e-Book List
e-Book
Sha Tau Kok Mui Tsz Lam is a Hakka village with more than 300 years of history, located on the slopes of Tiu Tang Lung in the northeast of the New Territories in Hong Kong. The villagers all share the same surname Tsang, and at its most prosperous period, there were 16 households and over a hundred residents. In the village, thatched hut built by the ancestors of the villagers can still be found today, as well as the layout of traditional Hakka architecture: rows of village houses built on the terrain, with large-scale terraced fields in front of the houses that are now rare in Hong Kong, and high mountains and feng shui forests behind them. In the 1970s, the younger generation left the village to make a living, and Mui Tsz Lam became deserted. The bustling scene of the past was no longer seen. In recent years, many villagers have actively returned to the village to take care of it, and with the restoration of electricity supply in the village and the re-paving of the road from Lai Chi Wo to Mui Tsz Lam, the long-abandoned ancient village has gradually regained its vitality. In 2019, the government launched the Countryside Conservation Funding Scheme to encourage local non-profit organizations and villagers to interact and collaborate to promote diverse and innovative conservation activities in remote rural areas. "Hing Chun Yurk Participatory Action Research on Countryside Conservation and Restoration in Mui Tsz Lam" is one of the approved projects. This project takes historical and cultural aspects as the entry point, and conducts data collection that lasted for more than two years, trying to decipher the code of the life system that circulated endlessly in Mui Tsz Lam in the past. This book is one of the results of this project, which is divided into five parts. The first part reviews the historical development and seasonal culture of Mui Tsz Lam, and presents the vivid appearance of Mui Tsz Lam in the past through oral history of the villagers. The second part records the process of villagers and research teams picking up and processing antiques, including cleaning and sorting, measuring and registering sizes, photography, storage and cataloging, to reconstruct the story and living space of the ancient village. The third and fourth parts cover the laws related to rural conservation in Hong Kong, and review and discuss the loopholes in relevant conservation policies, bringing out the concept of "cultural landscape" to understand the countryside. The final part is based on the experience of field investigation in Mui Tsz Lam, summarizing the six major cultural elements of Hakka villages in the cultural landscape. The book is well-written, vividly narrated, and presents the rich cultural and spiritual civilization of Hakka villages.
- AuthorPatsy Cheng, Phoebe Chau, Casper Yam
- PublisherJoint Publishing
- Publication Date2022
- Preview