Yim Tin Tsai old hidden village new reasons to visit
Hakka clan descendants are returning and bringing Yim Tin Tsai back to life
The main pathway in Yim Tin Tsai
Life renewed in Yim Tin Tsai village
Sitting on weathered red plastic chairs in Yim Tin Tsai village, elderly men and women stared at me. Their expressions were contorted in cautious surprise.
“How did you get here?” one of the men, dressed in a white under shirt and loose blue shorts, enquired. “The ferry only comes here on weekends.”
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His statement was true enough, and I explained that I paid the local ferry service extra to explore the small island town on a weekday.
Entering Yim Tin Tsai
They made sounds of understanding, nodding their heads as a woman with greying hair sternly told me not to enter the derelict houses for photographs, “because many of them are still ‘private residences’.” Their hesitancy at my presence was no surprise.
As one of Sai Kung’s outlying islands, Yim Tin Tsai is an insular community with an area of 0.24 square kilometres.
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In the nineteenth century, the former industrial town produced small quantities of salt that was sold to surrounding villages. By the 1960s, the salt industry drastically declined, as the work was outsourced to cheaper labour in mainland China and Vietnam.
Mangroves located at the breakwater
In 2004, Yim Tin Tsai was wholly abandoned. The last descendants of the Chan clan left for the opportunities that Hong Kong Island provided.
It seemed as though Yim Tin Tsai would meet the same fate as Ma Wan, a village located next to Tsing Ma Bridge. But merit and determination have given this abandoned town a second chance at life.
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The reinvigorated interests of the Catholic Church and descendants of the Chan clan cast the romantic glow of history and preservation on the outlying island town.
The village has become an ecotourism site
Now renewed as a unique ecotourism spot, Yim Tin Tsai is developing as a space for the next generation’s education and appreciation.
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The first settlers of Yim Tin Tsai began to populate the outlying island between the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.
Abandoned house located close to the pier
A Hakka clan from Yim Tim (now part of the Yantian district of Guangdong) named the village Yim Tin Tsai to both honour their heritage and mark the local trade (the direct Chinese translation is “Little Salt Field”).
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Its small population of approximately five hundred people developed salt farms. For much of its early history, this was a sustainable industry that was supported by most of the village’s residents.
Yim Tin Tsai’s former nunnery which functioned from 1901 to 2004
As Hong Kong’s oldest industry, the salt trade was largely viewed as a family business. Active in local history as early as 1,300 years before its earliest recorded settlers, salt farming appeared to be a stable and reliable economy.
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During the heydays of the late eighteenth century, Yim Tin Tsai’s villagers farmed six acres of salt fields, the smallest of five salt fields in Hong Kong during this period.
By 1864 Catholic priests started to visit the village
Besides reliable local industry, the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw numerous foreign missionaries visiting village communities.
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Historical records of the arrival of Catholicism in Yim Tin Tsai closely date that of the first settlers. By 1864, Italian priests, most prominently FR. G. Origo and Fr. S. Volonteri, began evangelising the villagers.
An abandoned Hakka house-Yim Tin Tsai
In 1866, Origo baptised seven villagers, and Volonteri baptised thirty-three people during Christmas of that year. Reverend Joseph Freinademetz was a prominent figure during this time.
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Alongside the neighbouring villages of Tai Long Wan, Che Kang, and Shum Chung, Freinademetz frequently visited Yim Tin Tsai to promote the Catholic faith and pastoral work.
Local baptisms began in 1866. By 1875, everyone on the island was a confirmed Catholic. The following year, the first stone chapel in the entire region of Sai Kung was built in Yim Tin Tsai.
The view from inside the location of the original stone chapel
The passion of the local population’s faith showed in the development of St. Joseph’s Chapel in 1890, which was inaugurated and blessed that year.
Replacing the original stone chapel, the villagers donated a small plot of land on a hilltop overlooking the salt-pans for the building’s construction.
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Built in the Italian Romanesque style, St. Joseph’s is an intimate prayer hall fitted with rose windows, a statue of Jesus and a crucifix.
The exterior of St. Joseph’s Chapel, showing the rose windows typical of ecclesiastical buildings
In the 1920s, the growing local population built a small school, Ching Po, beside the chapel. Yim Tin Tsai’s population hit its peak between the 1930s and 1950s.
Approximately fifty Chan households comprising 1,000 – 1,200 individuals lived in the village, with about one hundred children attending the village primary school.
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During the early 1950s, a pipeline was installed to provide potable drinking water. This prosperous growth proved to be wonderful but fleeting.
Dilapidated housing beside a current project for improvement
By the 1960s the world had progressed beyond the village’s capabilities. In an attempt to hold on to its economic independence, the salt-pans of Yim Tin Tsai were converted into fish-ponds.
The next decade saw the local population dropping to 500. Paired with a struggling local economy was the lack of educational mobility in Yim Tin Tsai.
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With only the Ching Po Primary School, families moved away to provide their children opportunities for further education.
In 1998 the last members of the Chan clan moved out
A lack of students forced Ching Po School to close in 1997. By 1998, Yim Tin Tsai was entirely abandoned.
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The last member of the Chan clan moved out of the village, and ferry services to the village were suspended indefinitely, even though the island sits only three kilometres from Sai Kung.
