128
SUNG HOK-P’ANG
1) as his son Hoh Wing (f) was a subordinate officer of this general. Hoh Wing was executed, and all his family punished. Hung Chi being considered a relation although it was only by marriage, was sentenced to banishment. His elder brother, who was the father of three sons, thinking him too young and ignorant and having no children to carry on his family, insisted on taking his place. So in the 26th year of Hung Mo (**) A.D. 1393 of Ming dynasty, Hung Yee went up North to Liao-tung (i★★). His banishment only lasted three years, but when he was free again to go where he liked Hung Yee appears to have been without means to get back to Kam T'in, because there is a story of his arriving in Nanking on foot, so poor that he was forced to beg in the streets and earn money by writing poems. One day a rich man named Ch'an (§) passed him in the street and noticing that his appearance and writing were those of an educated man, spoke to him and asked him his history. Touched by his story Ch'an befriended him, and made him the tutor of his children, but all the time Hung Yee longed for his own home and his own children. Eventually Ch'an suggested that if he provided him with a second wife he might be happier, so he arranged a marriage for him with his adopted daughter, Wong (*). Two years later a son was born called Kuen (§§), but after another year Hung Yee died. Then Ch'an provided the widow with money, and taking her little child, she set off to find her way to Kam T'in to bring Hung Yee's ashes back to the place of his ancestors. After many difficulties she arrived in Kam T'in only to find that Hung Yee's three sons Yam (†), Chan (14) and Yui (†) all grown up by now and not knowing anything of their father's history and second marriage, did not believe her story. Then Wong told them many old tales about Kam T'in that her husband had amused her with in the past in Nanking, and finally persuaded them to acknowledge her identity when she produced a fan with characters on it written in Hung Yee's own writing. So funeral preparations were at once made and customary rites performed in Hung Yee's honour, and Wong and her child were taken into the family. A year later the baby Kuen died and Wong was so upset that she threatened to take her life, and she was only prevented from doing so by Yam who promised to give her his son Naam K'ai () to be her grandson, that is, a son for her dead child. He also built her a house on Kwun Yum Shaan (4) where she could serve her husband's spirit tablet and study Bud-