Sha Tau Kok residents disagree over whether closed area should be opened up
By Brian Wong and Sherry Tsui Source:
Source: https://varsity.com.cuhk.edu.hk/index.php/2014/11/opening-sha-tau-kokl-border/
The two sides of Chung Ying Street are lined with boutiques selling clothes and knick-knacks and stores selling everything from accessories to electronics and appliances. But the most popular ones are the grocery shops and minimarts offering everyday consumer items imported into Hong Kong – such as milk powder, instant noodles, nappies and shampoo. Shoppers enter empty-handed and leave with boxes of goods. Outside the stores, people busily pack the goods they have bought.
Logs of daily goods keep entering Chung Ying Street every day
Trolley-loads of daily goods enter Chung Ying Street every day
They are free to shop on both sides of the 250-metre-long street, and pay no attention to the seven boundary stones separating Hong Kong and mainland China in the middle of Chung Ying Street. They were erected in 1898 to mark the boundary between imperial China and British Hong Kong, and after 1950 between the People’s Republic of China and the capitalist crown colony.
In 1951, most areas of the Sha Tau Kok district became part of the Frontier Closed Areas (FCA), including Chung Ying Street, which means visitors can only enter with a permit. Today, the Sha Tau Kok Rural Committee estimates that only 6,000 to 7,000 of the 30,000 or so residents from Sha Tau Kok’s 47 villages still live in the area, of which 4,000 to 5,000 are non-indigenous residents.
At the urging of the Rural Committees, the government announced a substantial reduction of Hong Kong’s Frontier Closed Area in 2008. Currently, Sha Tau Kok Market and Chung Ying Street are the only restricted areas left in Hong Kong and ironically access is easier from the mainland side where travel agents can secure permits for Rmb10.
Business may be brisk now, but it cannot compare with the early 1980s when China embarked on economic reform and Mainlanders flocked to Chung Ying Street to buy Hong Kong and foreign goods. At its peak during the 1990s, there were more than 40 gold shops in Chung Ying Street – the businesses there attracted up to 100,000 visitors and made HK$1 billion in takings a day. The adjacent Sha Tau Kok Market also prospered at that time.
Tsang Yuk-on, the indigenous village representative of Mui Tsz Lam Tsuen, says mainland residents and Sha Tau Kok residents could go freely between Chung Ying Street and Sha Tau Kok Market before 1997 as the colonial government exercised discretion over their movements. But after the handover, the permit system was strictly enforced on the Hong Kong side. Tsang speculates this is due to the need to enforce the One Country, Two Systems principle.
He is disappointed to see many of the spaces and facilities in Sha Tau Kok Market left unused after access became restricted. “For 16 years, we’ve wasted the shop spaces. The whole area is wasted,” Tsang says. It is hard to make a living in the closed area and he estimates that fewer than a thousand people stay overnight as most residents have moved to the mainland side or the downtown areas in Hong Kong where there is better transportation and access. Tsang says many hold on to their empty homes solely so they can apply for permits to enter the closed area.
Tsang and other indigenous villagers think the only way to stem the exodus and revive the area is to open it up and develop it.
Members of the Sha Tau Kok District Rural Committee and Sheung Shui District Rural Committee submitted a development plan to the Development Bureau and Security Bureau in February this year. Proposals include setting up a boundary control point at Chung Ying Street and opening up Sha Tau Kok Market. They say development of Sha Tau Kok could curb the number of mainland visitors going further afield to shopping hubs like Sheung Shui and Tsim Sha Tsui.
Sha Tau Kok District Rural Committee Chairman Benjamin Lee Koon-hung believes Sha Tau Kok could attract mainlanders who only want to shop in Hong Kong. “If Chung Ying Street is enough to satisfy their shopping needs, they don’t need to step into Hong Kong,” Lee says. Meanwhile, he also hopes to develop Sha Tau Kok Market and Chung Ying Street into tourist spots by preserving their historical and cultural features.
Lee says most of the indigenous people, who can trace their ancestry in the area back to 1898, support the opening up of the district.
“Opening up is always better than closing. Who wants to be imprisoned in their residence?” asks Lee. He says there are approximately four times as many non-indigenous residents as there are indigenous villagers because there is a public housing estate- Sha Tau Kok Chuen – in the closed area.
Those who oppose the plan are fishermen and non- indigenous residents. “I could only say they are naïve. As they are not well-educated, their minds are easily affected by others,” Lee says.
However, So Tik-ka, 32, the organiser of a campaign to oppose the opening of Sha Tau Kok, says she and other non-indigenous residents were not consulted or informed of the plan.
“We only knew of the plan through television news but in fact they haven’t asked any of the local residents,” So complains. In March, So set up a stand outside a supermarket to collect signatures against the scheme and says 2,000 people have signed so far.
