Joint University Docent Training and Heritage Services Program in Yim Tin Tsai Village, Sai Kung
Yimtintsai (鹽田梓) Village is located on a small island in Saikung, New Territories, about half-an-hour ride on ferry from Saikung Town. It is a village of Hakka people with a settlement history of about 300 years, comprising about 40 households when it was deserted by the villagers at the end of the 1990s. It was one of the earliest sites of the Catholic missionary enterprise in Hong Kong back in the 1860s, and the whole village was converted to Catholicism in 1866. St. Joseph’s Chapel on the Island was listed as a second-grade heritage building by the Hong Kong government. The Chapel was renovated in 2003 and the project won the UNESCO 2005 Award of Merit for the Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation.
In 2011, the non-profit Salt and Light Preservation Center was established under the aegis of the Hong Kong Catholic Diocese to launch several heritage conservation projects, including remodeling the old village school house into the Heritage Exhibition Center and revitalizing the saltpans based on the village’s history of salt industry. In the summer of 2015, the saltpan revitalization project won the UNESCO 2015 Awards of Distinction for the Asia-Pacific Heritage Awards for Culture Heritage Conservation. Since then, visitors to the village’s heritage facilities have increased tremendously. Volunteers are needed to help run the heritage programs managed by the Salt and Light Preservation Center. This program aims to provide three training and drilling sessions to students for serving as docents and heritage facilitators in Yim Tin Tsai, a revitalized Hakka village, as community service and experiential learning opportunities.
For full details, please visit: https://schina.hkust.edu.hk/node/449
