RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 122 H. G. H. NELSON * Records covering 380 houses from 1905 to 1968 reveal 55 sales of houses. This includes sales within (the majority) and between surname groups of which Sheung Tsuen has seven, formerly eight -- but does not include sales to outsiders; these do not in any case become significant until after 1963. The 55 house-sales include 12 houses which were sold twice, which for reasons given below, may be regarded as a significant reduction of the total; and also include sales of empty sites, cowsheds, and latrines. These latter are sometimes, but not invariably, indicated in the Memorial of sale, so it is likely that there were more of this type than the records reveal: I estimate the total at about 10. The number of original sales of habitable houses in this 63 year period is therefore a little above thirty. 9 I occasionally heard the term chinguk EA used to describe such a house; but strictly speaking this refers to the house which contains that version of the ancestral tablet which has been passed down the eldest son line. T T 10 The question of the completeness of the records may be raised: in general, I think it is safe to say that in as important a matter as title to house-property, transactions are almost certain to be registered eventually at the local District Office. The only exception to this is the adjustment of property rights which may involve a sale between brothers after a division: this often occurs before the brothers' succession to their father is registered, so that the sale does not reach the Land Records. In one such case that I know of, however, the sale between the brothers was felt to be important enough for it to be documented and witnessed by "the Village Representative and all the elders". This took place in 1960 or 1961. The Hon. Editor has drawn my attention to non-registration of transactions in the early years of the British administration of the New Territories, citing the District Officer's report for the Southern district (1912) which says:- Eight hundred and sixty-five deeds were registered during the year. This is only slightly above the average for the last seven years during which the Land Ordinance has been in force. There is no doubt that much land changes hands without registration; and it is probable that not more than 10 per cent of mortgages on land in the less accessible parts of the district are registered. The journey from Lantao is an almost insuperable obstacle and a "stamped paper" is generally considered sufficient security. In this case the principal reasons for non-registration were distance and poor communications. At Sheung Tsuen the main land office was at Tai Po until the Yuen Long District Office was established in 1947. (though it appears there was some kind of Land Office-cum-Court at Ping Shan pre-war). If people had to go all the way over Tai Mo Shan to Tai Po there would have been similar disincentives to registration here too. 11 Cf. M. C. Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1965 edition, p. 40: although this instance comes from a very different part of China, and a village where domestic architecture is different from that in Hong Kong. 12 The institution of k'ai-tsai ## often loosely translated as “godson' - is not relevant here. 13 See for example H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, London, 1969, p. 49. 14 Apart from its obvious restriction to a unilineal descent system, kwoh-kai also differs significantly from Western forms of adoption in that the initiative may come either from the adopter or the adoptee, as indicated below. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 179 When she reached the great age of seventy-two, she maintained her apartment in the same neat and tidy manner as when she was young. I have the most humble honour to record the above, (Signed) TANG WAI KUI, 26th generation descendant of "the Five Yuens." The most ancient Ancestral Hall to be found in the different villages of Kam T'in is Loi Shing Tong (✯✯✯) (see H.K.N. VII p. 250 and VIII, plate 8).* This hall is in Shui T'au village, and was built for the 11th ancestor, Tang Kwong Yue (). In recent years a tablet was discovered which had been hidden by furniture in one of the rooms for such a long time that its existence was forgotten. It records the date of the building of the hall and can be translated, roughly, as follows:- "Our ancestor Tseung Luk (X) planned to build an ancestral hall for our ancestor Kwong Yue. He was successful and the ancestral tablets have been fixed in the hall from the 40th year of Hong Hei, A.D. 1701, up till now. The building is in ruins, and Shing (*) (myself) and others think that as it was erected by our early fore-fathers, we ought to repair it. Owing to the limited ancestral fund, it is difficult to do this, but I (named Shing) and all my brothers, cousins, uncles and nephews are pleased to subscribe money towards the expense, and even the descendants of the ancestors Shing (*) and Yan (g) are pleased to help. The subscribers are as follows: Yiu Kong (#) subscribed one tael and two mace Sz Taan (BF @), one hundred and fifty taels. Sz Yue (tô) seventy-five taels. Sz Yuk (+), ten taels, Sz Shing (of), two-hundred and fifty taels. K'ei Yuen (M), sixty taels. Sz Tsaan (*), sixty taels. T'ing Suen (), eight taels. Sz Yue ($), sixty taels. Kin Lung, 47th year repaired, and this stone tablet fixed. The virtuous, meritorious descendant Tseung Luk was the one who started this Hall. The virtuous, meritorious descendant Sz Shing was the one who took charge of the work of repairing it.” * See Plate 34 at rear of this Volume. