Ng Yiu Fai

Ng Yiu Fai’s father attended public schools such as King’s College or Wah Yan College up to secondary graduation and then took a clerical job. Before he retired in the early 1980s, he had worked as a clerk at Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company (HAECO) for about 20 years. As a child Ng Yiu Fai grew up with two brothers in an ordinary family which was considered as being comfortably well off. Ng Yiu Fai’s father had spent his childhood in the walled village. As there were few literate people there then, Ng Yiu Fai’s uncles recommended his father for the post of manager of Ng Yat Un Tso and Ng Sz Ko Tso. He subsequently served as manager of Ng Sz Ko Tso for many years, only resigning in 1996 when he emigrated to Canada. Ng Yiu Fai’s mother was a Hakka and a typical housewife. Ng Yiu Fai guessed that his parents got to know each other after being introduced by friends. Ng Yiu Fai’s mother had some 10 brothers and sisters, all of whom originally lived in Kowloon City and subsequently moved to Hung Hom. The family eventually moved to a tenement building in Kowloon City Road in To Kwa Wan. During his childhood, Ng Yiu Fai accompanied his mother to her childhood home at To Kwa Wan to visit his maternal grandmother at least twice a month every time he had school holidays.  

Ng Yiu Fai’s family owned three houses in Nga Tsin Wai which were located respectively at No. 8, at the end of 3rd Lane and at 5th Lane. The dwelling at No. 8, 3rd Lane had been built well over 100 years before. The three homes, which the family always called “ancestral houses”, were passed down by Ng Yiu Fai’s grandfather, with ownership shared between his father and two younger uncles. Most houses within the walled village measured some 20-foot long by 10-foot wide (i.e. around 0.01 acres) and were divided into several width types such as 9, 11 and 13 pit of tiles. The ancestral house at No. 8, 3rd Lane was a complete house (complete houses occupied 0.01 acres whereas half houses occupied 0.005 acres), whereas the house at the end of 3rd Lane was a half house with the remaining 0.005 acre of land being owned by Ng Yiu Fai’s uncles. The house at 5th Lane was also a half house, with the other 0.005 acre of land belonging to his grandmother’s relatives.

The three ancestral houses were what was called “poke mud houses” in which builders had used granite of varying sizes to build walls and mud or cement to poke between gaps in the stone. In other words, the dwellings were not really stone houses at all. The house at the end of 3rd Lane served as a kitchen and incorporated a mud brick sealing wall that separated it from an adjacent house owned by Ng Yiu Fai’s uncles. While the kitchen initially used firewood, by the time Ng Yiu Fai had grown, kerosene was used instead. The kitchen doors in the kitchen were a pair of swing doors his family members used for cover when taking baths by hiding in the corner behind them. The houses at 3rd Lane and 5th Lane both had a cockloft. In the 3rd Lane house, this area was used for storage, while Ng Yiu Fai’s parents slept in the room downstairs. Ng Yiu Fai, his two brothers and grandmother, all lived in the 5th Lane house. Here, the three brothers slept in the cockloft while grandma slept downstairs. When his younger aunt returned to live in the village, the old lady began sleeping on the bed in the cockloft and the three brothers slept on the floor. As none of the three ancestral houses had a toilet, Ng Yiu Fai mostly used public facilities in Tung Tau Resettlement Estate. There was, however, a toilet jar inside the family’s home and every evening someone called round to collect what was then called “night soil”. The whole family ate at the larger 3rd Lane house, getting their meals from the kitchen at the end of the lane. Ng Yiu Fai thought that the living environment in his childhood was acceptable, though incomparable to that of those who lived in bigger buildings.

