- A group of artists who took up residency in remote Lai Chi Wo, near the Chinese border, are showing the fruits of their encounters with rural village life
- Featuring oral histories, vernacular architecture and representations of farming, its curation was a journey of discovery for one Hakka artist
There's a ferry that heads out of the Tolo Channel, past a police checkpoint and floating barrier, and on into a geological park and some of the most dramatic scenery in Hong Kong.
It's a world away from high-rises, although a Shenzhen container port suddenly looms on the horizon. There are a few other ferries, a couple of fishing boats, egrets and other bird life, red rock formations and then, a little over an hour later, we see the pier from which a path leads to the historic village of Lai Chi Wo.
The village, which is more than 300 years old, was once a flourishing community of Hakka Chinese farmers and one of the more affluent settlements in the northeastern New Territories.
By the 1950s, however, it had become so poor, some villagers say, that parents could not afford to send their children to school. So, like other indigenous villagers in rural Hong Kong, they migrated to work in restaurants in Britain and Germany, and later set up their own. (The Hakka, whose name in Chinese means "guest families", migrated from northern China to southern China in the 13th century and have their own language.)
On board the ferry is community artist Evelyna Liang Kan, herself half Hakka, who, together with seven others, has created an exhibition in the village reflecting its cultural and farming background as their gift to the community.
Liang spent 18 months gathering Hakka life stories from the 10 or so indigenous permanent inhabitants, and from 15 other Hakka residents of Hong Kong and Guangdong. She also visited Belfast, in Northern Ireland, to talk to some former Lai Chi Wo residents there.
Their oral stories and Hakka singing feature on recordings throughout the village that begin to play as you walk past. The singers are elderly Hakka shange singer Cheung Ching-tai and Hong Kong academic and indigenous Hakka Stephen Cheung, who specialises in Hakka songs and culture. (Shange are a form of Hakka folk song.)
Liang called the exhibition "MurMur of the Brick, Rurally Engaged Art" because, she says: "Every time I touch old buildings, I always have the feeling that when you are touching something you are in touch with the history and heritage."
For Liang, putting together the exhibition has been a journey into her past. She is Hakka on her father's side and had never explored this part of her identity. It has given her a new sense of who she is and helped her establish a firm bond with the residents of Lai Chi Wo.
Village head Tsang Wai-yip freely admits that before the artists came he knew nothing about heritage and sustainability. "But the people from University of Hong Kong have educated me on this. I also know little about art, other than it leaves me feeling peaceful and content," he says.
Liang says: "Many of the people here had to go abroad to find work. Now they are well established and want to come back and help their village."
Lai Chi Wo has welcomed temporary residents, including artist Monti Lai Wai-yi, whose artwork is inspired by farming and who, at her own insistence, has been involved in much back-breaking work cultivating rice without machinery over the past few years.
Her installations of corn sheaths and outdoor straw hats on tripods or sticks are her way of paying homage to all the farmers who have come before her to till the earth. As we walk down the fields to see her hats, dogs laze in the sunshine on village paths; buffalo will come by at dusk. Birds line an electric pylon.
Tsang is proud of the exhibits spread throughout the village and in the surrounding fields, which have survived because of a village emphasis on feng shui.
Woody Leung, who is in his second year of residency at Lai Chi Wo, has immersed himself in learning about Hakka architecture. His outdoor installation shows adobe bricks of mud and straw that would have been made in the village, and explains the process of making them as visitors come by.
These songs and stories, thoughts of home, the cooling of a bamboo hat, the intricacies of a woven band, the resilient lives that refuse to give up in dry and cracked earth, these expressions of art are our gifts and testimonies to Lai Chi WoEvelyna Liang Kan, artist
Inside one house, resident Tony Tsang, the youngest of four children born in Belfast, has created an art piece with a huge black and white photo of himself as a young boy with his family alongside a cardboard cow and straw. It represents what the village means to him " a stronghold where he was brought up from a young age by his grandparents.
Artist Lau Mei-yee, who is now based in Japan, has created one of the more striking pieces " she has dyed bamboo using traditional methods to create patterned straw hats.
Gladys Chiu learned how to do the band weaving of Hakka women just a couple of years ago, from a woman in her 80s in another village who passed on the skill.
"I intend to integrate the knowledge and skill I learned into my art creation, telling my life story through weaving patterned bands," she says of the bands that are worn on the hat and tell of romance, mountains and whether a woman was single or married.
"Before making the band, first we need to wear a belt around our waist," says Chiu, who also teaches students how to weave. "So we need to organise the thread and then use bamboo for the loom. The concept is similar to the weaving in some Western culture."
Artist Zoe Siu's installation stands outside a terrace of Hakka houses. It's a series of circular mirrors set in interconnecting woven frames over a drying rail with multiple pairs of socks. The art piece is based on the stories of childhood hardship told by Lai Chi Wo resident Ying Tse, who only got her first pair of socks when she emigrated to Britain.
Wong Wing-fung's installation is inspired by five stories about two families from different generations who used to live in the village.
"These songs and stories, thoughts of home, the cooling of a bamboo hat, the intricacies of a woven band, the resilient lives that refuse to give up in dry and cracked earth," says Liang, "these expressions of art are our gifts and testimonies to Lai Chi Wo."
MurMur of the Brick, Rurally Engaged Art. Until December 30. Lai Chi Wo Village, Sha Tau Kok
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