James Bond walked here. Roger Moore, to be precise, in 1974's The Man with the Golden Gun—about twenty minutes of film set against curved pavilion roofs and ancient Buddhist pines. But Dragon Garden had been a private secret long before 007 arrived, and it has outlasted the film's fame by half a century. In the hills above Sham Tseng, hidden from the highway by dense greenery, Dr. Lee Iu Cheung spent two decades turning a barren hillside into something the New Territories had never seen: a classical Chinese garden on an 8-hectare canvas, woven through with the architectural languages of three dynasties and three philosophies—all by a man who had also studied hydraulic engineering at Cornell.
In 1949, Dr. Lee Iu Cheung purchased a bare hill from the Hong Kong Government in the New Territories. He was 53, already decorated with an MBE from King George VI, already a permanent advisor to the Tung Wah Group of Hospitals, already a man of considerable standing. And yet he spent the next twenty years not expanding his public profile but his garden. Planning, designing, landscaping—personally shaping the landscape into something that would outlive him.
Lee had been born in Hong Kong in 1896 to a family from Guangdong Province, educated on a Lugard Scholarship through Cambridge examinations, then trained at the University of Hong Kong's Faculty of Engineering and later at Cornell. When his father died, he returned mid-study to Hong Kong. What he built in the New Territories decades later was, in part, a monument to that dual inheritance: a man shaped equally by Chinese classical tradition and Western technical education.
Dragon Garden draws from Song, Ming, and Qing dynastic architecture, but that description barely captures what you encounter walking through it. The ancestral hall's two stained-glass windows look, at first, like they belong in a Catholic church—until you notice that the patterns on the glass are clouds, birds, and rectangular Chinese motifs. Oil paintings line the walls in the Western manner, but the rooflines curve upward at the four corners in the way that ancient builders mimicked the contour of mountains.
This is, by design, a portrait of a life lived between cultures. The landscape follows feng shui principles: no chaos, no wildness, but a miniature natural world with hills and valleys, bridges and rivers, winding paths and rock gardens. The animals perched on the pavilion's corners are lucky mascots guarding against evil spirits—and also, practically, covers for the nail holes securing the curved tiles. Beauty and function, East and West, all in the same corner ornament.
Over 100 plant species grow here. The garden shelters more than 30 Buddhist pines—Podocarpus macrophyllus—believed to be among the largest specimens in the city.
In July 2006, news broke that Dragon Garden was to be sold. After sixty years of private maintenance, the family was ready to let developers have the hill. Hong Kong's Conservancy Association appealed urgently to the Town Planning Board, arguing that the garden represented irreplaceable cultural heritage and that its mansion should be preserved. The appeals worked. On 25 September 2006, the Hong Kong Antiquities and Monuments Office designated Dragon Garden a Grade II Historic Site.
Dr. Lee had died in 1976, three decades before that moment. His granddaughter, Cynthia Lee Hong Yee, responded to the near-loss by founding the Dragon Garden Charitable Trust, whose mission is to preserve cultural and heritage property in Hong Kong for public benefit. In 2016, Lumina College, a private Christian academy, took over operational management, running guided tours and maintaining the site as a rural campus. The garden that nearly disappeared into a development site now receives visitors, organized by the institution that saved it.
The Dragon Garden Charitable Trust has not been content simply to hold the property. It co-sponsored the Hong Kong and Shenzhen Bi-city Biennale of Urbanism and Architecture in 2009, using the platform to raise public awareness of heritage preservation. In 2010, the Trust organized a fundraising art exhibition at the Cat Street Gallery in Sheung Wan, commissioning artists to interpret Dragon Garden—local singer Kay Tse helped bring publicity to the event.
The Trust also continues pushing Hong Kong to modernize its Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance, which its members regard as inadequate to protect cultural assets like this one. The fixed cost for a full restoration proposal—including new facilities for exhibitions, organic farming, and educational purposes—has been estimated at approximately HK$30 million. Whether that vision is fully realized or not, the garden that Lee Iu Cheung built between 1949 and 1970 still stands above Sham Tseng, its pavilion animals still guarding the eaves, its Buddhist pines still the largest in the city.
Dragon Garden sits along Castle Peak Road at Tsing Lung Tau, in the western part of Tsuen Wan District. No MTR station is nearby—the closest is Tsuen Wan station on the Tsuen Wan Line, accessible from the southern exit. It is not a place you stumble upon; you have to know to look for it. That quality of deliberate discovery feels appropriate for a garden built in private over twenty years, nearly sold, then saved. It does not advertise itself. It waits.
Dragon Garden sits at approximately 22.36°N, 114.05°E in the western New Territories, in the hills above Sham Tseng near Castle Peak Road. From the air, look for the forested hillside east of the inlet at Sham Tseng Bay, southwest of Tsuen Wan's urban grid. The nearest major airport is Hong Kong International Airport (VHHH), about 12 nautical miles to the southwest on Lantau Island. Approach from the east at 1,500–2,500 feet to distinguish the garden's pavilion rooflines from the surrounding secondary forest. The area sits under the southern approach corridor for VHHH; pilots transiting the New Territories should monitor Hong Kong Approach on the appropriate frequency.