Ng Chin Hung

Long ago, Ng Chin Hung’s family used to own a lot of land in areas around Tai Hom, Yuen Leng and Hammer Hill Road. The earliest presently known registered deed landowner here was Ng Kam Choi of the Ng Clan’s 23rd generation who lived at roughly the same time as China was ruled by the Jiaqing and Daoguang Emperors of the Qing Dynasty (1796-1850). Back then, lands were passed from generation to generation – in this case, from Ng Kam Choi to descendants like Ng Chin Hung’s great-grandfather and grandfather. Ng Chin Hung’s family leased out many parcels of land to tenants who operated fruit plants, sauce factories and distilleries. Among them was Wo Fat Hing which produced liquor.

When Ng Chin Hung’s father died in 1996, the family’s lawyers advised him that while the old man was registered as the deed holder of 15 lots of land, the Land Registry had no record of his ownership. It was only by studying confidential Government files that Ng Chin Hung discovered that all the lots in question had been expropriated by the Government. Ng Chin Hung’s paternal younger uncle, Ng Yung Kan, and Ng Chin Hung’s father owned a piece of land that stretched all the way from Wong Tai Sin Temple along Lung Cheung Road to the TVB Station. The two men used to play in the fields there for fun when they were kids. The lands owned by the two families were only separated by a puddle, the water source of which was Lion Rock Mountain. Ng Chin Hung now sighs that since each parcel of land his family owned sprawled out over 10,000 square feet, he and his family might have wound up becoming the richest family in town. The Government’s land resumption meant that his family had no chance to construct buildings there.

Ng Chin Hung’s family’s ancestral house was located in the 2nd Lane of Nga Tsin Wai village and had an area of around 0.03 acres (Editor’s note: i.e. roughly the size of three standard houses in the walled village). The dwelling was bought by the boy’s wealthy great-grandfather in the 1900s. During pre-war times, Nga Tsin Wai village served as a granary, and many houses within the walled village doubled as cow and pig pens. When they heard the ‘Red Hair’ thieves were planning to raid and rob their homes, villagers would pull up the drawbridge at the gatehouse to protect themselves and their animals. In the early days, rich families lived in larger, three-hall houses in Mau Chin in front of the gatehouse, while their daughters-in-law, maids, concubines and other servants cared for the livestock, food and farm tools in dwellings inside the walled village itself.

Ng Chin Hung’s great-grandparents lived in Mau Chin, while their children moved into the walled village after getting married. Each of these families subsequently cooked separately. Both Ng Chin Hung and his father were born in the 2nd Lane ancestral home. When their house at Mau Chin was demolished by the Japanese army during the occupation years, the family’s great-grandmother moved into the village. During his childhood, Ng Chin Hung lived together with his great-grandmother, grandmother, parents, elder sisters and younger brother. At first, his grandmother lived in the smaller 0.01-acre house, while the rest of the family occupied the lager 0.02-acre unit next door. The bigger house was divided into inner and outer portions, with his parents living in the lower level of the outer portion where their bed was immediately adjacent to the offering table. Ng Chin Hung’s great-grandmother dwelt in the lower level of the inner portion cockloft, while his two elder sisters slept on the area’s iron beds. This meant that Ng Chin Hung and his younger brother slept on the bunk beds in the inner portion’s lower level.

Ng Chin Hung’s grandmother came from Siu Lek Yuen Village in Sha Tin. Back then, many Siu Lek Yuen women married men from Nga Tsin Wai. At the same time, many women in Nga Tsin Wai married men from Siu Lek Yuen. Among them, was the elder sister of Ng Tsz Fong of 3rd Lane. Every time there was a wedding or a funeral, the women of Nga Tsin Wai used to return to Sha Tin together. During summer days, Ng Chin Hung’s grandmother would set off just after daybreak at around 5:30 am, walking back to her parents’ home via Sha Tin Pass and arriving there just before the sun came out.

