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A Neglected Heritage: Towards

a Fuller Appreciation of the
Landscapes and Lifeways of
Hong Kongs Rice Farming Past
Mick Atha
Published online: 02 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Mick Atha (2012) A Neglected Heritage: Towards a Fuller
Appreciation of the Landscapes and Lifeways of Hong Kongs Rice Farming Past, Asian
Anthropology, 11:1, 129-156, DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2012.10600860
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1683478X.2012.10600860

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Published by The Chinese University Press

A Neglected Heritage: Towards a

Fuller Appreciation of the Landscapes
and Lifeways of Hong Kongs Rice
Farming Past
Mick ATHA

Introduction
In Hong Kong as elsewhere in the world, the landscape is a reflection of
past interactions between people and their physical environment, which
cumulatively create highly recognizable and culturally distinctive places.
Such unique and geographically-defined records of particular groups and
their way of life are what UNESCO calls cultural landscapes (Rssler
2006). At first glance, Hong Kongs cultural landscape is almost overpoweringly urban, a demonstration and consequence of the transformative potential of concrete and human agency; a city between the
mountains and the sea, hemmed in by nature and thrust upwards by
human ingenuity.
But beyond the metropolis1 there lies another, increasingly forgotten,
agrarian Hong Kong whose story now resides in the memories of retired
elderly farmers and in the relict landscapes they once worked and inhabited. Throughout the remoter parts of the New Territories there still exist
abandoned terraces and paddy fields, depopulated villages and fung shui
features, which reflect the lives, labor and beliefs of generation upon

Mick Atha teaches in the Department of Anthropology at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. He can be reached at mick.atha@yahoo.com

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generation of rural communities who designed, constructed and sustainably managed traditional rice farming landscapes. These landscapes
represent a unique and valuable local heritage resource which, together
with the memories of their last custodians, opens a rich and fascinating
window on a centuries-long traditional lifeway that at first coexisted with
and eventually was sacrificed to feed the post-war boomtowns demands
for land and workers. Such traditional landscapes and lifeways therefore
also have far wider relevance as powerful reminders of the fragility of
environmental stewardship in the face of larger scale socio-economic and
political forces, such as those presently embodied in the term
globalization.
The Hong Kong government has previously paid little attention to its
historic landscape, and this report is therefore intended to be something
of a wake-up call concerning the past effects and future implications of
the territorys landscape-less approach to its historic environment
both urban and, in particular, rural. The territorys heritage management
policy and practice have been hindered from the outset by a kind of
monument- and site-focused myopia, which has seemingly viewed
historic agrarian landscapes and the lifeway they recall as too ordinary
and peripheral to warrant serious study and protection. This is a situation
clearly at odds with international best practice as exemplified in
UNESCOs approach to the recognition, characterization and valuing of
cultural landscapes as a key concept in the heritage management process.
Moreover, the complete absence of historic landscape research of any
period in Hong Kong, never mind the sort of multi-period, interdisciplinary study commonly conducted in Europe, is clearly a lacuna that
needs addressing. Such studies have demonstrated that more holistic,
comprehensive and nuanced understandings of the human past are
possible when viewed through the lens of a landscape approach (e.g.
Fowler and Blackwell 1998; Wrathmell 2012). In Hong Kong that lens
necessarily embodies a fusion of both Western landscape archaeology
and Chinese understandings of landscape, which combine aspects of
geomancy, animism and ancestral worship.
I argue that at least one representative village landscape should be
fully investigated using integrated archaeological methods in order to
systematically survey and record for posterity the physical remains
reflecting that traditional rice farming economy, to interpret the same in
terms of Hong Kongs unique environmental, socio-historical, political
and spiritual context, and to share such findings with the academic and

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wider community. The report therefore concludes with an outline model

for a re-assessment of the socio-historical significance of Hong Kongs
rice farming past through the multi-disciplinary investigation, analysis,
interpretation and presentation of traditional rice farming landscapes. I
begin by considering landscape.

A Landscape Approach to the Past

The Oxford English Dictionary2 defines landscape as all the visible
features of an area of land, often considered in terms of their aesthetic
appeal. This definition demonstrates the persistence of modern Western
conceptions of landscape as an image and object remotely observed by
human beings (Thomas 2001: 167)culture outside of nature. This
Enlightenment-influenced viewpoint or so-called Western Gaze (Bender
1999: 31; Thomas 2001: 169) became enshrined in international heritage
legislation, which consciously separated heritage into natural and cultural
categories. That polarization harkens back to American geographer Carl
Sauers influential early definition of cultural landscape: The cultural
landscape is fashioned from a natural landscape by a cultural group.
Culture is the agent, the natural area is the medium, the cultural landscape the result (Sauer 1965 [1925]: 343).
Sauers definition challenged the then popular notion that people had
gradually adapted to their environment rather than being active agents in
its transformation (Head 2000: 15). However, by focusing on human
agency, the often significant influence of environmental processes on the
character and trajectory of cultural landscape change was seriously
underemphasised. Worse still, by portraying nature as a passive backdrop
it fundamentally denied the deeply embedded humans in nature
perspectives of many traditional cultures, who would certainly not see
landscape in such terms.
That separation of culture and nature has persisted in the assessment
criteria for World Heritage Sites until as recently as 2005 when they
were finally combined, following the recognition that for some communities natural features could carry intangible cultural meanings (Taylor
2009: 14). Another significant consequence of the culture-nature schism
was an emphasis in 1960s1980s heritage legislation on the more
obvious cultural categories of sites, monuments and buildings rather than
landscape. While this limiting view has been transcended in many places
by later legislation and more holistic, landscape approaches to the past,

