157
that Gazetteer calls the other places Om (J), this must be taken as significant. In addition, the County Gazetteer, at ch'uan 4 (Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, page 49 – taken from the 1688 Gazetteer) mentions a "Master of Meditation" at Ling To in the Ming by the name of Cheuk Shek-chue (pilfa;). This probably suggests a man, although the document at the Appendix shows that this term could be used for a nun. Ling To might, therefore, have been a house of monks in the early nineteenth century. Both Gazetteer references were taken over from the 1688 Gazetteer. However, village tradition at Ha Tsuen states that Ling To was "always" a nunnery. Lung Kai is not mentioned in the County Gazetteer. The rebuilding inscription of 1795 refers to it as Miu (§) and Tsz (F); at Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 1, pages 36-40. Here again, village tradition states that Lung Kai was always a nunnery.
The Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911 (Sessional Papers, 1911, No. 17, Noronha and Co. 1911) shows that a single man was living in the nunnery in 1911, since the village-by-village population table (Table XIX, p. 103 (33)) includes "Miu Kang Tsz" as a village, with a total population of one male.
49 This house is called Tsz ( f ) in the inscription of 1089 (Hsin An County Gazetteer, loc. cit.), which at that date should probably be given its full significance of "monastery" - no mention is made or implied there of any religious women associated with Pooi To. However, at chuan 18 of the County Gazetteer (Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, page 148), the institution at Tuen Mun contemporary with the Gazetteer (i.e. 1819) is called Om (KE, "nunnery"), and mention is made of a further Om nearly, the Wai Shin nunnery (ME), on Sui Ying mountain, already extinct by 1819. There may, therefore, well have been a period when even the Ching Shan monastery was a house of nuns. $47 Lei Shin-yue was almost certainly one of Lei Pui-yuen's students. He was already one of the main village elders in 1905, when he was the Manager of most of the main ancestral trusts of the largest branch of the lineage. He was very elderly in 1931.