[ { "id": 205874, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1969", "page_number": 180, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "174\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\ntive or sub-administrative area?\" So far as the Kowloon school was concerned it served the rural areas immediately east, west, north of and round Kowloon, whose principal villages were linked in yeuk (yueh) (#5) or 'compacts” — though whether the latter were self-organised or instituted by Government is still unknown to me. These villages used Kowloon as a market centre though there were small local markets in some of the yeuk. Together these yeuk do not appear to have constituted either an administrative or sub-administrative area of the county (1) save in the sense that the Kowloon sub-magistrate utilised their existence as a medium of contact and, no doubt, control. Again, whether they had any tuan lien is unknown - though village tradition at Nga Tsin Wai just in front of the Kowloon Walled City has it that, assisted by the Tin Hau goddess from the village temple, whose image glistened with her supreme effort, the villagers 'saved' the City from the Red Turban rebels in the 1850s and their leading elder was given a kung ming (1) by Government in recognition of their part in the defence.\n\nIn short, the detailed picture remains unfilled but we stand greatly in Mr. Wakeman's debt for having set the scene in such a stimulating and authoritative manner.\n\nHong Kong, 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nHONG KONG: A SOCIETY IN TRANSITION. CONTRIBUTIONS TO THE STUDY OF HONG KONG SOCIETY, ed. I. C. Jarvie, in consultation with Joseph Agassi, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1969, pp xxix, 378, illustrated.\n\nA symposium such as this might be approached from one of two angles: its theme could be either an exploration of the conflicts within Hong Kong society, or a comparison between the problems of Hong Kong and those of other areas in a similar situation of rapid and profound change. None of the papers in this volume attempts the latter; and those which attempt the former are noticeably more stimulating and more valuable than those which attempt neither. Hong Kong is a place in which a number of almost totally disparate groups, their interests sometimes diametrically opposed (e.g. the indigenous people and the immigrants in the New Territories), coexist in an exceedingly small compass: an opportunity to survey the relationships, often\n\nPage 180\n\nPage 181", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208132, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1977", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n155 \n\ncrews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. \n\nOne of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. \n\nAs I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap \n\n* Public Works Department.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209659, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1982", "page_number": 316, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "294\n\nG\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nIn 1884 Brenan was H.B.M. Consul at Chefoo. His position in 1880 is not clear from papers to hand, but he appears to have been making official visits to various places on the China Coast.\n\n* China, Imperial Maritime Customs, Reports on trade at the treaty ports for the year 1879. Shanghai, 1880, p. 246,\n\nIbid., p. 247. It was on behalf of one of Thomas Piry's grandsons that this volume of the trade reports was consulted, leading to the discovery of the two letters to W. Keswick.\n\n& Ibid., p. 246.\n\nTHE VILLAGE WATCH IN THE\n\nHONG KONG REGION\n\nBefore 1899 most New Territories villages of any size had watchmen or constables employed by the elders to enforce local rules, and in the bigger villages these may have had permanent employment. Lockhart wrote of “kang fu (kaang foo) or village constables, who are appointed by the village, and paid out of contributions made by the villagers according to the extent of their holdings in land\". He continued, \"Their duty is to keep watch, especially at night. They have the power to arrest, which is deputed to them by the gentry and elders of the village\". Writing four years after the transfer of the New Territories, another official, F. H. May, added a qualification: \"The so called Police really only village watchmen formerly and still in some instances employed by the villagers were only responsible for prevention of larcenies between villagers. They were not held responsible for robberies by outsiders which were supposed to be beyond their power to prevent\".2\n\nThe village watch was still a feature of the local security arrangements in the 1960s. Baker gives an account of it in the Sheung Shui villages of the northern New Territories in the 1960s, whilst Watson mentions it in his book on the Man lineage of San Tin, in an adjoining area. My own notes, which follow, made at Nga Tsin Wai, the last surviving village of central Kowloon, in the mid 1960s also offer some information on the subject.\n\nBefore and after 1899, this old walled village* had an office\n\nthere was no wall as such, but the houses all faced inward, giving the same effect as an enclosure.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209979, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1983", "page_number": 238, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "216\n\nThe popularity of the Kwun Yam temple must be seen in relation to the followings and reputations of the other village temples of the area from which the temple drew its patrons. There was a long-established Tin Hau temple (A) inside Nga Tsin Wai village, a mile or so to the west over towards Kowloon City and its suburb Kowloon Street. According to a late 19th century tablet in the temple, this had existed at least as early as 1727. It had long provided the normal place of worship for the residents of the seven villages of the League of Seven (1) centred on Nga Tsin Wai, and some of the elders of these villages described their villages to me as 'coming under the rule of the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai'. Other old villages had their own temples, including another dedicated to Tin Hau in the large old village of Po Kong. Another well-known temple outside the north-west corner of Kowloon walled city, dedicated this time to Hau Wong (E), had its followers from Kowloon Street and the villages nearby. However, if my informants are to be believed and their natural bias discounted, in the early years of this century none of these commanded such wide support as the Tung Shan temple and its Kwun Yam image, and none enjoyed the wide territorial support shown by the existence of chik li chosen from, and the circulation of subscription books within all of the thirteen main villages of Kowloon. Herein lies the importance, and the interest, of the combined Tung Shan and Kwun Yam temple of east Kowloon.\n\nBy contrast, the post-war neglect of this temple, and the fact that it has not been rebuilt, is, at first glance, hard to reconcile with its relatively recent rise to fame and period of glory. Elders give various reasons, and there is no doubt that a number of factors were at work. Firstly, the privations of the Japanese Occupation were more felt in Kowloon than in most places, because the military authorities razed Po Kong and other old villages nearby to extend the airfield, and this is said to have shaken villagers' faith in the gods. Secondly the high cost of the necessary repairs in a period of general impoverishment after the war are given as another factor. Thirdly, the removal of the Kowloon villages one by one for redevelopment purposes, before and especially after the war, was clearly another factor. The degree of disruption and personal struggle involved for the village families in these removals", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213581, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1995", "page_number": 177, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "147\n\nincense or joss sticks. According to Lo (1959, quoted in Iu, 1983), these trees were introduced into Guangdong Province from Vietnam in the Tang dynasty (619-907 AD) and were planted in large numbers in the New Territories during the Sung dynasty (960-1279 AD). In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned throughout China for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories) (Chan, 1989). In the Kuang-tung hsin-yu (Ch’u, 1974), it is noted that many people in Tung-kuan made their fortune from Kuan-heung (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. Incense trees were very suitable for the decomposed granite soils of the area and were particularly grown in the area of Shatin and the lower part of Lam Tsuen valley, whose name means \"forest village\", and around Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan on Lantau. Interestingly, Schofield (1983) referring to the fine fung shui wood at Sha Lo Wan adds “In a suitable light, ancient log slides can be seen running straight down the steepest hills on this stretch of coast\", although whether these have anything to do with the incense trade may never be known.