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small patches of vegetable fields. The present Diamond Hill Squatter Area, with the remains of the old Tai Hom Village at its centre, is all that remains of this huge area today.

Nga Tsin Wai was buried in this squatter area. Squatter huts were built up against the outer face of the old walls of 1724. The old moat area was not built over, however, because the ground there was too unsafe and damp. The Ng clan Ancestral Hall disappeared into the centre of the new Tung Tau Squatter Area, and the area north of the village was covered with a network of vegetable plots and squatter huts. As before, the villagers were, in most cases, quite unable to get any rent from the squatters, and just lost control of their sole economic asset - their fields.

To the northwest of the village an even larger squatter area developed around the Wong Tai Sin Temple (founded here in the 1930s), and the villages of Ta Kwu Leng and Shek Kwu Lung. This squatter area was cleared from 1955 for the construction of the Wong Tai Sin Housing Estates: Ta Kwu Ling and Shek Kwu Lung villages were cleared with the squatter huts which surrounded them. No special compensation was paid to the villagers of these villages, who received cash for their fields, and a unit in the new estates. Thus, by the middle 1950s, Nga Tsin Wai was left as the only indigenous village left in the whole area, except for Chuk Yuen, Yuen Ling, and Ngau Chi Wan to the east.

Ngau Chi Wan with Pak Uk Tsai was in turn cleared for development in the late 1960s (the villagers here were given a resite just north of the new road), Ngau Chi Wan for the construction of Lung Cheung Road, and Pak Uk Tsai for the site formation for Ping Shek Estate. What was left of Chuk Yuen went in the early 1980s (some of the village had disappeared a decade or so earlier), for the development of Open Space along Po Kong Village Road. Both the Yuen Ling villages went in the early 1990s, with the squatter area which surrounded them, for the site formation for the Chi Lin Nunnery.

At Nga Tsin Wai itself, the site formation for the original Tung Tau Estate (1960), and its access roads, led to the resumption of all the remaining village fields. The Ng clan Ancestral Hall was cleared with the squatter area around it. A resite was given for the Ancestral Hall, at the western end of the old moat (the resite was less than a quarter the

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