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its persistence in Hong Kong remains a major barrier to progress in the

heritage management sector.
In contrast to such top-down modernist viewpoints, much landscape research conducted today is more bottom-up and humanistic in
approach, with an acknowledgement of the complex interplay of culture
and nature. This change of emphasis is reflected in the more useful
general definition of landscape provided by the European Landscape
Convention, (ELC), which defines it as an area, as perceived by people,
whose character is the result of the action and interaction of natural and/
or human factors (Council of Europe 2000).
That is better suited to our purpose and underlines the importance of
perception, which is in itself an act of interpretation and thus also of
comprehension. The ELC definition also usefully highlights a role for both
culture and nature in the creation of landscapes. Perception is active in that
we see, understand and contextualize the world based on our personal
experiences, which are mediated and given meaning by the specific sociohistorical context of our particular lifeway. Landscapes are thus individually perceived but collectively understood and, as such, are phenomena
whose character, values and meanings are socially definedhence the
recent prominence in archaeological writing of social landscape conceptions (e.g. Cooney 1999; Ashmore 2004; Meskell and Preucel 2004).
It is important to note, however, that non-Western conceptions of
landscape may differ fundamentally from those outlined above. For
example, in China humans are considered part of nature and the idea of
cultural landscape is problematic because every landscape is in some
sense cultural (Taylor 2009: 16). The intangible dimension also emphasizes the fact that a landscape can carry quite different meanings, values
and significance for different groups of people. This is ably demonstrated, for example, by Uluru-Kata Tjuta (formerly Ayers Rock) World
Heritage cultural landscapea sacred mountain for local Aboriginal
peoples which, until very recently was regarded by many tourists as just
a natural feature to be climbed (Fowler 2004: 34ff). The fact that it took
so long for international heritage bodies to formally recognize the valuable alternative realities of such perspectives testifies to the dominance
of Western language discourse on the subject. In reality, the modern
world has few if any truly natural landscapes that are completely devoid
of human influence or intangible values.
Traditional farming communities in Hong Kong, not surprisingly,
embraced the Chinese notion of human existence as inextricably bound

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up with nature. In rural villages in the New Territories this was

expressed through a fusion of ancestor worship, animism and the
ancient Chinese belief system of fung shui. In his study of Chinese
village geomancy, Fan Wei suggested that fung shui was an esoteric
set of theories and practices grounded in indigenous philosophies and
human experiences [It] has been used in China to probe the landscape and to discern from the irregularity and asymmetry of mountains
and waters appropriate locations for specific human occupancy (Fan
1992: 35).
Fuller explanation of the principles and philosophy underlying fung
shui is beyond the scope of this report but can readily be found (Fan
1992: 35ff.; Webb 1995: 3745; Bruun 2003: 1ff.). Bruuns (2003)
review Fengshui in China, is useful in that it highlights the history of
fung shui, the myriad attempts to categorize geomancy in Western intellectual terms, and the many approaches and socio-political contexts of its
use in Chinese communities across Asia, including urban Hong Kong. It
is clear from Bruuns study that the Chinese use of fung shui is diverse
and complex, and amounts to much more than simply a set of rules
governing the placement of houses and graves. While there is doubtless
some truth in his argument that fung shui in Hong Kong was nourished
and developed as a separate idiom and an act of cultural performance
presumably further stimulated by the continued presence of foreigners
and the willingness of the British government to take it seriously (Bruun
2003: 65), the fung shui imprint nevertheless remains in New Territories
village landscapes and existed well before the colonial era.
Anthropologist Rubie Watson observed that
among the people of rural Hong Kong geomancy is deeply intertwined with
the ancestor cult and can be considered integral to many local religious practices. Geomancy not only allows humans to comprehend and take advantage
of the forces of nature that surround them, but also guides the creation and
maintenance of landscapes. (Watson 2007: 3)

Traditional villagers deep connections with place strongly resonate with

Ingolds dwelling perspective, which asserts that the landscape is
constituted as an enduring record ofand testimony tothe lives and
works of past generations who have dwelt within it, and in so doing,
have left there something of themselves. He goes on to suggest that to
perceive the landscape is to carry out an act of remembrance
engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with

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the past (Ingold 1993: 152).

To sum up this brief introduction to landscape, then, there are four
ideas which will be further developed in the remainder of this report:
firstly, landscapes have a physical dimension that is shaped by the interaction of human agency (e.g. farming) and environmental processes (e.g.
erosion); secondly, landscapes are culturally defined in terms of a
complex mix of geomorphological, socio-economic, political, and intangible factors; thirdly, the cultural meanings, values and significance of
any landscape are mediated by their specific socio-historic context; and
finally, landscape offers a more inclusive and holistic approach to the
human past and this is particularly the case if local research embraces a
fusion of Western and Chinese conceptualisations. Having introduced
Western and Chinese ideas about landscape, I now briefly consider the
practical issues attending their investigation.