\n\nThe successful cultivation of the incense tree depended on three conditions, the suitability of the soil, adoption of proper methods of cultivation and the mastering of tapping and cutting methods for the collection of resin, which had a medicinal use. The general name of the varieties of incense produced in Tung Kwun, Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those times, was \"Kuan-heung\" (Iu, 1983).\n\nThe logs were collected at Tsim Sha Tsui from where it was shipped by small boats to Shek Pai Wan near present day Aberdeen on Hong Kong Island, where it was re-shipped onto Chinese seagoing junks to Canton, SE Asia and as far away as Arabia.\n\nIt has been suggested that the cultivation of and trade in incense trees gave rise to the name of Hong Kong (meaning incense harbour). \"Little Hong Kong, or Heung-kong-wai, is said to have been so-called on account of the quantity of Pak-miu-heung-shu then growing there, the wood of these white-wood fragrant trees is called \"Nga-heung\" (i.e. fragrant wood white as a tooth), is odoriferous when burnt, and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214114, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1997", "page_number": 182, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "151\n\nfrom the Colonial Office, in London, for the setting up of a Botanical Garden. This garden, which still flourishes today, finally came into being in 1862.\n\nBut, skipping a hundred years to the Branch's second time around, quite a lot else has been achieved. For example, the RASHKB has built up a respectable library of books on Asia. This is on permanent loan to the Urban Council, at the City Hall, and members of the general public are welcome to refer to it. On the shelves of the RASHKB Collection one can find many old, valuable titles, such as: A Narrative of the British Embassy to China in the Years 1792, 1793 and 1794, by Aeneas Anderson (1795) (then in the service of Earl Macartney), and Narrative of a Voyage Round the World, by Captain Sir Edward Belcher RN (1843), in two volumes. Some books in the RAS Collection bear interesting chops (stamps), such as from the old Canton Reading Room and the South China Morning Post's pre-World War II Library.\n\nIn addition RASHKB Archives, including files, photographs and papers, are deposited with the Government Public Records Office (PRO). Other Branch possessions are on long-term loan to the Hong Kong University. These include the F.A. Nixon, Buddhist, Tang Dynasty Scroll and the 38 M.A. McMullen Bills of Lading, relating to shipments in China from 1825-73. Also held by the University on behalf of the RASHKB are microfilms of 1847-59 Branch procedures and the Nixon Photographs of 991 bronze Nestorian crosses.\n\nAlthough the Society is basically apolitical, and occasionally thought of as being pro-establishment, it has not been afraid to take up cudgels when it felt there was a cause. As examples a letter was sent, in May 1995, to the Hong Kong Government pressing for the retention of the spirit hall and historical and architectural artefacts when the old Nga Tsin Wai Walled Village, in East Kowloon, is demolished.\n\nAlso, because of some government intransigence at the time, a small group of RASHKB members appeared twice before a Legislative Council committee to press for a properly established Public Records Office. When a purpose-designed, reasonably accessible, PRO opened in June 1997 at Kwun Tong, many members liked to think the RAS played a part in this successful outcome.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214626, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 41, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "descent from an Imperial clansman who was abandoned here in 1277 (their surname is the same as that of the Sung Imperial house), - the clan subsequently left the area'. Certainly the villagers remembered the Sung Court with reverence. Many folk-tales grew up in the nearby villages about the boy-Emperors and their actions. The villagers down to the nineteenth century revered the grave of the sister of the two boy-Emperors, which stood just outside Kowloon City. The major temple of the area, the Hau Wong Temple outside the Walled City, was dedicated to the uncle of the boy-Emperors, the Prince-Marquis Yeung Leung-tsit. The villagers say that they worshipped this man in secret during the Yuan dynasty, and built him a temple as soon as the coming of the Ming made this possible. The villagers greatly reverenced Yeung Leung-tsit's benevolence and selflessness, but his deification is clearly one that was intended to reflect the local people's reverence for the Sung Court as a whole.\n\nAt some date, an important Market grew up in front of the yamen at Kowloon City. In the later nineteenth century this stretched from the south-east gate of the Walled City (the most important entrance to the City) down to the great stone pier that stretched out into the waters of Kowloon Bay. There was one long main street, with a number of side streets10. Around the Market there were a whole string of small suburban communities, mostly market gardening communities or else places doing business in offensive trades that were too unpleasant to occupy space within the Market area proper. The largest of these suburban communities was Sha Po Village, immediately east of the Market. This was mostly a market gardening village. Branches of the Nga Tsin Wai clans (among many others) were settled here, and it came to be regarded as a settled village with permanently resident clans. The Lok Sin Tong (founded in 1880), the most important local charitable organisation, was also here: the Tong occupied a large area (it had a major Meeting Hall and a dispensary for issue of free medicines, which, with its offices, were arranged around a courtyard with a garden, opening off Blacksmith Street through a substantial gateway, with a second courtyard behind with a school, which used the second courtyard as a playground). The Tong doubtless found land in Sha Po cheaper than in the Market itself. The other suburban villages - Sai Tau, Tung Tau, Hau Wong, and Hoklo Villages - were more transient. There were a few families in each, which were permanently settled, but most residents here were resident only temporarily.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214627, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 42, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "is difficult to date the establishment of this Market. There is no certain mention of the Market (as opposed to the military garrison) before the early nineteenth century. However, both \"Kowloon (九龍)\" and \"Kwun Fu (軍府)\" are marked as separate entities on at least one early map\". On this map the \"Kwun Fu\" entry is specifically of the military post (駐軍), strongly suggesting that the \"Kowloon\" entry is for a significant non-military site, and thus presumably refers to the Market, although this cannot be demonstrated without cavil12. There is, however, some evidence that suggests that a Market has been in existence here since at least the middle twelfth century. The Lam clan of Po Kong were originally merchants in the coastal trade, trading between southern Fukien and Canton. Given that they chose to settle in Po Kong in the mid-late twelfth century, it can be presumed that the site was not inconvenient for this trade. This may imply that there was a Market and landing place at Kowloon City then.