logged a severe cavity and dead branches in recent surveys, the ordinary wear of a tree old enough that nobody alive remembers it being young, and it remains under continuous monitoring and pruning rather than removal. It stands on the wooded slope directly behind the village, a short walk off Lam Kam Road, still doing the job it was left standing there to do.