LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES
179
When she reached the great age of seventy-two, she maintained her apartment in the same neat and tidy manner as when she was young.
I have the most humble honour to record the above,
(Signed) TANG WAI KUI,
26th generation descendant of "the Five Yuens."
The most ancient Ancestral Hall to be found in the different villages of Kam T'in is Loi Shing Tong (✯✯✯) (see H.K.N. VII p. 250 and VIII, plate 8).* This hall is in Shui T'au village, and was built for the 11th ancestor, Tang Kwong Yue (). In recent years a tablet was discovered which had been hidden by furniture in one of the rooms for such a long time that its existence was forgotten. It records the date of the building of the hall and can be translated, roughly, as follows:-
"Our ancestor Tseung Luk (X) planned to build an ancestral hall for our ancestor Kwong Yue. He was successful and the ancestral tablets have been fixed in the hall from the 40th year of Hong Hei, A.D. 1701, up till now. The building is in ruins, and Shing (*) (myself) and others think that as it was erected by our early fore-fathers, we ought to repair it. Owing to the limited ancestral fund, it is difficult to do this, but I (named Shing) and all my brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews are pleased to subscribe money towards the expense, and even the descendants of the ancestors Shing (*) and Yan (g) are pleased to help.
The subscribers are as follows:
Yiu Kong (#) subscribed one tael and two mace Sz Taan (BF @), one hundred and fifty taels.
Sz Yue (tô) seventy-five taels.
Sz Yuk (+), ten taels,
Sz Shing (of), two-hundred and fifty taels.
K'ei Yuen (M), sixty taels.
Sz Tsaan (*), sixty taels.
T'ing Suen (), eight taels.
Sz Yue ($), sixty taels.
Kin Lung, 47th year repaired, and this stone tablet fixed.
The virtuous, meritorious descendant Tseung Luk was the one who started this Hall. The virtuous, meritorious descendant Sz Shing was the one who took charge of the work of repairing it.”
* See Plate 34 at rear of this Volume.