\n\nThe coastal plain around the Market at Kowloon was, by the nineteenth century, full of villages (see Map 1). Most were Punti. Of the larger villages, only Ngau Chi Wan was Hakka. Most of the villages in the area were settled in the eighteenth century, but Nga Tsin Wai, Po Kong, and Ma Tau Wai at least date from the middle or late twelfth century. Most were rice subsistence villages, except for the market gardening villages in the area immediately around the Market.\n\nFoundation of Nga Tsin Wai Village\n\nThe Nga Tsin Wai villagers have a clear and precise traditional account of the foundation of their village. Three men, they claim, came to the area with the court of the Sung boy-Emperors in 1277. One, Ng Shing-tat (吳勝達) was a civil official, another, Chan Chiu-yin (陳朝賢) was a military official, and the third, Li Shing-kai (李勝介) was also attached to the remnant Sung court in some capacity no longer remembered. When the Emperor Ping fell (1279), these three men jointly established the village. The Tin Hau Temple in the village was subsequently founded in 1354. The village has remained inhabited to the present day by the descendants of these three men. Originally, the inhabitants lived scattered through the area, some here, some there, but, in 1724, the villagers built a walled village to defend themselves against bandit and pirate attack, and most of them came together to live inside the walls, although some preferred to settle in Sha Po, Kak", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214630, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 45, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "9\n\nof hardship immediately after it.\n\nOne point of considerable interest in the Chan clan Tsuk Po to the history of Nga Tsin Wai is the reference to a village, or district, in the Kowloon area, called Nga Pin Heung, as the residence of the clan from the middle twelfth to the middle sixteenth centuries, and the explicit reference to Chan Chiu-yin as being the first of the clan to settle in Nga Tsin Wai. The only yamen there has ever been in the broader Kowloon area was at or very near Kowloon City, and Nga Pin Heung, since it lay “in Kowloon” must, therefore, be in the wider Kowloon City area. Nga Tsin Wai (7, \"The Walled Village in Front of the Yamen\") could not have taken this name before the walls were built. Nga Pin Heung (AMA, “The Unwalled Village, or District, Beside the Yamen”) sounds very much like what the name of Nga Tsin Wai would have been before the walls were built. This is especially so since the village is not, in fact, in front of the yamen, but beside it, so “Nga Pin” is a more accurate name for the area than \"Nga Tsin\".\n\nThe Kowloon area has two other place names referring to the yamen, that is, Nga Tsin Long Village (, \"The Fields in front of the Yamen\") immediately south of Kowloon City, and the upper end of Ma Tau Wai Village which was known as Nga Yau Tau (H, “The Right-hand Side of the Yamen“). Both are very close to Nga Tsin Wai. If \"Heung\" in Nga Pin Heung means “District\" rather than \"Village\", then all three places may once have stood within the Nga Pin Heung District. In any case, Nga Pin Heung must have been in the immediate vicinity of the yamen, and must either have consisted of Nga Tsin Wai, or else comprised the whole district, including Nga Tsin Wai. When the Chans settled at Nga Pin Heung in the twelfth century, therefore, they must have settled either at, or very near Nga Tsin Wai.\n\nThe Tai Wai villagers have a date for the building of the walls of their village - 1574. They also have a tradition that their village was set out by Lai Po-yi (fi), a famous Fung Shui master. This man had come to the notice of the Tai Wai villagers, the Tai Wai elders informed me, while he was setting out the walls of Nga Tsin Wai, and they invited him to come to set out Tai Wai as soon as he had finished work at Nga Tsin Wai. Since Tai Wai is almost a perfect copy of Nga Tsin Wai, and since these two walled villages differ in detail from most of the other New Territories walled villages, it is very likely that they\n\nPage 45\n\nPage 46", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214632, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 47, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Kwangtung, is treated as the First Ancestor of the Nga Tsin Wai clan. His eldest son was in turn born in 1102, but the Nga Tsin Wai descendants stem from the fifth son, who can hardly have been born much before 1120. Nine further generations are recorded in the Tsuk Po. The fifth of these was a sixth son. Assuming a 25-year generation gap for those ancestors born as the first, second, or third sons, and a forty-year generation gap for the sixth son, the eldest son in this ninth generation must have been born about 1370-1385. There were five brothers in this generation, who must have been born within the period 1370-1400.\n\nNg Kui-hau fled from Nam Hung in the disturbances of 1126-1127, when the Northern Sung collapsed in the face of barbarian invasion. He went to the safety of Canton City where he lived until his death in 1158. Six of his seven sons moved away from Canton, five to establish descent lines in various places in central Kwangtung, and one to settle in Annam. The fifth son, Ng Jui (42) from whom the Nga Tsin Wai Ngs descend, settled in Tung Kuan, at Ng Ka Chung (4, \"Creek of the Ng Family”).\n\nOne of the sixth generation descendants of Ng Jui, (Ng Chung-tak, the eighth generation Clan Ancestor), born about 1290-1300, moved from Ng Ka Chung to “Kowloon”. The recent revised Tsuk Po states that he settled at a place called “Kwun Fu Sz Nga Tsin Tsuen”TM 1775, \"The Unwalled Village in front of the Kwun Fu Yamen\". Ng Chung-tak's third, but only surviving son, Ng Shing-tat, is considered the Founding Ancestor of the Nga Tsin Wai clan. He cannot have been born much before 1320-1335. The old Tsuk Po does not say that either Ng Shing-tak or his father settled in Nga Tsin Wai, merely in “Kowloon”; presumably implying that the family were then settled here and there in the open fields rather than in a village as such - presumably in that Nga Pin Heung where the Chans had already been settled for nearly two hundred years by the time the Ngs moved there. A date somewhere in the middle of the fourteenth century is the most likely for the Ng clan to have settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area, in Ng Chung-tak's old age (the Tsuk Po has a reference to Ng Shing-tak bringing his ancestor's bones to \"Kowloon\": this may refer to his mother's remains). The date remembered by the clan as the foundation date of the Tin Hau Temple, 1354, is almost exactly the period when the Ngs are most likely to have settled in the Nga Tsin Wai area, and the establishment of the temple, or whatever this date", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214635, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 50, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "14\n\nto Tip Fuk in 1163. The Ngs joined the Chans here about 1350: the foundation date for the temple of 1354 is probably connected with this. Possibly the Lis settled here at about this date as well. Chan Mung-lung, BH, was the first Chan to settle in the Nga Tsin Wai area, and Ng Chung-tak was the first of his clan. Chan Chiu-yin was not the first Chan to settle in the area, but he was the clan head when the village was walled about 1570. Ng Shing-tak was the second generation of his family to live in the area, about 1350: he lived two hundred years before Chan Chiu-yin, and two hundred years after Chan Mang-lung.\n\nThe date of 1724 given by the villagers for the walling of the village must be a mistake. The village would have been in ruins after the Coastal Evacuation, and the 1724 date must represent the successful repair and rehabilitation of the village. The villagers on their return to the village after the Evacuation must have lived in temporary huts for some time before they could gather the funds needed for the repair of their walls, temple, and permanent houses.