The village well, charmingly named “The Well of Life”
The future was moving, and Yim Tin Tsai was fast becoming a relic of the past. Who could have foreseen that the village’s past would save its future?
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In 2003, Pope John Paul II canonised Reverend Freinademetz for his crucial work and successes as a missionary in China.
Roof tiles set aside for future renovation works
As a prominent figure in Yim Tin Tsai’s past, this posthumous recognition led to renewed interest in the now abandoned island village.
The year following Freinademetz’s canonisation, the Catholic Church conducted extensive renovations of St. Joseph’s Chapel.
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These efforts were given the recognition they deserved, as St. Joseph’s won an Award of Merit at the 2005 UNESCO Asia-Pacific Awards for Cultural Heritage Conservation, beating out dozens of larger and older heritage sites in the Asia Pacific.
Statue of Joseph Freinademetz, who preached and lived in Hong Kong and was canonised in 2003 by Pope John Paul II
These conservation efforts and international recognition inspired former residents and Hong Kong conservationists to undergo a long-term project to revive Yim Tin Tsai.
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The process of restoring the island village to its former glory has been a labour of love. Many of the abandoned Hakka homes still hold remains of their former occupants.
Bell bequeathed to St. Joseph’s Chapel in 2004 by the Catholic Church
Broken furniture and rusted 1960s artefacts gather dust in these dilapidated structures. To preserve the outer characteristics of these Hakka homes, the buildings need to be gutted from the inside and carefully fortified to be inhabitable once more.
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While the village leaders want the island to become fully inhabitable in the future, the primary concern is the expansion and maintenance of the salt farms. Fully operational once again, it was a herculean task to fully revive the island’s old trade.
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As it is a finicky process that is highly sensitive to seasonal changes, all of the workers initially hired to rebuild the salt-pans quit in frustration.
Old basketball court beside St Joseph’s Chapel, rusted from lack of use
None of the surviving Chan clan descendants even knew what a salt farm was supposed to look like. Eventually, a group travelled to Shanwei and Taiwan to learn the craft at active salt farms.
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Through this, they learned about the changes in salinity levels from summer to winter, and how to cultivate the salt so that it properly crystallised for later harvest.
Now Yim Tin Tsai’s salt-pans are fully functioning. Their purpose is purely for public education and the long-term preservation of an ancient craft.
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Instead of selling the salt to neighbouring villages, the final product is sold in key chain form for posterity.
Two locals managing the saltpans
The resuscitation of the salt-pans began in 2012, and they were unveiled to the public three years later.
In a 2016 interview, village chief Colin Chan Chung-yin said that they had always intended to breathe life back into the village.
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Plans for the island’s revitalisation had begun as early as 1994, four years before the town was wholly abandoned.
Development project in Yim Tin Tsai
“Restoration work finally started in 2008, and by 2011, the island had its first full time resident back.”
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Alongside breathing life back to its former industry, the revitalisation programme increased accessibility within the island.
Before 2015, most of the town’s roads were overgrown dirt paths. It was a challenge getting from one end of the island to the other.
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A special concern was reaching the local graves. Resting atop one of Yim Tin Tsai’s hills, the grave site overlooks the breakwater that divides the island from Kau Sai Chau.
Overgrown pathway through dense foliage
Before the roads were paved, villagers struggled through the dense foliage to pay their respects to ancestors, clearing the graves, presenting offerings to the departed and fending off snakes.
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The introduction of paved paths in July 2015 made this respectful journey much easier to manage, helping villagers maintain a connection to their personal histories within Yim Tin Tsai.
As an island located in the Sai Kung peninsula, over two thousand visitors travel to Yim Tin Tsai on weekend day trips.
The view of the breakwater from the island town’s gravesite
Alongside the island town’s self-supporting history, they come for the unique ecotourism walks that the villagers lead.
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Taking visitors through paved and beaten paths, they can admire dwarf mountain pines clustered between ferns, enjoy the delicate nature of the rose myrtle plant, and salivate over the grand longan trees.
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Their small, round fruits are a longstanding treat in Asia, and like all other fruits grown on the island, are strictly prohibited from being picked.
One of five abandoned barbeque pits
With all that has been achieved, there is still a long way to go before Yim Tin Tsai is a prosperous, bustling village once more.
But the continuous efforts of the island’s descendants and a steadily growing interest in its history and ecology are looking to change things for the better.
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Ferry services to Yim Tin Tsai sail from the Sai Kung ferry pier, where you’ll find several stalls offering transportation services to Sai Kung’s surrounding islands.
Derelict building in need of restoration
When searching for the one that shuttles visitors to and from Yim Tin Tsai, look for the face of a white cartoon cat. It is the most prominent ferry stall by the Sai Kung pier.
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Situated at the corner of the pier entrance, the company named in Chinese, literally translating to “Cat Sign” runs regular services to the more popular outlying islands, such as the largest island in the Sai Kung Peninsula, Sharp Island, and coral-dense Bluff Island.
Services to Yim Tin Tsai typically only run on weekends, costing HK$50 per person for a round trip.
Sai Kung pier
After I agreed to pay seven times the usual amount for private ferrying to and from the industrious island town, the proprietor gave me the company’s WhatsApp number to call when I wanted to be picked up from Yim Tin Tsai and returned to Sai Kung proper.
Text & Photos Victoria Mae Martyn
