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Vivian Au

Retired fish farmer Lai Koon-shing has spent most of his life in a quiet corner of Hong Kong, a rural area set against a backdrop of mountains in the New Territories.
Yau Tam Mei Tsuen in Yuen Long has long been home to a farming community that produced rice, vegetables, poultry, pigs and fish.
Lai, 76, and his wife raised their four children there. Their extended family of 19 individuals from three generations occupy two village houses built on 8,000 square metres (86,111 sq ft) leased from the government.
When it is mealtime, everyone comes together. “This is one of the happiest moments for me,” Lai said.
He still has his fish pond, and some of his neighbours continue keeping chickens, but the close-knit community of about 1,300 knows their days there are numbered.
Yau Tam Mei Tsuen lies within a 63,790 square metre site for the new development of Ngau Tam Mei, a key centre in the proposed Northern Metropolis megaproject near the border with mainland China.
Preliminary plans for the new town include a public hospital with 3,000 beds – making it the largest in Hong Kong – a medical school and new homes.
The government’s Northern Metropolis blueprint aims to transform 30,000 hectares (74,130 acres) in the New Territories into an economic powerhouse and housing hub.
Although Yau Tam Mei Tsuen has existed for more than a century, authorities do not consider it an indigenous village and most residents are tenants on government land.
Those who are affected by the development plans and qualify for compensation will receive an ex gratia payment or be assigned public rental housing.
“We hope to stay if we have a choice,” Lai said, as he recounted how the village residents shared bonds that ran deep.

“We used to send our children to the village school,” he said.
His daughter Jenna, a clerk in her 50s, was born in the village and continued living at the family home after she married and had two children.
She said the villagers cared for one another, and she herself sometimes looked after her neighbours’ children while their parents were out shopping for groceries.
“We enjoy the living environment and the neighbourhood relationships here,” she said.
Her father said the villagers were not consulted before the land resumption plan was released in November, and the ex gratia compensation offered to their whole family, estimated at about HK$1.2 million (US$154,300), was insufficient.
“Even if we qualify for public housing, we will have to pay rent in the future,” he said.
He hoped that if the development plan remained unchanged, the villagers would be able to live in public housing in Ngau Tam Mei or Yuen Long, allowing them to maintain their bonds.
Another resident, who asked to be referred to only as Wong, said his family was better off as they owned their farming plot of about 30,000 sq ft.
“My mother built our house here in the 1970s,” said the 42-year-old, one of seven siblings who grew up there.
His parents were farmers before raising chickens until the 1980s.
Unlike those who would receive an ex gratia payment, he estimated that his family could get about HK$35 million in compensation.
Despite that relatively large sum, he said that if he had a choice, he would not leave the place he had called home all these decades.
He said daily life in a tsuen – Cantonese for “village” – saw adults gathering at the village office daily to chat during their leisure time.
As Wong was speaking to the Post near the village office, he waved to almost everyone who passed by.
Then he spotted an elderly man who had dropped his key into a drain about 34cm (13.4 inches) deep and was struggling to retrieve it.
Without hesitating, Wong paused the interview and went to help the man, reaching into the dry drain to get the key.
Afterwards, he brushed aside his kind deed, indicating it was just what anyone would do for a neighbour.
He said he knew the development plans were for the improvement of society and supported the project, but hoped the government would consider resettling the affected villagers together.
He was aware that there was “nearly zero hope” of keeping the village, as a lawmaker had told him he could help with compensation matters but not if the villagers resisted moving out.
“We will be very disappointed if we cannot be resettled within the same area,” Wong said.


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Yau Tam Mei Tsuen in Yuen Long. Photo: May Tse

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Society

With development of Northern Metropolis, residents of Yau Tam Mei Tsuen face new way of life in near future but hope to retain long-standing ties


With development of Northern Metropolis, residents of Yau Tam Mei Tsuen face new way of life in near future but hope to retain long-standing ties.


Hong Kong culture

Northern Metropolis