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SCMP Reporter

Dorothy Wong Choi-ha would like to retire to Tai Long Wan. William Chan, 53, did so 20 years ago and has no plans to leave his rural idyll in the remote Sai Kung valley.

But there the similarities between the two Sai Kung residents end. For Wong, who heads an ambitious development company with a glossy portfolio of prestigious villa estates, wants to turn Tai Long Wan into Hong Kong's first Club Med-style resort. Chan would rather it be left alone.

'My retirement scheme is to stay in Tai Long Wan, so I don't want to spoil the area,' Wong says.

'Before, I would have liked to retire in Hawaii or another country. But now I have decided to stay in Tai Long Wan. This is a lovely place.' The irony will not be lost on the hundreds of campers, hikers and surfers who are lured every weekend to the majestic stretch of sand, vegetation and clean waters.

The rugged beauty of the jagged coastline hiding sheltered bays is breathtaking.

But change is in the air and Tai Long Wan is not immune to development.

For some time villagers have whispered darkly of men from 'the company' wheeling and dealing behind the scenes. Long-time visitors speak resignedly of 'developers' moving in.

Shadows are looming large over the tranquillity and grandeur of this stunning panorama.

The truth is starker than the rumours. Wong's Utahloy Company Ltd is buying up all the private land. According to Wong, the company already owns all 2,800 private lots of village land and paddy fields. The claim is impossible to verify.

Her vision is to transform the green belt area into a luxury resort - styled on 'mainland philosophy schools' - with water sports facilities and a retreat for burnt-out business executives.

'It is not suitable for tall buildings, but for chalet-type developments, like Club Med,' she told the Sunday Morning Post.

In her private company's plush office in Kowloon Tong, thick carpets and huge orchids give it the feel of a hotel. Two rocks, split to reveal dazzling semi-precious stones, flank the entrance to the boardroom containing photographs of Tai Long Wan.

'I love this area,' she says. 'I can't find another property like it in Hong Kong. It is unique.' Her planned 'low key development' - with bungalow chalets built on the former paddy fields behind Tai Long Wan beach - will have little effect on the environment, Wong says.

'The environmentalists like to keep everything natural. But if society keeps growing, you need to satisfy this growth,' she says.

She is reluctant to divulge figures, but some locals are bitter about how cheaply villagers have sold their ancestral right. The going rate is $53 a square foot, sparking one resident to say: 'They are crazy, it is too cheap.' One cantankerous villager demanded more and is rumoured to have received $1 million for three tumbledown houses.

Kan Chok-kit, who serves up cold beer and steaming plates of fried rice at the Cosy Corner, says the elderly owner has so far refused to sell his prime beach site restaurant and is waiting for his son to return from Britain.

Villagers at neighbouring Sai Wan have also rebuffed developers' offers. Davies Mau Lai and Stephen Mau Lai, who were born in the village and recently returned after working in Britain, said: 'No one is selling. It is too little money.' But Wong maintains she has no need to search for suitable sites - frustrated villagers come to her.

'We are just helping the villagers to sort out their family problems,' she says.

'If nobody wants to buy their land they are stuck in arguments. My family is in Sai Kung, so I am friendly with the Sai Kung people.

'It is very difficult to do this kind of development if you don't know the villagers. Mutual trust is important. We like to make money and at the same time we like to forge friendships with everybody.' In exchange for transferring their birthright, up to 100 villagers, most of whom reside overseas, will be given Spanish-style villas in a new village in the area. The four existing villages of Tai Long, Ham Tin, Cheung Uk Wai and Lam Uk Wai will be 'redesigned and centralised in one place', she says.

What Wong is doing is perfectly legal. Tai Long Wan is an extreme example of what is happening all over the New Territories. Under the New Territories Small House Policy, male descendants of indigenous villagers have the right to apply to the Government for a plot of land on which to build a 700-square-foot three-story house.

The policy has come under fire from women's rights groups and legislators because it only applies to men. More recently, conservationists voiced concern about the implications of the policy for country parks and other special areas. Villages were excluded from the country parks when they were established and now returning villagers want to retire to their ancestral homes or reap the rich rewards of a booming property market.

Wong says: 'The whole village seems very understanding. They sell the land and we pay the land cost to them and we take over the old houses.' There is rich irony in the villagers who once fled their plots for Chinese restaurants in Britain in the 1960s, returning to harvest the land's riches prior to 1997.

Yuen Long, because of its huge area, has the largest stockpile of 3,500 applications; Tai Po about 3,000; and Sai Kung 700. At the end of March this year, the Lands Department had a total backlog of 13,000 applications.

Sai Kung district land executive Tony Lui said: 'Of course, most of the applicants come back from overseas. They want to exercise their right before 1997. They are afraid that afterwards they will be deprived of their right.' According to the Basic Law, the policy will remain the same for 50 years - although privately, district lands officers admit the New Territories may simply run out of land before then, particularly if the rate of returnees continues.

Lui says: 'Returning villagers must genuinely intend to return to live in Hong Kong if they want to apply for government land to build their house.

'If they have no intention of settling down in Hong Kong we won't sell the land to them. Of course, we have to check their passports. But it is very difficult to control. If they come back for half a year, how can you say they won't go back overseas.

'And of course there are a lot of developers using their right to develop the land.' Sai Kung restaurateur Loi Lam, who returned from recession-hit Britain years ago, agrees overseas New Territories villagers are rushing back before 1997 - but not just to cash in their chips. At least half of those returning wish to retire to their ancestral homes, he says, adding development of remote areas will be beneficial.

'Access has to be convenient,' he says. 'It is not going to spoil anything and it will make a better living environment.' Sai Kung District Board member Hiew Moo-siew does not believe that returnees should sell their land to developers, but there is nothing to stop the practice.

Trading birthrights to allow strangers into ancestral villages goes against Chinese tradition, according to research student at Hong Kong University, Billy Hau Chi-hang, who is also an indigenous villager. But he adds selling up is sometimes an economic necessity.

'Some of the villagers are not rich,' he says. 'They don't have the money to build a house. If they have three plots, they sell one or two to build a house.' At Long Ke cove, an arduous hike from Tai Long Wan, village representative Wong Ghi-sing has begun applying to exercise about 50 villagers' rights, many of them returning from overseas.

Villagers say a church-run drug rehabilitation centre at Long Ke has built illegal structures and is incompatible with the 'revival' of their village. A stalemate has ensued, but Wong is patient.

Villagers of Sha Lo Tung, near Tai Po, know all about waiting. Their representative, Roger Li, has been biding his time for 16 years for redevelopment to provide returning villagers with their promised new houses - and the Sha Lo Tung Development Company its long-awaited residential development.

Dorothy Wong has no illusions about the time it will take to develop Tai Long Wan. She has so far spent three years buying up village land. She reckons it will take another four years to build new houses for the villagers and a decade before the resort takes shape.

'For this kind of development we accept it will take a long time,' she says. 'We don't mind waiting.' 



Villagers go for gold in idyllic Sai Kung valley