S A N D R A

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.