Ng Yiu Fai’s family left Nga Tsin Wai in 1972 and moved to a building in To Kwa Wan. Their new home was a purchased property, equipped with a lift. By that time, Ng Yiu Fai and his brothers had grown up and found it very hard to live in a home without a toilet. Ng Yiu Fai’s initial impressions of his new home were all about cleanliness and convenience as he and his family no longer had to visit public toilets. Back then, he did not feel very sad about his family’s ancestral homes as he does now. He regrets that the Government did not allow the ancestral houses to be demolished for redevelopment. Otherwise he and his family would not have had to move out. His grandmother initially felt sad about leaving the ancestral home and insisted on staying on. After she accidentally fell and hurt herself five or six years later, she could no longer look after herself and therefore moved to To Kwa Wan to reunite and stay with her other family members.

After leaving Nga Tsin Wai, Ng Yiu Fai’s family leased out the houses at 3rd Lane end and 5th Lane. The tenant of the 3rd Lane end house approached the family about renting the house himself. This house later fell into disrepair and collapsed after a few years by which point the tenant had already left. Although originally living in the opposite hut, the tenant of the 5th Lane house was not surnamed Ng. As this tenant’s family had many children, they rented the house from Ng Yiu Fai’s parents for a very low monthly rent of about HK$120. Indeed so attractive were the terms that they lived in the house for decades! Rent collection was handled by Ng Yiu Fai’s father, with the tenant depositing each month’s payment into the family bank account. The three ancestral houses were subsequently reclaimed by the Government and classified as “Crown Land” at the time of acquisition by the Urban Renewal Authority (URA).

Ng Yiu Fai began attending Primary 1 at age 6 when his parents enrolled him for morning classes at Kwun Tong’s St. John Primary School. His mother took him to school by bus every day. At that time, Kwun Tong had not been developed and the areas beyond the Amoy sauce factory were largely barren. As Ng Yiu Fai was unable to catch up with other students, he transferred to the newly-opened Ng Wah Primary School where he attended Primary 3 and Primary 4 afternoon classes. He subsequently moved to Chi Tak Public School in Primary 5 when the school was opened by Nga Tsin Wai’s Ng Clan. As an Ng Clan descendent, he required no formal application to attend. Ng Yiu Fai went on to complete Primary 6 here before studying at a private English college in Kowloon City. After rounding off his junior secondary education at this institution, Ng Yiu Fai enrolled at South East Radio College. Studying here was his own decision as he thought the most important thing was to make a living. His parents did not stand in his way.

After studying at the radio college for two and a half years, Ng Yiu Fai’s uncles in Nga Tsin Wai subsequently referred him for a job at Hong Kong’s old Kai Tak Airport (Editor’s note: i.e. Hong Kong International Airport) where he has been working until this day. Ng Yiu Fai didn’t really care where or for whom he worked, he was just eager to join a large company that promised him more stable long-term employment prospects. He went on to work for Cathay Pacific’s catering services division. As it was a low level job, no application was necessary beyond a simple interview. Ng Yiu Fai went to work at San Po Kong which was opposite the walled village. Starting from lowest level duties such as moving and lifting, he gradually rose to supervisory level, but occasionally still did the odd bit of manual labouring. The radio knowledge he had learned at college was of no use whatsoever. Ng Yiu Fai’s elder brother and younger brother also attended Ng Wah Primary School and Ng Wah Secondary School. His younger brother subsequently took jobs in passenger services at the airport. While Ng Yiu Fai, his father and younger brother all worked at Kai Tak, they did not often see one and other at work as they all belonged to different departments.

When Ng Yiu Fai was still small, his parents were very strict, rarely allowing him to play around and urging him to stay at home to study. Ng Yiu Fai’s memory was poor, and he had little interest in his studies. After returning home to do his homework after school, he played with his brothers, cousins and children living in the lane outside his front door. In addition to grabbing paper, popular games included shooting marbles and patting picture cards. That said, Ng Yiu Fai rarely ventured further outside than the house next door. Nor did he travel very far on holidays. The houses at Nga Tsin Wai were still intact at that time and not overgrown with trees as happened in later years. As no one took care of the village and its surroundings after the houses collapsed, seeds blew in from nowhere and slowly grew into big trees.

