Abandoned villages of Hong Kong

https://www.cnn.com/2024/02/13/style/hong-kong-abandoned-villages-stefan-irvine-photographer-hnk/index.html

by keepamovin • 2 years ago

248 115 2 years ago

cnn.com

gottorf• 2 years ago

Amazing how in the 4th-most dense place in the world[0], there could be such a thing as an abandoned village!

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_and_dependen...

bobthepanda2• 2 years ago

A lot of these areas are remote via the road network, or on tiny little islands, or sometimes within the Frontier Closed Area separating Hong Kong and China. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frontier_Closed_Area

vidarh• 2 years ago

A substantial proportion of Hong Kong is entirely undeveloped land.

seanmcdirmid5• 2 years ago

A lot of Chinese municipalities have lots of rural land, they can even encompass multiple counties if that makes any sense. A few even have sane ghost cities (like kangbashi in ordos) that are severely under populated.

HK is mostly mountainous, so there are really dense parts between the mountains (which is cool when you have a dense but not large area surrounded by hills, like a university I visited). In this case, they are talking about an island, not connected via a bridge but a ferry, so it makes sense that life would be tough.

ddeck• 2 years ago

Surprisingly only 24% of Hong Kong is developed "built-up" area. The rest is mostly forested. This also means that despite the density being broadly equivalent to Singapore on that list, it is actually much more densely populated in the areas where people live and work.

Hong Kong has a mountainous topography. Of the total land area of 1,111 km 2, 24.3% (270 km2) is built-up area, with the remaining 75 .7% (841 km 2) being not-for-development or non-built-up area consisting mainly of country parks, wetland, reservoirs, fish ponds, etc

https://www.legco.gov.hk/yr17-18/english/panels/dev/papers/d...

ksec4• 2 years ago

Yes. That means if we accounted for that. Compare to Number 1 on the list where Macau has no such issue. Hong Kong would take the Top Spot as the most populated place on the planet.

larrysalibra2• 2 years ago

Government policy and moneyed interests have been aligned since the british to restrict land use to keep property prices high and buy political support of ancestors of indigenous residents through free handout of tiny plots of land for low density housing to the male descendants. All of the people that bought into the overpriced housing market also want prices to stay high.

Hong Kong land use is fascinating and the government's Planning Department provides a great tool to explore how land is used and for what purpose: https://www.pland.gov.hk/pland_en/info_serv/open_data/landu/

The total area used by transport (71 sq km) is very close to the total area used for all types of residential (80 sq km). Hong Kong has 733 sq km of woodland and forest.

makeitdouble2• 2 years ago

My uneducated guess: the denser, convenient and efficient a city is, the harder it will be to maintain that level of comfort in the outskirts or remote places and people will progressively move to the concentrated areas.

We often hear people arguing that having cheap broadband in all local areas is just impossible, and I read it as "no young adult will want to live in those areas when they've the choice to move out on their own". Broadband being just one example.

Arn_Thor5• 2 years ago

I can shed some light on this. Most of these villages began their demise around the middle to late middle of the last century, before or during the upsurge of the economy that would lead to the city's boom times. Times were very tough, especially out in the sticks, so those that could move abroad, or send their kids abroad, did. That is a large part of why you have a huge ex-Hong Kong community in the UK, Canada, Australia, etc. Entire villages cleared out.

The thing is, they moved but most often retained land rights. So those villages fell into disrepair as people moved but the houses and plots of land usually belong to families that have lived abroad for one, two or three generations now. They could be developed but so far there's little incentive for people to do so, despite the high property prices (those that were very successful abroad instead bought property in Hong Kong's new towns and have seen asset values skyrocket).

Hong Kong's government has historically been very good at providing services for the outlying areas. The many villages that did not end up abandoned have for decades had all the amenities, with stable power, clean water, fiberoptic broadband and often gas as well.

cogman10• 2 years ago

Yup. I came from a small town of 300 people. Of my graduating class of 11, 1 stayed put and the rest moved to more urban areas.

