Tai Mo Shan being the highest peak in Hong Kong, its undulating ranges are often partly hidden from sight because of the mists. A climb up the peak is rewarded with sweeping views of lesser peaks like Tai To Yan, Kai Kung Leng, Needle Hill and Grassy Hill as well as the plains of Pat Heung. In Huang Bore’s Tai Mo Shan, the loftiness of the peak is stressed by the vertical composition with mist-shrouded peaks stacked one on top of the other to conjure up the illusion of a never-ending string of hills. The tiny hikers on the steep slopes serve the dual purpose of accentuating the monumentality of the landscape and of documenting the enjoyable excursion with hiking friends.

Deep in the Tai Mo Shan are the Ng Tung Chai Waterfalls, the main waterfall of which can be reached by climbing up from the Well Fall through the Middle Fall behind a dense wood. The drop of the fall from the reddish cliff is so great that it seems to be plunging down from heaven into the shallow pond below where visitors can sit out on the gravels skirting it. In Huang Bore’s Yung Sheh Hikers Viewing Waterfall (Ng Tung Chai), the massive waterfall in the centre is sandwiched between wall-like cliffs, dwarfing the onlookers standing by the shallow stretch of water in the foreground. The Bride’s Pool is another of Huang Bore’s favourites. Among his many paintings of the place, the most unusual is the one with bathers.

Huang Bore’s painting compositions come in a surprisingly wide variety. Pat Sin Leng, for instance, appears in three versions. In the first, the ranges sprawl horizontally and tower over the Tolo Harbour, Ting Kok and Tai Mei Tuk seen from below as one would have captured by sketching from life. In the second, in a vertical format, the peaks rise towards the sky with their feet shrouded in mists, as if seen by a hiker heading for the highest point. The third is the artist’s conceptualization, or a bird’s eye view of the ranges, which extend diagonally from the bottom to top left traversing the villages in Ting Kok and Tai Mei Tuk dotted with fishing boats. Of the three, the last resembles closest the composition of a traditional landscape.