Ma Shi Po is the latest farming village in Hong Kong preparing to bite the dust of the commercial diggers

A tiny farm plot that will soon be tranformed to residential complexes. Photo by Tim Cheung.

Hong Kong villages at mercy of urban developers

By Tim Cheung
CNN Asia
4 January, 2011

Excerpt:

After decades of rapid urban development, farming villages like Ma Shi Po are on the verge of extinction in Hong Kong.

Hong Kong doesn’t strike people as a city that promotes a back-to-nature lifestyle and the brutal truth is younger generations here don’t always have the luxury of interacting with nature. Many have “probably never been to a farmland,” according to Sandy Chan, an amateur environmental advocate.

A lot of arable farmland in Hong Kong has rapidly disappeared to make way for urban development in recent decades, often resulting in grievous friction between villagers and developers.

One example of this friction materialized at the Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong Express Rail Link protest in January last year, where protests were carried out near the Legislative Council Building.

Protesters were provoked by the government’s plan to bulldoze Tsoi Yuen village for the construction of the high-speed railway without the consent of all the villagers.

Read the complete article here.