Tai Wai: Alarm bells ring in bicycle town
Tai Wai's residents are struggling to preserve the district's simple pace of life and its beloved cycling businesses against all-too-rapid urbanisation
To many, Tai Wai is the starting point of a 20-kilometre paved cycle track that extends all the way to Tai Po. For years, its views of Tolo Harbour, fresh air and the temples along the way have provided the ideal setting for a leisurely afternoon spin.
Tai Wai, surrounded by mountains and country parks, is southwest of Sha Tin and is within a 30-minute train ride of Shenzhen and the city centre in Kowloon.
Jeff Lo, owner of New Wah Nam Cycle, a bicycle shop started by his father in the early 1980s, says he likes the fact Tai Wai is a middle ground between the countryside and the city.
"The pace of living here is not too fast and yet not too slow. And the people are simple and pure," the 41-year-old says.
But this idyll is now overshadowed by plans for another series of walled buildings, or high-density residential towers, which will soar up from Tai Wai MTR station by 2018.
A dozen 50-storey residential towers, under the first three phases of Festival City, have sprung up to the southwest of the station, forming a colossal wall more than one kilometre long that cuts a line through Tai Wai. Phase three was finished earlier this year.
