182 Ka-ming Wu
dimensions. First, the Ma Shi Po campaign has made it possible for marginalized
farmers to defend their way of life, their homes, and their livelihoods against the
increasing urban sprawl of Hong Kong. Second, the campaign is the first to raise
the possibility of having farmland coexist with urban neighborhoods in Hong
Kong. Third, through promoting ethical consumption practices and lifestyles
and art, cultural, and communal projects, the activities of Ma Shi Po activists
contribute to a new micro-political, lifestyle-based as well as place-based identity
politics and social activism in post-colonial Hong Kong.
I discussed how the rural activism of Ma Shi Po has created a unique space
that speaks to global environmental concerns and local political, economic,
and environmental problems. In many ways, this case of rural activism is
one instantiation of the global community gardens movement that provide
opportunities for urbanites to dirty their hands, grow their own organic food,
develop stronger neighborhood relations, and improve community health and
well-being (Armstrong 2000; Firth, Maye, and Pearson 2011). And even though
the size of Ma Po Po’s community farm is comparatively small, its activists
consistently address concerns about food security and the importance of Hong
Kong having its own food production (Green Local Trend 2013). Through its
farmers’ market and various workshops, the campaign links its struggle to global
critiques of modern industrial agricultural systems, which are producing unhealthy,
processed food and harming both the environment and the people. Although the
Hong Kong activists seldom use the term “alternative food network”, which is
one of the major concerns of community garden advocates in the Euro-American
context (Anderson and Cook 1999; Evers and Hodgson 2011), they are expressing
similar aims when they speak about the necessity of having urban neighborhood
farms instead of relying entirely on imported food from China.
The case of rural activism in Ma Shi Po both resonates with community
gardens movements in many parts of the world (Baker 2004) and makes unique
interventions in the local context as it addresses the problem of real estate
dominance and questions the conventional growth model and the colonial
narrative of Hong Kong history and society. This activism has differed from that
of conventional party politics, which is often protest-based and relies on a few
elite spokesmen. Instead, it extends the meanings of civic engagement to include
lifestyle consumption practices and patterns of everyday life in late modernity
(Lewis 2015). This has won much support, especially from the younger generation
for its ability to connect a green transformational politics with a new form of
community making. The rural activism of Ma Shi Po offers a glimpse into the
changing sociocultural and geopolitical landscape of post-colonial Hong Kong,
in which government policy, land planning, place-based cultural identity, food
security of the special administrative region, and lifestyle practices and micro-
political activism have become tightly intertwined.