Local legend tells that over a century ago, pirates plagued the waters around Tsuen Wan, and so to protect their lives and valuables, villagers avoided the coast and moved inland to the foothills of Tai Mo Shan, where they began to farm and settle. Due to the steep terrain, villagers had no choice but to carve out terraced fields along the hillside. According to Mr. Yau, his father first moved to Fu Yung Shan in the 1940s through a friend’s introduction. In those days, the terraced fields were mainly used to grow rice, and although the yields could not match those of the floodplains of Yuen Long or North District, they were enough to sustain a family. 

There are over 10 levels of terraces at Fu Yung Shan, each about 3 to 5 metres wide. However, the actual farmable area is only 2 to 3 metres wide because of the width taken up by the stone retaining walls. If you were to scoop out the soil between the hillside and the stone retaining wall, you would get a trench with a roughly trapezoidal cross-section. The stone walls are built out of trimmed rocks, engineered to hold back soil and prevent erosion and landslides. 

Mr. Yau says that while he was working around his farm, he discovered that the oldest retaining walls had been built with remarkable precision, with the stones neatly fitted together without any need for mortar. In fact, the oldest walls have turned out to be sturdier and more durable than those built later on. He theorizes that life must have been less hectic in the past, allowing people the time to quarry the stones, carve them into regular blocks, and stack them like bricks. 

By the time Mr. Yau’s father took over the farm, the terraced fields had long been established. Building on what the previous owners left behind, he continued to reinforce and expand the terraces, sometimes on his own, and sometimes with the help of hired stonemasons. However, compared to the more leisurely pace of the past, modern farmers face more time pressure. Therefore, they do not have the time to grind each rock into perfect shape, and simply fill any gaps with smaller stones.  

The soil of Fu Yung Shan is not as rich as that on floodplains of Yuen Long and North District, and farmers had to dig up soil from various parts of the hillside to fill in the terraces. The soil here is mainly yellow clay, formed by the constant erosion of the hill slopes by rain. This soil is dense and sticky, and lacking in organic matter, so farmers used to keep poultry to use the manure as fertilizer. 

Since the soil in the terraces had to be dug up from the surrounding woods, the soil layer is not as deep as it is in the lowlands. However, Mr. Yau believes that soil erosion in this area is not very severe due to the fact that this farmland was once rice paddies. Long-term submersion in water caused the bottom layer of soil to become hard and dense, making it more solid. Nevertheless, when soil is washed away by heavy rains, villagers still need to dig more up to replace it. 

After Hong Kong’s agriculture shifted away from rice farming to vegetable growing, most terraced fields were converted into fruit orchards. The stepped structure makes them unsuitable for vegetable farming, which requires intensive management and frequent harvest. Moreover, it is too difficult to regularly haul a tiller up and down.  As a result, crops such as oranges, longan, wampee and lychee are commonly found in terraced fields across various parts of the New Territories. The peach trees grown by Mr. Yau are also a fruit tree, but since they are cultivated for ornamental purposes, they are cut and sold when they flower but before they bear fruit. 

Peach trees raised on terraced slopes also grow differently than those grown on flat land. Because one side inevitably receives more sunlight than the other, the plants will naturally react by growing towards the light. As a result, it is difficult to grow uniformly regular trees. When residential estates put in an order for dozens of similar-looking peach trees, Mr. Yau is less likely to be able to supply them. Therefore, most of his customers are corporates or families.  

Challenges in terraced farming

Tending to terraced fields is much more physically demanding than working on flat land. Although fruit trees require less frequent maintenance than vegetable fields, it still takes a lot of physical labour to apply fertiliser and to carry harvested trees down the hill. And even on a (small, narrow) terraced field, it is too much work to till the soil by hand. That is why Mr. Yau uses smaller and lighter machines than those used on flat land, because he still has to carry them up and down manually. In recent years, due to the increasing difficulty in carrying fertiliser uphill, Mr. Yau built a track-and-trolley system on one end of the field so that he can haul fertilizer uphill with a rope.

Sometimes, retaining walls will collapse due to heavy rain, unable to withstand the excess load of water and soil. Nowadays, it is hard to find large stones, and farmers may lack the physical strength to carve them into shape. Yet it is not cost-effective to use modern methods to repair the breaks with cement, so they resort to patching the walls with small stones. Occasionally, wet soil collects in the gaps between the stones, which allows weeds and wild trees to grow, increasing the strain on the retaining walls. Farmers therefore have to stay on top of the weeding.

In the past, terraced farmers kept poultry for eggs and meat, using the manure as fertiliser and part of their crop as feed. However, in the 2000s, the government banned free-range poultry farming to prevent avian influenza. As a result, farmers lost the ability to generate their own pigeon or duck manure, and started having to buy fertilizer from outside suppliers.  Dealing with soil erosion has also become more challenging, as Mr. Yau now needs to import peat soil to replace soil losses. These policy and societal changes have increased the farm’s production costs. 

Mr. Yau guesses that all the terraced fields still existing in Hong Kong must be over a hundred years old. The gradual decline of agriculture has led to the abandonment of many hillside villages in the New Territories. Although some old fields have been restored in various parts of the New Territories in recent years, the difficulty of restoring terraced fields is much greater. While it is fairly straightforward to use a brush cutter to clear weeds from flat land, if you try to do the same thing on overgrown terraced fields, you might accidentally destabilize the retaining walls by repeatedly hitting them with the blades. 

Terraced fields carry within them a unique history and wisdom, reflecting the perseverance of farmers as they eked arable land out of challenging terrain. From the rice paddies of the past to the peach blossom and fruit orchards of today, terraced fields are not only places of production, they embody the methods and wisdom passed down through the generations in adapting to the natural environment. Yet, due to societal changes and the decline of local agriculture, the continued maintenance and management of terraced fields faces numerous challenges, including soil erosion, labour shortages, and policy restrictions, resulting in the fading away of these centuries-old agricultural landscapes. Mr. Yau’s story reminds us that terraced fields are not just a gift bestowed by the landscape, but a vessel for culture and memory. In our society’s pursuit of modernity, it is worth pausing to reflect more deeply on how to preserve this precious agricultural heritage.  

This article was written by contract researcher Ng Cheuk Hang