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and interactive" experiences. Looking at these forms of so-called Hong Kong heritage, I ask whether the sense of belonging or historical identity has been successfully created among people who share rooted cultural similarities but have diverse origins. Historical identity, being defined as self-identification with regard to one's origins, is important for local people who aim to construct their own origins in the past, and also for their understanding of how Hong Kong society might cope with current political relations between China and Taiwan. In Hong Kong's case, because of the continuous immigration from mainland China and the similar socio-cultural backgrounds involved, the issues of self-identification and the idea of Chineseness are always controversial; because people are to some extent oriented by different institutions, multiple identities can always be found among Hong Kong residents, for example, passport, citizenship, widespread family, education, etc.
Moreover, with the recent decline of rural areas and the rapid expansion of urbanization in the New Territories, the contrast between the cultural heritage areas and the new town areas with their modern facilities for many leisure activities has become more marked than ever before. With the popular "discovery voyage" development in the last two decades, New Territories became the hinterland for history and traditions, which Hong Kong people were looking for. Again, modern transportation networks conveniently served nostalgia in the forms of traditions such as rural landscapes, ancestral hall, and puhn chơi (a festival as well as banquet food in the New Territories).
In fact, there are many differences between international tourists and domestic tourists in the way they use the same heritage trail. Foreigners see the heritage trail as one of the never-ceasing wonders created for the Hong Kong image. However, locals take it as the central part of the search for local Hong Kong history, as well as the "main dish" of the one-day domestic tours. It might be contended that cultural heritage, on common land with common history, is intimately related to the commonsense notion of belonging to Hong Kong, and that is the way that participants' identities are being shaped through these one-day experiences. But what I found out was that local tourists did not identify with the monuments through these visits, but they identified with each other as Hongkongese through the experience of cultural as well as heritage tourism.