On a warm Friday morning just days before Lunar New Year, 73-year-old Leung Yat-shun stood at his flower stall in Mong Kok’s bustling festive market, surrounded by gladioli and lilies freshly cut from his fields in San Tin. Despite eyes reddened from nights of near-sleepless harvesting, he smiled easily. “Farming is like raising children,” he said. “It takes lots of care — but I really like it.”
This year, that care was tested more than most. The weeks before the Lunar New Year brought wild swings in temperature. In late January, a sharp cold snap sent thermometers in the northern New Territories plummeting to 7 degrees Celsius, threatening to stunt the flowers before they could bloom. Then, days before the festival, unseasonably warm weather arrived, forcing Leung to erect shading at his market stall to stop the blossoms from opening too soon.
To coax the flowers through the cold, Leung and his workers lit fires along the farm’s perimeter, burning piles of wood to gently warm the surrounding air — a traditional technique he described simply as “taking the chill off.” It worked. By the time the New Year crowds arrived in Mong Kok, his gladioli and lilies had full, healthy buds.
Half a Century of Growing Things from the Heart
Leung has farmed in San Tin for more than 50 years. He named his farm Shun Sum Yuen — Cantonese for “growing things from our hearts.” The name reflects both the philosophy and the sacrifice behind every crop.
He was born in Zhongshan, Guangdong province, and was a teenager when he and his family fled to Hong Kong in 1968 during the Cultural Revolution. He tried his hand as a street hawker first, but the life didn’t suit him. “My father and I went to farm in the New Territories instead,” he recalled. They began by renting a small plot in San Tin in 1970, and over the decades, piece by piece, expanded whenever neighboring farmers gave up their land. Today, Shun Sum Yuen stretches across three hectares, producing vegetables, flowers, and every summer, a sweeping field of sunflowers that draws visitors from across the city.
For his gladioli and lilies, Leung insists on premium Dutch bulbs — each lily bulb costs around HK$15. If the flowers bloom on time and the market is good, a single stalk might sell for HK$25. The margins are thin. “We can’t make much money from farming,” he said plainly.
Last year brought near-disaster when Typhoon Wipha tore through Hong Kong, destroying his entire sunflower crop and leaving him with losses of close to HK$200,000. He started planting sunflower seedlings again in early February. He plans to transplant them once the lily and gladiolus harvest is done, hoping Hongkongers will once again walk through rows of yellow blooms during the Easter holidays in April.
A Farm on Borrowed Time
The harder threat may be one that no fire or shade structure can fix. Hong Kong’s ambitious Northern Metropolis development — announced in 2021 and designed to transform rural borderland areas into a sprawling urban and technology hub — is expected to reclaim the land occupied by Shun Sum Yuen as early as this year. The San Tin Technopole, the project’s centrepiece, sits squarely over the fields where Leung has spent his adult life.
Leung is already scouting for alternative sites elsewhere in the New Territories, pragmatic about the inevitable. But he is not resigned. He speaks about the farm — its four dogs, its roughly 20 cats, the open sky — as most people speak about home. “I don’t want to move into a public housing unit, trapped by four walls,” he said.
He acknowledges that agriculture in Hong Kong is, by any measure, an uphill endeavor. But after more than half a century of coaxing life from the soil, Leung Yat-shun shows no sign of stopping. The sunflowers will bloom again. He’ll make sure of it.
