Hi! Houses: Chuen Lung Village Revisited by Thirteen Hong Kong Artists

Description

Chuen Lung is a small, secluded settlement at the foothills of Hong Kong’s highest peak, Tai Mo Shan. Its story is long and rich, stretching back to the reign of Emperor Yongle (1403 – 1424) in the Ming dynasty, when the Tsang family settled by the mountainside. Thanks to its lush surroundings, the village is known for the watercress grown in its environs.

Before the Second World War, locals pooled resources to build a school for the children of Chuen Lung and nearby villages, called Koon Man School. It would close and reopen again in 1958, when rising population numbers across Hong Kong meant more villagers than ever before. But it closed again in 1988, because of dwindling enrolment numbers as parents starting sending their children to the schools in Tsuen Wan town.

As part of a program called Hi! Houses that invites Hongkongers to get to know below the radar heritage sites of their city, the village has been chosen as a site for artistic intervention. In this program, thirteen local artists, including Kingsley Ng, Kacey Wong, Leung Chi-wo and Tang Kwok-hin, have created interactive works dotted around the village that encourage audiences to meditate on the passing of time and the nature of rural Hong Kong life in diverging ways. Some use the school as starting point, others the local fauna, others the distinctive Hakka vernacular.