The Sha Tau Kok Public Pier which cost 46 million dollars for renovation is now the stop of merely 3 kai-tos commuting from Sha Tau Kok and nearby islands
Just three kai-to’s serving nearby islands berth at the renovated Sha Tau Kok Public Pier.
Bowie Hau Chi-keung, the chairman of the Sheung Shui District Rural Committee admits he did not consult local residents about the opening up of Sha Tau Kok District before submitting the plan.
But he says the development can create business opportunities while having little impact on Hong Kong citizens. Hau says it would also help to curb smuggling activities and imports of illegal goods across Chung Ying Street because customs and police officers would be able to regulate imports at a proper border checkpoint.
Shirley Lo Suet-yan, who lives on the mainland side of Chung Ying Street, disagrees with the opening of Sha Tau Kok. She is annoyed about the problems of parallel trading and thinks the problem would worsen after opening. As it is, she usually gets held up at the control point to the Mainland because there are too many people queuing with their goods.
“The police check us very strictly and I usually collide with the carts,” Lo says. When Varsity visited Chung Ying Street, we were asked by four different people to deliver goods to the Mainland and were offered between Rmb40 and Rmb60 to do so.
Lo worries about the potential disturbance caused by a stream of visitors. “I have lived here for a long time and I really enjoy the quiet and comfortable environment. But it would deteriorate if more tourists come,” she says.
Another local resident, 50-year-old Lee Chor-kwong, who also lives on the mainland side of Chung Ying Street, has a different view. He thinks the economic potential in Sha Tau Kok could be an incentive to improve the community’s ancillary facilities and create more jobs. “Now I have to go to Kowloon for work. If you can have the jobs matched inside the area and find the locals to do the job, it is possible to develop,” says Lee.
Opinion among the Chung Ying Street retailers is mixed.
Fifty-year-old Leung Kai-chung, who is a second generation store owner, agrees with the proposal. He says opening up would lead to development and progress and says it is essential for areas like Chung Ying Street to divert mainland shoppers away from crowded areas like Causeway Bay and Sheung Shui. Once they have bought their fill of Hong Kong products, they will just leave and go home, he says.
However, Lau Wan-ying, a newspaper vendor and local resident is worried about the implications for security. She says Sha Tau Kok is an extremely safe place. Most residents are elderly people who lead simple lives and it is easy to spot strangers because residents recognise each other.
Lau is satisfied with her lot, “I don’t need to employ staff and I just need to make money to pay the rent, that’s all.” But she thinks the rent would definitely go up and public security deteriorate if the area is opened up.
“Local residents normally disagree with the opening of Sha Tau Kok, except those who own their own land,” she says.
People in Sha Tau Market usually cycle around their neigbourhood and recognise others
Bicycles are the preferred mode of transport in Sha Tau Kok market
Ms Law who owns a children’s clothing boutique in Chung Ying Street says Hongkongers spend less than Mainlanders do. Nearly 80 percent of her customers come from the Mainland. She guesses Hong Kong people are uncertain about the quality of goods at Chung Ying Street.
Yet Law signed the petition against opening up Sha Tau Kok. She hopes Chung Ying Street can retain its unique atmosphere which depends on the fact that people cannot easily access it without closed-area permits. She argues that the permit-only rule might continue to prompt people’s curiosity so that they treat it as a tourism spot when they travel across from Shenzhen.
Despite public discussion, the Development Bureau says it has no immediate plans to develop Sha Tau Kok district and that Chung Ying Street is unsuitable for large-scale development due to its restricted access. In a written reply, the Security Bureau said there was no plan to establish a control point at Chung Ying Street at present because it “involves various complicated considerations”, such as immigration, residents’ mobility and boundary security.
As for the younger generation of Sha Tau Kok, they have different thoughts about their home.
Chan Sai-leong, a university research assistant who used to live in Nam Chung, which is a few kilometers away from the Sha Tau Kok town center, says he does not miss the desolate environment and inconvenient transportation.
Although the 22-year-old has moved to the city, he is happy to see more commercial activities taking place in his old neighbourhood. Chan believes development and conservation should co-exist. He thinks others who live in more developed districts have no rights to ask Sha Tau Kok residents to preserve the area, while they themselves are enjoying the benefits of development. Chan says. “This is totally unfair. Why is it that you can develop yours but we cannot develop ours?”
Chan understands that a coin has two sides. The opening of Sha Tau Kok could result in the emergence of parallel traders who might cause disturbance to the district. Yet, he is convinced that if the government compensated the shop owners and the residents reasonably, there would be no complaints.
But to 21-year-old Raymond Wong Wai-nung, a local resident who works as an investment adviser, the development project could be another way to enrich the already rich and powerful at the expense of the livelihood of local residents. He agrees the opening up of the area would only turn Sha Tau Kok into a centre for parallel traders. “Such a proposal wraps itself in ‘development’ and ‘business’, exploiting the livelihood of normal residents. They fall victim to it completely,” Wong says.
