Written by Wang Junjie
It takes an hour to cross the border.
At first, Eddie Wong scans a QR code on WeChat, a Chinese social and message app, then signs a form online on the Hong Kong side, then signs another on the mainland China side, “just like playing a game, one task at a time,” at the last step, after he shows his Home Return Permit, an official permit for Hong Kong residents travel to the mainland, and a negative COVID-19 test result, he could wait for the bus to pick him up.
He hasn't been to the mainland for over a year due to the pandemic. In February, after the Chinese New Year, he drives to the border at Shenzhen Bay, one of the only two ports open to the public to go to the mainland. After he crosses the border, he has a 14-day quarantine in Shenzhen, a city shares the border with Hong Kong. This time, he is going to Dongguan, the fourth largest city in Guangdong Province, for family business. His family owned several factories there.
Last October, the Hong Kong government decided to relax the quarantine, for those who have Hong Kong citizenship and stayed in Guangdong Province for the past two weeks, they could return to Hong Kong without 14 days quarantine.
“Now, it will be much easier for me to come back,” Eddie says, he now travels to Guangzhou, another major city in the Greater Bay Area, an economic and geographic concept that consists of nine cities and two special administrative regions in China.
The border that Eddie just crossed, existed from the 1950s when the former British Government tried to deter massive migrants from the mainland. After the People’s Republic of China took over the mainland in 1949, there were over 210,422 refugees fled to Hong Kong from November to December that year.
Now, Hong Kong has been returned to China for 24 years. But the city still remains a 30-kilometer border with the mainland.
With Hong Kong’s vision to merge into the Greater Bay Area, the border is being erased.
Back in 2018, a 55-kilometer sea-crossing bridge connecting Hong Kong, Macau and Zhuhai opened to the public. A reporter from the South China Morning Post once drove a private car to cross the bridge, she firstly drove a 12km link road from the Hong Kong side, then went through a 6.7km undersea tunnel, then a 22.9km offshore bridge, and a 13.4km link road on the Zhuhai side. It takes an hour to go to Zhuhai by car, a major city in the Greater Bay Area, from Hong Kong. Before this, passengers could only take a 3-hour bus or a 70-minute ship.
The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is by far the largest cross-sea bridge, costs over 15 billion yuan. The Hong Kong side of the bridge is at Lantau Island where the airport located.
Lantau Island is the largest island in Hong Kong, nearly two times larger than Hong Kong Island.The Island belongs to the New Territories, a region still hasn’t been developed well.
Hong Kong is one of the densest place in the world, with over 7 million people living in a 1,104-square-kilometer land. Among the land, there is also about 75% of the land is green land, which is for agriculture, wetland, and water bodies, according to Hong Kong’s Planning Department.
Most of the green land are in New Territories, the region once was leased from Qing China by the United Kingdom for over 99 years. Thus, the former British-Hong Kong government intended not to develop it.
But now, the Hong Kong government sees huge opportunities in the Lantau area and the North New Territories area, both are connected with the mainland.
“There will be a huge science park,” Kwok Hoi Yi, a 67-year-old man, living right next to the border at the North Territories.
The park he mentions is part of the city’s ongoing project called Hong Kong 2030 plus, an developing strategy brought up firstly in 2007. In the plan, the government also mentioned the Lantau Tomorrow Vision project, a reclamation plan that develop the east of Lantau Island into a new metropolis.
The park will be finished between 2024 and 2027, a few years left. “It takes time, the government mentions the park long time ago,” Kwok wears green T-shirt and washed-out blue jeans, laughing.
His family fled from the mainland in the 1950s to this village called Ha Wan Tsuen. Back in the 1950s and 1970s, many mainlanders swam across the Shenzhen river to Ha Wan Tsuen, “I saw many people shot by the army, died in the river, float over the water,” Kwok recalls the old days.
As the writer Chen Bingan writes in his book called The Great Exodus to Hong Kong, there were four times of huge illegal emigration to Hong Kong in the years of 1957, 1962, 1972 and 1979. According to the writer’s research, there were about two million illegal immigrants flooded Hong Kong during the time. However, only a few refugees successfully escaped.
