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I was told by a descendant of Dang Man-Wai that his ancestor had made several alterations to the landscape to destroy the fung-sheui of Nam Pin Wai. He built a number of temples, and dug a well behind the temples and made fish ponds in front of the village.
Some written complaints from 1873 reveal a series of disputes that had lasted several months and which suggest that the event was part of a long term conflict. The Dangs complained to the county magistrate and his subordinates that some Nam Pin Wai villagers had robbed their money for fish seeds, and that they had several times in the previous six months taken fish by force from the fish ponds that belonged to or were operated by the Dangs. The owner of one of the fish ponds, a Wong of Sha Tau, complained that on one occasion the local Nam Pin Wai gangsters fed more than one thousand people to take all the fishes away from the ponds. The version of the Nam Pin Wai villagers is different. According to them, some of the Dangs of Tai Hong Wai, one of the Kam Tin villages, relying on their being the owner of the market, for a certain amount of “rent” allowed gambling tables to be set up in the market area, some just in front of the house of a certain Ng of Nam Pin Wai. Ng reported this to the nearby guard post. In response the man in charge came to stop the gambling. But the Dangs would not listen. Ng and other villagers tried in vain to reason with them. The Dangs beat them up, causing injuries, and seized the laundry of Ng. To cover up their misdeeds, the Dangs asked their village brothers to accuse the Nam Pin Wai villagers of robbing the fish seed money, and later framed the case of the fishes.
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The target of the Dangs was not limited to the few alleged gangsters, but included the Nam Pin Wai villagers in general. In one of the complaints the Dangs gave the general context of the dispute. The Nam Pin Wai village had been subordinate to the Dangs since the time of their ancestors.22 Many of the villagers were generally disloyal to their masters, and the younger ones had relied on this when they robbed the fishes. The people of the village in general were pleased to see the disaster that happened to the Dangs. The Nam Pin Wai villagers, on the other hand, spoke of themselves as a small village always oppressed by the big lineage of the Dangs. They accused the Dangs of stealing two cows from a Yeung of their village. When they complained to the Dang elders about this, they were told to pay to redeem the cows.