In 1953, an imam named Ai Pok-tak returned to Hong Kong from a pilgrimage to Mecca carrying eight date-palm saplings, hoping to grow a piece of his faith in a city where the tree was rarely seen. Only one survived. Planted outside the family's home near Hong Kong's border with mainland China, it eventually grew to more than twice the height of the family's two-storey house. Ai and his wife, Ma Yuk-lan, had moved to Hong Kong from Gansu province in 1949, and the palm's survival became deeply intertwined with their family's faith and history. Decades later, the same tree became the centre of a long-running dispute over road construction. What began as an effort to save the palm from demolition under British colonial rule continued after Hong Kong's return to Chinese sovereignty in 1997, with Ma repeatedly asking authorities to find a way to preserve it.
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