Stories behind Hong Kong districts: Pok Fu Lam Village, once a rural idyll, unbowed amid uncertain future

When social worker Benjamin Sin Chiu-hang was posted to the Caritas office in Pok Fu Lam Village, he knew he had arrived somewhere special. “The people living there were somehow different from the people elsewhere in Hong Kong,” he says. “It’s a horizontal community, very vernacular and organic.”

Not everyone shared his positive impression. The village’s tin-roofed houses, which sprawl between the Pok Fu Lam Reservoir and the high-rises of Chi Fu Fa Yuen estate, have often been dismissed as a slum. But Pok Fu Lam deserves not to be overlooked: it is one of Hong Kong Island’s few indigenous villages, with a history stretching back almost 400 years.

Sin set out to collect oral histories, which he documented in Pokfulam Village: The Historical Settlement Below Victoria Peak, published in 2013. He also stumbled across a rare collection of 39 photos taken by John Stericker, who documented the settlement in 1952. “It was so rare at that time for a foreigner to go right into the village and take photos of the ordinary villagers,” says Sin.

Watch: Pok Fu Lam puts on fire dragon dance for Mid-Autumn Festival

The images depict a quintessential country village of tile-roofed greystone houses, community altars and makeshift market stalls with straw baskets full of fresh greens.