Opinion | Yuen Long violence exposes the turf mentality of Hong Kong’s walled villages

The brutal assault in and around Yuen Long station on the West Rail Line by a mob of men, most of them from walled villages and some with triad backgrounds, has exposed more than a schism between the anti-extradition black shirts and pro-police white shirts. More importantly, the attack on Sunday night shows a deep, long-standing division in Hong Kong between urbanites and villagers – especially the older indigenous people – in terms of their sense of belonging and ownership of place, and of governance.

For the longest time, Yuen Long was a rural area inhabited only by the indigenous Cantonese and Hakkas. Although the district has been urbanised in recent years, acquired more modern landmarks like Yoho Mall and opened up to outsiders (urbanites and even expatriates), the indigenous people maintain a turf mentality that hasn’t changed much since the 19th century, when the British took control of the New Territories but encountered strong resistance from the villagers.

Some of the indigenous clans trace their roots in the New Territories as far back as the Song dynasty. The clans ran their villages like fiefdoms and to this day, the villagers hold fast to this sense of responsibility for managing their territory, in stark contrast to how urbanites usually rely on the public authorities.

You see this in the way the villagers organise themselves, into village councils and other associations. And this is the mentality that led to some indigenous people taking matters into their own hands and beating up train passengers in Yuen Long.

To these villagers, the assault was an act of self-governance and self-defence – against the troublemaking outsiders in their midst, against the anti-extradition and increasingly anti-China protests that have spread from the city centre to the outlying areas of Hong Kong. Historically, the walled villages could not be entered without permission. Traditionally, the villagers are known to be pro-China and pro-establishment, except if and when the small-house policy created to compensate the clans is in jeopardy.

The Yuen Long incident was not simply a gang attack. According to reports, it involved more than one gang and more than one village (including those in the rural sub-districts of Ping Shan, Pat Heung and Ha Tsuen). To these assailants, their action was more a defence of perhaps their core value: “This is my home, don’t trespass.”