Found: one left-foot flip-flop (prestigious Chynel brand)

A typhoon passed through Hong Kong recently. Afterwards, at low-tide time, I donned a pair of low-rise duck boots and headed down to the small beach nearby to see whether any interesting sea life had been washed closer to shore or, less-fortunately for the creatures concerned, ashore. I did see some interesting living and once-living things but mostly I saw trash and groups of people blithely digging for clams amidst the trash.

Any interesting living things would be out on the tidal flat, in the few-mm-deep layer of water remaining at low tide, so that was where I spent much of my short walk. Above is a snapshot taken facing back towards shore, with a zoomed-in view of part of the long trash deposit at the bottom of the beach.

The trash was thickest at the high-tide line (a bit like a glacial moraine of garbage), but no part of the beach or the flat was clean. Every bit of seaborne rubbish was less than an arm’s reach from another bit and it was much more densely packed in many areas and more was visible floating in or on the water itself. Nevertheless, the guy above shucked his sneakers and seemed to be enjoying standing ankle-deep in trash tea.

At every low tide, groups of people descend on the flat to dig for clams. Professional diggers wear umbrella hats to keep the sun out of their eyes and their harvests go into large buckets, which they later heft onto two-wheeled carts stationed on the nearest bits of beach. Those clams likely find their way onto local “fresh seafood” restaurant tables. On this day, the pros either stayed home due to the sporadic heavy showers from the trailing edge of the departing typhoon or were working elsewhere, but normal folks came out to dig, with children in tow. Presumably, they ate all or most of their hauls themselves.

Incidentally, that reddish-orange thing in the foreground, a bit to the right of the center of the image, is a rusted-out propane tank.