\n\nThe Tsuk Po give a little information as to the settlement of those branches of the Ng and Chan clans to leave Nga Tsin Wai and settle elsewhere. The Chans of Nga Tsin Long settled there about 1550-1570 - the Founding Ancestor of Nga Tsin Long, Chan Kwok-yin, RTY, was the younger brother of Chan Chiu-yin. The Ngs of Siu Lek Yuen in Sha Tin split off from the Nga Tsin Wai stock in the generation immediately after the Coastal Evacuation - probably before 1680 (the Siu Lek Yuen Ngs comprise the third Fourth Fong descent line). Another branch of the Ngs moved to Pok Liu (Lamma Island) in about 1820-1850. A branch of the Ngs moved to Tseung Kwan O somewhen in the early eighteenth century, probably about 1720, at the same time as a branch of the Chan clan moved there as well. Probably most of the other branches which split off from the Nga Tsin Wai clans did so in this same period, i.e. the fifty years after the ending of the Coastal Evacuation - this was a period when clans tried to occupy as much space as possible, with a view to giving later generations plenty of living space. Some of the branches, however, may have moved out much earlier. Several Chan clans resident in the villages around Kowloon City claim a relationship with the Chans of Nga Tsin Wai, but do not descend from Chan Chiu-yin or Chan Kwok-yin. These may well be groups already distinct before Chan Chiu-yin moved within the new walls at Nga Tsin Wai. There are such Chan clans at Ta Kwu", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214636, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "15\n\nLing, and at Ma Tau Wai/Ma Tau Chung. The Tsuk Po also give no dates for the branches of the Ng clan settled at Sha Po and Shek Kwu Lung, although it is likely that these broke away from the Nga Tsin Wai main stock late, in the nineteenth century (there were also branches of the Lei clan of Nga Tsin Wai in these two villages, who probably moved there at about the same time as the Ngs).\n\nOver time, so many of the Chans and Leis moved out of Nga Tsin Wai that that village became almost entirely resided in by the Ngs. As of today there are only one or two households left of the Chans and Leis. Even a hundred years ago, the great majority of the Chans had already moved elsewhere, as will be discussed further below, and in the last few decades most of the Leis have left as well. Nonetheless, the Nga Tsin Wai Ngs remain very much aware that their village is a three-clan village, even if two of the clans have declined to a very low percentage. Groups of Tses () and Yungs (the Chinese character for their surname is not known) bought into Nga Tsin Wai late in the last century, but these incomers are in no way to be compared with the Chans and Leis who are, the village elders of today state, “truly our brothers\". The Tses and Yungs eventually sold out and left the area, anyway. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers invite all their clan brethren from Nga Tsin Long, Siu Lek Yuen, Lamma, Tseung Kwan O, and the other Kowloon villages for the Tin Hau Birthday celebrations each year. Most send representatives, to show that they still recognise their relationship with Nga Tsin Wai. This is even more the case with the decennial Ta Tsiu (the “Great Sacrifices\" which bring a community back into conformity with the wishes of the deities), which Nga Tsin Wai and its nearby villages have held every ten years since 1726\".\n\nTopography of the Village Area\n\nThe village as laid out in 1570, and as rebuilt and rehabilitated in 1724, consisted of a rectangular, almost square, walled enclosure (about 60 yards deep by 67 wide) set in the middle of a wide moat (between 30 and 35 feet wide) which surrounded it on all sides, and which could be accessed only over a single narrow causeway leading to the single gate. This gate consisted of two leaves of stout planks, barrable from behind, and with provision for being reinforced across the front by iron bars or stout wooden bars let into housings cut into the jambs and lockable from within the gatehouse. The walls were of good brick, on stone", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214638, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "J\n\n17\n\nhouse sites had, by then, been divided into two very tiny separate houses (the original layout probably consisted of 130 houses including the temple). The houses were very tiny - 23' deep by 8.5' wide, totalling no more than 196 square feet. Where the houses had been divided, the small houses were less than 100 square feet each. The houses were too small to have air-wells, and consisted each of only a single room, with a tiny cockloft over a small bedchamber at the back. Few had windows (some had a tiny window at the back, lighting the cockloft, about a foot square, defended with iron bars and closed by shutters), and most were aired and lighted only through the house door. The premises backing onto the outer walls were houses, of the same size as those fronting the lanes.\n\nThe village had no well or open space within the walls. The gatehouse was wider than the lane leading to it inside the walls, and provided space for an earth god shrine, and a ladder giving access to the gun-chamber above the gate. At the other end of the spinal centre lane was the Tin Hau Temple, occupying one house site, and facing the gate directly: the Village Office occupied the house immediately to its north.\n\nThe features of the layout of Nga Tsin Wai which it shares with Tai Wai in Sha Tin are the almost square layout facing the optimum Fung Shui direction and not the cardinal points, the narrow lanes, the tiny houses, the layout of six north-south and three east-west lanes with the first and sixth lanes running back to dead ends against the inner faces of the walls, the existence of premises backing onto the walls which are as big (in most cases) as the houses opening onto the lanes, and the temple occupying a house-site opposite the gate-house. Both villages used the house immediately to the north of the temple as the Village Office. The Tai Wai towers in 1905 did not protrude into the moat, but this may well be a modification introduced when the two villages were rehabilitated after the Coastal Evacuation. Of these features, the narrowness of the lanes and the smallness of the houses are special to the two villages (most walled villages within the New Territories had very many fewer, but very much larger houses, and much wider lanes). In most New Territories walled villages the premises along the two side walls are very much smaller than the houses facing into the lanes, and were designed for use as cattle sheds, pigsties, and latrines: to have houses here is unusual. The dead-ends at the end of the first and sixth lanes are also peculiar to these two villages. Most", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214639, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "18\n\nUntypical is the temple at the end of the central spinal lane: in other walled villages this site is occupied at most by a \"God-house\" (7), since the villagers tended to feel that to have a full-scale community temple inside a walled village was improper, as access was thus reduced for non-villagers. The absence of a well is another uncommon feature of the two villages - most walled villages, for obvious reasons, find space for one (the Nga Tsin Wai villagers, if besieged within their walls, as they were in 1854, dipped water from their moat). Moats are quite common, and are not special to these two villages.\n\nThe village was built to house far more people than can possibly have been Nga Tsin Wai villagers in 1570. 130 houses is a very large number. It is probable that it was always assumed that each village family would occupy several houses, some as residences, some as barns, some as pigsties or cattle sheds. It is likely that the large number of houses was designed to allow the other villages of the Kowloon plain to flee inside the walls when problems arose, and that at least those members of the three clans of the village living outside the walls in the other villages of the area always assumed they could find shelter there at a pinch. When the walls were rehabilitated in 1724 they certainly sheltered far more people than were then needed - the Ng clan then consisted only of some eight households, and the other two clans of no more than three or four each. Without question, the elders of 1724 were looking to the long term in rebuilding so lavishly, and must have had the defences of more than just Nga Tsin Wai in mind.