Back to school

A school compound lying vacant for years in the Hakka village of Chuen Lung gets reinvented into a photography resource center and lab with a focus on community development. Chitralekha Basu reports.

Tsang Kim-man points at a dilapidated shade. It has seen much frenetic activity in the '60s and '70s, when Tsang was a boy. He recalls how trucks arrived at the crack of dawn to take back baskets full of fresh produce - watercress, green beans, Chinese broccoli and lettuce - to the wholesale market. Just about everyone in the Hakka village of Chuen Lung, from elderly women to small children - who had a lot of fun picking out the bugs from the vegetables - was involved in the process.

As the years rolled by, the trucks stopped coming. Many villagers left Chuen Lung's agrarian setup for more-urbanized neighborhoods. Those still relying on farming as their main source of livelihood preferred to cart their harvest to Market Street in Tsuen Wan on their own.

Tsang's repertoire of the stories of old Chuen Lung would have been lost too, in the natural course of things. Luckily, his accounts of local history have found a home for safekeeping. Koon Man School, which Tsang attended and which has been defunct for many years, was recently turned into a cultural facility and resource center for learning and experimentations in photography. Run by the Hong Kong Photographic Culture Association (HKPCA), the newly revitalized Koon Man Space is committed to celebrating and sharing the distinctive culture, history and ecology of Chuen Lung by hosting community-oriented programs and public exhibitions. At the Space's opening on May 9, Tsang stood proudly next to his not-to-scale map of the village, with quaint drawings showing houses, farmed patches and dirt tracks - many of which have since disappeared - recounting the stories behind each sketch to every visitor who stopped to listen.