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any physical sense, for there is no mechanism for such a transfer. Filial children benefit from the virtue of their parents' graves; how is a mystery. If they live close enough they must tend the graves, but their separation from them by mere distance is no bar to their receiving the virtue.
58. Few people seem to doubt that descendants are affected by fung shui. But there is also a popular belief, not shared by some geomancers, that the virtue stored up in a grave can be tapped by strangers. And from this idea stem the attempts at poaching on sites; attempts, that is to say, to bury one's dead in the immediate neighbourhood of a grave which has demonstrated its efficacy. Geomancers may say that the virtue is confined to one tiny spot in the grave, the site having been chosen to accord with the special characteristics of its occupant, and that the area round the grave will avail nobody. On the other hand, they will also certainly say that a new grave close by the old may well destroy its virtue by altering the conformation of the site. So that poaching is a serious offence and may be the cause of bitter disputes. I came across no such case myself, but there is evidence that quarrels of this sort have been known in the New Territories. (For early evidence see the Administrative Reports on the Northern District for 1909 and 1910; a system of grave registration was introduced in 1909 to overcome these difficulties). Generally people in the New Territories are able to protect their graves against encroachment and it is only in special cases that one can see the effect of the belief that the virtue of a site may be tapped. In a valley leading from Fei Ngo Shan and overlooking Hebe Haven there is a large official cemetery (Pak Fa Lam) which appears to have come into existence because it contains the tomb of Sun Yat-sen's mother. Sun's success is attributed by many people in Hong Kong to this grave; in consequence, it has attracted to it a host of other graves, despite the prohibition placed by the Administration on burial there. (Sun's failures as well as his successes can be read from the grave of his mother, as I shall show presently, but people who 'buy' plots in the cemetery are presumably not concerned with this qualification).
59. Geomancy in the open countryside entails scattered burial. Each new omega-shaped grave involves the search for a new site. Burial grounds amounting to cemeteries are very rare, and when they are found they usually turn out to be used for people who were not old residents of the New Territories. A New Territories
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