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ancestral hall of one of the lineages; this hall and all of its members are apparently guarded by the same pot, for no special separate pot was placed by its door. Moreover, all residents of the old village similarly receive protection from this pot and its charms, because of its physical propinquity. A question such as "why is a pot placed here and not over there?” is the sort that usually draws the answer, "because that is the way it is always done,” and indeed, that is the sort of answer I was given repeatedly throughout the afternoon. Nonetheless, consideration of the location of all of the pots jointly leads one readily to this sort of interpretation.
The placement of pots in the two remaining hamlets provide cases in point. In one instance, where the lineage's ancestral hall is an integral part of the residential hamlet, a single pot is placed in front of the ancestral hall, to protect all residents and all lineage members alike (and the two groups are not fully isomorphic, as some members live in fact in Europe, and one member, as I will note below, lives in Fung Yuen but outside the hamlet). In the other, where the ancestral hall stands at some distance from the hamlet, two pots are required. One stands at the end of the row of terraced houses, and a second is located just in front of the ancestral hall.
The final two pots further underscore the need for protection of every household at several symbolic levels rather than just one, which alone would prove inadequate. These pots were placed in front of two separate houses that were built only in the last decade, in fields that are at some remove from all three of the hamlets (and one is surrounded by immigrants' houses). These households, as descendants of the founding ancestors, receive protection as members of the community guarded by the Daaih Wohng Yeh and the Touh Deih Gung, and as members of the alliance formalized in the community house. Moreover, one of them is a member of a lineage ancestral hall. Nonetheless, they were apparently at risk because of the few hundred yards that separate their homes from the various nuclei of village life, and therefore they required extra protection. As the village head put it, they are still members of the community, even though they have moved "away."