There's just a bunch of issues with being semi remote.

Unless you can land remote work (good luck) jobs are basically have a family farm, work in the school, or work for a state agency maintaining roads, or commute for an hour to a city with more jobs.

Then there's the lack of services, it's basically "want food, entertainment, hospital care? Welp, you are going to have to travel for an hour to get any of that". You pretty much have to leave the town if you want more than a high school education.

Quiet literally the only thing going on in the city is high school sports.

But hey, with small towns that also generally means that everyone knows everyone. Which can be good if you like community, but also can be real bad if you don't want to live where everyone has their nose in everyone else's business.

But then, that was a small town. There's a large number of "communities" where instead of farmers putting their house close together they keep the "homes on the range". Which, as you can imagine, takes people that want isolation to want to live in those places.

solresol• 2 years ago

Likewise, I never expected that there would be a car-free village in Hong Kong. It's peaceful and quiet and laid-back: exactly what you wouldn't expect in Hong Kong.

billti• 2 years ago

Open your maps app and go into satellite view. North of the main area most of Hong Kong is surprisingly green and unpopulated (until you hit the border with Shenzen).

I spent some time in India years ago and remember being amazed that a country with over a billion people could have so much vast open beautiful countryside. It’s incredible how much population can fit into a few (very) dense areas.

ijhuygft776• 2 years ago

CNN reported that... so maybe double check their claims?

jesterson• 2 years ago

2024 and people still blindly believe what CNN is "reporting". Unbelieveable

razakel• 2 years ago

They look like beautiful places to live, there just isn't the infrastructure or economy to support them. Which, admittedly, is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

jez• 2 years ago

https://lite.cnn.com/2024/02/13/style/hong-kong-abandoned-vi...

circularfoyers• 2 years ago

Unfortunately this removes the images it seems.

rcMgD2BwE72F• 2 years ago

Thank you. I can't access the page otherwise, CNN says

Browser Blocked (Firefox) >We apologize, but your web browser is configured in such a way that it is preventing this site from implementing required components that protect your privacy and allow you to view and change your privacy settings. This functionality is required for privacy legislation in your region.

jojobas2• 2 years ago

remote villages

Please, the entirety of Hong Kong is like 40x50km.

There sure are some tall steep hills making some areas just not worth messing with.

bobthepanda2• 2 years ago

There are also lots of tiny little islands, some of which used to be fishing villages.

keiranlovett3• 2 years ago

Remote in this context can mean “out of the way and hard to get to”.

Some of the outlining villages that are heavily populated are regarded as “remote” because they have limited public transport infrastructure. The density of the city combined with the mountainous topology makes it impossible to directly go to your destination.

Then, these abandoned villages are on outlying islands from these heavily populated villages. You need to hire a private charter boat or a “tour service” to get to.

So it can take 1-2 hours from the city center to get to one of the villages (if you’re going to Sai Kung Village, you’re on a single road prone to congestion during peak traffic), then you’re taking another 1-2 hour ride on a boat to the islands you want to go to.

Certainly possible as day trips, but also certainly an inconvenience.

jojobas2• 2 years ago

Anywhere else in the world 1-2 hours away from a metropolitan city centre is anything but remote.

People commute from Pakenham to Melbourne (~1:20), from Alpharetta to Atlanta (~1:30) etc.

jjcm• 2 years ago

Meta comment - what is going on with the network traffic on that page? Seems like there's ~20 network requests per second that are sustained when I open it up. Scrolling through the article and it ended up with 2k requests.

Was getting lag even on an m1 pro.

wallawe• 2 years ago

I tried it and only got 80 requests. Then turned off uBlock Origin and got the same 2k ish you did. That's pretty wild.

ipaddr• 2 years ago

Tracking mouse movements my guess. Maybe crypto mining.

guardiangod• 2 years ago

Hong Kong has many of such sites. I remember when I was 7-ish years old, my father took me to an island to look for the grave of my great grandfather, who fled to HK during China's civil war. We trotted the mountains thru the tall hillside grass to reach clusters of abandoned graves, and checked the tombstones for the man's name.

