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substantial amount, outside the offended party's door or, in the case of a whole lineage, its ancestral hall, and at the expense of the other. Justice was not only to be done but was to be seen (and heard!) to be done. As one informant has said, "The act was intended to give back face, and so was done at the home of the wronged party but paid for by the other". It thereby entailed an acknowledgement of guilt by the offender, and since houses and ancestral halls were set in the midst of each village, and the dispute was of course common knowledge, the shame and vexation of the party having to make such an atonement was complete. I suspect that this made settlements much more difficult where the aggrieved party insisted on his rights to fire-crackers perhaps to such an extent that sensible people would not insist on it, and the mediating elders would do their best to persuade parties to forego the provision, wherever possible.
This practice first came to my attention in 1957, when I was District Officer South. Two lineages in the villages of Tseng Lan Shue and Ho Chung were in dispute over damage to or interference with a grave belonging to the former, and its village representative (who was also an elder of the lineage in question) was demanding that the Ho Chung people should make due payment and, in addition, pay for ten thousand strings of fire-crackers to be let off at his clan's ancestral hall to show atonement and satisfactorily (for him) conclude the case. He was a difficult and determined person, and I was inexperienced and thought his claim extravagant. As the case was somehow settled or at any rate did not come up to me again, I thought no more about it, not realizing that the demand for firecrackers as part of the settlement was in line with old custom in the area.
Since that time, the old rural society and its economic base have been changed out of all recognition, but my discussions with elders in different parts of the old Southern District, comprising the present Islands, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan administrative districts, at various times over the past twenty-five years have confirmed the practice in their areas in former days, and its time-honoured place in the settlement of disputes.
Finding this practice to be an interesting, not to say intriguing, part of local custom, but being unable to spend time in gathering