One ferry away, another way of life.
Our first series, This is Lantau — 13 episodes, one hour each, stepping into the real Lantau: farmers and fishers, artists and musicians, practitioners and elders, and the people who chose to stay. Lantau is larger than Kowloon and Hong Kong Island combined — more than a tenth of Hong Kong's land — yet for most people it's only the scenery that slips past on the way to the airport or the Big Buddha.
Made in Lantau is a community media platform for Lantau Island. Independent — made by people who live here, for people who care about this place: radio, podcasts, film, and whatever comes next.
RTHK's Community Involvement Broadcasting Service (CIBS) funds and broadcasts programmes made by communities themselves, one of the few platforms in Hong Kong that does. This is Lantau is about the island's people and places, and should be made with them. Our proposal is currently under review.
Produced by That Space — a creative and cultural hub at 17 Mui Wo Chung Hau Street, Lantau. Gallery, event space, community connector.
This is Lantau is a 13-episode bilingual radio series — led in Cantonese, with English — moving through the island's villages, farms, coastlines and studios, layered with on-location field recordings that let you feel the place with your eyes closed.
Before Tsing Ma Bridge, the ferry was the only way onto the island. In colonial times Lantau was a hidden refuge — hiking, camping, monasteries, fishing villages, each of Mui Wo, Tai O and Tung Chung with its own pier and memories. This episode traces Lantau's crossings: how people reached the island before the bridge, and how, in 1997, that bridge rewrote its fate overnight.
After the bridge opened, Tung Chung new town rose fast — but Mui Wo and Tai O drifted the other way. Mui Wo's ferry pier, once Lantau's gateway thick with weekend crowds; Tai O, a fishing village of over 30,000 at its peak, now home to around 2,000. Through three people who have each lived on Lantau for decades — a born-and-bred local, a Briton who moved here in 1979, and a descendant of a Tai O fishing family — this episode asks what remains once the tide goes out.
Lantau's land and sea have fed its people for centuries. This episode steps into the farms and fishing villages still at work, meeting the farmers and fishers who chose to stay — from regenerative agriculture to rice revival, from traditional Tai O fishing to ecological aquaculture — and hears how they turn old roots into new ways of making a living in modern Hong Kong.
In Lantau's village houses lives a community of makers. Ceramicists, botanical artists, illustrators, painters — they've chosen the island as their studio, working between hills and coastline. By area, Lantau's density of makers is several times the city's. This episode enters their workspaces to ask how the island's hills, coast and soil shape their work — and what brought them here to stay.
In Lantau's village houses lives a community of musicians. DJs, singer-songwriters, sound artists — they've made the island their studio, working between the sound of waves and birdsong. By area, Lantau's density of musicians is several times the city's. This episode enters their spaces to ask how the island's soundscape, rhythm and silence shape their music — and what brought them here to stay.
Between Lantau's hills and coast lives a community of practitioners. Mindfulness teachers, yoga instructors, monastics of many faiths — they've made the island their place of practice, living in its natural quiet. Lantau holds Hong Kong's most diverse spiritual traditions — Buddhist Zen monasteries, Catholic abbeys, meditation and yoga practitioners — side by side on one island. This episode enters their spaces to ask how the island's mountains, sea and natural rhythms shape their practice — and what brought them here to stay.
Lantau is one of the few places in Hong Kong where wild animals still live alongside people. Water buffalo roam the streets of Mui Wo, volunteers quietly replant the hillsides, and others build a connection to nature for the next generation deep in the forest. This episode steps into these stories to ask how people and the wild feel their way toward sharing one island.
At three in the morning, a ferry still leaves Central for Mui Wo. Most people don't know it exists. This episode follows a few who do: into the places where they work through the city's small hours, then onto the boat with them — engine, water, the silence on deck. In the quietest hour, we listen to how they move between Lantau and the city, and what the island means to them. Everyone who boards at 3am carries a story about the distance between the island and the city.
Hong Kong has 263 islands; most people know only a handful. The outlying islands were never separate dots on a map — long before the city, Cheung Chau, Peng Chau and Mui Wo already formed one interdependent archipelago. Ferries, tides, and the flow of people and goods shaped this world for centuries. This episode leaves Lantau for Cheung Chau, Peng Chau and the nearly-forgotten Lai Chi Wo — places that each face the same question: how to exist at the city's edge, and how to find a centre again after the people leave.
The government has plans for Lantau, but the plans keep changing. Lantau Tomorrow shelved, the Northern Metropolis now the priority, South Lantau zoned for 'conservation.' Top-down planning and bottom-up building pull against each other on this island. This episode meets the architects and space-makers who chose to land here, and asks how they shape a future for Lantau in their own way, amid policies that never stop moving.
Some arrive and leave, some leave and come back, some arrive and never go. Lantau isn't a place many people plan to settle — yet it has become an unexpected home for so many. This episode follows a few who put down roots here: expatriate residents, returning Hongkongers, ethnic-minority communities. In their daily lives, we listen for each of their answers to one question: where is home?
At the Dragon Boat Festival, the village crews of Lantau put their boats in the water. The moment the drums beat, centuries of inter-village contest come alive. But where do these traditions come from, and who carries them on? This episode joins the dragon-boat crews, the lion- and kirin-dance troupes, and the craftsmen who build the boats and the lion heads, asking what community memory and identity lie behind Lantau's drums.
How do a place's traditions, food and crafts become something an outsider wants to take home? Using design and branding to give a place its own voice is rising across Hong Kong's communities — and it's a global movement in cultural tourism. This episode meets designers and brand-makers from across Hong Kong, asking how local tradition gets reimagined so an island's story can travel — into shops, into a traveller's suitcase, and out beyond Hong Kong.
Public voting has closed — thank you. Every heart tells us which stories resonate, and which ones to make first.
People of Lantau, and people who love it, telling their own stories here — asking questions, answering each other's. Every line you leave becomes part of the programme.
Programme news, field notes from recordings, and broadcast times. Rarely sent, only when it matters.
This is Lantau is produced by That Space — a creative and cultural hub at 17 Mui Wo Chung Hau Street, Lantau. Gallery, event space, community connector.