We more or less hiked (no trails) till sunset, when I suggested we should turn back before dark. The island was more or less deserted except for a newly built public housing estate at a pier. Being stuck on a (almost) wilderness mountain surrounded by abandoned tombs at night was not my idea of fun.

sunnybeetroot• 2 years ago

Do you recall the name of the island?

reassembled• 2 years ago

And did you find the great grandfathers grave?

jumploops• 2 years ago

Highly recommend hiking a segment or two of the MacLehose Trail in Hong Kong.

Section 5 [0] in particular is striking, as you're hiking through the forest _above_ Kowloon. Plus quite a few monkeys, if you're lucky!

[0] https://www.alltrails.com/explore/trail/hong-kong/sai-kung/m...

KMag2• 2 years ago

The monkeys are not native, and can be rather aggressive, particularly during the breeding season. The novelty wore off on me pretty quickly.

Also, on Lantau Island, exercise caution when encountering feral cattle on hiking trails.

But, I really miss hiking in Hong Kong, especially in the Autumn.

dheera2• 2 years ago

“I started the habit of carrying dog biscuits in my camera bag when I went out to these places,” he said

That makes them more likely to attack other visitors, unfortunately.

el_benhameen• 2 years ago

Dogs aren’t like criminals. They aren’t going to assume another visitor has treats and attack when the visitor doesn’t produce them. They’re going to emulate whatever behavior got them treats last time.

keepamovin5• 2 years ago

The deer of Japan disagree with you haha :)

But more seriously what is a good strategy for dealing with wild dogs?

neom• 2 years ago

Korea and Japan also have these. The Japanese ones are covered extensively on youtube, however, my favs are by Tokyo Lens, I like his style and his voice is very calming. Here are some of my faves:

This Man Lives in an Abandoned Japanese School - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-i2Ndgrgcu8

(cont. I Spent 72 Hours in a Japanese School - Abandoned in the Mountains - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvPxJBiDgp8)

Why Was This Japanese Village Abandoned? - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDPT6q_4OHY

Inside a free tiny house in Japan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tneLNsV3oXQ

Series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLtflILeTBlX-Klzfudsxp...

nojs• 2 years ago

Taiwan too: https://www.twtainan.net/en/attractions/detail/4486

etrautmann• 2 years ago

I was hiking in the outskirts of HK a while ago and was amazed to wander into the middle of a massive airsoft game that was being played in these abandoned villages. The players were decked out to 100% realism, where I couldn't tell that it wasn't a military exercise. Pretty surreal

keiranlovett3• 2 years ago

You just unlocked a childhood memory of my time in Hong Kong. There was an “abandoned” anti-aircraft battery on one of the mountains on the island. We would occasionally go there for airsoft games. Not fully decked out like you’re talking about (but I’ve seen those too).

boomboomsubban• 2 years ago

I assume everywhere has them, the US has tons. Some were abandoned long ago, some still have residents but are slowly dying out.

I had a friend who liked to go visit them, and I went with a few times. They look like the original post, old looking on the outside and falling apart on the inside.

throwaway4good2• 2 years ago

It is not really comparable. This is more like finding abandoned villages in New York city.

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

City or state? Because while HK is a city, the area is not just the city but a whole "special administrative region" containing a peninsula + islands, where these pictures were taken from. Compare: https://www.atlasobscura.com/things-to-do/new-york-state/aba...

sct202• 2 years ago

There are formerly inhabited islands in Boston harbor that are similar to these fishing villages, and they're mostly used now as stops on tourist day trips to explore ruins. It's a PITA to live in a place only accessibly by ferry.

Cthulhu_2• 2 years ago

There's a scene in a James May show where he visits a town in Japan that isn't quite abandoned yet, but very sparsely populated. One or several of the villagers were taken to making puppets and placing them around the empty buildings like the school.