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 56 his bill. He described the lady who had ordered the materials and when he heard that it was the goddess herself he forwent his bill and donated the materials. The temple was built on the side of the hill above Wenchang town, called Shuiwei Po, which became the cult centre. Marginal variations of the story heard in Penang and Cambodia include the following: a number of fishermen aboard a junk threw out their net and drew in an enormously heavy but small log, requiring the joint effort of the whole crew. After their communal vow to have the log carved and having hauled in two large catches, they were so embarrassed at not being able to afford to have the log carved and to raise a shrine to house it they left it on the edge of the village where it was incorporated into the walls of a pigsty. Pigs however began sickening and dying, and only when Pan saw a glowing light over the pigsty did he recall the log and their promise. He burnt incense, asked forgiveness and all became tranquil and normal. People claimed to have seen an exquisitely beautiful young woman on the branch overhanging the pigsty and came to realize that it was the spirit of the log. They collected funds, had a temple built and the log carved into the shape of the woman they had seen on the branch. The temple became the cult centre for the Holy Mother who is also known as: Paihai Shen The Spirit who Controls the Seas. According to Wilmott10, Shuiwei Shengmu, the main deity in the Hainanese temple in Phnom-penh, changed her name to being simply Shengmu because the Cantonese connotation of the term 'Shuiwei' was associated with bad fortune in business11 and kept many people from frequenting the temple. 4: Uniquely Hainanese Secondary Deities [though a few are also revered China-wide by Han Chinese] a] The One Hundred and Eight Brothers- Yibai lingba Xiongde 一百零八兄弟 The tablet to the 108 Brothers is exclusively revered on secondary altars in Hainanese temples in South-east Asia only. The Brothers are ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 57 not orthodox spirits shen but dark spirits. Yinshen, the ghosts of those who have died a violent death before their due date. Chinese usually describe this group, in English, as the 108 Martyrs. They are never portrayed as images and tend to be regarded more as public worthies, folk hero "ethnic group" ancestors rather than deities. The tablet is very similar to the ancestral tablet and simply states that it is the 'Tablet to the One Hundred and Eight Brothers'. It is venerated and although the spirits of the brothers are occasionally asked for advice by devotees they are not usually prayed to for major requests or protection, although in Java in one temple the tablet was prayed to by seafarers before they set out on a long journey. Their festival, simple and not in any way lavish, is generally celebrated on the 15th day of the tenth lunar month, though in Singapore it is held on the 3rd of the eighth lunar month. The question is, who were the One Hundred and Eight Brothers? Three separate versions of the story of their demise have each been recounted with great solemnity, conviction and confidence by temple keepers in Java, Thailand, Singapore and Malaysia, and even in a Chinese temple in Bali. In Penang the story centres on a junk-load of Hainanese immigrants heading for South-east Asia which never arrived. One version claims that they were mistaken for pirates and wiped out by the 'French' [sic] navy off Annam or the 'British' off Malaya again having been mistaken for pirates. Another version suggests that they were all drowned during a typhoon off the southern tip of what is now Vietnam, and yet another that they were annihilated by Chinese government forces off the Leizhou peninsular immediately north of Hainan when, again, they were mistaken for pirates.12 The third story is that they were the original immigrants from Fujian province who arrived in Hainan to settle but all died in Hainan from disease or at the hands of the aborigines. A twist to the version heard in Penang claimed that the typhoon which sank the junk in the South China Seas drowned all but one of the one hundred and nine aboard, one small boy being saved after days of drifting on wreckage. He then died in Malaya at a ripe old age. 12 One hundred and eight is a secret symbolic number used by secret societies, and one of the Triad gangs in British Malaya was known as the 'One Hundred and Eight Society.' with a devotee in Seremban ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 58 claiming that the Society used to worship ‘openly' in Hainanese temples before convening a meeting. One hundred and eight is also a Buddhist number, the number of the beads in a rosary, the number of passions and delusions, and the number of tolls of the monastery bell at dawn and dusk. A further connotation of the number 108 is reflected in the number of times temple keepers claimed that the Brothers were the 108 heroes at Liang Shan Po in the classic novel, Shuihu Chuan, 'The Water Margin,' but when pressed, in every case they admitted that this had been no more than a guess. The Brothers are also known as: Yibai You Ba Gong 一百有八公 Yibai You Xiongdi 一百有八兄弟 and Yibai Lingba Xiongdi Zhonghun 一百零八兄弟忠魂 Lu Bode and Ma Yuan are two generals revered in Hainanese temples, often on the same altar, with both bearing the same honorific, the Wave Conquering General, [Fupo Jiangjun13]. The first general, Lu Bode, subjugated large areas of what today is Guangdong province during the Earlier Han [ca. 120 BC]. A native of Pingzhou, he served with distinction under He Chubing who became the president of the Board of War. In BC 120 he subjugated large portions of what is today Guangdong and Guangxi, and received further honours. The second general, Ma Yuan [14BC - AD 49], was also awarded the title of the Wave Conqueror for the pacification of the southern region some hundred years later. Popular in Guangdong province he used also to be particularly honoured in Guangxi where he was revered as a river god, "The Wave Conquering General - Fupo Jiangjun' and in Hengzhou in Hunan he used to be the main deity in a small temple where he was worshipped as the protective deity at the local river rapids. Ma Yuan, also known as the Vanguard General, Xianfeng14 led a further southern expansion of the Han empire and has been popularly worshipped from about the fifth century AD by Han settlers ================================================================================