A one-kilometre walk past a 600-year-old pagoda, ancestral halls and walled villages of the Tang clan.
Before the British arrived, this was not empty land. The New Territories held walled villages, market towns, ancestral halls and clan estates going back to the Song dynasty, farmed by five powerful lineages — the Five Great Clans — of whom the Tang were the oldest and most established.
The Ping Shan Heritage Trail, opened in 1993, is a one-kilometre signed route through the Tang settlement at Ping Shan, and it was Hong Kong’s first heritage trail.
What is on it
Tsui Sing Lau Pagoda — the only surviving ancient pagoda in Hong Kong, three storeys of green brick, built around 1380 by a Tang ancestor and sited by geomancy to block the north and improve the clan’s fortunes in the imperial examinations. It worked, according to the clan.
Tang Ancestral Hall, from around the twelfth century in origin and rebuilt since, is one of the largest in Hong Kong — three halls and two courtyards, with the ancestral tablets on the altar. It is still used for ceremonies and for the dim dang lantern-lighting rite when a boy is born.
Yu Kiu Ancestral Hall beside it, from about 1500.
Sheung Cheung Wai, a walled village from the eighteenth century, still inhabited, with its gatehouse and part of the wall intact.
Kun Ting Study Hall and Ching Shu Hin, an 1870 study hall and guesthouse for scholars preparing for the imperial examinations.
Hung Shing Temple, Yeung Hau Temple, and several shrine buildings.
The Ping Shan Tang Clan Gallery in the former Ping Shan Police Station of 1899 — a colonial building on a hill above the village, which the clan regarded as a deliberate insult to the site’s geomancy. It is now the visitor centre and holds the exhibition. Free.
The politics of the ground
The New Territories were leased, not ceded, in 1898 and the clans resisted the British takeover with armed force in the Six-Day War of that year, which they lost.
The colonial government subsequently recognised traditional land rights, which is the origin of the Small House Policy — the right of male indigenous villagers to build a house on village land — a policy still in force and still contested.
Practicalities
Free, open at all hours except the halls and gallery, which keep daytime hours and close on some days.
West Rail to Tin Shui Wai, then Light Rail to Ping Shan — about an hour from Central in total.
The trail is signposted, flat and easy. Bring water; there is little shade.
Hong Kong Wetland Park is a short ride away and the two make a good New Territories day.
