Ever since he came to Hong Kong some 50 years ago, Patrick Hase has researched the local history of Hong Kong, and especially of the New Territories villages and market towns. Written documentation for the study of these communities has been lacking, so much of the research was conducted by way of oral interviews with village elders, conducted during 1980s and 1990s, seeking their memories of what the villages were like in their youth, a century and more ago, and what they remembered of what their grandparents had told them of the history of the community before modernization, urbanization, and high-technology changed those communities forever.