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A Neglected Heritage: Towards

a Fuller Appreciation of the

Landscapes and Lifeways of

Hong Kong’s Rice Farming PastMick Atha

Published online: 02 Jan 2013.

To cite this article: Mick Atha (2012) A Neglected Heritage: Towards a FullerAppreciation of the Landscapes and Lifeways of Hong Kong’s Rice Farming Past, Asian

Anthropology, 11:1, 129-156, DOI: 10.1080/1683478X.2012.10600860

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130 Mick ATHA

generation of rural communities who designed, constructed and sustain-

ably managed traditional rice farming landscapes. These landscapes

represent a unique and valuable local heritage resource which, togetherwith 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 boomtown’s 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 territory’s “landscape-less” approach to its historic environment—

both urban and, in particular, rural. The territory’s 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 situationclearly at odds with international “best practice” as exemplified in

UNESCO’s 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, interdisci-

plinary 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 arepossible 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 Kong’s unique environmental, socio-historical, political

and spiritual context, and to share such findings with the academic and

Published by The Chinese University Press


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A Neglected Heritage 131

wider community. The report therefore concludes with an outline model

for a re-assessment of the socio-historical significance of Hong Kong’s

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

Sauer’s 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 land-scape the result” (Sauer 1965 [1925]: 343).

Sauer’s 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 commu-

nities natural features could carry intangible cultural meanings (Taylor

2009: 14). Another significant consequence of the culture-nature schism

was an emphasis in 1960s–1980s 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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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 Chinesevillage 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 land-

scape 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: 37–45; Bruun 2003: 1ff.). Bruun’s (2003)

review Fengshui in China, is useful in that it highlights the history of

fung shui, the myriad attempts to categorize geomancy in Western intel-

lectual 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 Bruun’s 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 nourishedand 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 prac-tices. 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

Ingold’s “dwelling perspective,” which asserts that “the landscape is

constituted as an enduring record of—and testimony to—the 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 “toperceive the landscape is to carry out an act of remembrance …

engaging perceptually with an environment that is itself pregnant with



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134 Mick ATHA

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 inter-

action 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 intan-

gible 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 aimsto understand the process of development that led to that conclusion—the

human narrative or sequence of events that resulted in a particular land-

scape. 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 hasbeen 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: 16–17) 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 investigativetechniques, landscape archaeology aims to produce a series of comple-

mentary 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 desk-

based review of previous archaeological findings, historic and geological

maps, ground-based and aerial photographs, and documentary and place-

name 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 analysis—from 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 tothe investigation and understanding of Hong Kong’s 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 Kong’s “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 Kong’s heritage resource.

The Making of the Hong Kong Landscape

The modern history of Hong Kong has been dealt with exhaustively else-

where (Welsh 1993; Tsang 2004); however, some key events with a direct

bearing on the development of the historic landscape need to be explored.

“Asia’s world city”3 is one of the globe’s most unashamed monu-

ments to late-20th-century urbanized capitalism; throughout its history



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environment, which by whatever means necessary was being bent to

urban Hong Kong’s will. The situation in the New Territories, though,

could not have been more different: there, villages and their fieldsystems, 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 1946–1947. 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 villagenestles 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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138 Mick ATHA

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 paddies—the bulk of which were owned

by communal and ancestral trusts (Hase and Lee 1992: 81)—while

Figure 2. New Territories rice farming landscape in 1946–1947. 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 priva-

tions of World War II; fung shui woods, however, mostly survived. (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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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). Incontrast, 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: 38–42). 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 Cantonese-

speaking 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 centuryonwards 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 Kong’s manufacturing and commercial sector, which wascreating ever more job opportunities (Potter 1968: 44–56). 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: 42–48). Third, there was a redoubled male exodus to

work in Chinese restaurants overseas, and fourth, an expansion of educa-

tional 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: 76–77). Finally

and crucially, there was an increasing availability of cheaper imported

rice (Watson 1975: 48).



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140 Mick ATHA

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 inMarch 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 hill-

sides, 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 communica-

tions and, in some instances, adoption of vegetable farming, depopu-

lated 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 NewTerritories, 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 land-

scape” relative to a set of thirteen geomantic rules that had guided devel-

opment in the area since the village’s 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: 88–92). Hase

and Lee’s study plainly demonstrated the decisive role of fung shui in



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shaping the character of Shueng Wo Hang’s 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 orien-tation of the ancestral hall, temple and earth god shrines, and the provi-

sion of woodlands and ponds to balance and check the flows of yin and

yang forces (Figure 3).

While every village’s 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 permis-

sion of the copyright holder Patrick Hase).



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142 Mick ATHA

the New Territories that reflect deeply held and widely shared beliefs

about what constituted an auspicious setting for a village and its inhabit-

ants (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 1946–1947. The

village sits at the foot of a gentle slope, in a slightly raised position with its rice-

drying 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 arc—all other hillsides have been stripped bare. (Photo:

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

Copyright President and Fellows of Harvard College. Reproduced with permis-

sion of the copyright holders).



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is species-rich mature woodland—its fung shui grove—in 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 modifi-

cation 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 trans-

mitted. (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 ofelderly 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 abandon-

ment of rice farming, the cycle was broken and rural landscapes gradu-

ally, and sometimes suddenly, slipped out of local stewardship.

While it is difficult to avoid a feeling of sadness at this loss, the endof rice farming had some positive effects on Hong Kong’s urban popula-

tion, 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 recre-

ational 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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144 Mick ATHA

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

Kong’s heritage legislation and management policies take little account

of historic landscape and few heritage managers in government or privatepractice would consider the remains of villages and field systems aban-

doned in the late 20th century—albeit after centuries of development and

use—worthy of detailed archaeological study, conservation or public

presentation.