The Human Narrative of Landscape

Cultural landscapes are the result of a process of interaction between a
particular group of people and their environment: they are thus an interim
conclusion to an ongoing story. In contrast, landscape archaeology aims
to understand the process of development that led to that conclusionthe
human narrative or sequence of events that resulted in a particular landscape. As a landscape archaeologist, my own research has mostly revolved
around answering the questions: how did the landscape change through
time and what can that tell us about changing human behavior, social
organisation, economy and even beliefs (Atha 2008, 2012)? Landscape
archaeology has its origins in the writings of O. G. S. Crawford, who
observed that the surface of England is a palimpsest, a document that has
been written on and erased over and over again; and it is the business of
the field archaeologist to decipher it (Crawford 1953: 51).
Two years later, W. G. Hoskins published his seminal book The
Making of the English Landscape, in which he famously argued that if
we wished to understand how past people shaped and interacted with
their environment, then the landscape itself, to those who know how
to read it aright is the richest historical record we possess (Hoskins
1955: 14). Hoskins approach emphasised the detailed description of
field systems, woodlands, and settlements: landscape as a document,
which encouraged the notion of reading the landscape (Muir 2000;
Rippon 2004: 1617) and thereby unlocking the human stories behind its

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development. Landscape archaeology emerged in the 1970s as a more

scientific reaction to such earlier, more descriptive, endeavors (Aston and
Rowley 1974; Aston 1985). By applying a wider range of investigative
techniques, landscape archaeology aims to produce a series of complementary data sets which, when collectively analyzed, can reveal a deeper
and more nuanced understanding of human activity across space and
through time.
Typically for any given study area, research begins with a deskbased review of previous archaeological findings, historic and geological
maps, ground-based and aerial photographs, and documentary and placename evidence. The findings of this baseline review then support a field
investigation addressing all evidence for human activity of all periods
and spanning multiple scales of analysisfrom artefacts to entire
cultural landscapes. Interdisciplinary in focus, this draws on a wide
variety of techniques and data sets including historic building recording,
surface artefact collection or field-walking, topographical, earthworks,
and geophysical surveys and, if appropriate, targeted excavation.
Interdisciplinary contributions may include, for example, elements as
diverse as oral histories and botanical surveys.
Such an integrated landscape approach would clearly contribute to
the investigation and understanding of Hong Kongs agrarian past.
However, before we can decide on an appropriate research design for the
historic landscape, there are three further contributory aspects that must
be discussed. Firstly, we must learn more about the metropolis and its
hinterland, and the role the former played in the demise of the New
Territories traditional way of life. Secondly, we need to understand the
basis for and implications of Hong Kongs landscape-less approach to
heritage management, in terms of both rural and urban contexts. Finally,
a review of international criteria and standards for the assessment of
cultural landscapes should help to define the value and significance of
Hong Kongs heritage resource.

The Making of the Hong Kong Landscape

The modern history of Hong Kong has been dealt with exhaustively elsewhere (Welsh 1993; Tsang 2004); however, some key events with a direct
bearing on the development of the historic landscape need to be explored.
Asias world city3 is one of the globes most unashamed monuments to late-20th-century urbanized capitalism; throughout its history

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the citys governments have embraced and facilitated expansive development as the very essence of economic growth and success. What is
remarkable is the role of rural farming populations in this story, without
whose contribution Hong Kongs striking socioeconomic transformation
during the post-war period could not have occurred (Hayes 2006: 71).
But to begin at the beginning: the myth of the much quoted barren
island with hardly a house upon it,4 is just that: a politically motivated
exaggeration by a London-based government official, aggrieved that his
direct order to establish a colony nearer to the Yangzi had been ignored
by the military commander on the ground. In truth Hong Kong Island
was home to a population numbering several thousand Chinese farmers
and fishermen (Tsang 2004: 16), but it was the wonderful deep-water
harbor that had caught the eye of merchants and naval officers alike.
Although rugged, the mountainous landscape of the northern shore
nevertheless provided a narrow coastal plain suitable for the initial foundation of the colony. Early mercantile success fuelled development and
development required land which was limited in supply. Thus within
twenty years of its establishment, the colonys seafront was already
expanding north into the harbour through the earliest of many reclamations. The subsequent addition of Kowloon Peninsula (1861) provided
scope for further mercantile, naval and domestic expansion of the city,
while the 1898 lease of the New Territories provided a rural buffer
zone between the city and the Chinese empire to the north. By the early
20th century, Hong Kong extended along the entire north shore of the
island, from Kennedy Town to Shau Kei Wan, and from the sea-front to
high up the slopes of the Peak. The heart of the City of Victoria, with its
buildings in the arcaded and balconied colonial style, looked out across
the harbor at the shipyards, docks and burgeoning urbanization of
Kowloon. At the time of the lease, Hong Kong and Kowloon had spent
sixty and forty years following an entirely different socio-economic
trajectory, which took them ever further from the content and sentiment
of traditional China (Hayes 2006: 1) as embodied in the farming
communities of the New Territories. It is therefore not surprising that
when such communities were first encountered by colonial officers in
the first years of the lease, a great difference was apparent between
their traditional lifeway and sensibilities and those of Hong Kongs
urbanised Chinese (ibid.).
The brand of raw Western capitalism fuelling the Crown Colonys
growth engendered an almost contemptuous attitude towards the

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environment, which by whatever means necessary was being bent to

urban Hong Kongs will. The situation in the New Territories, though,
could not have been more different: there, villages and their field
systems, indeed entire landscapes, were laid out with sensitivity to the
environment (Figures 1 and 2).
The long-term prosperity and wellbeing of New Territories rice
farming communities and their distinctive landscapes reflected a deeply
Figure 1. New Territories rice farming scene in 19461947. In the foreground rice is drying
in the sun (presumably in front of village houses out of shot to the left), the paddy
fields extend across the valley floor, while in the background another village
nestles below the hill protected by its fung shui grove. (Photo: Hedda Morrison
Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University; Copyright President
and Fellows of Harvard College. Reproduced with permission of the copyright
holders).