Kwok’s family was one of them, “my family was lucky, we suffered from poor and smuggling into Hong Kong, not be caught,” Kwok’s family was from Dongguan, a city next to Shenzhen, “we used to live in a very poor situation,” Kwok says. Back then, the city of Dongguan was small and poor, until the late 1970s, Dongguan finally had a chance to develop. Now, the city’s economic growth is approaching one thousand billion a year.
Kwok now is the representative of the village, the fifth generation. “You see, we don’t have just one surname here, because we are from different places,” Kwok points to the wall, where the former four representatives’ names and photos show. It goes with To, Leung, To, Wei and then Kwok.
“I could say that almost 99% of people here are from the mainland, mostly from Guangdong province,” he says, “we are like exiles.” His parents were farmers, the same as most of the old people here. After settled down at Ha Wan Tsuen, his parents started to farm, they tried to raise water plants and built fishponds.
But the planting condition here was bad, as Kwok remembers. “We suffered from Typhoon and had to be careful with insects and birds to destroy the farm.”
Later, they tried to use the swamps as fishponds to raise fish. Hong Kong Bird Watching Society, a non-profit environmental conservation organization, once did a project called Hong Kong Fishpond Conservation Scheme. They discovered, between the 1950s and 1970s, the fish business in New Territories welcomed a golden time, as the population grew rapidly, the demand for freshwater fish doubled.
However, with the urbanization of Hong Kong, young people prefer to find a job in the city. “Young people like me all went to the city,” Kwok explained, “thus, the fish business here began to decrease.” He used to work in Kowloon in the late 1970s as a manager in a factory with his high school diploma.
“Later, I remember that in the early 1980s, the mainland opens the door, Hong Kong people started to import fishes from the mainland with cheaper price, therefore, we no longer have the advantages to have fish business,” Kwok sits in the village hall, one of the few brick houses here.
As the Drainage Services Department noted, Hong Kong’s freshwater fish business faced growing competition from mainland China in the late 1980s. Since the 1990s, the fishpond industry has been diminished. The fishpond decreased to 11.5 square km in 2012 from 21.35 square km in 1986.
The village also belongs to Hong Kong’s natural conservation area, “thus, the government doesn’t allow us to build houses with bricks,” Kwok explained. In Ha Wan Tsuen, the houses are built with tin-alike material, good for recycling.
Kwok leads the way to a big tree the villagers worship the god down here. “It is very famous here, you must see,” Kwok smiles. Along the way, few people are waiting for the shuttle bus. Most of the villagers travel by car because only one route of shuttle bus runs here.
There are only two roads heading to Ha Wan Tsuen, one called Ha Wan East Road, built in the 1950s, another road called Ha Wan Tsuen road, connected with Lok Ma Chau road which is a main road to the border.
Ha Wan East Road is a narrow street, now is under construction. Two workers at this road told, “the construction is for the Loop.”
The Lok Ma Chau Loop, a 0.88-square-km land, will be turned into Hong Kong-Shenzhen Innovation and Technology Park, the new Science Park’s official name. Just imagine, 140 soccer fields. It’s 4 sizes of the Hong Kong Science Park that located at the Chinese University Hong Kong.
The Loop is a controversial place. It used to belong to Shenzhen. However, with Shenzhen’s rapid development in the 1980s, the Shenzhen river was polluted. In 1995, Hong Kong and Shenzhen worked together to deal with pollution. Later in 2006, with the pollution fixed, the river straightened, left only one entry from Hong Kong to the Loop, two cities discussed that to exchange a few of the land. In 2017, the two cities signed officially to hand over the Loop to Hong Kong.
Since then, the Loop was designed as a new tech hub to push forward the collaboration between Shenzhen and Hong Kong.
As the government says in an official document, they invested over 32.5 billion money in the Lok Ma Chau Loop project, the first phase will be finished between 2024 and 2027, just a few years later.
The merge between Hong Kong and mainland China brings more chances for the locals.
By the time when the project is done, this new Science Park will bring over 50,000 jobs to the city. Hong Kong government sees this as a chance to boost the city’s technology industry. The current Science Park offers over 13,000 jobs, as the Hong Kong Science & Technology company, the parent company owns Science Park, said in its official introduction document.
