This 300-Year-Old Farming Village Was Abandoned in the 1960s. Now Residents Are Moving Back

January 13, 2025 | Source: CNN World | by Rebecca Cairns

“We maintain what is called a feng-shui forest, to preserve the village,” says Susan Wong. The 73-year-old grandmother is the village chief, and was born in Lai Chi Wo, when the town was home to around 1,000 residents. “From our ancestors to now, it has been passed down, not to let anyone cut down the trees. If you cut all the trees out, the mountain will become bare, and nothing can cover the village.”

Feng shui — which literally means “wind” and “water” — is a design philosophy about how homes, villages and cities should be arranged for good fortune.

Surrounded by forest-covered mountains cloaked in mist, a patchwork quilt of green farmland and steel-blue waves breaking on mangrove-strewn mudflats, Lai Chi Wo does not look like it belongs in Hong Kong.

The remote 300-year-old village is one of the city’s oldest settlements — and one of its most biodiverse.

Its location is no accident: it draws on the traditional philosophies of the Hakka people, one of Hong Kong’s pre-colonial indigenous groups, who built the settlement.