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Figure 2. New Territories rice farming landscape in 19461947. The much-repeated

pattern of paddy fields on the valley floor and terraces on the lower hillsides.
Above the terraces the hills have been stripped of trees for use as fuel and most
of the extensive plantations of the pre-war years were removed during the privations of World War II; fung shui woods, however, mostly survived. (Photo: Hedda

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Morrison Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University; Copyright

President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reproduced with permission of the
copyright holders).

embedded knowledge and understanding of the environment, its dangers

and potentials. In order to insure against a total loss due to storm damage
or flooding, rice farming communities often grew a mixture of double
crop rice in larger valley bottom paddiesthe bulk of which were owned
by communal and ancestral trusts (Hase and Lee 1992: 81)while

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smaller, privately-owned, hillside terraced fields might, if well supplied

with water, be used for single crop rice (Hase, pers. comm.) and/or crops
such as sweet potatoes, sugar cane or peanuts (Potter 1968: 57). In
contrast, communities near the coast, such as at Tin Shui Wai, planted
double-crop white rice in riverside paddies inland and single-crop red
rice in brackish paddy fields reclaimed from the sea which, during the
1970s, were converted to fishponds (Cheung 2011: 39). The Mans of
San Tin, on the other hand, managed to prosper for over six centuries
with an agricultural economy focused entirely on reclamation-based red
rice production (Watson 1975: 3842). The success of this general model
is borne out by the almost one-thousand-year history of some of the
larger, so-called Great Clan communities of the western and northern
New Territories (Baker 1966: 26; Waters 1995: 79). Such Cantonesespeaking Punti settlers occupied most of the low-lying better land, so
that the late-coming Hakka people, many of whom arrived after the
17th-century Coastal Evacuation5, were forced to open up poorer land in
foothill areas and smaller upland valleys, in particular in the eastern New
Territories (Hase and Lee 1992: 79).
While that long agricultural tradition continued essentially
unchanged until the mid-20th century, from the later 19th century
onwards many of the New Territories young men had either moved
abroad or were working as merchant seamen. As a consequence, village
women bore the triple burden of childrearing and care for elderly in-laws
as well as the majority of work in the rice fields (Hayes 2006: 76).
However, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, a number of interrelated
factors were relentlessly undermining the traditional social and economic
structure of the New Territories. First, there was the rapid post-war
ascent of Hong Kongs manufacturing and commercial sector, which was
creating ever more job opportunities (Potter 1968: 4456). Second, there
was the mass influx of refugees from the Mainland, amongst whom were
a significant number of farmers skilled in intensive vegetable growing
(Watson 1975: 4248). Third, there was a redoubled male exodus to
work in Chinese restaurants overseas, and fourth, an expansion of educational opportunities produced the first generation of literate young
women who aspired to a better life for themselves and their daughters in
the textile workshops and factories of Kowloon and the classrooms of
the many new schools (Aijmer 1967: 70; Hayes 2006: 7677). Finally
and crucially, there was an increasing availability of cheaper imported
rice (Watson 1975: 48).

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The consequences of such changes were dramatic, as the statistics

presented by Hayes (2006: 75) attest: from 23,400 acres under rice
cultivation [in the New Territories] in 1955, to only about 280 acres in
March 1979, while rice production stood at 19,081 tonnes in 1970 but
had collapsed to only 351 tonnes in March 1979. Although this change
was felt throughout the New Territories, and even larger lowland village
communities would have found themselves unable to meet the high labor
demands of rice farming, the greatest impact was felt in the more remote
upland areas, where entire villages were abandoned and the terraced hillsides, for the first time in centuries, fell silent.
Today, beyond the urban fringe and the larger lowland villages,
which survived into the post-rice era due to their better communications and, in some instances, adoption of vegetable farming, depopulated and abandoned villages can be found throughout the uplands of
the New Territories amidst their overgrown but essentially intact
agrarian landscapes. Much therefore survives, but very little of it has
been investigated or recorded archaeologically and none at all using an
integrated landscape approach. The same cannot be said for historical
and anthropological research, of which there has been much addressing
the traditional agricultural practices and village life of the New
Territories, and their transformation and eventual decline during the
20th century (e.g. Watson 1975; Hase and Sinn 1995; Hayes 1996,
2001, 2006; Johnson 2001; Watson 2007). James Hayes, in particular,
has produced several invaluable socio-historical accounts of the New
Territories and its traditional lifeway in transition, which can be usefully
contrasted with more detailed studies of particular village communities
and their social landscapes (e.g. Aijmer 1968; Potter 1968; Hase and
Lee 1992; Gee 1995).
The establishment of villages was, in particular, an occasion when
villagers, if they were able, sought geomantic advice to ensure the future
prosperity of the community. At the Hakka settlement of Sheung Wo
Hang in the northeastern New Territories it was possible through analysis
of the village layout in relation to the surrounding landscape, supported
by interviews with elderly villagers, to reconstruct the fung shui landscape relative to a set of thirteen geomantic rules that had guided development in the area since the villages formal setting out in 1720 by a
fung shui master, Lee Sam-yau, who for generations thereafter was
worshipped in the Lee ancestral hall (Hase and Lee 1992: 8892). Hase
and Lees study plainly demonstrated the decisive role of fung shui in

