In ancient times, the fertile Sha Tin valley produced two fine crops of rice a year. The people of the valley praised their clan-held land as the 'rice bowl of the Emperor'. Now overgrown gardens, whispering bamboos, tumbling streams and long-abandoned patches of paddy, plus the ghostly silence of buildings long abandoned to encroaching vegetation, all are reminders of the untouched territory that existed before the city-port was born.