The King Camphor of Sha Lo Wan

Japanese soldiers cut down most of Lantau Island's large trees for fuel during the wartime occupation, and by local account, they stopped short of this one because they believed a guardian spirit haunted it and would frighten off anyone who tried. Whether the spirit or something more practical spared it, the camphor beside Sha Lo Wan's old village school survived a period when little large timber on the island did, and villagers still call it Sha Lo Wan's King Camphor. Hong Kong's own tourism authority repeats the village's claim that it is over a thousand years old, a figure with no scientific dating behind it and best treated as local tradition rather than a measured fact, though camphors are long-lived enough that a large old specimen reaching many centuries is far from implausible. What is certain is its role: Sha Lo Wan, a fishing village on Lantau's quiet north-west coast reachable by a coastal footpath or a rural kaido ferry from Tung Chung, has treated this tree as a feng shui guardian for generations, the kind of tree a village builds its sense of protection around rather than fells for a hard winter. It still stands on the government-registered slope beside the school, watched over rather than the other way around now.