Yuen Long

Name

The Cantonese name Yuen Long 元朗 may, depending on context, refer to the limits of the original market town, Yuen Long New Town, Yuen Long Plain or Yuen Long District.

Market town

The central part of Yuen Long was traditionally a market town in the area now known as Yuen Long San Hui (元朗新墟), in Yuen Long District in the New Territories West in Hong Kong. The site of the market town was situated centrally with regard to surrounding villages, allowing villagers a convenient location to sell their crops and fish.

The market is a place to allow people from villages in northwest New Territories to shop and trade. Like many market towns in Hong Kong, the market operates only on certain days each week.

Now, the central part of Yuen Long does not have that kind of market anymore. On the contrary, Modern shopping malls and various types of restaurants are established.

New towns

Two new towns have been developed in Yuen Long since the 1970s:

Yuen Long New Town was developed by the market town in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Tin Shui Wai New Town was established in the 1990s to the west of Yuen Long New Town, as separate from Yuen Long New Town. It is mostly residential.

There are Light Rail Transit and several bus routes serving between the two towns.

Housing estate

Private residential estate Fairview Park is located in the northeast part of Yuen Long.

History

The original Yuen Long Town was not located in the busiest place of present-day Yuen Long, namely Yuen Long Main Road (元朗大馬路), part of Castle Peak Road.

The earliest market in Yuen Long was situated south of the main road near Tai Kei Leng. In 1669 the market was moved north to the area near where the present-day MTR station is situated. This was done for political reasons. This area is now known as Yuen Long Kau Hui (元朗舊墟, lit. "old Yuen Long Town"). This market is sited south of a small hill. While it is far from the coast today, it was beside the seashore when the market was first built.

Cheung Shing Street, which separates Nam Pin Wai and Sai Pin Wai, divides the centre of the market. Temples were built for worship and to judge disputes. After the British leased the New Territories in 1898, they built Castle Peak Road to connect major areas of the New Territories and Kowloon. The villagers proposed and moved the market town to the main road. After the Second World War, Yuen Long Town dramatically increased in size, going from a small village into a large town known for its numerous cultural and sporting events.

Tourism projects

(Cable Car and Po Lin Monastery are NOT in Yuen Long) In 2002, the Hong Kong government announced that the MTR Corporation (MTRC) had secured the rights to run a cable car which formed part of a HK$750 million tourism project scheduled for completion in August 2005. Under the plan, a theme village would be built at Ngong Ping along a 'tourist corridor', with 6,000 square metres of shop space and an 18,600-square-metre piazza between the cable car terminal and the Po Lin Monastery. A 5.5 km cable car line, jointly managed by the MTRC and Skyrail-ITM of Australia, would link it to Tung Chung Station, in the vicinity of Hong Kong International Airport. Government-funded infrastructure works were estimated to cost $70 million.

The MTRC were granted the rights to develop and run businesses within the tourist corridor, which religious groups feared could destroy the area's religious environment, and threaten the closure of the Po Lin Monastery by draining their revenues. Environmental groups also expressed concerns about the project: the Conservancy Association feared the project would endanger woodland and brooks nearby, by threatening butterfly-habitat. The government, however, said it had considered the views of religious and green groups, and reassured that the design would "preserve the tranquil atmosphere." The Travel Industry Council welcomed the "long overdue" project; the MTRC said the project would create 300 jobs.

Facilities and tourist attractions opened in 2005 include the Ngong Ping Village, Walking with the Buddha, A tale of monkey's theatre and Ngong Ping tea house.

Cross-border activities

Due to their proximity to the Shenzhen border in China's Guangdong province, towns in the northern parts of Hong Kong, notably Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, have become hubs for parallel traders who have been buying up large quantities of goods, forcing up local prices and disrupting the daily lives of local citizens. Since 2012, there has been a vertiginous increase in Chinese parallel traders arriving in the North District of Hong Kong to re-export infant formula and household products – goods popular with the Chinese – across the border to Shenzhen. Trafficking caused chronic local shortages of milk powder in Hong Kong, which led the government to impose restrictions on the amount of milk powder exports from Hong Kong.

The first anti-parallel trading protest was started at Sheung Shui in September 2012. As government efforts to limit the adverse impact of Chinese trafficking were widely seen as inadequate, there have been further subsequent protests in towns in the North District including Sheung Shui. A campaign called Liberate Yuen Long was mounted on 1 March 2015 by localist groups to protest smuggling and parallel trading.

Public transport

The following information show transportation in Yuen Long.

Buses

Rail

Buses

Rail

Demographics

Yuen Long residents are mainly local ethnic Han with a sizable Hoa immigrants, Vietnamese Chinese from the 1970s to 1990s.

Education