Wong believes opening up is essential to generate income, but he hopes that any plan would be beneficial to all parties involved. “You need to think twice, do we need to trade what we originally have for such business opportunities?” he asks.
Edited by Cherry Wong
Tsang Yuk On
10月14日 2024·
如果施政報告有針對這問題就👍
Hong Kong Economic Journal | 2019-06-19
Newspaper | A19 |時事評論 |龍虎山下 |By 謝國生
沙頭角禁區潛力蓄勢待發
自《粵港澳大灣區發展規劃綱要》於今年2月中出爐後，深圳市口岸辦公室火速在5月中旬，宣布對深圳各口岸功能進行優化和調整，以提升深港融合；當中皇崗口岸、文錦渡口岸和沙頭角口岸將取消貨車通關及貨檢功能，過境貨檢將由西面的深圳灣口岸及東面興建中的蓮塘口岸負責，實行「東進東出，西進西出」。深圳方面將重建皇崗口岸，作為純旅檢通道，並擬與香港實施「合作查驗，一次放行」，實現「兩地一檢」。沙頭角口岸是另一個將被重建作純旅檢通道的口岸。
為配合口岸發展，香港將面對兩個問題︰一是在法律法規層面上的銜接；二是涉及更新查驗設施及設備的協同。香港是時候檢討邊境禁區的融合和需要。由於深圳計劃重建沙頭角口岸，這為沙頭角禁區開放提供一個黃金機會。
禁區歷史背景
沙頭角原橫跨中港兩地，範圍涵蓋深圳的鹽田區及部分新界北區。當中包括沙頭角村及著名的中英街，鄰近有打鼓嶺及坪輋。遍布在沙頭角及附近島嶼的鄉村，統稱為沙頭角鄉，人口以客家、鶴佬、蜑家和廣府人為主。全盛時期人口超過兩萬，鄉村數目超過60，居民以捕魚及務農為主要經濟活動。
區內保存歷史遺跡和傳統文化，包括清乾隆年間落成的鏡蓉書屋，樓高兩層，是少數專供教學用途的青磚書室，1991年獲香港政府列為法定古蹟；客家圍村的傳統習俗；以及已有300多年歷史的「魚燈舞」等。
1950年代初，港英政府基於圍堵中國、防止偷渡及打擊走私3個理由，把沙頭角列為邊境禁區。2012年2月15日起，為開發生態旅遊，帶動區內旅遊業，政府分兩個階段開放禁區。首階段縮減蓮麻坑至沙頭角段，以及米埔至落馬洲管制站分段的禁區。第二階段將於2020年初展開，把落馬洲管制站至梧桐河分段，以及梧桐河至蓮麻坑分段開放。沙頭角邊境禁區的面積，相應由原來的2800公頃大幅縮減至400公頃。
基於保安理由，特區政府繼續把中英街及沙頭角墟列為禁區，市民進入沙頭角墟，必須持有許可證，俗稱「禁區紙」。現時區內設施包括各式店舖、巴士總站等，便利居民的日常生活。
優厚發展條件
近年香港邊境禁區範圍日減，尚餘大約400公頃未被解封。隨着本地經濟起飛，鄉郊人口轉移，村落多已荒廢，目前只剩下37條鄉村，自上世紀五十年代初被列作禁區的沙頭角墟，尤其值得關注。
時至今日，沙頭角墟仍然缺乏直接海上交通，窒礙了整個新界北區的發展，隔斷了十多條經沙頭角出入村落的出路。完整的沙頭角墟荒廢多年，營商條件以至本地及鄰區就業通通欠奉。
儘管如此，作為處於兩地邊界的市鎮，沙頭角墟極具潛力發展成為邊境龍頭市鎮。
第一，沙頭角墟連接香港與深圳東部及粵東地區，位處區內交通樞紐；開放禁區，可以加強香港與深圳東部如鹽田區的連接。鹽田區的優勢包括有濱海旅遊、黃金珠寶產業及生態旅遊資源。藉着釋放人流、物流、資金流及訊息流，可惠及商貿、旅遊、科技及醫療等產業。
深圳有較完善的產業供應鏈，而香港方面則具創新優勢。中英街毗鄰深港兩地，沙頭角墟的地理優勢更有利於新市鎮發展，成為香港與粵東地區之間的中轉站。連同新界北區的蓮塘、香園圍、文錦渡及羅湖等口岸，沙頭角整體上蘊含口岸經濟帶的發展意義。
發展沙頭角可促進粵港兩地資源、技術、人才和服務的交流；作為邊境市鎮的試點之一，將來更能帶動鄰近地域的發展，從而有效利用周邊土地資源。開放沙頭角墟禁區定能釋放更多土地，紓緩當前香港土地嚴重缺乏的挑戰。
第二，沙頭角墟的「解禁」，可以帶動沙頭角海以東、大鵬灣西南海域，以吉澳為主的旅遊業。吉澳自清末便擁有「南海明珠」的稱譽，作為重要的海島市集，商貿繁盛，風光秀麗。其周圍的水域較為平靜，有潛力發展成為水上活動中心；島上有自來水供應及碼頭設施，具備發展基礎條件。
附近的印洲塘更是香港首批海岸公園之一，地質景觀豐富多彩。沙頭角碼頭是通往這些離島的交通要塞，但現時碼頭仍處於禁區範圍之內，進出皆受到限制。開放沙頭角墟禁區，即可刺激區內休閒以及生態旅遊業的發展。
