A SENSE OF PERMANENT OWNERSHIP

Over the past week, the reports about Cantonese villagers in Yuen Long attacking people with iron bars and wooden staves (baseball bats) at the MTR station have excited some attention, but scant informed comment, in the international press. Largely because the outside world thinks it's just an interesting manifestation of political discord somewhere exotic, but does not have much deep interest in details. But also because the concept of "walled villages" is far from foreign heads.

Walled villages (圍 'wai') in HK are an interesting phenomenon.

Here's an article from the South China Morning Post precisely about those zones in Hong Kong's more rural hinterland.


新界之圍


Yuen Long violence exposes the turf mentality of Hong Kong’s walled villages

To the villagers, the Yuen Long attack could have been understood as self-defence – against the anti-extradition and increasingly anti-Beijing protests that have spread from the city centre to the outlying areas of Hong Kong

Isabella Ng
Published: 4:00pm, 26 Jul, 2019

The brutal assault in and around Yuen Long station on the West Rail Line by a mob of men, most of them from walled villages and some with triad backgrounds, has exposed more than a schism between the anti-extradition black shirts and pro-police white shirts. More importantly, the attack on Sunday night shows a deep, long-standing division in Hong Kong between urbanites and villagers – especially the older indigenous people – in terms of their sense of belonging and ownership of place, and of governance.

For the longest time, Yuen Long was a rural area inhabited only by the indigenous Cantonese and Hakkas. Although the district has been urbanised in recent years, acquired more modern landmarks like Yoho Mall and opened up to outsiders (urbanites and even expatriates), the indigenous people maintain a turf mentality that hasn’t changed much since the 19th century, when the British took control of the New Territories but encountered strong resistance from the villagers.

Some of the indigenous clans trace their roots in the New Territories as far back as the Song dynasty. The clans ran their villages like fiefdoms and to this day, the villagers hold fast to this sense of responsibility for managing their territory, in stark contrast to how urbanites usually rely on the public authorities.

You see this in the way the villagers organise themselves, into village councils and other associations. And this is the mentality that led to some indigenous people taking matters into their own hands and beating up train passengers in Yuen Long.

To these villagers, the assault was an act of self-governance and self-defence – against the troublemaking outsiders in their midst, against the anti-extradition and increasingly anti-China protests that have spread from the city centre to the outlying areas of Hong Kong. Historically, the walled villages could not be entered without permission. Traditionally, the villagers are known to be pro-China and pro-establishment, except if and when the small-house policy created to compensate the clans is in jeopardy.

The Yuen Long incident was not simply a gang attack. According to reports, it involved more than one gang and more than one village (including those in the rural sub-districts of Ping Shan, Pat Heung and Ha Tsuen). To these assailants, their action was more a defence of perhaps their core value: “This is my home, don’t trespass.”

These rod-wielding men’s assault on alleged troublemakers and perceived intruders from downtown suggests the villagers still feel a sense of ownership of every inch of soil in Yuen Long, even though the rural-urban divide in Hong Kong is blurring. This is their home and no one is to trespass, never mind that the very land under their feet now belongs to a property developer or has become a transport depot teeming with innocent people.

The police’s handling of the incident – some police stations shut their doors, officers arrived late and failed to take prompt action against the assailants – was not simply a matter of insufficient manpower, despite the police chief’s suggestion. It was also an example of the New Territories’ feudal legacy: the police have a history of sidestepping direct confrontation with the indigenous people.

Of course, the younger generation of villagers might think quite differently from the older generation; video footage of the attack suggests the assailants were mainly middle-aged.
Undeniably, times are changing. Although the villagers were known to be chauvinistic in the old days, they have become friendlier and more hospitable in recent years, as more village houses are sold or rented out to urbanites and expatriates.

But if the older villagers’ entrenched idea of fiefdom is unchanged, it might affect livelihoods in a Yuen Long that is becoming increasingly commercialised and accessible by public transport. After all, if outsiders do not feel welcomed, who would patronise the shops and restaurants that rely on such business to survive? The villagers’ turf mentality, if unbroken, would seriously affect urbanites’ perception of Yuen Long as a safe and welcoming space.

The violent attack on Sunday night should be taken as a chance to re-examine not only the governance of Hong Kong, but also the rural-urban dynamics that could be vital to Hong Kong’s future development.


Isabella Ng is assistant professor and associate head of the Department of Asian and Policy Studies at The Education University of Hong Kong. She is also the author of the newly published book, Hong Kong Rural Women Under Chinese Rule: Gender Politics, Reunification and Globalisation in Post-colonial Hong Kong


SOURCE: Yuen Long violence - Isabella Ng - SCMP


This article will be relevant to anyone interested in Chinese enclaves in South East Asia and to a certain extent in North America, as the insular "our turf" mentality occurs in all Southern Chinese communities.
And understandably so.

Urbanites and Northerners, in one sense, are merely a foreign overlay.
If you are Cantonese, then speaking Mandarin is a clever trick.
When only Mandarin, um, you've failed at life.

And native born "English onlies", are, of course, never really people, except to their parents, who often find them inexplicably flawed.




Note: This article posted here in its entirety because I find it useful and insightful, and intend to re-read it several times along with further reading elsewhere. If I did not do so, I probably couldn't find it again.





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