This year, Hong Kong launched a program targeting fresh local graduates called the Greater Bay Area Youth Employment Scheme. On the website, the scheme offers over 2,000 job positions, mostly focused on the tech and science area.
The average pay goes to HKD$18,000 for fresh graduates. “The pay is not bad, but I don’t see many people around me take part in,” Franklin Tse said, he now works for a local tech company with HK$32,000 a month at the Hong Kong Science Park, “also for me, I have no plans going to the mainland, my family is here in Hong Kong.”
Tse lives in Tsing Yi, spends an hour every day to work. He gets up at 7:30 each day, takes a 30-minute bus to Tai Wai station, then takes a 10-minute subway to the University station, then takes a 10-minute shuttle bus to the Science Park.
Critics once complained the existed Hong Kong Science Park lacking great transportation. However, the new Science Park at Lok Ma Chau is 24 kilometers away from the existed Science Park at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. As for now, no trains or buses are traveling to the Lok Ma Chau Loop.
As the project of the Science Park at Loop started, the government intended to build new roads to the Loop. However, a villager’s house stuck at the entrance of a planned road to the new Science Park. The government asked the family to move, “They don’t want to leave, the public house that the government offered is small,” Kwok answered. They hangs a huge poster on the wall, saying “give back my homeland, the incompetent government”.
“What if Ha Wan Tsuen becomes a city?” I ask.
“It will be,
“Honestly, I don’t want it to be,
“I am old, I cannot do the city works anymore,
“Also, I can have a larger space and enjoy the quiet here.” As Kwok said, the village has only 400 people live here now, but many are old people with ages above 80.
Now, the merge between Hong Kong and the mainland brings problems, too.
After the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge opened, an influx of tourists from the mainland to the city. Hong Kong’s Tung Chung, a town on Hong Kong’s Lantau Island, once overloaded with crowds, seeing a record-high number of people, over 90,000 passengers going through the Hong Kong side in one day, in the first two weeks.
According to news reports from South China Morning Post and other local media, many residents were worrying Tung Chung and other communities that close to the border will be a new Sheung Shui.
Sheung Shui, a border town located in the northern New Territories, used to packed with parallel traders who buy milk formula and medicine in Hong Kong and then sell them to mainland buyers in home stores.
From Shenzhen to Sheung Shui, “it only takes half an hour, I mean it includes the process of passing the checkpoint,” Linzy Lam, a Shenzhen local recalls. Lam used to go to Sheung Shui from Shenzhen’s Futian Port to purchase commodities like shampoos and medicine. “It’s not only for milk or medicine, parallel traders also buy luxury and iPhone,” Lam says, near Sheung Shui Station, there is a huge supermall.
Now, mainland tourists will have more access to Hong Kong. Last year, even under the pandemic, a new port namely Liantang Port or Heung Yuen Wai Boundary Control Point was opened for freight transport, by far the seventh port. The port will be used for passengers to go through once the pandemic is over.
Recently, Hong Kong also agreed with Shenzhen to co-locating border checkpoints in the new Huanggang port. The new Huanggang port will be turned into a transport hub.
After the new Science Park announced, money quickly goes into the land. Many lands around the Loop were sold. Some of the lands were closed by the fence, the sign says “MTR Corporation area, entry prohibited”. The corporation owns the metro system in the city.
According to a plan released by the government, when the new Science Park finished, only 15% of the land planed as a natural reserve area.
The Loop closed to the Mai Po Marshes, Hong Kong’s famous nature reserve. According to South China Morning Post’s report in 2017, environmental groups once warned the Lok Ma Chau Loop’s development will affect the surrounding wetlands and wildlife.
Right now, on the Hong Kong side, the Loop project has started. Excavators working in the land, only hearing a sound of bang, and seeing dusts in the. The 0.88-square-km land has been excavated to loess. But around the yellow, there is a huge area of green land.
In the meantime, on the Shenzhen side, another construction work is on the way. The new Huanggang port includes a checkpoint and new office building, counts for 400,000 square meters. According to the official documents, the new Huanggang port will connect with a new subway line from Hong Kong.
By 2022, the new port will be in use and about 300,000 passengers could go through at most in one day.
“Impact?
“What impact?
“It will just be another Sheung Shui.” Kwok says in the end.