沙頭角灣、大鵬灣及大亞灣連同新界沿海區域，具有獨特的海岸線風光，深圳方面亦計劃把這些灣區發展成國際黃金海岸旅遊帶，打造一個世界級的濱海生態旅遊度假區。
第三，沙頭角墟解禁和發展，有望加強附近偏遠鄉村（如荔枝窩）的基礎建設，改善民生。新界居民的一大呼聲是活化偏遠鄉村，國內如上海朱家角、浙江烏鎮等特色小鎮，結合旅遊、文化及生態等多元發展，可供香港參考。活化項目的渠道應以鄉民為主，以掌握傳統文化，與私營機構以互惠互利為合作基礎。
2012年2月15日，香港邊境禁區範圍再次縮減，沙頭角的6條鄉村得以解禁，因而釋放商機，塘肚村、新村及木棉頭村陸續興建旅遊景點。居民計劃分階段把42公頃土地闢作有機農莊，挖掘魚塘飼養有機鯇魚，以及開設氣槍靶場及野戰區等戶外活動場所。有機耕種農作方面，包括佔地20公頃的稻田，每月可生產30公噸菌類食品的蘑菇種植場，以及佔地5公頃的蘭花館，向本地酒店供貨。
政策方針導向
前任行政長官梁振英在《施政報告》中，提出要落實新農業政策，包括設立農業園和農業持續發展基金，期望透過政策和社會支持，使本地農業可以朝現代化、高增值方向持續發展，而此方針亦獲得現屆政府繼續支持。發展長遠目標包括申建民宿及酒店以開拓生態主題公園，再加上沙頭角沿海估計逾100公頃土地，可增闢蠔排、養殖龍蝦等。若計劃得以落實，預計可以創造超過1000個本地就業職位。
沙頭角公眾碼頭是全港最長的碼頭，街渡可穿梭來往附近的吉澳及鴨洲小島。沙頭角毗鄰八仙嶺及船灣郊野公園，加上鹿頸及流水響等郊遊景點，有充分條件推動當地的休閒和旅遊業。
綜合以上分析，放寬邊境政策有利香港與大灣區融合。隨着香園圍公路通車及蓮塘口岸即將開通，開放沙頭角禁區利多於弊，放寬禁區限制，有助發展區內生態旅遊，在帶動本土社區經濟的同時，亦可改善居民生活，長遠而言，更可增加土地供應，提升香港的持續發展優勢。
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wJoIvHb1PBY
https://std.stheadline.com/realtime/article/2018623/%E5%8D%B3%E6%99%82-%E6%B8%AF%E8%81%9E-%E5%8C%97%E9%83%BD%EF%B8%B1%E9%BB%83%E5%81%89%E7%B6%B8%E7%8E%87%E4%BB%A3%E8%A1%A8%E5%9C%98%E6%99%A4%E6%B7%B1%E5%9C%B3%E5%B8%82%E6%94%BF%E5%BA%9C%E4%BB%A3%E8%A1%A8-%E5%8C%AF%E5%A0%B1%E6%B2%99%E9%A0%AD%E8%A7%92%E5%90%88%E4%BD%9C%E5%8D%80%E5%B7%A5%E4%BD%9C%E5%B0%8F%E7%B5%84%E9%80%B2%E5%B1%95?fbclid=IwY2xjawGrvdlleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHes6-y_ma0zUo_UvuqYsBto9ib_e08jXeEGtIw_M_7FwhlOUB7LPWv9tkw_aem_QaaKKrhAstTcJM3mcEg5ZQ
Varsity Source: https://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/zh/practicum/varsity/
2022 年 9 月 30 日
Varsity looks at the bigger picture, we care about our society and about storytelling. We are not afraid of ideas, or of depth.
Varsity is greater than the sum of its parts, our students pull off what may seem like the impossible. Varsity is a family where you will form deep and lasting friendships.
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反觀2021年從瀝源以$350港元購入名牌SEIKO精工表, 才三年便永久停了. 修理費最少要百多元, 還是不修算了.
湊巧博主在香港吃鹹水魚, 也有相同發現.
