Discovering Hong Kong’s first heritage trail
The Tang Clan of the New Territories is one of Hong Kong’s oldest family clans with the longest history. In the wake of unrest and power struggles between individual Chinese kingdoms, waves of refugees repeatedly moved from various regions of the north to the south, where the emigrants settled and founded villages. The name of a clan often derives from the dynasty when the emigration began, in this case, from the Tang Dynasty (618-907 a.d.). Around the time of the Song Dynasty (960–1279 a.d.), the first settlers of the Tang and the Ping clans from Guandong reached the area around Ping Shan. They built walled villages, pagodas, and temples where they offered sacrifices to their gods. They erected study halls where young men prepared for the examination to become an imperial state servant, and ancestral halls to celebrate and honour the deceased. But the ancestral halls also served another purpose: archiving the documentation related to the development of land ownerships. Due to the progressive urbanisation of the New Territories, the clans were concerned about the preservation of their culture and suggested to the government that they should set up a Heritage Trail.
The Ping Shan Heritage Trail opened in 1993 and was the first of its kind. It runs through Ping Shan, past Hong Kong’s only remaining pagoda. There is a walled village with imposing bars to close off the main gate, a well that for a long time represented the only freshwater supply for the two villages, and several temples and ancestral halls that are still used for gatherings of the clans. The trail ends at the former colonial police station, which was built to control the villagers, but has now been converted into a museum to commemorate their history.
Info
Address The trail starts at the Tsui Sing Lau Pagoda, Tsui Sing Road, Tin Shui Wai | Public Transport MTR West Rail Line towards Tuen Mun, Tin Shui Wai Station, Exit D | Tip In the MTR Tin Shui Wan you will find an odd bronze sculpture, called ”Climbing Up,” decorated with people (who have a strange resemblance to Mao) crawling up a book.
Although it is quite a long trip from downtown to Ping Shan, and the area is rather unusual, as part of the Heritage Trail leads through an industrial area, it’s definitely worth the visit.
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