A shame, but also a natural progression if there are no jobs around anymore, and / or the jobs in the cities pay better and seem more attractive. We're lucky that in the software industry, a lot of jobs can be done remote now so people don't have to live in the cities unless they choose to, but that's only a fraction of the workforce.

LoveMortuus• 2 years ago

While lack of jobs is one factor, I think a much bigger factor is the imminent colony collapse - birth rate being below the replacement level (which, if I remember correctly, is 2.1).

And with the relatively wide availability of internet even in rural areas via satellites, the job factor is even lower. Of course, most jobs aren't computer/internet based, but there are still many jobs there, and some could say that the job market in those areas is growing (I'm aware of record-breaking lay-offs in the tech sector this year, but I think that has more to do with the current economy, I could be wrong)

somenameforme5• 2 years ago

As a peer post hit on, this sort of stuff is mostly related to collapsing birth rates. Japan's lost about 6 million people since 2009 [1], and the rate of decline is still accelerating. That's millions of homes, businesses, and so on that no longer serve any purpose. And the wild thing is that, due to the way fertility works, they will keep losing at least the same ratio of people per year (currently about 1 in 200) until they either start having children, or go extinct.

This, in turn, causes economic problems. When a country has high fertility rates, their market naturally grows year by year. And vice versa, when they have a low fertility rate. So it's likely to become a vicious cycle. The population declining because of low fertility rate drives economic chaos resulting in even lower fertility rates. And this same future awaits every country with sub-replacement fertility rates. It's like watching a train wreck unfold in ultra slow-mo, but being no more capable of independently stopping it.

https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/japan-populat...

freedomben• 2 years ago

Nice, the real questions I had about the Abandoned Japanese School (like how he gets power and money) were answered in a part 2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwGx4lXTWfw

xianwen• 2 years ago

This is strange. Hong Kong is not that large, as compared to South Korea or Japan. Many people in Hong Kong live in tidy space. Why are there abandoned villages in Hong Kong?

seanmcdirmid5• 2 years ago

Do you want to live in the city with utilities and transit infrastructure, or do you want to live in the middle of a mountainous island with nothing but a ferry connection to shore?

rdoherty• 2 years ago

If you read the article it says exactly why:

In the 1950s and ‘60s, as Hong Kong grew as an industrial hub, many people migrated to the rapidly expanding urban centers for better working opportunities. “It’s hard farming and fishing out there in these remote areas, so a lot of people moved to the city to work in the factories,”

resolutebat2• 2 years ago

That explained why they were abandoned, but not why they haven't been reoccupied, since HK's population has exploded since the 1950s.

The short answer seems to be corruption: a cabal of property developers colludes with the government to ensure prices are sky-high and nobody outside the system (like, say, whoever owns the land in these abandoned villages) gets building permits.

coggs• 2 years ago

I lived in HK in the 90's at the HK University of Science and Technology. It's out in the New Territories, surrounded by small villages and otherwise mostly undeveloped dense, low-lying scrub. We'd hike in the country parks and it could be surreal; Remnants of abandoned villages like in the article. Feral dogs like in the article. We had some Hakka ladies take us on their boat out to I think it was Pak Sha Chau where there was a small pathetic abandoned amusement park. Also there was a larger island with an original refugee camp from the Vietnamese boat people era. Now I think it is a golf course.. Great memories

ksec4• 2 years ago

On a related topic: Anyone want to sign up for a HN meet up in Hong Kong. I have read at least a few expats on HN said to be working in HK. Not sure if there are many more of us.

larrysalibra2• 2 years ago

sure!

qazxcvbnm• 2 years ago

Sounds like a fun idea!

dewey4• 2 years ago

Sign me up! Tried to get something going last year and met some people there (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35243008).

Also if you are in HK and are interested in hacker spaces there's https://www.dimsumlabs.com which is great. Has an open door every Tuesday (today!).

patanouk• 2 years ago

Count me in!