\n\nAt both Nga Tsin Wai and Tai Wai, the villagers started to build houses outside the walls in the late eighteenth century at Tai Wai, more probably during the early nineteenth century at Nga Tsin Wai. These houses were larger and airier than the houses within the walls, and were built by the wealthier villagers as residences - normally these families retained one or more houses within the walls as well. By 1902 there were thirty house-lots just outside the walls at Nga Tsin Wai, mostly on the east of the village, between the moat and the river. Some were very large (see Map 2). The first of these houses were built by 1846, as several are shown in the 1846 drawing mentioned above but more were added between then and 1902. It is likely that houses built by members of the village clans in Sha Po were originally seen as no different from the houses built between the walls and the river: they were both \"houses outside the walls\". It was only at the end of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214641, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "20 \n\nand the upper end of the Market (the Ng clan Ancestral Hall stood next to this road): this path went through the scattered houses of Tung Tau Village. To the south went a path which led to Sha Po Village, the lower end of the Market (where most of the shops owned by Nga Tsin Wai people were), and on to the pier. Of these, the path from the South-East Gate and on to Sha Tin Pass and the pier at Yuen Chau Kok was of major importance.\n\nThe Hong Kong Government did a traffic survey at Sha Tin Pass in late 1904, in an attempt to consider the profitability of the Railway then under planning20, 600 persons a day were recorded as crossing this pass, 280 of them \"carrying goods\" (a good deal of this trade was of fresh fish from Tolo Harbour being carried for sale at Kowloon City Market, and through the Market on to Hong Kong). This was a very summary and unsophisticated survey, and probably under-estimates the traffic (it took no account of the higher numbers passing on Kowloon City market days, and it is unlikely to have been undertaken from dawn to dusk), but still suggests very heavy traffic (even as it stands, it implies someone crossing the pass every daylight minute). The \"goods carried” would have been carried in the standard loads of 75 catties (100 pounds), and hence at least 12½ tons of goods were being man-handled over the pass every day at that date.\n\nBefore the opening of the Railway in 1912, wealthy men would hire sedan chairs and coolies to carry them over the passes. Sha Tin village elders remember the Tai Wai man who was, before 1898, a clerk in the Sub-Magistracy at Kowloon City, and who travelled to and fro by sedan chair, and remember also that, if a villager called a doctor from Kowloon City to visit them, and then the doctor would insist on being carried over the mountains in a chair. All these would have passed under the walls of Nga Tsin Wai.\n\nThis constant heavy traffic along the paths around the village brought business to Nga Tsin Wai. Cakes (Cha Kwo), and tea could be sold to passers-by, and also fruit and so forth. It is not known if any of the Nga Tsin Wai villagers worked as chair-coolies - it is perhaps more likely that the chair-coolies mostly lived in the Market - but there can be no doubt that all this traffic brought a lot of business the way of the village.\n\nJ", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214642, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "21\n\nDespite the busy nature of these paths over the mountains to Sha Tin, they could be dangerous. Sha Tin village elders remember that tigers were to be found in the woods below Lion Rock in the late nineteenth century during every breeding season. The path to Tai Wai was less heavily used than that over Sha Tin Pass, and tigers sometimes closed it. The Tai Wai and Tin Sam villagers, when there were tigers on the mountain, would gather at dawn at the Che Kung Temple, where they would worship the deity and seek his protection (the wild places on the Sha Tin side of the mountain were under his protection, as those on the Kowloon side were under the protection of the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau), and then go over the mountain to their market at Kowloon City in a group, with men armed with spears at front and back, and with others blowing conch shells and banging gongs to frighten the tigers off (these conch shells and gongs were kept in the temple for the purpose).\n\nOne young lady of Tai Wai in Sha Tin, about 1906, crossing the mountains to market on her own, was suddenly menaced by a tiger that came out of the undergrowth near the path. She scrambled onto the roof of a bamboo rain-shelter which stood there, but the tiger leapt after her. His weight caused the shelter to collapse, and girl, tiger, and hut all fell to the ground together. The weight of the tiger caused the bamboos to shatter, and many stuck the tiger like so many small spears. The tiger was so enraged at this that he started to attack the ruins of the hut, roaring and flinging himself at the sticks of bamboo, thus allowing the girl to crawl off, unharmed, and so to run home down the mountain, with a story she was still telling in the year of her death more than 60 years later: this story was told me by the son of the lady concerned.\n\nThe slopes of Lion Rock were, as noted above, under the protection and control of Che Kung on the Sha Tin side, but under the protection of the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau on the other. Many cautious travellers would come into the village to worship before setting out over the slopes of the mountain. Again, this brought business and prosperity to the village.\n\nNga Tsin Wai and the League of Seven\n\nNga Tsin Wai is the head village of an inter-village union called the Kowloon Tsat Yeuk (七約), or Tsat Po (七堡), the \"Kowloon", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214644, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "were also to be found in Ta Kwu Leng and Ma Tau Wai.\n\n23\n\nIt will be seen that Kowloon City, Kowloon Market, and the suburban villages around them, apart from Sha Po, (that is, Tung Tau, Sai Tau, Hau Wong, and Hoklo Villages) had no part in the League of Seven. These areas were considered to fall immediately under the control of the Sub-Magistrate in Kowloon City, or under the control of the Kowloon Market Kaifong. Apart from these places, the League of Seven covered all the area around Kowloon City.\n\nThe Kowloon City and Kowloon Market areas worshipped at the Hau Wong Temple outside the Walled City, and did not worship at the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau Temple. There was a Tin Hau Temple at Sha Po where the residents in the Market also worshipped. Ma Tau Wai had a temple of its own: this was to Pak Tai, worshipped under the title Sheung Tai (7). Only the gate pillars of this temple survive today, in the Lomond Road Garden.\n\nTo the east of the area of the League of Seven was the large and ancient village of Po Kong, belonging to the Lam (*) clan. Po Kong never joined the League of Seven. Po Kong had its own temple (it was dedicated to Tin Hau), and the Po Kong people did not go to the Tin Hau Temple at Nga Tsin Wai. Chuk Yuen and Sha Tei Yuen were genealogically connected with Po Kong. According to the Nga Tsin Wai elders, the villages of Po Kong, Chuk Yuen, Sha Tei Yuen, Nga Yiu Tau, Ngau Chi Wan (including its \"Mau Tsuen” of Pak Uk Tsai, or Ping Shek), and Yuen Ling (both the Upper and Lower Villages) formed an inter-village alliance of their own, the Six Villages Alliance (AM). Ngau Chi Wan had its own temple, to the Sam Shan Kwok Wong - this temple still survives. According to Ngau Chi Wan village elders, there was no Six Villages' Ta Tsiu, but Ngau Chi Wan conducted these rituals on its own every ten years. Ngau Chi Wan also held the She (£) feast before their higher earth god, every year, when every family made an offering of food, which later formed the basis of the communal feast. Ngau Chi Wan was, clearly, rather independent where the worship of the deities was concerned, and may well have been rather less well-integrated into the Six Villages than the villages closer to Po Kong. Ngau Chi Wan was a Hakka village, founded in the very early eighteenth century. It was founded by the Lau (1) clan, but the To (†), Yeung (), Tsang (4), and Yip () clans joined the Laus during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214646, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "25\n\nSeven, rather than into any relationship with Po Kong. Tai Hom was the only Hakka village in the League of Seven. It was probably this Hakka ethnicity, their rejection by Po Kong, and their relative isolation from Nga Tsin Wai that led the Tai Hom villagers to establish a temple of their own outside their village, somewhere in the period 1821-1850, probably late in the period: it was greatly expanded in 1904. This temple, the Tung Shan Temple (it was dedicated to Kwun Yam) became, for a short period during the 1920s and 1930s, the main religious focus of the \"thirteen villages of Kowloon\", that is, the villages of both the League of Seven and of the Six Villages Alliance, but it was left ruined in the War.