Tai Po Sights - Tai Ming Lane Square.
Consisting of the lane of Light (Tai Kwong), Bright (Tai Ming), Flourish (Tai Wing) and Blessing (Kwong Fuk), Four Lane has witnessed many changes in the community of Tai Po. the Tolo Harbour seashore, Four Lane's current location, was a meeting place for farmers and fishermen.
In the early 1890s, the Alliance of Seven (Tsai Cheuk) established a Man Mo Temple, dedicated to the deities of literature and of war, and the Market of Peace (Tai Wo), which supplemented the old Tai Po Market (see also GC2T0A1). The site of Four Lane became a port for fishing boats and a bazaar for farmers and traders and the Yuen Chau Tsai pier welcomed the vessels from eastern Guangdong. The railroad linked Tai Po to Kowloon and to Canton (Guangzhou), while the road networks put Tai Po at the centre of the New Territories.
Four Lane was built on the Tolo Beach during the 1960s, when the area was used as watercress fields. An open space surrounded by concentrically laid buildings and lanes, it was designed to integrate business and leisure activities. In the 1980s, the Hong Kong Government began to build the Tai Po New Town on land reclaimed from the harbour. New businesses, consumers and tourists were attracted to the sea, as existing traditional markets and modern shopping malls complemented each other. Within these forty years, Four Lane has become a central feature of Tai Po.
The four lanes are nowadays arranged as a square with a garden inside. The square they form together is known as Tai Ming Lane Square, and it is meant to look like the Chinese character 回 (wui - to return), thinking it is a central place where people would like to come back to.
The Hong Kong Housing Society carried out an $8 million revitalization project at the Four Lanes in 2008. Chinese-style ornamental columns and screen walls were erected, while red bricks were laid along the four lanes to give a facelift to the area.
Now this nice square is a popular meeting and sitting out area in the heart of Tai Po Market. The streets surrounding this square teem with all kinds of shops and restaurants, and a short walk away is the new Tai Po Hui Market, a two-story wet market, above which you can find a food court, the library and a sports centre.
Getting there.
Tai Ming Lane Square is a 5-minute walk from Tai Po Market MTR station. Numerous buses and minibuses also stop in its vicinity, Kwong Fuk Road is a nearby stop for the buses to and from Kowloon and Hong Kong.
About the cache.
This square is always busy, even more so when the weather is good and on Sundays when the maids are out in force. An apt alias would be 'muggle central', and there is even a cache hiding out. Please, please be really really stealthy when retrieving and replacing it. My sincere hope is for this cache to last for a while. Even though it has ample space, I do not recommend leaving trackables here as there is a high risk of it becoming muggled sooner or later.
The high muggle factor is reflected in the difficulty rating. GPS signal may also be unreliable due to the buildings around GZ, you may want to use Google Maps or OSM to narrow down your search area. Each of these issues add a star to the rating, making it a 3-star difficulty. Recommended at night for the lower muggle factor.