For people interested in abandoned villages, I can heartily recommend the 'Hong Kong Abandoned Villages' group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/801573476651269/

The group still has content posted daily, with almost exclusively Hong Kong places

btzs• 2 years ago

I am interested, too!

Renaud• 2 years ago

Hear, hear!

faichai• 2 years ago

I’d be interested.

ulfw3• 2 years ago

I'm game. Am in Central.

yololol• 2 years ago

One more o/

alun• 2 years ago

Check out Dim Sum Labs, it's a really cool hacker space in Sheung Wan. I think meet ups are every Tuesday

ksec4• 2 years ago

Thanks will do that.

ksec4• 2 years ago

WOAH.... I wasn't expecting anything. Let me figure out how to get this moving forward. ( Need to find a Venue )

dewey4• 2 years ago

Two proven meetup locations would be the IFC rooftop terrace (Next to Shake Shack) or Inn Side Out (Monthly BTC meetup is happening there).

mishu2• 2 years ago

I'd also like to join.

gyzmau• 2 years ago

Some HN fellow in Hk, Nice to see! Kung Hei Fat Choy

0web• 2 years ago

Me too if you're still checking these replies!

ulfw3• 2 years ago

So... anyone?

dewey4• 2 years ago

I'm not the OP, but I also just checked in on this thread again and thought I'll just start a HN HK WhatsApp group to get everyone in one place so we can see how many people we would be.

Otherwise grabbing a beer with 1-2 people is also usually not a bad outcome:

https://chat.whatsapp.com/J0figJGIgTkAwUkbmOzuLQ

I hope this invite link works, otherwise email in my profile.

dewey4• 2 years ago

Funnily enough I just walked by this gallery yesterday and planned on visiting it after the holidays. Looks really interesting.

keepamovin5• 2 years ago

Yeah by posting it I hoped to encourage people to visit the gallery too :)

Terr_2• 2 years ago

I imagine part of it has to do with how how land-control works in HK, and the relationship between government income, taxes, and property developers.

As a former resident, I sometimes hear people talking about how HK is ranked highly by some US think-tank with respect to business taxes and regulation--usually with a "we should do that in America" bent.

Many of them don't seem to realize all the other idiosyncratic policies--ones they might dislike--which balance that and make it possible. For example, huge amounts of subsidized and/or government-run housing, revenues from the land leases, and an enormous sovereign-wealth fund.

ulfw3• 2 years ago

LOL at the "enormous sovereign-wealth fund" comment. No such thing. We finally got one new just a year or so ago and it's miniscule (obviously, as it's new):

https://www.chinadailyhk.com/article/304054

LudwigNagasena• 2 years ago

It is basically a restructuring of existing funds. The Exchange Fund acted as an SWF in all but name for a long time.

GianFabien• 2 years ago

Looks like an amazing area for a movie set. Just need the right script that takes advantage of the surreal scenery.

papaver-somnamb• 2 years ago

Once upon a time, I went on a spontaneous solo trek along a trail I stumbled upon, after crossing a large, modern bridge on foot. Lan Tau maybe. It was beautiful. The hills were remarkably fragrant, and I wondered if that's a contributing factor in how HK got it's name ("Fragrant Harbor"). Saw a collection of no-longer-tended graves in the traditional womb shape. And along the ridges with views on both sides, I could really get a sense of lay and scale of HK. It was so enjoyable that I even forgot my exhaustion until I was solidly back in the built environment.

That evening, when I returned and shared my excitement, I received a dressing-down for walking on the trails alone; explanation being people that have entered HK without permission or those fleeing within HK from like the law tend to hide out in the hills, and they are known to sometimes attack out of desperation or suspicion. To this day I'm still not certain about it, what was their reasoning rooted in..

thriftwy• 2 years ago

It's very weird. Any of these houses in HK could have been a great dacha, and would cost hundred of thousands dollars.

wkat4242• 2 years ago

Too bad they destroyed the walled city.. Id have loved to see it one day.

Abandoned villages of Hong Kong

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