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NOTES AND QUERIES
The Police Station at Tung Chung was in an old Chinese fort, walled in. I heard my cases under a huge tree there and always had to drink a large tumbler of goat's milk provided by the Indian Sergeant in charge. He would have been awfully hurt if I had refused. It might be O.K. with half a pint of rum or whisky, but I had not the heart to do it!
J. W. HAYES
SOME NOTES ON TUNG CHUNG1
Tung Chung, Eastern Stream, appeared on the historical scene of the region earlier than most other places in the New Territories. The valley acquired its eminence because the last of the Sung emperors was proclaimed there and upheld some sort of a Court in the valley for at least three months in 1278, the last year of the Sung dynasty. Though the place of proclamation cannot be ascertained to be Tung Chung itself, Chinese historians have been tackling the problem from the name Huang Lung Hang*, Yellow Dragon Valley, which refers to the inhabited part of the valley of the Eastern Stream. Historical documents have indicated that a yellow dragon appeared in the sea when the boy emperor was proclaimed and the fact was recorded because it was thought to be a good omen for the fast vanishing dynasty.
Apart from legends, there is more vivid evidence of the brief stay of royalty in the area because wherever the fugitive Sungs held court, the people erected temples to remember a loyal courtier, Lord Yeung, a member of the royal household who followed the Court to the very end. Today, we can find three of such Hou Wong temples in our region: Kowloon City, Tai O and Tung Chung. The temple at Tung Chung cannot, of course, be dated as far back as 1278 but it is certain that it was renovated around 1870 and subsequently in 1910 and 1959.
There is next to nothing to tell what happened in the region between the fall of the Sung dynasty (1278) and the coastal
1 The above historical note on the Tung Chung area contains material collected by Mr. C. Y. Ng of the University of Hong Kong for his Ph.D. thesis on "Rural Development". A more detailed historical paper on Tung Chung by Mr. Ng is expected to be published next year.