Mango King
By Michael Leung, July 2014
In August 2013, Wooferten, an independent community art space in Yau Ma Tei invited me to participate in their Art Activist in Residence programme. I decided to focus on community farming on the ground floor, with the neighbourhood, as opposed to farming on the rooftop, which is often relatively inaccessible. Relationships, stories and neighbourhood interactions were documented and archived for public reference, and the Community Farming Project was exhibited at Kubrick Cafe and Bookshop in December 2013. One part of this residency focused on Mango King’s guerrilla farm, and I have been invited to elaborate on this relationship in an exhibition called ‘Can We Live Together?’ at Oil Street.
Since moving to Hong Kong over four years ago, I have developed a strong interest in locally produced food. In August 2013, a group of friends from Tak Cheong Lane in Yau Ma Tei told me about an outdoor space where a homeless person was growing food. At sunset and in single file, we meandered through a circuit of highways before reaching a piece of derelict land where an island of sweet potatoes thrived. Situated next to the sweet potato crop was a collection of bottles filled with water. Somebody was clearly farming here.
Mango King is a guerrilla farmer in Hong Kong.2 He is without a home in the traditional sense of having stable accommodation, and lives on his farm that is located on unused government land in Kowloon. I first met him on the morning of Monday 9th September 2013. Since then, I have visited him, sometimes with friends, over 20 times to date.
Earlier this year, Mango King was requested by the government to vacate his farm and home by mid-July, due to a road extension that will connect traffic to the West Kowloon development. In addition to the road extension, Christopher DeWolf writes in a recent article, ‘Hong Kong’s government is no friend of guerilla gardening, running television ads against illegal planting and tearing up informal vegetable patches.’3 In areas that are unused, not prone to landslides and serve the community in only positive ways, we should take a moment to understand farmers such as Mango King and what he has self-organised in this “no man’s land.”
At the time of this exhibition setup (late July 2014), Mango King continues to farm attentively and live in this unused space, aware that his days here are numbered and that he will need to relocate imminently. Presently, he continues to sow seeds and water his plants, vegetables and fruit trees twice daily in the summer heat.
To date Mango King is currently growing one lychee tree, four banana trees, 20 cayenne chilli pepper plants, over 40 papaya trees and much more. This thorough list can be seen in ‘Mango King’s Farm Map.’ His approach to farming is impressive, organic and follows many of the Permaculture Design Principles — Mango King observes and interacts with the urban landscape, catches and stores energy through his “Beaver Water Collection” technique, obtains a yield through seed saving, produces no waste through composting, uses small and slow solutions such as his “Volcano Planting” technique, uses edges and values the marginal in seeing the value of this under-appreciated government land, and creatively uses and responds to change in his willingness to vacate his farm and relocate all his plants and trees (some of which are even taller than him).4 The Mango King Diary updates Yau Ma Tei shops, urban farmers, residents and other people on our collaboration. People are often impressed and surprised by Mango King’s farm, yield and resourcefulness.
Mango King and his farm allow me to reflect and define my roles as an urban farmer in Hong Kong, a neighbour in Yau Ma Tei and a citizen in Hong Kong. On days where I am too busy or tired to sow seeds or to water our rooftop farm, I often reflect on Mango King’s positive energy and commitment to his farm. His approach to farming energises me and introduces an important level of discipline in my life. As a neighbour in Yau Ma Tei, I am fortunate to be surrounded by many like-minded and supportive individuals and collectives, especially the group who first introduced me to Mango King’s farm.
The 20+ times that I have visited Mango King — some short, some long — are exhibited in Oil Street and online. If Mango King is evicted, this creative archive will serve as testament to a Hong Kong citizen’s great lengths and efforts to sustaining himself in a city that is an increasing challenge — with unsustainable rent increases, the homogenisation of shop spaces, destructive urban renewal projects and farmland issues in the North East New Territories — to live in. Hopefully his story can encourage us to redefine how public space can be used, what role we can play in our communities and what type of city we want to live in.
Proofread by Alexandra Tung
Photos and more information here:
https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.539877076141587.1073741829.536550709807557&type=3
Chinese version: https://medium.com/@studio_leung/c0649661786c
[1] Guerrilla gardening is described as “the illicit cultivation of someone else’s land” – Reynolds, Mark, On Guerrilla Gardening (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2008, 5)
[2] DeWolf, Christopher, Hong Kong’s Guerrilla Gardeners, February 2014, www.roadsandkingdoms.com/2014/hong-kongs-guerrilla-gardeners
[3] Permaculture Design Principles 1, 2, 3, 6, 9 and 11– Mollison, Bill, Permaculture: A Designers’ Manual (Tagari Publications, 1988)