Hong Kong’s “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 land-

scape 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 legisla-

tion. Sun (2011) provides a useful overview of the development of HongKong’s 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 revi-

sion on the horizon. The structure and scope of Hong Kong’s heritage

legislation was based upon a model devised for other British colonies inPalestine 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 monu-

ments” 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 forre-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 Ordinance’s execution, unquestionably has a difficult job as a small

government department defending Hong Kong’s heritage in the face of

overwhelming odds. Given such pressures, the AMO’s apparent lack of

interest in historic landscape—a heritage category at present firmly

beyond the scope of the Ordinance—is 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 Kong’s heritage and natural resources. Landscape is supposedlycovered 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 landscapes—buildings, field systems, fung shui features—as part

of an EIA study. In terms of historic landscape, then, the best one mightexpect 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 archaeo-

logical 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 thecase (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 villagers—a move that was seen in an increas-

ingly negative light by urbanites (ibid.: 6). Consequently, many urban

residents today—no doubt including government officers—seem at best

ambivalent towards rural communities, whom they suspect of using fung

shui solely as a political tool in compensation negotiations (ibid.: 6–7).

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 perfectopportunity for a wide-ranging exploration of Hong Kong’s archaeolog-

ical 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 communi-

cation 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 thesepaved 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 theuse 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 theQing 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 Kong’s 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 like-

lihood of their abuse.

One recent example of this is the Former Marine PoliceHeadquarters Compound in Tsim Sha Tsui. As a declared monument, the

Former Marine Police Headquarters Compound, comprising three build-

ings on a small flat-topped hillock, had the highest level of protection

afforded to heritage resources in Hong Kong. Unfortunately the manage-

ment of the site’s adaptive reuse was seemingly not under the complete

control of the AMO, and tourism- and commerce-related aspects of the

site’s redevelopment were given a higher priority than the preservation

of its essential heritage characteristics. As a consequence, the compoundsimply disappeared—one 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 compound—and therefore also a small piece of urban

historic landscape—rather 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 Kong’s landscape through the agency of



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148 Mick ATHA

urban and rural populations, and examined the reasons behind and impli-

cations of the local “landscape-less” approach to heritage management.

Let me now benchmark local heritage resources against the criteria usedby UNESCO in its assessment of World Heritage cultural landscapes,

before setting forth a research design for the investigation and recording

of Hong Kong’s traditional rice farming landscape.

World Heritage cultural landscapes—local parallels

While not wishing to claim that Hong Kong’s traditional agricultural

landscapes have the “outstanding universal value” (World HeritageCentre 2011: 20) necessary for inclusion on the list of World Heritage

Sites, it might nevertheless be useful to benchmark their significance

against UNESCO’s 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, summa-

rized below, seem particularly relevant to agricultural landscapes with

intangible associations such as those in Hong Kong’s New Territories,

which are

a unique or at least exceptional testimony to a cultural tradition or to a civili-

sation 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: 20–21)

Hong Kong’s rice farming landscapes are “clearly defined,” which is aterm the WHC normally uses in relation to designed landscapes such as

the parklands and pleasure gardens of Europe’s great houses (Rössler

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 fossil-

ised or relict features, but also others still in use today. The New

Territories’ landscapes can also be considered “associative”—a 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 ances-

tors on the day-to-day lives and future well-being of rice farmingcommunities in Hong Kong clearly indicate an associative dimension to

such landscapes. Hong Kong’s 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 Kong’s traditional village land-

scapes, nor should we try to—but 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 Kong’s Historic Rice FarmingLandscapes

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 deci-sion-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 fascinatingcultural landscapes—a result in large part of the need to render less-

than-perfect locations suitable for habitation through careful attention to

geomantic considerations (Hase and Lee 1992: 90–93). As such, they

offer an ideal opportunity to record, interpret and present—through

publication and perhaps museum display—a complete traditional village

landscape in terms of its physical layout, geomantic underpinnings, and

socio-historic context.

The physical remains of Hong Kong’s historic rice farming land-

scapes 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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150 Mick ATHA

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

village landscape, such as trackways, field systems, and water-manage-

ment features, were more likely to have been determined on purelypractical, 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 terri-

tory, 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 1899–1903 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

insider’s 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 village’s

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). Muchof the interest in unravelling the landscape would derive from the

synergy of Western and geomantic understandings of place. An ecolog-

ical 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 UNESCO’s assessment criteria, it can be

convincingly argued that Hong Kong’s historic rice farming landscapesare a regionally unique record of a cultural tradition that has now disap-

peared. 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 environ-

ment 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 land-

scapes provides a strong intangible, associative dimension that must alsobe 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 Kong’s outdated and monument-focused legisla-

tion 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 heri-

tage 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 year—there is thus a real sense of urgency.

The unique East-meets-West approach advocated above, which

combines a multi-technique landscape investigation with anthropolog-

ical and geomantic research, would result in a timely study and a lasting

and fitting record of Hong Kong’s traditional rice farming communities

and the landscapes, which over centuries and many generations, they

created and sustainably managed.



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152 Mick ATHA

Acknowledgements

I thank Gordon Mathews for encouraging me to publish in Asian

Anthropology. I am grateful to Patrick Hase for his insightful commentson 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 Morrison’s images of Hong Kong’s 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 Kong’s New

Territories.

2. This is from the OED online dictionary:

http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/landscape?q=landscape

3. “Asia’s world city” is the slogan of the Hong Kong Government’s “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 theFirst 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

Kangxi’s reign between 1662–1669 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 rescis-

sion; however, the Qing government then actively encouraged settlers to

repopulate the land. The origins of the Hakka migration into Hong Kongcan be dated to this period (Hayes 1974).

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