Contesting (Un)rootedness: An Examination of Agrarian Memories in Urbanizing Context&#x02014;Tung Chung Valley from 1990s to Present

Stephanie Kwong; Silvia Tse

doi:10.65961/hks-2026-52-007

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Hong Kong Studies ›› 2026, Vol. 5 ›› Issue (2) : 6. DOI: 10.65961/hks-2026-52-007

Contesting (Un)rootedness: An Examination of Agrarian Memories in Urbanizing Context—Tung Chung Valley from 1990s to Present

Stephanie Kwong, Silvia Tse^*†

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Abstract

Tung Chung, Office an isolated agrarian community on the northern shore of Lantau Island, was transformed within a decade into a new town serving Hong Kong International Airport and is now undergoing a second phase of urbanization. This article seeks to explore how agrarian memory associated with this space is produced, contested, and restaged under the current context. Noting a dominant “salvage” logic underneath these memories, we leverage (un)archiving, refocusing archival materials, photographs, and prior studies as to look back to a chain of knowledge producers—including women and residents born after the baby boomer generation who cultivated the land, men who emigrated and returned as village authorities, colonial officials, and academic researchers. Through this exploration, we put forward an epistemology of multi-temporality that holds these competing memories together, resisting a single linear narrative of rural-to-urban transition as progress. We treat memory as an ongoing, politically-charged negotiation, and foreground current knowledge productions that keep Tung Chung’s agrarian present alive.

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Stephanie Kwong, Silvia Tse. Contesting (Un)rootedness: An Examination of Agrarian Memories in Urbanizing Context—Tung Chung Valley from 1990s to Present.Hong Kong Studies2026 , 5(2): 6. https://doi.org/10.65961/hks-2026-52-007

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Funding

About author: Stephanie Kwong and Silvia Tse are co-founding members of Tung Chung, (un)rooted, a community research collective aiming to (re)discover and trace Tung Chung’s post-WWII land-sea networks through a combination of archival practices and community history research.Stephanie Kwong double majored in Politics and Public Administration and Language and Communication in her undergraduate studies. She has since been working in the local social purpose sector, where her focus spans from neighborhood activation, women empowerment, and youth development. Stephanie is a D. H. Chen Foundation Scholar.Silvia Tse holds a degree in English Literature and has since been working across Hong Kong’s heritage and tourism sector, specializing in ethnographic research, community engagement, and policy advocacy. Her practice explores speculative histories, material culture, and ecology, often through food and waste. She has also co-founded digital and in-person literary initiatives centering diasporic poetics and nomadic reading spaces. * The authors wish to thank Jamie Chan and Yuet Yi Ye for reading earlier drafts of this article and giving constructive comments. They also wish to thank Leni Cheung and Christy Leung for supporting the research process, organizing fieldnotes and archival materials, and documenting Tung Chung Valley together in the past year. ^†All authors have contributed to the paper equally.