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Indigenous inhabitants are peopledescended through the male line from a person who was in 1898, beforeConvention for the Extension of Hong Kong Territory was signed, a resident of an established village in theNew Territories ofHong Kong.[1]
Indigenous inhabitants have special rights to preserve their customs. When thesovereignty of Hong Kongwas transferred from the United Kingdom to thePeople's Republic of China in 1997, these special rights were preserved under theHong Kong Basic Law.
Article 40 of the Basic Law
- The lawful traditional rights and interests of the indigenous inhabitants of the "New Territories" shall be protected by the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region.
Special rights are restricted to the village that the indigenous inhabitant is from. In order to protect the tradition of villages, male indigenous inhabitants have the right to apply forsmall house, known asTing Uk (Chinese:丁屋;Hong Kong Hakka:Den1 Vuk5). Properties are only inherited by male members of a village. The interests of indigenous inhabitants are represented by theHeung Yee Kuk (Chinese:鄉議局;Hong Kong Hakka:Hiong1 Ngi4 Kiuk6).
In 2021, theLiber Research Community found sites of suspected of illegal collusion between developers and villagers, and additionally found villager land that could otherwise be used forhousing in Hong Kong, contrary to the government's claim that the land was "unfit" for development.[2][better source needed]
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People have been living on boats in the New Territories for generations, and they do not usually own land or houses. They have no special rights because the Hong Kong government since 1898 only recognisesestablished villages (Chinese:認可鄉村;Hong Kong Hakka:Ngin4ko3 Hiong1con1).
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As a result of a large influx of non-indigenous inhabitants into the rural villages, conflicts between indigenous and non-indigenous inhabitants are surfacing. Because the management of a village was only in the hand of indigenous inhabitants, non-indigenous inhabitants could not participate in the matters of the village.
The indigenous inhabitants of Hong Kong spokeTanka, Mei-Hui Hakka,Hailufeng Min (closer toTeochew dialect thanHokkien) and Yue ChineseWeitou dialect which is different from the newcomers who spoke contemporary standardCantonese.
"Internally, inter-village feuds were common. They amounted to mini-wars, often lasting for years and marked by deaths in armed struggles and the destruction of houses and crops. The causes of strife were often rooted in access to, or protection of, precious water for irrigation, and other economic assets, such as the control of ferries and markets. Disputes over fung-shui of settlements or ancestral graves were not uncommon because the belief of sitings being directly linked with prosperity or adversity. Superior geomantic skills were in demand, since they could be used to injure the fung-shui of another village, lineage, branch lineage or family, or even to drive out earlier settlers." (Hayes, 2012)