Ng Yiu Fai thought that Chinese New Year was a most impressive festival! During the Lunar New Year, he went from door to door paying his respects to the neighbours together with his brothers. All it took to receive a red Lai See packet filled with one or two cents was a cheery “Kung Hei Fat Choy”. Kids back then would be over the moon if they received just HK$1 in lucky money so HK$10 was considered an awesome amount! Ng Yiu Fai knew almost everyone in the village and was especially familiar with people in his lane. To mark the festivities, his grandmother and mother made crispy triangles and dumplings and fried sesame balls and cakes in the family kitchen. Ng Yiu Fai and other children helped them out by pounding peanuts and flour. Ng Yiu Fai found being in the kitchen while grown-ups worked to be very interesting and enjoyable.

Every Chung Yeung Festival Ng Yiu Fai went grave sweeping with his parents. Everyone subsequently paid their respects to their ancestors in Tsz Wan Shan, Nga Tsin Wai’s Ng Clan Ancestral Hall and Shatin on the eighth, ninth and tenth day of the ninth lunar month. In those years, food at this event was abundant. Especially popular treats included peanuts and Kwong So Cakes which Ng Yiu Fai’s mother put in plastic bags. In those days, many people went to Shatin for grave sweeping as they were paying respects to the chief ancestor Ng Yat Un Tso (i.e. the chief ancestor of Nga Tsin Wai’s Ng Clan’s fourth branch). Although he was still only a kid in those days, Ng Yiu Fai was allotted a portion of around HK$2-3 in grave sweeping money after food had been distributed to everyone in the hills.

Belonging to the clan’s Ng Sz Ko Tso branch, the ancestral cemetery belonging to Ng Yiu Fai’s ancestors was located at Tseng Lan Shue where some eight or nine urns had been fixed in place. During earlier Chung Yeung Festivals, Ng Yiu Fai also went to Tseng Lan Shue for grave sweeping. Here, more than 10 people often came along. Most of them were from three families, namely those of Ng Yiu Fai and his uncles Ng Lam Yau and Ng Sun Hong. As the two uncles lived in Nga Tsin Wai, the three families had more opportunities to meet each other. While Ng Sh Ko Tso could trace many descent lines, many people had already moved out of Nga Tsin Wai. As a result, Ng Yiu Fai met them less and less. The hill graves at Tseng Lan Shue were later appropriated by the Government for the construction of Pik Uk Prison. The descendants of Ng Sz Ko Tso therefore paid tribute to their ancestors in the ancestral hall. When Ng Yiu Fai went grave sweeping with the adults while still small, he had no interest in the importance of the tradition – he just knew that everyone would receive a portion of food and a share of some money. Like the kids there, he had nothing to do in the hills and just ran around catching grasshoppers.

When Ng Yiu Fai was a child, he often joined his father in paying Chinese New Year visits to his uncles. The adults gathered and chatted at the village office where Ng Yiu Fai heard the grown-ups recall a lot of past memories such as the fact that the Ng Clan once had a lot of farmlands stretching between the north of Boundary Street and Kowloon Tong. Unfortunately continuous development by the Government meant these areas had all slowly been taken back. Kids in those days rarely heard full stories and could not ask the elders to provide further elaboration. When Ng Yiu Fai’s father subsequently emigrated to Canada, he had nothing left to hand down for his son. As Ng Yiu Fai’s younger brother had earlier settled in Canada, his father applied for family reunion emigration. Ng Yiu Fai decided he would not be able to adapt to the Canadian way of life and decided to stay in Hong Kong. He eventually flew to Canada twice a year to visit his loved ones. He thought that Canada was a boring place and that emigrating to such an environment would not necessarily guarantee any improvement of his or the next generation of his family’s quality of life.

