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scattered farms of various families. Towards the end of the Ming, because of the unsettled state of the times, these families decided to come together to form a fortified village with wall and moat. They employed a famous Fung Shui expert, Lai Po-i (*), to set out and purify the enclosure. He was mocked by some youths however, and became so angered that he flung down the bowl of water he was using in the purificatory rites and left. Things went wrong, and eventually the elders sought Lai Po-i out to beseech him to return to complete his work. This he refused to do, but instructed them to build a temple oriented to the north-east on the site where he had thrown down the bowl, and to lay out a road directly in front to a suitable point where the gate would be, and then to set out a village with that road site taken as the centre. This was done, and the village was set out as a square, with the temple in the centre of the back wall, directly facing the gate down the main street, in consequence.
The temple was dedicated to Hau Wong. The Sha Tin villagers believe that Hau Wong had been a refugee who had settled in Sha Tin somewhen before their ancestors arrived, who had farmed in the area and given advice to anyone who came to ask. After his death the residents continued to ask his spirit for advice, at the site of his hut. An exactly similar tale is told of Che Kung and the founding of his, the only other old temple in Sha Tin.
It seems clear that these two gods were of essentially local significance, and that they jointly presided over the fortunes of the valley. Before the fortification of Tai Wai it is likely that the temple to Hau Wong stood in the fields, like the Che Kung Temple, and that all the residents of the area worshipped there. After the Tai Wai villagers brought the god into the new temple in the village this area responsibility seems to have remained, although the village came more and more to regard the temple as their own special property. Certainly, Hau Wong, as well as the definitely communal Che Kung, is still invited to all Ta Tsiu celebrations in Sha Tin. Further, at the repair of the temple inside the village in 1864, for which a donation tablet is preserved, donations were received from most Sha Tin villages, and even from wealthy men in Cheung Sha Wan and Kowloon who had