NOTES AND QUERIES
159
the poorest class each man owns one or more houses. Besides those used for habitation some of these houses are used for keeping cattle or storage of grass etc...... Some are ancestral and joss temples which are for worshipping purposes, and most of these were left by their ancestors, the cost of originally building each of them amounting to thousands of dollars.
It was usual for a family to own more than one small house in one of the rows of houses that characterised local villages, and for its members to spread into several whilst still feeding as one household. Among specific cases is the following statement of the position at Li Cheng Uk, New Kowloon about 1910:
44
When I went to the LING clan of Cheng Uk as a sun po tsai (童養媳) or child fiancée at the age of eight, my future husband's parents occupied five houses in a row. I slept in one with my mother-in-law, two adult but unmarried sisters-in-law slept in another, my father-in-law and two adult unmarried sons in the third, an old uncle and aunt in a fourth, and the family's hired labourers in the last.
++
In the adjoining village of Sheung Li Uk another informant's family occupied five houses next to the clan's main ancestral hall:
One of these houses was an additional ancestral hall, built to honour my own grandfather, whilst the first of the other four was used at night by my mother and father and myself; the second and third were used by my unmarried brothers in their twenties; and the fourth and last by a married brother, his wife and their small daughter. All these persons fed together. Our domestic animals were housed in a wooden barn, though it was common for dwelling houses to be used as cow houses and pigsties and for storage of grass and firewood, agricultural implements and farm produce. Our family was quite prosperous but most other families in the village occupied only a pair of house." (Period circa 1900 - 1910)
On Hong Kong island a few similar examples have come to my notice in the course of reading and enquiry.
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NOTES AND QUERIES
159
the poorest class each man owns one or more houses. Besides those used for habitation some of these houses are used for keeping cattle or storage of grass etc...... Some are ancestral and joss temples which are for worshipping purposes, and most of these were left by their ancestors, the cost of originally building each of them amounting to thousands of dollars.
It was usual for a family to own more than one small house in one of the rows of houses that characterised local villages, and for its members to spread into several whilst still feeding as one house- hold. Among specific cases is the following statement of the posi- tion at Li Cheng Uk, New Kowloon about 1910:
44
When I went to the LING clan of Cheng Uk as a sun po tsai (#7#(7) or child fiancée at the age of eight, my future husband's parents occupied five houses in a row. I slept in one with my mother-in-law, two adult but unmarried sisters-in-law slept in another, my father-in- law and two adult unmarried sons in the third, an old uncle and aunt in a fourth, and the family's hired labourers in the last.
++
In the adjoining village of Sheung Li Uk another informant's family occupied five houses next to the clan's main ancestral hall:
One of these houses was an additional ancestral hall, built to honour my own grandfather, whilst the first of the other four was used at night by my mother and father and myself; the second and third were used by my unmarried brothers in their twenties; and the fourth and last by a married brother, his wife and their small daughter. All these persons fed together. Our domestic animals were housed in a wooden barn, though it was common for dwelling houses to be used as cow houses and pigsties and for storage of grass and firewood, agricultural implements and farm produce. Our family was quite prosperous but most other families in the village occupied only a pair of house." (Period circa 1900 - 1910)
On Hong Kong island a few similar examples have come to my notice in the course of reading and enquiry.
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