\n\nThe land south of Ma Tau Kok formed part of the Alliance of Three (三聯盟) of Hung Hom (Hung Hom including Tai Wan, Hok Yuen including Shek Shan, and To Kwa Wan, probably including Ma Tau Kok). The land east of Ngau Chi Wan and Pak Uk Tsai formed the inter-village alliance called \"The Four Stone Hills\" (四石嶺). This was a sworn alliance of the quarry-villages of this mountainous and infertile area (Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Cha Kwo Ling, and Lei Yue Mun).\n\nInter-village alliances normally centre on joint worship by the elders, either at the higher earth god of the area, or at the local temple. Nothing is now remembered in Nga Tsin Wai of any inter-village worship by the elders of the League of Seven as a group at any higher earth god shrine, nor of any She, * , Feast of the elders in front of the shrine. However, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers do not now even remember where their earth gods used to stand - they were all removed by the Japanese, except for the earth god of the Village Gate - so too much should not be made of this. The elders of the villages of the League of Seven did and do worship the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau, however, on her Birthday each year (the Tai Hom elders consider the villages of the League of Seven as \"belonging to the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai\"): it is likely that this was the ritual focus of the League, and that the meetings of the elders of the district took place after the worship. The elders hold a feast today after the worship of Tin Hau, and this is probably a very ancient tradition. The Temple, however, was the property of Nga Tsin Wai alone (it is owned by all three of the Nga Tsin Wai clans, and the Manager of the Temple, chosen by the elders of the three clans, is the Village Headman): it was probably for this reason that, on her Birthday, the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214648, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "27\n\nsmall group of soldiers there, so the risk of attack was then real. This was particularly so since pirates were a notorious risk in the waters between Kowloon City and the Lei Yue Mun Passage throughout the period from the middle eighteenth century to the late 1840s, and Nga Tsin Wai was both relatively wealthy, and only a few hundred yards from the coast. After 1841, when the Sub-Magistracy, and the local garrison command were moved back to Kowloon City, the number of soldiers posted near Nga Tsin Wai should have been enough to frighten off bandits in most circumstances. However, the League of Seven faced one major attack, in 1854.\n\nIn 1854 a group of Taiping rebels approached Kowloon City25. The villagers of Nga Tsin Wai believe that the garrison at Kowloon City all fled, with the officials, and the traders in the Market. The League of Seven was thus left with no defence against the bandits except what they could muster themselves. The villagers of Nga Tsin Wai say that the elders of the League of Seven besought Tin Hau to help them with advice. They cast the divining-blocks (FF) - should they stay and fight, or flee? The Goddess told them to stay, and, in a spirit of devotion, they decided to follow her advice. The villagers of the undefended League of Seven villages fled inside the walls of Nga Tsin Wai, and the gate was heavily barred. Nga Tsin Wai had, as noted above, two iron cannon above the gate, and a brass jingal at each corner tower. These guns were all readied, and stocks of gunpowder gathered. When the Taiping bandits appeared before the village, the League villagers fought them off valiantly, and the bandits eventually left, leaving the League of Seven untouched. The villagers consider this success to be a miraculous intervention by the Goddess: great drops of sweat were seen on the Goddess' brow, showing what a huge effort she was making to throw back the bandits. The leader of the villagers in this defence was Shue-tong (A), from the tenth descent line of the clan. He was later commended by the Ch'ing Government, and granted the honour of a peacock's feather for his role in this defence. The official records generally agree with the villagers' memory of this event. There can be little doubt that the merchants in the totally undefended Market at Kowloon would have fled on the approach of the rebels, but it seems likely from the official records that the garrison did as well, since the rebels, led by Loh A-tim (E), were able to capture the Walled City, seemingly without any fighting, on the 26th day of the 7th Moon, 1854. Seven days later, a relieving force of soldiers under the command\n\nNo", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214649, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "28\n\nof Cheung Yuk-tong (E) arrived (presumably this relieving force came from the garrison at the County City of Nam Tau), and retook the Walled City after a day of very heavy fighting, in which two of the Government soldiers died, and \"over 30\" bandits. Presumably, the successful defence of Nga Tsin Wai took place during this same seven-day period, in September - October 1854.\n\nThere were probably other occasions when bandits were forced away. For instance, the villagers of the Siu Lek Yuen inter-village alliance in Sha Tin have a story of a heroic fight by their combined manpower against a gang of bandits in the 1860s or 1870s. The Siu Lek Yuen villagers, having killed a number of the bandits, forced the rest to flee over the mountains to Nga Tsin Wai, where the Siu Lek Yuen villagers left them to the further attentions of the men of the League of Seven27.\n\nThe Nga Tsin Wai villagers also remember an attempt by the Tang clan (probably of Kam Tin) to impose Tang clan political control on this area. They relate that the elders of the League of Seven met the Tangs, and showed them the bags in which the silver which had been gathered by the League as a defence fund was kept, and the guns and gunpowder at their gate. \"Every tsin of silver, and every grain of gunpowder will be spent to fight you off\", the elders said, and the Tangs eventually left, with their tails between their legs2.\n\nThe last time the Nga Tsin Wai villagers closed and barred their gates against attack was in 1967, during the Riots. When the Riots broke out in San Po Kong, the villagers closed their gate, and put themselves into a position of defence, although their valour was not then put to the test.\n\nNga Tsin Wai's position at the head of the League of Seven put it into a very important position in the traditional politics of the Kowloon area. The Chief Elder of the League of Seven - usually the Chief Elder of Nga Tsin Wai - was one of the two or three most important figures in the district. The Sub-Magistrate would certainly have included him whenever he needed to consult the gentry of the district. As noted further below, Nga Tsin Wai village trusts were the subsoil land-owners of a good deal of the land in the area, especially in the Market, and at Sha Po, thus reinforcing their predominant local political position.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214651, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 66, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "30\n\nvillagers jointly owning property, but where one of the group also individually owned a house in Nga Tsin Wai. Eight of these seventeen house-owners owning premises only outside the village comprised groups of joint-owners. Sixteen of the 72 owners owning houses within the village consisted of joint-ownership groups of two or more villagers. Villagers of Nga Tsin Wai (including the village trusts) owned rather more than 83 acres of arable land. Villagers of Nga Tsin Wai as defined here also owned 47 house-lots in Sha Po, and 30 house-lots in Kowloon Market. In Sha Po and Kowloon City, many of these house-lots covered several adjacent shops, or else comprised large walled compounds with many workshops (one consisted of no less than fifteen small buildings set in a large courtyard). The standard shop or house occupied about one-hundredth of an acre: some of these compound lots in Kowloon City and Sha Po were as large as nine, or even eleven standard buildings. The villagers thus owned the equivalent of 95 standard buildings in Kowloon City, and 99 in Sha Po. Nga Tsin Wai village must have had a total population of about 400 people, although, even in 1902, a percentage were living away from the village, working as seamen or in the City.