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shaping the character of Shueng Wo Hangs landscape, including the

site, orientation and layout of the village and its blocks of houses, the
positioning of clan graves on the hillside nearby, the location and orientation of the ancestral hall, temple and earth god shrines, and the provision of woodlands and ponds to balance and check the flows of yin and
yang forces (Figure 3).
While every villages fung shui landscape is a unique response to
local factors one can, nevertheless, recognise repeating patterns across
Figure 3. The geomantic setting of Sheung Wo Hang as reconstructed by Patrick Hase
from a combination of fung shui assessment and local informant testimony.
(Source: based upon Hase and Lee 1992, Figure 5.9 and reproduced with permission of the copyright holder Patrick Hase).

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the New Territories that reflect deeply held and widely shared beliefs
about what constituted an auspicious setting for a village and its inhabitants (Figure 4).
Typically, a New Territories village sits at the foot of a hill, ideally
with flanking ridges creating an armchair shape, while to the rear there

Figure 4. New Territories rice farming village in its landscape setting in 19461947. The
village sits at the foot of a gentle slope, in a slightly raised position with its ricedrying grounds in front and the paddy fields on the lower-lying valley floor. A
fung shui wood blankets the hill behind and curves around the far end of the
village in a protective arcall other hillsides have been stripped bare. (Photo:
Hedda Morrison Collection, Harvard-Yenching Library, Harvard University;
Copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reproduced with permission of the copyright holders).

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is species-rich mature woodlandits fung shui grovein front a flat

area previously used for drying rice, and beyond and below that the
former paddy fields criss-crossed by streams. A large banyan spirit tree
may overlook the main earth god shrine guarding the entrance to the
village, while ancestral graves lie beyond the edge of the village proper
(Webb 1995: 37). In the New Territories fung shui can be seen to have a
fundamentally practical dimension relating to the sustainability of
communities practising wet rice agriculture in a mountainous region
affected by landslips and typhoons (Lovelace 1983). Based on his study
of rice farming villages in the northwest New Territories, Lovelace
argued that
it is possible to conceive of the fengshui belief system as a highly codified
strategy for settlement, subsistence, and landscape interpretation and modification according to this economic system [and] a kind of information
system in which data about environmental conditions and processes and
proper settlement behavior could be processed, evaluated, stored and transmitted. (Lovelace 1983: 202)

The research of Hase, Potter and the Watsons, amongst others, drew
upon the deep well of knowledge held by a now dwindling population of
elderly villagers, which was acquired through decades of living and
working in the socio-economic-spiritual continuum of that traditional
lifeway. The villagers feelings of ancestry and belonging, combined
with a reverence for the land, its energies and deities, guaranteed the
long-term sustainable management of the landscape. With the abandonment of rice farming, the cycle was broken and rural landscapes gradually, and sometimes suddenly, slipped out of local stewardship.
While it is difficult to avoid a feeling of sadness at this loss, the end
of rice farming had some positive effects on Hong Kongs urban population, which had grown exponentially with mass immigration from China
following World War II. With large areas of the lowland New Territories
taken out of agricultural use, bold plans for New Town developments,
mass public housing and dramatically improved infrastructure could be
rapidly implemented. The wholesale abandonment of remoter, mainly
upland, areas of the New Territories made large tracts of land available
for the creation of country parks, which were viewed as a vital recreational resource for the green-starved, high-rise dwelling populace (Hayes
2006: 80). Consequently, some abandoned villages and their relict field
systems now lie within Government-run country parks, and are therefore

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afforded some degree of protection. The reality, though, is that Hong

Kongs heritage legislation and management policies take little account
of historic landscape and few heritage managers in government or private
practice would consider the remains of villages and field systems abandoned in the late 20th centuryalbeit after centuries of development and
useworthy of detailed archaeological study, conservation or public
presentation.

