The members of a Tang lineage in Lung Yeuk Tau claim that they have lived in Hong Kong's Northern New Territories for centuries. Like many longtime residents of this area, they were given the status of "indigenous inhabitants" when the British colonial government leased the territory in 1898. At this time, local populations largely governed themselves. However, after Second World War, immigrants from China began to swell the population, and the colonial administration became more and more involved in local politics. The "indigenous inhabitants" have long felt that they lost influence and that their rights have diminished in this changing socio-political scene. The reunification of Hong Kong with China in 1997, however, offered the Tangs an opportunity to regain some of the lost resource...[ Read more ]

The members of a Tang lineage in Lung Yeuk Tau claim that they have lived in Hong Kong's Northern New Territories for centuries. Like many longtime residents of this area, they were given the status of "indigenous inhabitants" when the British colonial government leased the territory in 1898. At this time, local populations largely governed themselves. However, after Second World War, immigrants from China began to swell the population, and the colonial administration became more and more involved in local politics. The "indigenous inhabitants" have long felt that they lost influence and that their rights have diminished in this changing socio-political scene. The reunification of Hong Kong with China in 1997, however, offered the Tangs an opportunity to regain some of the lost resources as they organized in order to face challenges from their urbanized neighbors. The Tangs suddenly found themselves in possession of important Hong Kong "heritage", valued by the urbanities, the British, and the post-colonial administrators alike as important links to the past. The Tangs strategically collaborated with the government by manipulating and recreating their own history and culture to be presented as "heritage". At the same time, they attempted to revive their dominance by negotiating tradition and bargaining for resources in the context of government heritage policies. They used the public interest in their historical buildings, walled villages, ancestral halls, and temples as a way to promote their indigenous identity.

In this thesis, I argue that the meaning of heritage is being manipulated by the Tang lineage to achieve specific ends as they confront the government's continuous appropriation of their community's properties. The case of the Lung Yeuk Tau Tang lineage village illustrates a lineage's struggle with state agencies for better treatments by placing their history, tradition, and culture under the motif "heritage". In sum, this thesis is a preliminary enquiry into the politics of heritage through the discussion of a struggle for control of interpretation among the Tang lineage and its neighbors, and among the lineage members themselves, under the unique socio-political circumstance in which the native populations have been marginalized by rapid urbanization.