In marking Lunar New Year, his grandmother would take Ng Chin Hung’s entire family back to her maiden home, bringing with many gifts and provisions for her loved ones. Sha Tin had yet to be developed back then so his grandmother’s stylish return to her maiden home made her look like a big sister who was ready to scold everyone! Ng Chin Hung loved these family visits to Siu Lek Yuen as he got to live in his grandmother’s big house. While there, he was also able to chat with children of his own age and to have fun while playing in the woods, climbing the fruit trees and crossing the streams. He especially adored tucking into fruits such as lychees and longans during the Mid-Autumn Festival. As Siu Lek Yuen was located near the mouth of a river, Ng Chin Hung’s maternal cousins and uncles would row a boat to net fish, crabs and clams when they were not busy farming. As his grandmother liked to eat shellfish, her family steamed crabs and boiled clams whenever Ng Chin Hung’s family was coming to dinner. Ng Chin Hung reflects today that relationships among neighbours in the walled villages in the old days were very close. As a result, every time his grandmother went back to visit her parents, she would drop into other families’ houses there one after the other.

Ng Chin Hung’s father attended Queen’s College from the age of around 10, eventually dropping out of school after the fall of Hong Kong in December 1941. Due to difficulties arising from the occupation, he eventually went to Guangzhou with some buddies from Nga Tsin Wai. Although still less than 18 years old, he eked out a living there selling used clothing before returning to Hong Kong when the Japanese forces were defeated. He was then admitted to the British army’s ‘water mine and coastal artillery soldiers’ (or Hong Kong Chinese Training Unit). After serving as a Chinese British soldier for a couple of years or so, he transferred to the police training school, formally beginning his career as a policeman in 1947. During his first few years, Ng Chin Hung’s father served in uniform before subsequently becoming a crime detective officer in the Criminal Investigation Department (“CID”).

His father and Lui Lok served at roughly the same time – the era of the ‘Four Big Detective Sergeants’. Back then, corruption was flourishing and it was not uncommon for police officers to demand protection money from weaker members of society. Given his steady income, Ng Chin Hung’s father did not want a promotion as he was content to stay a crime detective officer for the remainder of his career. In those years, the older man liked to dance and was a regular visitor to the Blue Sky Nightclub in Portland Street. According to the accounts of villagers who sat chatting at the gatehouse, Ng Chin Hung’s father dressed very casually when he went out dancing, only wearing his pajamas, shirt and slippers. His carrying of his regulation-issue gun did, however, cause much merriment amongst his neighbours!

Ng Chin Hung was a very mischievous boy when he was little. As there were no computers or TVs back then, he liked to stroll around, playing hide-and-seek in the village and visiting the Tung Fong and Yue Hwa China products stores in San Po Kong. There were bicycles for rent in the seven-storey resettlement blocks at an hourly fee of 50 cents or HK$1. After school, Ng Chin Hung used to rent the bikes with his buddies from the village, exploring Kowloon Tong, Lo Fu Ngam, Kowloon City and To Kwa Wan as they rode. Sometimes, the boys went down to the sewer (Editor’s note: at Kai Tak Nullah) in search of adventure. The water there was very dirty and was all sorts of different colours because of how the wastewater from the nearby dyeing plants had mixed with the source water from the mountain stream. As polluted as it was, eels could still be seen swimming inside. After the rain, the whole sewer filled up with sloughed-off sand that workers had to come and clean up every month or so. Ng Chin Hung’s playmates included Skinny Yin, Ah Ming, Wah Tau, Ah Kuen and Ng Shui Chuen’s son. All of the boys were a little younger than him and no longer lived in Nga Tsin Wai.  

Ng Chin Hung’s family was wealthy by village standards and a lot of people followed by the side of his policeman father. For this reason, Ng Chin Hung grew up in a home that was effectively a mansion with a seemingly never-ending stream of visitors! Every time his mother cooked, she cooked huge portions of food with fish and chicken, some of which she delivered to her own mother in Fuk Lo Tsun Road. At mealtimes, many neighbours came around to eat at a table that could easily seat over 10 people. Ng Chin Hung’s mother would only accept a nominal payment for her efforts and did not really care if visitors paid nothing at all! Sometimes, when Ng Chin Hung saw that his neighbours were tucking into particularly delicious dishes, he would go in, pick some food and leave. At the end of the day, not too many villagers minded this as such practices were a way of life within the walls of the village. 