Hong Kongs Landscape-less Heritage Management

Landscape and landscape archaeology are both poorly understood and
therefore generally eschewed in Hong Kong and the wider East Asian
region. A recent paper by a scholar at Beijing University concluded that
although the Western idea of landscape has been adopted in China, there
is nevertheless a lack of holistic thinking and understanding of landscape archaeology research (Zhang 2010: 16). Holistic thinking is an
essential part of the landscape approach and without it landscape can
seem an empty concept, as is the case in Hong Kong.
At the heart of the problem is a colonial legacy of outdated legislation. Sun (2011) provides a useful overview of the development of Hong
Kongs heritage legislation. The ideas that were eventually enacted as the
Antiquities and Monuments Ordinance in 1976 were first introduced into
the Legislative Council of the colonial government in the 1950s, but then
circulated without significant progress for almost twenty years. As a
result, the Ordinance was already substantially out of date when it was
introduced and, nearly 40 years on, there is still no sign of a major revision on the horizon. The structure and scope of Hong Kongs heritage
legislation was based upon a model devised for other British colonies in
Palestine and Africa rather than that enacted in Britain (Sun 2011). Was
this therefore a case of colonial double standards whereby Hong Kong
heritage was considered less valuable than that in Britain? The
Ordinance covers any individual place, building, site or structure
dating to before 1800 but does not protect groups or their landscape
setting, as is possible in Macau and Guangzhou (Du Cros et al. 2007:
41). Only heritage resources included on the list of 101 declared monuments are afforded significant legal protection, the vast majority being
colonial and Chinese historic buildings and structures, plus a number of
prehistoric rock carvings.

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The choice of 1800 as the cut-off date is unusual for such legislation,
and might be an indication that the government did not see late Qing and
early colonial heritage as worthy of protection, thus clearing the way for
re-development of historic urban areas (ibid.: 37). It has also been noted
that the original cut-off date proposed was 1843 which, as the official
start date of the British Crown Colony, was eventually considered too
politically sensitive (Sun 2011). Overall, the Ordinance is certainly better
than nothing, but the retention of such inadequate legislation, unrevised
for nearly 40 years, provides a stark reminder of the relative values placed
on development and cultural heritage in this commercially-motivated city.
The Antiquities and Monuments Office (AMO), which is responsible for
the Ordinances execution, unquestionably has a difficult job as a small
government department defending Hong Kongs heritage in the face of
overwhelming odds. Given such pressures, the AMOs apparent lack of
interest in historic landscapea heritage category at present firmly
beyond the scope of the Ordinanceis not surprising.
The implementation in 1998 of the Environmental Impact
Assessment Ordinance (EIAO) marked the beginning of commercial
consultancy work, and was therefore a watershed in the management of
Hong Kongs heritage and natural resources. Landscape is supposedly
covered by the EIAO but there are no formalized criteria for the detailed
assessment of historic landscape impacts in EIA projects from either
Western or Chinese perspectives. It seems that the landscape of the
EIAO is a thing of aesthetic or ecological value, not cultural heritage.
Therefore, at present, one would probably be considered mad to suggest
that we should systematically record, analyze and preserve relict rice
farming landscapesbuildings, field systems, fung shui featuresas part
of an EIA study. In terms of historic landscape, then, the best one might
expect to see in an EIA report is a record of the more obvious features
such as fung shui woods, spirit trees and ponds along with the graves,
shrines, ancestral halls, temples and older houses, which should be
mapped and photographed as part of a built heritage impact assessment
(BHIA) survey. But no collective, landscape-scale, synthetic analysis or
discussion of such features would usually appear. The presence of
surface or buried archaeological remains is determined by an archaeological impact assessment (AIA) using a three-stage survey methodology
comprising a field scan for surface artefact scatters, followed by auger
testing and then test pitting.

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When it comes to the mitigation of perceived impacts to fung shui, it

seems that pre-1997 government officers were perhaps more prepared to
listen to and take account of villagers concerns than is presently the
case (Watson 2007: 4). From around the time of the handover, New
Territories community leaders vigorously lobbied both the British and
Chinese governments in order to protect their special rights and
customs as indigenous villagersa move that was seen in an increasingly negative light by urbanites (ibid.: 6). Consequently, many urban
residents todayno doubt including government officersseem at best
ambivalent towards rural communities, whom they suspect of using fung
shui solely as a political tool in compensation negotiations (ibid.: 67).
However, the fact remains that, whatever its present political context,
geomancy was an important social consideration when many, if not all,
New Territories villages were founded and laid out.

The Consequences of a Landscape-less Approach to the Past

Although no integrated landscape research has so far been carried out in
Hong Kong, some aspects of the landscape have been studied. Two
AMO-commissioned territory-wide surveys (TWS) provided a perfect
opportunity for a wide-ranging exploration of Hong Kongs archaeological heritage; however, a landscape approach was not employed in either
case. Nevertheless, in the first TWS, the networks of ancient boulder
trackways, which for centuries provided the primary means of communication between rural villages and their markets, were identified as having
high cultural significance:
[they] offer a unique insight into a traditional world. It is strongly
recommended that a complete study should be made to record all these
paved trackways in as definitive a fashion as possible. (Peacock and Nixon
1986: 179)

The trackways are extensive, and form an integral part of the New
Territories historic landscape. They might realistically require a full
season of fieldwork for two dedicated teams of archaeologists and
surveyors if one wished to properly survey and record them. When a
comprehensive study was recently commissioned by the AMO, a very
short reporting timescale was specified, which effectively ruled out the
use of an integrated landscape approach in a project ideally suited to
its application.