Ng Yiu Fai moved out of Nga Tsin Wai in 1972. After leaving, he occasionally returned to the village mainly to visit his grandmother. After the old lady finally moved out, he returned to the village less often. The amount of time he stayed during these increasingly infrequent visits varied. Sometimes, his trips would last a whole afternoon. On other occasions, he would only stay for as much time as it took to offer incense in Tin Hau Temple and ancestral hall. Influenced by his parents while growing up, he would burn incense and greet and chat with his former neighbours every time he returned to the village. Although some neighbours did not share his surname and were not really family, Ng Yiu Fai still addressed them as “uncles” and “aunties”. Examples included Auntie Hung, a neighbour who had watched him growing up. Ng Yiu Fai thought that neighbourhood relations had been very good in the past as everybody took care of one and other and happily sharing their food. This was especially true of kindness towards the elderly. Villagers liked to entrust others to do the marketing on their behalf. If ever his mother felt ill or uncomfortable, Ng Yiu Fai would go to the market to buy ingredients for meals with his neighbours. As he often watched his mother in the kitchen during his childhood, he could cook many dishes on his own by the time he was 10 or 11. As a result, whenever his mother was too busy to cook, Ng Yiu Fai would happily take over at the stove.

Ng Yiu Fai was not quite clear about clan affairs before he was appointed manager of Ng Sz Ko Tso in 2007. The previous year he had, however, helped to prepare Nga Tsin Wai’s Jiao Festival. His clansmen later told him that the former manager of Ng Sz Ko Tso had died and they had recommended him to fill the vacant post. As there was no other candidate and he did not want the post to remain unfilled, Ng Yiu Fai decided to accept their invitation to serve. His principle duty was to represent Ng Sz Ko Tso branch in serving as a director of Ng Wai Wing Tso and Ng Yat Un Tso Limited. The company had very few functions, many of which involved managing the ancestral trust properties at Fung Wong New Village and preparing for ancestral worship at Chung Yeung Festival. As such it usually held only two annual gatherings during the Chinese New Year Spring Dinner and Chung Yeung Festival ancestral worship.

Whenever there were more matters for the company to decide, Ng Yiu Fai would solicit the opinions of his Ng Sz Ko Tso clansmen by telephone. Although serving as manager, he still held down a regular job. Occasionally, he had to take leave from his main work, but it was never really a problem for him to take care of both jobs. The Ng Sz Ko Tso branch did not have its own property or cemetery; nor did it hold regular meetings. In the old days, its clansmen gathered in the ancestral hall during Chung Yeung Festival for ancestral worship. At this time, no such arrangements had been made for around 10 years so Ng Yiu Fai rarely needed to attend. Ng Sz Ko Tso had three descent lines: Ng Shen Yam, Ng Chow Yam and Ng Ching Yam. Ng Yiu Fai did not know about people from the Ng Ching Yam line and only knew about Ng Shu Ming’s family from the Ng Chow Yam line. He mainly contacted the three families from the Ng Shen Yam descent line.

Having assumed managerial responsibilities, Ng Yiu Fai had gained a better understanding of ancestors and also come to know about his fellow clansmen, including several whose names he had previously barely heard of. Ng Yiu Fai grew up in the walled village, only leaving when he was 10 or so, retaining a few traditional concepts when he did so. He thinks that the ancestral hall still exists today and that as he belongs to his ancestral line, tai gong (ancestor) will always be tai gong. He hopes that the clanship will continue and will be very sad if it is lost during his generation (i.e. the 28th in the line). He also worries about clanships’ future during his children’s generation. Ng Yiu Fai was interested in things from his forefathers’ days when he was a child, but every time he asked his father to tell him more, he was scolded for being nosy! When he was young, Ng Yiu Fai had only the barest idea about his ancestral heritage. Only after his family emigrated to Canada leaving him alone in Hong Kong did he gradually begin to take interest in such ideas. He hopes that the next generation will follow a similar path. Ng Yiu Fai does not wish to deliberately indoctrinate the next generation and only takes his son to attend the clan affairs in a subtle attempt to cultivate his interest.   

