By He Tsz Yuk
"Rural Revitalization" is one of the nation's key priorities and has garnered significant attention. Particularly noteworthy is that for Hong Kong, this year marks the full-speed development of the Northern Metropolis. The development of the "Mirs Bay /Yinzhou Tang Ecological and Recreational Tourism Circle" is now before us, encompassing a series of coastal villages in areas such as Lin Ma Hang and Sha Tau Kok. It is time for Hong Kong to systematically learn from the successful experiences of neighboring regions, further focus on rural revitalization efforts, and provide robust support for the Northern Metropolis.
The Quadripartite Shared Development Model of Doumen Impression Town
Xiazhou Village in Doumen Town is an ancient village with a history of over 300 years. Previously, the village was filled with various idle and abandoned rammed earth houses and brick houses, with a large number of young people leaving for work elsewhere. Later, with strong support from the Doumen District and Doumen Town, the village committee led the villagers' participation and established a village-enterprise cooperative company, innovatively developing a "Quadripartite Shared" development model. The model involves the village collective coordinating the interests of all parties and encouraging the participation of all stakeholders; the village-enterprise company specifically undertakes project planning, farmhouse upgrades, and project operation management; the homeowners lease idle houses for use as shops; and the operators contribute labor. To quickly boost villagers' confidence in rural revitalization, the village-enterprise company immediately began revitalizing the homesteads, using a "repair the old as it was" strategy to preserve the original style as much as possible, transforming old houses into shops.
To date, the town has launched 38 projects, including a series of food and handicraft shops such as pig intestine-looked rice rolls and pork knuckles and ginger stew. The proceeds from these sales are first collected by the village and then distributed proportionally to the homeowners and villagers, so as to achieve "profit sharing and risk sharing" to distribute costs and operational risks among all parties. Additionally, the village-enterprise company is committed to enhancing the overall employability of the villagers. With the introduction of local grassroots cadres, I learned that the worker of the pig intestine-looked rice roll shop was originally a single-parent household in poverty. Later, she participated in training courses provided by the village-enterprise company and, under the guidance of a master from western Guangdong, mastered the skill of making the rolls. Currently, many young people from the hometown, seeing the development potential, have returned to start businesses and look for working opportunities.
Shangzhou Village Promotes Courtyard Economy
I have also visited a female Café owner, Zhao Liting, who gave up her bakery business due to pregnancy and became a full-time mother before. By 2022, with the support of the village committee, she initiated a renovation project, transforming her idle house into this cafe. She preserved the original characteristics of the village house, only making minor renovations to create a check-in spot that organically combines ancient houses and courtyards views, that successfully turning rural scenery and courtyard greenery into added value for the collective economy. Furthermore, Doumen Town innovatively linked Shangzhou Village, Xiazhou Village, and Xinxiang Village, establishing a "Yuxinzhou" tri-village joint leadership group. The group is under the guidance of the town government, and it will regularly hold joint meetings to achieve resource integration, complementary advantages, and mutual exchange. Under the coordination of the joint leadership group, the three villages painted a rainbow line on their main roads, guiding tourists along the rainbow line to visit all three villages, and formed a homestay alliance among the three villages, jointly planning how to better accommodate overflow tourists from the Imperial Hot Spring Resort and develop special homestays, thereby forming a route-based tourism promotion and enhancing operational efficiency.
Inspirations for Hong Kong's Rural Revitalization
In fact, Hong Kong is not short of excellent rural revitalization demonstrations, such as Yim Tin Tsai, which transformed natural salt fields into an education center and converted the nearby only primary school, Cheng Po School, into a cultural exhibition center, and Lai Chi Wo Hakka Village, which restored village houses into cultural centers, and won the UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation. However, towards the development needs of the Northern Metropolis, the " Mirs Bay /Yinzhou Tang Ecological and Recreational Tourism Circle" possesses very rich rural resources, all of which need effective development and conservation to avoid development disparities between villages. To this end, the government should actively learn from the excellent cases like Doumen Town, to establish a grand strategy for rural revitalization, and to implement it according to the conditions of each village. The basic elements of this strategy should be: first, establishing a shared resource system among villages to promote shared development outcomes from point to area; second, promoting village-enterprise cooperation to organically combine residents' resources and social capital; third, attracting youth employment and entrepreneurship projects, encouraging young people to contribute the rural areas, and sharing business ideas and promoting skill inheritance with villagers.
The author is a commentator of a local think tank and the coordinator of the Civil Policy Address. His research focuses on the development of the Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Greater Bay Area.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of DotDotNews.
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