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Although no impact assessment projects have been designed with

landscape research in mind, some have nevertheless produced findings
that warrant discussion on a landscape scale. A prime example is the
Qing dynasty landscape gradually emerging during the redevelopment of
Kai Tak Airport. Here, the archaeological discoveries of Kowloon Walled
City, the Longjin Bridge and its Pavilion allow us, with the help of old
photographs and historic maps, to reconstruct the late Qing landscape of
Kowloon Bay. Projects such as the Kai Tak Development remind us that
in Hong Kongs historic urban areas large-scale (re)development is a fact
of life and historic buildings have to fight for their lives in the face of
sky high land values and the pressure to replace a few stories of historic
brick and granite with a hundred of gleaming glass and steel. In the city,
ignoring landscape means that individual buildings may be preserved
while their setting is destroyed or, worse still, historically important
complexes of buildings are modified or have elements removed such that
their socio-historical significance, value and meaning are adversely
affected. A lack of understanding of setting results in poor decisions
regarding the adaptive reuse of historic buildings, and an increasing likelihood of their abuse.
One recent example of this is the Former Marine Police
Headquarters Compound in Tsim Sha Tsui. As a declared monument, the
Former Marine Police Headquarters Compound, comprising three buildings on a small flat-topped hillock, had the highest level of protection
afforded to heritage resources in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the management of the sites adaptive reuse was seemingly not under the complete
control of the AMO, and tourism- and commerce-related aspects of the
sites redevelopment were given a higher priority than the preservation
of its essential heritage characteristics. As a consequence, the compound
simply disappearedone of the last pieces of original hilly topography
of Tsim Sha Tsui was quarried away and with it went any sense of the
setting and collective meaning of the three buildings. Insult was then
added to injury when the beautiful old headquarters building was
surrounded by modern designer goods outlets housed in buildings in the
faux colonial style. If the three buildings and their hill had been truly
considered as a compoundand therefore also a small piece of urban
historic landscaperather than three unrelated structures, then things
would have turned out differently.
Thus far we have introduced landscape and landscape archaeology,
explored the making of Hong Kongs landscape through the agency of

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urban and rural populations, and examined the reasons behind and implications of the local landscape-less approach to heritage management.
Let me now benchmark local heritage resources against the criteria used
by UNESCO in its assessment of World Heritage cultural landscapes,
before setting forth a research design for the investigation and recording
of Hong Kongs traditional rice farming landscape.

World Heritage cultural landscapeslocal parallels

While not wishing to claim that Hong Kongs traditional agricultural
landscapes have the outstanding universal value (World Heritage
Centre 2011: 20) necessary for inclusion on the list of World Heritage
Sites, it might nevertheless be useful to benchmark their significance
against UNESCOs assessment criteria. In order to be considered for
inclusion on the list of World Heritage Sites a cultural landscape must
meet one or more of a series of six criteria, three of which, summarized below, seem particularly relevant to agricultural landscapes with
intangible associations such as those in Hong Kongs New Territories,
which are
a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civilisation which is living or which has disappeared an outstanding example
of a traditional human settlement, land-use which is representative of a
culture (or cultures), or human interaction with the environment especially
when it has become vulnerable under the impact of irreversible change [and
being] directly or tangibly associated with events or living traditions, with
ideas, or with beliefs. (World Heritage Centre 2011: 2021)

Hong Kongs rice farming landscapes are clearly defined, which is a

term the WHC normally uses in relation to designed landscapes such as
the parklands and pleasure gardens of Europes great houses (Rssler
2006: 337), but is perhaps also applicable to the geomantically designed
vernacular landscapes in the immediate environs of rice farming
villages. In contrast, the surrounding field systems are unquestionably
organically evolved landscapes, which are the result of centuries of
human interaction with the local environment, comprising mainly fossilised or relict features, but also others still in use today. The New
Territories landscapes can also be considered associativea term
most often applied by the WHC to non-agricultural landscapes to which,
for example Australian Aboriginal peoples attach intangible heritage

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values associated with animistic, spiritual and ancestral beliefs.

Traditional beliefs in the influence of fung shui, earth spirits and ancestors on the day-to-day lives and future well-being of rice farming
communities in Hong Kong clearly indicate an associative dimension to
such landscapes. Hong Kongs historic rural landscape thus embodies a
melange of designed, organically evolved and intangible components that
make it worthy of study and perhaps preservation.
Clearly we cannot preserve all Hong Kongs traditional village landscapes, nor should we try tobut we should at the very least have a
detailed record of one, or perhaps two, well-preserved and representative
examples. But how might we go about selecting our study area(s) and
what might such a research project look like?

A Research Design for Hong Kongs Historic Rice Farming

Landscapes
In choosing a village landscape for study, there are many criteria to be
considered, of which perhaps the most important are representativeness
and intactness: is it a good example of the regional type and does it
survive in all its essential parts? Another significant factor in the decision-making process is the survival of elderly former rice farmers, whose
testimony would be invaluable when interpreting the socio-historic
context of the physical remains of the village.
Given the degree of post-agricultural disturbance of lowland
villages and those at the upland fringe, one is inevitably drawn to the
excellent levels of preservation exhibited in some of the more remote
Hakka villages of the uplands. While these are clearly not typical of
lowland types, they do tend to have the most complex and fascinating
cultural landscapesa result in large part of the need to render lessthan-perfect locations suitable for habitation through careful attention to
geomantic considerations (Hase and Lee 1992: 9093). As such, they
offer an ideal opportunity to record, interpret and presentthrough
publication and perhaps museum displaya complete traditional village
landscape in terms of its physical layout, geomantic underpinnings, and
socio-historic context.
The physical remains of Hong Kongs historic rice farming landscapes provide a challenging subject for archaeological investigation.
The tangible remains of buildings, shrines, graves, specimen trees and
woodlands in many instances reflect intangible, geomantic considerations

