Hoi Ha village was established in 1811 by Hakka settlers sharing the family name Yung. They arrived at the innermost shore of Hoi Ha Wan — a calm, finger-shaped inlet on the Sai Kung Peninsula in northeastern Hong Kong's New Territories — and built houses, cleared land, and began farming. What drew the Yungs to this particular cove is not recorded, but the geography speaks for itself. The inlet is sheltered on three sides, the water is clear, and the surrounding hills drop steeply enough to discourage casual intrusion. Archaeologists later found the site had been visited long before the Yungs arrived: pottery sherds from the Tang, Ming, and Qing dynasties, along with prehistoric stone implements, turned up in territory-wide surveys. Hoi Ha sits at the end of a very long line of people who recognized that this bay is worth the walk.

For much of its history, Hoi Ha's economy rested on a chemical reaction: heat calcium carbonate — found in abundance in oyster shells and coral skeletons — and it transforms into calcium oxide, otherwise known as quicklime. The limekiln industry operated across Sai Kung villages from roughly 1800 to 1939, and Hoi Ha had four kilns of its own. Villagers collected coral and shells from the bay just steps from their homes, loaded them into kilns built from rubble stone and lined with crude brick, and burned them into lime used in construction mortar and agricultural soil amendment. The finished product was loaded onto boats and rowed or sailed across to Hong Kong Island to be sold. Two of the four kilns still stand on the eastern shore of the inlet — comparatively intact, restored by the Antiquities and Monuments Office in 1982 with help from the villagers themselves. They are among the clearest remaining evidence of an industry that shaped Sai Kung's coastal communities for a century and a half.

The decline of lime production was gradual, then total. Cement, more consistent and easier to source as Hong Kong's import trade expanded, began displacing lime in construction after the Second World War. The kilns at Hoi Ha fell silent. The bay that once loaded lime boats became a recreational destination, and in 1996 the waters around the inlet were designated part of Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park — one of Hong Kong's earliest marine protected areas. Today the Agriculture, Fisheries and Conservation Department maintains a warden post at the village. The village itself remains a recognized settlement under the New Territories Small House Policy, which means indigenous male villagers retain the right to build small houses on the site. But the population is thin, the garment and manufacturing booms of Kowloon and the New Towns never touched this cove, and the stillness the Yung family first found here in 1811 persists in its own way.

Hoi Ha Wan Marine Park wraps around the inlet that gives the village its name, protecting a coastline known for its coral communities. The park is a draw for snorkelers and kayakers willing to make the journey by minibus and country trail across the Sai Kung Peninsula. For visitors who arrive at the village itself rather than just the water, the lime kilns reward a short detour. They sit quietly on the eastern bank — two domed stone chambers, open at the top, furred with vegetation — easy to miss if you don't know to look. The Antiquities and Monuments Office designation gives them a measure of official recognition, but no sign shouts for attention. They suit the place: understated, persistent, and set against a view of water and hills that has changed less than almost anything else in Hong Kong.