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BARBARA E. WARD
would engage a Taoist priest to come down to his junk and perform a ceremony known as Changing the Gods (woon shan). This, which involved spilling the blood of a domestic fowl, was believed to provide cleansing from pollution and open the way for good fortune.
The annual ritual cycle began with the New Year and proceeded almost immediately to the public festival for the 'birthday' of the local tutelary deity, Hung Shing Kung, on the 13th day of the 2nd lunar month. These two occasions were the ritual highlights of the year. Quickly in their wake came Ch'ing Ming, fixed by the Chinese solar calendar at a date corresponding with April 6th and falling therefore usually in the third lunar month. This was one of the two special occasions for the commemoration of a family's departed members. The third month saw also the festival to T'in Hau, the so-called Queen of Heaven, protectress of all seamen, celebrated biennially with Chinese opera at the neighbouring village of Lung Shuen Wan and annually in a large number of other places in the Colony.
In the fourth month there was a festival at the temple of T'am Kung in Shaukiwan to which a few Kau Sai people sometimes went to watch the plays, and on the fifth day of the fifth month the Dragon Boat festival. Kau Sai had once had a Dragon Boat of its own which, I was told, on one memorable occasion even came in first in the 'regatta' held in those days at Aberdeen and attended by H.E. the Governor. But that was back in the 'twenties. Later, Kau Sai people merely looked on at the Dragon Boat races held elsewhere, or sometimes 'fielded' a scratch 'team' for the fun of the thing at Sai Kung. All boat families also made offerings at the temple on the Double Fifth which was also widely used as a kind of dividing mark in the calendar: hired crew, for example, were usually engaged or laid off at New Year and the Dragon Boat festival.
In the sixth lunar month was held the festival for Koon Yam, 'Goddess of Mercy', observed in all her many temples but attended particularly by Kau Sai residents at the village of Pak Sha Wan, near Sai Kung. (The fact that this village was also the site of that Kau Sai New Village to which the landsmen were