\n\nAccording to the Sha Tin villagers, the bare subsistence requirement for an adult in this area is about one-sixth of an acre of medium-good arable land. Between half an acre and three-quarters of an acre is the bare minimum for the subsistence of an ordinary family, although the villagers traditionally talk of an acre as desirable. The arable land near Nga Tsin Wai was all of average or good quality, with little poor quality land. Any village with above three-quarters of an acre of average or good arable land per household should definitely be seen as prosperous above the average. Villagers also say that three houses per household are desirable (allowing one for a barn, and one for a married son); villages in the New Territories range from barely one house per household to a little over two per household (“house” in this context means the small single-storey brick traditional structures, often of about 436 square feet). On both counts, Nga Tsin Wai was prosperous in 1902; it had well over two houses per house-owning household, and over an acre of reasonably good arable land per household. If the village had a total population of 400, that would imply a population equivalent to about 300 adults: that would have given every adult villager access to over a quarter of an acre of agricultural land, again, a sign of prosperity.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214665, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "44\n\nThe lychees at Po Kong are really abundant.\n\nOf these verses, the reference in line 169 is to a temple near Ma Thu Wai. The reference in lines 170-172 is probably to the ejection of the Ch'ing officials from the Kowloon Walled City. In line 174 the reference may be to the prostitutes' quarter in the Market. The \"hospital\" in line 175 is the Lok Sin Tong.\n\nFor three villages - Po Kong, Sha Tei Yuen, and Yuen Ling - the poet singles out the orchards and vegetable fields he saw there as particularly significant and worth comment, and at Ngau Chi Wan it was \"herding\" - presumably of meat animals for the market - which he noted as interesting and special. The vast majority of villages visited by Hui Wing-hing were rice-subsistence villages, with almost every inch of arable land used for rice, and the Kowloon villages clearly looked very different. While Hui Wing-hing's attention at Nga Tsin Wai was taken up by the British takeover of the New Territories, there can be no doubt that Nga Tsin Wai, too, was to a large degree a market-gardening area in his time.\n\nAlmost all the coastal villages in the New Territories area had sampans, and added inshore fishing to their subsistence. It is a measure of Nga Tsin Wai's general prosperity that the Nga Tsin Wai village elders believe that their ancestors did not do this: the village had no sampans, and bought its fish - probably mostly from the coolies carrying fish from Tolo Harbour past the village to Kowloon Market. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers did, however, dig clams from the mud flats offshore, together with the villagers of all the other villages in the Kowloon Bay area. They also reared carp in the village moat, and possibly in other fishponds, for sale in the Market.\n\nNga Tsin Wai was never a poor village, but it prospered noticeably during the later nineteenth century. 1902, the date of the Block Crown lease must have been about the most prosperous period of this village community. The village fields were fast being converted to market gardens as the village faced their sellers' market in the growing City. The village had developed good contacts with shipping companies, so that many of the men were able to get good jobs as seamen. Many villagers were also getting good jobs in the Whampoa Docks, where, again, the village developed good contacts in this period. As the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214668, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "47\n\nthe highest placed individual named on the then Donation Tablet was again an Ng (the Managers of this restoration are all entered on the Donation Tablet in the names of their shops - the Market merchants were clearly the dominant force on this occasion). This man, Ng Man-yuen, XXX, cannot be identified from the Ng clan Tsuk Po, but he was probably a Nga Tsin Wai elder appearing in the Tsuk Po under a posthumous Tong name. Some six other Ngs either certainly or probably Nga Tsin Wai villagers can be identified on this 1822 Donation Tablet, as can three more on the 1859 Tablet. It should be remembered that the Nga Tsin Wai villagers did not normally worship at the Hau Wong Temple, but at their own Tin Hau Temple: the prominent position taken by Ng clan elders in these restorations must be seen as evidence of the clan recognising their local prominence and responding to it.\n\nThus, Nga Tsin Wai was keenly aware of its role as one of the largest and most prosperous villages of the area, and its elders can be seen playing an important part in all the local charitable undertakings, a part entirely in accord with the village's wealth and standing and self-confidence.\n\nThe village, again as a response to its relatively wealthy position, placed a high importance on education, as noted above. One village youth, Ng Tsz-mei, 7, 1881-1939, even managed to get into King's College, despite being so poor in his childhood that he had to work herding cattle. He studied engineering, and established with his brother the Tung Shing Company (with its premises on High Street, in Sai Ying Pun), which did a good deal of construction work for the Government. Ng Tsz-mei prospered greatly, and retired to the house he had built on the banks of the river at Sha Tin (he called the house Ng Yuen, \"The Ng Garden\", and it still survives). He left behind him a reputation for charity. He was a major supporter of the Red Cross in its medical work in the New Territories in the 1920s and 1930s, he gave coffins to the poor who could not otherwise afford a decent burial, and bought and distributed a great deal of medicine in a cholera outbreak.\n\nNot only did the Ng clan run a high-quality school, and interest themselves in academic education, but they were also anxious to ensure that the clan youth were trained in martial arts. The response of the villagers to the Taiping bandits makes it clear that there must have", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214672, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "51\n\nLife was not, however, all hard work, sickness, and brawls. The farming year was full of slack periods when there was time for entertainment and pleasure. The ritual year gave the villagers a framework for their leisure activities: each major festival was marked with a feast - even the poorest of families would have fat pork and rich eels on feast days. Nga Tsin Wai was, according to the Sha Tin village elders, famous for making \"Cha Kwo\", the traditional sticky village cakes, and these would usually be in evidence at festivals. The New Year, Tin Hau's Birthday, and the Winter Solstice Festival were the main festivals celebrated in Nga Tsin Wai, together with the Spring (Ching Ming) and Autumn (Chun Yeung) Grave Festivals, where fat pork would be distributed by the Ancestral Trusts to those who attended the worship at the graves.\n\nDuring the summer, and particularly at the Dragon Boat Festival, the village had the habit of inviting strolling singers to come and stay in the village for a few days or a week, to sing through their repertoire of \"Dragon Boat Songs\". These were long sung novels, and the villagers would sit outside the village gate in the evening listening to the singer for hours.