Faced with demolition and redevelopment, Nga Tsin Wai has changed dramatically in recent years. As Ng Yiu Fai returned less and less, he had mixed feelings each time he went back as he found village houses demolished one after another and he had no real friends left there. The personal closeness of bygone days was what he missed the most, as he felt very comfortable living with his uncles and aunts. As he got older, Ng Yiu Fai felt the environment in and around the village was becoming increasingly inconvenient. For example, he could not pee anywhere like he could when he was a child, and he was afraid that the house might collapse whenever there was a typhoon or rainstorm!

But overall, he was not too sad about the demolition as he broadly agreed with the Government’s conservation plans to help give the next generation the opportunity to learn more about the walled village. In the future will see one of Ng Yiu Fai’s family’s ancestral houses retained and transformed into something like a museum. As of this time, Ng Yiu Fai had participated in five events of Jiao Festival in Nga Tsin Wai, only missing the 1986 session as he was unable to attend due to work. While Ng Yiu Fai’s parents emigrated in 1996, he still visited that year’s Jiao event alone. Looking back, he feels that Jiao rituals of the past were more bustling and lively. Villagers, irrespective of their surnames, were not allowed to bring meat into the village during the Jiao ritual period and wooden doll puppet shows were staged over two nights in those years.

Ng Yiu Fai’s father had held many posts in the walled village, taking charge of the affairs of Ng Shing Tat Tso, Ng Yat Un Tso and Ng Sz Ko Tso and also looking after his fellow villagers’ interests at the same time. In the past, the older man mostly went to the village office for meetings after dinner to discuss village affairs and ancestral trust matters. At that time, Ng Yiu Fai mostly did his homework at home, and his father seldom mentioned public issues in his hearing. Only when Ng Yiu Fai looked up file records several years later did he learn about the posts his father had filled. While Ng Yiu Fai had been invited to handle village affairs, he did not want to have a post or a title. He thought that it was more troublesome to handle village affairs than ancestral trust matters as the former involved balancing more people’s opinions. But mindful of his upbringing, he was willing to contribute to village affairs. As he knew how to operate a computer, he has helped out on village office clerical work for the past four or five years. Ng Yiu Fai stresses that he did not like vying for positions and would have been happy to give up the manager post of Ng Sz Ko Tso at any time. If anyone from the younger generation is interested in taking over and has obtained his clansmen’s recommendation, Ng Yiu Fai will still be delighted to offer him his full support! As he does not have the mindset of inheriting his father’s roles, Ng Yiu Fai just wants to do all he can to help.

The clan’s Ng Sz Ko Tso branch has never compiled its own genealogy. Ng Yiu Fai thought that his father might have several generations’ lineal ancestor records and had told him about relatives of offshoots such as his uncles Ng Lam Yau and Ng Sun Hong (Editor’s note: the three families of Ng Yiu Fai, Ng Lam Yau and Ng Sun Hong are all descended from the Ng Shen Yam line). When Ng Wing Tong published the whole clan’s genealogy in 1986, Ng Yiu Fai’s father had helped its compiler by sharing useful information with him. Only in recent years after Ng Yiu Fai served as manager did he begin to read up on clan genealogy. He knew nothing about compiling the genealogy before that. Ng Yiu Fai believes that the Ng Clan is a big one and that its genealogy is very important as it will allow the clansmen to understand each other’s closeness. That said, Ng Yiu Fai did not usually bother to read up on such things. Only when he heard people referring to kinship did he become interested in looking up the records. Ng Sz Ko Tso is now having its 29th generation of descendants. Ng Yiu Fai learned from his mother that lighting the lanterns and taking the roasted pig’s head to the cemetery were important traditions dating back to long before her sons had been born (Editor’s note: customs for newborn boys in grave sweeping). He believes that clansmen of his branch of the family have an obligation to report newborn boys themselves as it is difficult for him to take the initiative and contact families for tracing purposes.