Ng Chin Hung spent his childhood in Nga Tsin Wai, learning to love listening to the conversations of the village elders from around the age of eight. As a result, he grew to understand many past stories from old folk such as his grandmother, father, Ng Kau, Ng Kam Ling, Ng Hung On and Ng Yeung Kin. Every time one of the seniors began a new tale, he listened carefully and kept the stories in mind. Having been passed down from generation to generation, this oral history taught Ng Chin Hung a great deal about village affairs. Having forged close ties with Ng Kam Ling, Ng Chin Hung learned much about the land acquisition process of the British Hong Kong Government in the early years first hand. Before the land was liable for compulsory purchase, it seemed the Government published a Gazette informing owners to collect compensation calculated at market prices within one month. Failure to do so would mean the amount would be transferred to the Treasury and confiscated. If a villager tried to collect this money after the cut-off date, he or she would need to hire a lawyer to resolve matters. In the court, the judge would ask the aggrieved villager ‘Why did you fail to collect your money on time? Were you trying to be confrontational?’

Ng Chin Hung’s family owned large tracts of land in and around Nga Tsin Wai before the 1960s. Of these, Lot 5646 had an area of over 10,000 sq. ft. Half of this land was rented out to a fruit plant, while the other half was leased by a sauce factory before being expropriated by the Government for construction of seven-storey resettlement blocks in the 1950s. To cope with the influx of refugees from the Mainland between the 1940s and 50s, the Government used the Crown Lands Resumption Ordinance to forcibly impose compulsory purchase orders on Nga Tsin Wai’s indigenous inhabitants. Once their lands had been acquired, the Government set about building the seven-storey resettlement buildings. These properties eventually evolved into new public housing estates and home ownership buildings.

Wong Tai Sin District Council (“WTSDC”) classified Nga Tsin Wai as a site of historical interest in April 2000, subsequently passing a motion to preserve the entire village. Once the owners had agreed to classify their properties as historical buildings, title ownership would be frozen. At the start of the April 2005 fiscal year, the Government auctioned off two residential lots at Sha Po Road receiving satisfactory bids for land that is now home to the Le Billionnaire and The Latitude properties. This was the first time the Government had auctioned land in Kowloon City for decades. Ng Chin Hung therefore approached the URA as an indigenous inhabitant to enquire about the price and progress of Nga Tsin Wai’s acquisition. The URA informed him that the development of the K1 project was on hold and could only move forward if WTSDC’s motion was overruled.

In the following two years Ng Chin Hung and his younger brother lobbied all concerned parties. In doing so, they sent letters to the SAR Chief Executive plus various Legislative Council and District Council members outlining the poor living conditions in Nga Tsin Wai and the urgent need for villagers to improve their quality of life. Several times, he led officials and councilors on tours of the village so they could see for themselves the hardships villagers faced every day. Later, he successfully obtained the signatures of every householder in the village bar one on a petition requesting the authorities’ approval of the final overruling WTSDC’s motion and the redeveloping of Nga Tsin Wai. The Legislative Council eventually overturned WTSDC’s decision and approved the start the redevelopment in 2008.

After the restart of the Nga Tsin Wai redevelopment project in 2008, Ng Chin Hung and his brother began negotiating with senior executives of the URA. The three prerequisites Ng Chin Hung listed out for the redevelopment were thus: Firstly, Tin Hau Temple would either not be demolished or would be relocated as it was the spiritual epicentre of Nga Tsin Wai. Secondly, the Village Office would be retained. Should the existing Village Office have to be demolished, the facility would be rebuilt in a new location to be agreed following discussions between the villagers and the authorities. Thirdly, as Ng Chin Hung believed redevelopment is not equivalent to demolishing or selling the village, a tablet inscribed with the words ‘Nga Tsin Wai Village’ had to be installed and displayed prominently after any redevelopment.

The URA accepted all three conditions, including the conversion of the “Chung Tso” (Communal Hall) next to Tin Hau Temple into a new three-storey Village Office with each floor having an area of about 700 sq. ft. The URA also promised to assume full responsibility for the cost of the maintenance of Tin Hau Temple and to install essential new equipment including a HK$1,000,000 smokeless incense burner at the request of Ng Chin Hung and his brother. The aim was to pre-empt any possible complaints by the new owners. Ng Chin Hung had already started negotiating with the concerned departments about the redevelopment as early as in 1985 or 1986 when he was just 25 or 26. Not until 2009 was the implementation of the redevelopment project formally confirmed. Speaking of the protracted negotiations, Ng Chin Hung said with real emotion that he felt that the entire village had benefitted, with every resident receiving generous relocation compensation. Some villagers initially did not agree with the redevelopment, and did not support Ng Chin Hung in his negotiations with the authorities on their behalf.