180 Ka-ming Wu
festivals and establishing exhibits that highlighted the importance of preserving
farmland and village communities in the New Territories (Yuen Hau Yan 2014). In
response, university students have set up groups on agricultural development and
concerned artists went to make art and documentaries at Ma Shi Po (Yuen Hau Yan
2013; Ng Sai Ling 2014). Inspired by the Ma Shi Po campaign, a group of artists
designed a program called “Art Travel Learning on Urban Rural Co-existence” in
2014 and put together an exhibition of agricultural and household tools combined
with an oral history documentary of villagers and farmers in the New Territories.
Theatre artists have also made the Ma Shi Po story into a staged performance
(Kafka 2014). In other words, the Ma Shi Po campaign has actively engaged
with the educated classes, art communities, and other social organizations so as to
popularize their message. In the process, many young people have become keen
supporters of this cause.
Indeed, Ma Shi Po activism speaks directly to a younger generation of
citizens who were born and grew up in Hong Kong after 1997. The Ma Shi Po
campaign is attractive because it helps to imagine a different kind of community
and development in Hong Kong by enabling a very different narrative and
understanding of the city. The history of Hong Kong is often narrated as follows: It
developed from a small fishing village to today’s global financial center under the
reign of benign British colonialism, and its legacy is the rule of law and the value
of economic liberalism. This narrative is taught in schools, reiterated in travel
books and tightly integrated into the politics of place identity. Such a narrative,
however, often works most favorably for global business elites, advocates for
unending economic development, and easily neglects peoples’ interests at the
grassroots as well as their many micro- and local histories of place.
Agriculture in the New Territories (by indigenous and later by non-indigenous
tenants) is a major “micro”-history of Hong Kong that is rarely mentioned in
the “official” or mainstream discourse. But the Ma Shi Po campaign has nicely
articulated a micro-history of the New Territories and woven it into a major
development debate that concerns today’s Hong Kong. The campaign reminds us
that agriculture has been central to the region for at least 300 years, well before
the commencement of British colonialism. Agricultural development also had a
significant renaissance after World War Two when many migrated from southern
Chinese towns such as Nanhai, Panyu, and Shunde and brought to Hong Kong
new vegetable species, farming methods, and associated communities and local
cultures (Janice 2014). For many young people in Hong Kong, Ma Shi Po’s rural
activism is therefore about rescuing and/or re-valuing a major part of Hong Kong’s
history, culture, and identity that has been largely forgotten in the hegemonic
narrative of Hong Kong as a global financial center. It helps the younger generation
to think about how Hong Kong can chart a path that is different from the past and
that promotes a new sense of sustainable community.
Ma Shi Po’s opposition to the development of the northeastern New Territories,
just across the mainland border, also makes it central to recent debates about the
position of Hong Kong as a special administrative district of China after 1997. Hong
Kong relies heavily on China for all kinds of resources (such as food, power, and