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Sha Lo Tong Study 沙螺銅田野調查

by Yin Yin, Chil, Karry, Kate

 

 

Location and Background

 

Sha Lo Tung is a rural area of Tai Po District, in the northeastern area of New Territories of Hong Kong.

 

The traffic of how to get to Sha Lo Tong is by taxi, and the distance from HKIEd to Sha Lo Tong is around 6.7 km and waste is around 16 minutes.

 

The significance of Sha Lo Tung is because of its eco-environment of the abundance of  mud, swamp and woods. We want to know the environment here and how villagers and aboriginal people regard their place and how they feel the varieties recently compared with it before. So we will interview them to know the direct information,


And there is also an argument of ecological value and development happened in this place before. So we think this is an important place in Hong Kong and want to know more about it.

Story of Sha Lo Tung by the Restaurant Owner

We did a brief interview with the owner of the one and only restaurant in Sha lo Tung. He is also a local in the village. He grew up in the vi We ask him about the banners, his future plan  etc.

 

 

Q: Can you tell us about the background of Sha lo Tung?

 

A: What kind of background information do you want to know?

 

 

Q: Well.. Something like Your childhood memory in Sha lo tung

 

A: Well.. Our village has over 400 years long history. It is a Hakka Village. It’s pretty rare in Hong Kong . There is some, but people in those villages are not pure hakka people, they are mixed. Our Cheung’s house has no outsiders, people’s last names are Cheung and Li. Sha Lo tung has two village. In the past, there are two brothers came from mainland and found this piece of land . They saw mountains and waters, which they can provide for themselves using these natural resources. They can survive in here and slowly it developed a whole village. During the ‘peak’ era of Sha lo tung, There were one to two thaudsand of people lived in here. There were one hundred and twenty two houses. Later, we tried to cooperate with developers. They said they would build houses for us. It has been thirty five years and  the developers still hasn’t built any houses for us. So… we kept waiting . A lot of elderly could not wait for this long.(passed away)  

They wished to live peacefully and fruitfully, but they couldn’t. The village got cheated on. It only got one broken house left in here now. Before when the villagers moved out , the houses were perfectly fine . Later, the developers claimed to build houses for the villagers. So, the villagers moved out .And then the developer had some kind of crisis, and they didn’t build the house . Till now, they still hasn’t build it. In the past, the cheung’s and the Li’s would celebrate together during some festivals. It was very lively and happy . During the festival , there would be ‘hakka pork’ and ‘ big wok rice’ . Every family would sit arounf the table and the great grandfather would distributed the pork. And now, the past is the past. There’s no such sencenary anymore. The people were gone..

 

Q: How long have you run this restaurant?

 

A: We are not running a restaurant . It’s a private home cusine . We make it conveinent for the hikers in case they are hungry.Then, they can eat something.It’s very simple.

 

 

Q: What you think about Sha Lo Tung’s  future ?

 

A: It’s hard to tell for now. The government has set it as second level of cultural heritage. But the government never really tried to repair the broken houses, and the environmentalist are protecting about it. The environmental groups said no to the idea, but have they done anything?For example, when people still lived here in the past, those well and rivers were very beautiful, we can go down and swim, but now , the rivers and water streams are getting less and less.

 

Trip Video 

 

There is one interview in the video.

 

We have interviewed hiker in Sha Lo Tung. The hiker who live in Tai Po told us that he have been there one to two times a year. He said that there is lots of change in Sha Lo Tung this year. Last year, insecticides were sprayed all over the place, the mountains were ‘bald’ (dried up). Now, all the plants and flowers are growing back, But the houses are occupied and I don’t know who did it. The banners were put up there recently.  

Final Presentation

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