\n\nThe villagers of Nga Tsin Wai were famous for singing themselves (the Tai Wai villagers in Sha Tin were jealous of the Nga Tsin Wai skills). The villagers sang Shan Ko, “Mountain Songs\". These were sung man to woman, verse by verse, and often included innuendo and suggestive comment: they were often called \"Teasing Songs\" as a result. Nga Tsin Wai villagers would often hold impromptu contests with youngsters from Tai Wai when they met at the pass which separated the lands of the two villages (the villagers say that is why the songs are called \"Mountain Songs\"). The Sha Tin elders also remember that more formal contests were also held - an annual one at Ma Tau Wai drew contestants from all of East Kowloon and Sha Tin: it was held at the Mid Autumn Festival. Contestants would be drawn, man and woman, and they would sing to each other; the one that ran out of things to say being declared the loser. The audience was mostly youngsters, and a few interested elders - they would sit around the contest area on the ground, vocal in their comments. The village elders say these contests could last for a couple of weeks if enough contestants appeared. The last contest was held just after the War. This was a Punti practice. The elders of the Hakka village of Ngau Chi Wan rather...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214675, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 90, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "54\n\nCity itself began at about the same time. The land south of the City Wall was cleared, and the land between today's Carpenter Road and Prince Edward Road, Grampian Road and Sa Po Road was developed. All this area was developed before the mid 1930s. Nga Tsin Long village disappeared at this date (it lay close to today's Nga Tsin Long Road). The old Market disappeared, too: it was cleared along with the villages nearby. By the middle 1930s, nothing at all was left of the old villages south of Kowloon City, with the exception of a few houses of Sai Tau near the Hau Wong Temple, and about a third of Sha Po, which remained, rather forlornly, on the eastern edge of this development area until the 1960s.\n\nFor the Nga Tsin Wai villagers, the problems this development caused were very great. For half-a-dozen years there was no Market at Kowloon City, effectively, at all. Half the League of Seven had disappeared within a couple of years. The economy and society of the area had thus been very seriously damaged. The shops and workshops owned by the villagers had to close: rental income was cut off.\n\nIn the later 1930s there was no further development in this area, because of fears caused by the steady growth of Japanese influence across the Border. However, these years saw a huge number of refugees fleeing from the Japanese into Hong Kong. Squatter huts were thrown up in the area around Kowloon City, both over the strip of land between the Walled City and Carpenter Road (this had been cleared for development in the mid 1930s, but left empty when development slowed down), and to the east of the City, around Tung Tau, and Nga Tsin Wai. The area north of Nga Tsin Wai village became full of squatter huts in this period. Squatters occupied many of the village fields, and the villagers were not usually able to get rent for them.\n\nAll these problems were shared with Po Kong. The Po Kong people, unable to understand why their comfortable life had suddenly shattered, put the blame on their Goddess. They took their Tin Hau and cast the image into a great fire. This sacrilege shocked the Nga Tsin Wai villagers greatly: not only was the Goddess thus dishonoured, but also the Po Kong people were the Goddess' own relatives (the Po Kong Lams come from the same village and clan as the Lady Lam who was later deified as the Goddess Tin Hau). The Nga Tsin Wai people retained their faith in the Goddess. The disasters which befell Po Kong over the next few\n\nPage 90\n\nPage 91", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214684, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 99, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "63\n\n16 The date is engraved on the earth god shrine in the village\n\nFor the Ta Tsiu at Nga Tsin Wai, see J W Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong Studies and Themes, Hong Kong Oxford University Press, 1983, pp 157-159 See also p 162\n\n18 These guns were all sunk in the moat immediately to the south of the village gate when the Japanese came\n\n19 In the 1902 Block Crown Lease, the Ancestral Hall is shown as the Ng Kit-san house, and the Ng Kit-san house as the Ancestral Hall by some strange error\n\n0\n\n1\n\n༣།\n\nDespatch from Sir M Nathan to Colonial Office, January 11th, 1905, in file CO882/6, printed in Eastern No 88, Confidential Hong Kong Correspondence [December 15 1903 to February 27 1907] Relating to the Proposed Canton Kowloon Railway', printed for the use of the Colonial Office, April 1907, No 59, pp 81-88\n\nThe slopes to the east of Lion Rock were under the protection of Kwun Yam These slopes were called Tsz Wan Shan (Fill, “Mountain of the Cloud of Compassion one of the titles of Kwun Yam) There has been a temple to Kwun Yam half way up to the pass since at least 1853, probably much earlier The early ownership of this temple is unclear\n\nInformation on the Chus is taken from their Tsuk Po, a copy of which I was kindly given by Dr James Hayes, and from notes of interviews Dr Hayes had with Chu clan elders in the 1960s See also, Southern District Board, 1996, p 138\n\nOn the Tung Shan Temple, see J W Hayes, \"The Kwun Yam - Tung Shan Temple of East Kowloon, 1840-1940”, Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Vol 23, 1983 pp 212-218\n\n*For instance, in Aed (), Joint Publishing (Hong Kong), 1994, p 44, and RPF Lam, ed The Hong Kong Album, Urban Council, Hong Kong, 1982, p 66\n\n25 I am indebted to Dr James Hayes for much of the detail of this section\n\n26 See A Lui, Forts and Pirates, op cit p 31", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214702, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1999", "page_number": 117, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Kak Hang\n\nPo Kong, Sha Tin Pass,\n\nYaen Chru Kok, Tai Po\n\nSha Tei Yoen\n\nFlekkda\n\nTiu Sam and Tai Wai\n\nFields\n\nCL Courtyard\n\nLatrines\n\nMetres\n\nFluids\n\nRiver\n\nMoat\n\nSEBO SERIA\n\nThe Has Terapie\n\nEntrance Causeway, and Gate,\n\nwith Guard Chamber Over\n\nMont\n\nWall\n\n日\n\nWall\n\nMAP 2\n\nNga Tsin Wai in 1902\n\nFlekk\n\nSouth-East Gate of Walled City\n\n100\n\nLower Sha Po and Pier\n\nFielde\n\nUpper Sha Po\n\nNg Clan Ancestral Hall (Village School)\n\n+7\n\nCL\n\nD\n\n81\n\n24-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215524, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-2001", "page_number": 301, "title": "RAS-2001", "content_text": "251\n\nSituated on the South slope of Danger Flag Hill, Kowloon, on Military Reserve Land, midway between the Military and Association Rifle Rangers and about thirty yards to the North of the line joining the butts. The Cemetery measures fifty-feet square and its limits have been defined by wooden pickets.77\n\nThere was another Indian cemetery at Tai Shek Ku78 recorded in a government notice, which was ordered to be closed in 1927;79 however, the origin of this cemetery is not known.\n\nCemeteries in the Early 20th Century\n\nThe first two decades of the 20th century was a period of steady economic and administrative development in Hong Kong, in spite of the influx of Chinese as a result of unsettled condition following the 1911 Revolution in China. A long list of cemeteries was added during this period.\n\nIn 1903, the 'Sai Yu Shek Cemetery'80 (晒魚石墳場) was appointed 'to the North of Kowloon City and West of Nga Tsin, as a sufficient and proper place for a burial ground for Chinese living in the vicinity of Kowloon City.'81 In addition, there was also a Sai Yu Shek (Christian) Cemetery.82\n\nIn the same year (1903), it was also announced that the 'Po Kong Po Cemetery' (), 'situated to the North-east of Kowloon City and West of the Village of Sha Ti Un'83 () was to be closed. Again, no information examined has revealed the origin of this cemetery, although the cemetery is mentioned in a privately published memoir regarding the burial of a woman in 1896.84 As this burial predated the lease of the New Territories in 1898 and the fact that the cemetery was adjacent to several villages in the Kowloon City area, Po Kong Po Cemetery might have been an extension of some villagers' burial ground,85\n\nA year later, another Chinese Christian Cemetery was authorized ‘on the hillside about 200 feet to the North of Kowloon Walled City, measuring, on the North 208'9,' on the East 208'9' and on the West 208'9,' and defined by boundary stones.' This cemetery still exists today as the oldest surviving cemetery on the Kowloon Peninsula.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2001.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g", "rank": 0 } ]