Indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories

This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (July 2009) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

This article is part of a series on the
History of Hong Kong
Timeline
Prehistoric Imperial  (221 BC – 1800s) Bao'an County and Xin'an County British Hong Kong (1841–1941, 1945–1997) Colonial  (1800s–1930s) Convention of Chuenpi Treaty of Nanking Convention of Peking Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory Japanese occupation (1941–1945)   (1940s) 1950s 1960s (1967 riots) 1970s 1980s 1990s Retrocession to China Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of China (since 1997) 2000s 2010s 2020s 2019–20 protests COVID-19 pandemic National security law (2020, 2024) 2021 electoral reform
By topic
Aviation Bus Culture Economy Education Geography Politics Technical standards
History of China / of the United Kingdom Hong Kong portal
v t e

Indigenous inhabitants are people descended through the male line from a person who was in 1898, before Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory was signed, a resident of an established village in the New Territories of Hong Kong.^[1]

Indigenous inhabitants have special rights to preserve their customs. When the sovereignty of Hong Kong was transferred from the United Kingdom to the People's Republic of China in 1997, these special rights were preserved under the Hong Kong Basic Law.

Article 40 of the Basic Law

The lawful traditional rights and interests of the indigenous inhabitants of the "New Territories" shall be protected by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.

Special rights are restricted to the village that the indigenous inhabitant is from. In order to protect the tradition of villages, male indigenous inhabitants have the right to apply for small house, known as Ting Uk (Chinese: 丁屋; Hong Kong Hakka: Den¹ Vuk⁵). Properties are only inherited by male members of a village. The interests of indigenous inhabitants are represented by the Heung Yee Kuk (Chinese: 鄉議局; Hong Kong Hakka: Hiong¹ Ngi⁴ Kiuk⁶).

In 2021, the Liber Research Community found sites of suspected of illegal collusion between developers and villagers, and additionally found villager land that could otherwise be used for housing in Hong Kong, contrary to the government's claim that the land was "unfit" for development.^{[2][better source needed]}

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008)

People have been living on boats in the New Territories for generations, and they do not usually own land or houses. They have no special rights because the Hong Kong government since 1898 only recognises established villages (Chinese: 認可鄉村; Hong Kong Hakka: Ngin⁴ko³ Hiong¹con¹).

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding to it. (June 2008)

As a result of a large influx of non-indigenous inhabitants into the rural villages, conflicts between indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants are surfacing. Because the management of a village was only in the hand of indigenous inhabitants, non-indigenous inhabitants could not participate in the matters of the village.

The indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong spoke Tanka, Hakka, Hoklo (closer to Teochew dialect than Hokkien, which is usually called "Hoklo" as well) and Yue Chinese Weitou dialect which is different from the newcomers who spoke contemporary standard Cantonese.

"Internally, inter-village feuds were common. They amounted to mini-wars, often lasting for years and marked by deaths in armed struggles and the destruction of houses and crops. The causes of strife were often rooted in access to, or protection of, precious water for irrigation, and other economic assets, such as the control of ferries and markets. Disputes over fung-shui of settlements or ancestral graves were not uncommon because the belief of sitings being directly linked with prosperity or adversity. Superior geomantic skills were in demand, since they could be used to injure the fung-shui of another village, lineage, branch lineage or family, or even to drive out earlier settlers." (Hayes, 2012)

• Hong Kong Punti people (also known as Weitou people)
• Hong Kong Hakka people
• Hong Kong Tanka people
• Hokkien people
• Convention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory
• Housing in Hong Kong

• Hayes, J. (2012). The great difference. Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, p.7.

This sociology-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e

This Hong Kong–related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

• v
• t
• e