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of the landscape. The position and layout of other elements of the

village landscape, such as trackways, field systems, and water-management features, were more likely to have been determined on purely
practical, rather than geomantic grounds. Thus the critical initial task
of defining the study area would in part be a matter of establishing
patterns of landholding and the political boundaries of the village territory, while also bearing in mind the likely geomantic influence on the
core settlement zone and any associated graves. Another significant
early element would involve a baseline review of historical records
such as clan genealogies and local village records (see Hayes 2010;
Hase 2011), the San On County Gazetteers, colonial government
records, aerial photographs and previous reports relating to the study
area or to traditional village life. Of particular value are the very
detailed maps of the 18991903 Block Crown Lease Survey which, in
order to identify all landholding for purposes of taxation, recorded
every land parcel, field, house and structure in the New Territories (Hayes
2006: 32). The anthropological focus would be on local informant
testimony, which would be fundamental to the development of an
insiders view of the settlement, its fung shui, and its social, political
and economic history.
Complementing the historical-anthropological endeavour would be a
detailed topographical and analytical earthworks survey of the villages
fields, terraces, water management and communications features, to be
carried out by a landscape archaeologist (see examples in Bowden 1999).
Such work would also provide an ideal opportunity to conduct a surface
artefact survey, or field scan, in parallel. Geophysical surveys may prove
invaluable in identifying traces of earlier phases of human activity not
visible on the surface (see examples in Gaffney and Gater 2003). Much
of the interest in unravelling the landscape would derive from the
synergy of Western and geomantic understandings of place. An ecological survey would focus, in particular, on woodlands and spirit trees with
geomantic significance, but could also identify examples of the many
medicinal plants surviving in the protected environment of fung shui
groves (see Yip et al. 2004). A detailed built-heritage survey would
record all historic structures, whether intact or ruins, including houses,
ancestral halls, temples, shrines and graves. Finally, targeted excavation
could be used to address questions of function, relationship or date of
any landscape features that are unanswerable using non-intrusive
methods.

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Conclusions
Borrowing once more from UNESCOs assessment criteria, it can be
convincingly argued that Hong Kongs historic rice farming landscapes
are a regionally unique record of a cultural tradition that has now disappeared. They are also, in some cases, still fine examples of a traditional
form of settlement and land-use, representative of local indigenous
cultures and their long-term, cyclical interactions with the local environment which, due to a variety of human factors, are at ever increasing risk
of irreversible change. The influence of fung shui, animism and ancestral
worship on the establishment and maintenance of such village landscapes provides a strong intangible, associative dimension that must also
be addressed.
At present there is not a single fully surveyed and recorded example
of a traditional New Territories rice farming village and its cultural
landscape. When one contrasts the volume of published historical and
anthropological studies focused on traditional rice farming communities
with the complete lack of archaeological or historic landscape research
on the subject, the gap can only be explained in terms of local research
bias in favour of other, more ancient, less mundane archaeological
remains. Further factors contributing to the lack of archaeological
research include Hong Kongs outdated and monument-focused legislation that takes little account of historic landscape in either Western or
local Chinese terms, which is then further compounded by the absence
of any theoretical or practical understanding of landscape and landscape
archaeology within the local curatorial community. However, in the
absence of a coherent policy on historic landscape, this neglected heritage continues to suffer incremental damage and loss. While landscapes
will survive in some form or other to be studied in the years ahead,
their knowledgeable final custodians are now elderly and fewer in
number with each passing yearthere is thus a real sense of urgency.
The unique East-meets-West approach advocated above, which
combines a multi-technique landscape investigation with anthropological and geomantic research, would result in a timely study and a lasting
and fitting record of Hong Kongs traditional rice farming communities
and the landscapes, which over centuries and many generations, they
created and sustainably managed.

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Acknowledgements
I thank Gordon Mathews for encouraging me to publish in Asian
Anthropology. I am grateful to Patrick Hase for his insightful comments
on an earlier draft and for his permission to use the Sheung Wo Hang
figure. I am also grateful to the two reviewers whose comments and
suggestions have led to a clarification of key aspects of my argument.
Lastly I thank Dr Lum of Harvard University for granting me permission
to use three of Hedda Morrisons images of Hong Kongs traditional
village landscapes.

Notes
1. Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong (Hase and Sinn 1995) is the
title of a volume exploring traditional village life in Hong Kongs New
Territories.
2. This is from the OED online dictionary:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/landscape?q=landscape
3. Asias world city is the slogan of the Hong Kong Governments Brand
Hong Kong initiative established in 2001. http://www.brandhk.gov.hk/en/#/
4. The words of Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Secretary at the time of the
First Anglo-Chinese War (First Opium War) as cited in Tsang (2004: 14).
5. The Coastal Evacuation occurred at the beginning of the first Qing Emperor
Kangxis reign between 16621669 and involved the forced depopulation of
what was probably the entire area of modern Hong Kong in order to prevent
coastal communities from offering support to Ming loyalists based in
Taiwan. The effect on the local population was catastrophic and only around
one tenth of the estimated 16,000 people driven out returned after the rescission; however, the Qing government then actively encouraged settlers to
repopulate the land. The origins of the Hakka migration into Hong Kong
can be dated to this period (Hayes 1974).

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