118
successful leadership was assessed by the smooth handling of the arrangements for celebrating the birthdays of the principal gods of the two local temples, Hung Shing and Kuan Yin, and the important festival of Hungry Ghosts in the seventh lunar month. Each Fong took its turn to be responsible for managing and financing the arrangements made on these ritual occasions, and by local custom, the leaders were not permitted to canvas funds outside their own Fong. It was this restriction which led to the amalgamation of the three old Fong organizations about 1930. The Fong serving the San On group had declined in numbers, and when it came to its turn, could no longer support the burden of financing the festival arrangements to the satisfaction of the community. The amalgamation was hardly a major innovation, in that the whole community, and the leaders of all three Fongs, had always combined together whenever it became necessary to repair the local temples. The hearing of 1893, referred to above, makes this clear. The Hung Shing temple had been given a major reconstruction in 1888. On that occasion the three Fongs appointed between 10-20 managers from among their leaders to share the work of collecting subscriptions and arranging for the building work to be done.
The record of the 1893 hearing shows that, in ordinary years, there were usually three members of the temple committee, called chik sze. (4) One of the current chik sze of 1893 described his duties. 'Our duties are to attend to the theatricals in the course of the year and to look after the interior fittings of the temple'. The evidence contains a passing reference to 'the three guilds'. Other facts stated in the record and discussed with old residents (born respectively in 1887, 1891 and 1897; and interviewed in 1966) shows that the three Fongs were meant. The implication is either that each Fong supplied one manager to the body of three who looked after the physical maintenance of the temple; or that as with the celebration of major festivals each Fong took it in turn to manage the temple for one year. I believe that the former was the case.
I turn now to the leadership of the Fongs. Unfortunately the record of the hearing in the temple dispute does not help to explain how the leaders in each Fong came to be elected to their