Cheung Koon Fu

Cheung Koon Fu was born in 1921 in Cheung Uk Tsuen, Sha Lo Tung.  His family were indigenous Hakka settlers in Tai Po, New Territories.  It has been more than 300 years since Sha Lo Tung was founded.  His father Cheung Fan (Note: transliteration only) was a mining engineer with two wives.  The second wife was an ordinary peasant woman, and she gave birth to five children.  Cheung Koon Fu was her youngest son.  In the early years, Sha Lo Tung’s villagers led difficult lives.  His father had no opportunity to study and began working abroad since he was a child.  He went to an island near Australia to work as a miner and learnt about mining and good English skills from the foreigners.  After returning to Hong Kong, he engaged in mining and earned a reputation as “The Chinese Mining Secretary” in the mining sector.  His father was hired to mine in Lin Fa Shan, near Lin Ma Hang and Shing Mun Reservoir, by foreigners who came to Hong Kong.

When Cheung Koon Fu was small, he studied at the Sha Lo Tung Primary School which was opened by local villagers.  He learnt to read subjects such as Classical Chinese, Chinese language, social study and history.  Classical Chinese was taught from the Primary 4. The schools used modern textbooks, but hired teachers with classical backgrounds who always applied physical punishments on students.  When Cheung Koon Fu was in Primary 5, he left school to go mining with his father, who was working in Lin Fa Shan.  His father, however, wanted him to continue his studies, and thus sent him to Tsim Sha Tsui to learn English.  Due to many years of underground work, his father contracted pneumoconiosis when mining in Lin Fa Shan and passed away at the age of 60, when Cheung Koon Fu was only 17 years old.  Cheung Koon Fu was unable to maintain his studies in Tsim Sha Tsui after the death of his father, so he returned to Sha Lo Tung.  Cheung Yee Fun (Note: transliteration only), a teacher at Sha Lo Tung Primary School, liked Cheung Koon Fu and invited him to come to the school for tutoring and to serve as teaching assistant.  The two years of learning under Master Cheung greatly expanded his knowledge in Classical Chinese literature.

Cheung Koon Fu got married at the age of 19.  Soon after that, the Japanese attacked Hong Kong.  After the fall of Hong Kong at the end of 1941, Sha Lo Tung villagers lived in poverty.  The Japanese troops often raided the villages, and interrogated the villagers with tortures to find out where the guerrilla fighters were.  Cheung Koon Fu was the youngest son in the family and needed not to do housework.  His spent his childhood playing and therefore lacked necessary life skills.  Since there were too many people in the family, the married Cheung Koon Fu was required to leave.  In 1943, Cheung Koon Fu joined the Sha Tau Kok squadron of East River Column’s Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Battalion.  When he first joined, he had to be trained in Mainland China before returning to New Territories to work with the villagers as a liaison officer.  His job was to spread pro-guerrilla propaganda.  Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Battalion was disbanded after the war.  He did not follow the East River Column to move northward to China; he instead continued to stay in Hong Kong.

At the end of 1941, the Japanese attacked Hong Kong.  The Japanese cavalry passed by Sha Lo Tung when they were heading toward the urban area of Hong Kong and Kowloon, but they did not disturb the villagers.  Subsequent to the surrender of the British, the New Territories were in disorder and the problem of banditry in Sha Lo Tung was severe.  Most bandits came from Mainland China into the New Territories, armed with weapons such as ‘box cannons’ and revolvers.  Since the British Hong Kong government prohibited private possession of weapons before the war, Sha Lo Tung villagers only had rusty knives that rendered them unable to resist bandits.  Cheung Koon Fu could recall three incidences of looting committed by the bandits.  The first time, they took away poultry and other livestock.  The second time, the bandit gang, with more than 30 people, looted a variety of food.  In the third time, they even robbed the cotton blankets.  Sha Lo Tung did not have much agricultural land in the first place, so food was in scarcity after the looting.  The villagers subsisted on sweet potato, wild potato and sarsaparilla.  After the Japanese authority took over Hong Kong, they made efforts to suppress activities of guerrilla forces in the New Territories.  Every time they heard from a Chinese informant’s about sighting of guerilla fighters in Sha Lo Tung, they would send a search team of dozens of people into the village.  A search of such kind took place every one to two months.

When the Japanese entered the village for a search, they separated the men from the women, and locked up the young men in a certain village house.  They then questioned them to find out the guerrilla’s whereabouts.  Since there was no interpreter present, both sides could not understand each other’s language.  After beating and slapping the villagers, the Japanese soldiers would randomly arrest several people and took them down to the river for water torture.  Some of the arrested were sent to the Japanese headquarters in Fanling for a torture called “Diu Fei Gey” (hands tied behind one’s back and hung in mid-air).  Cheung Koon Fu was once detained for several hours.  He was only slapped and beaten, but fortunately never subject to water torture.  A certain villager from Cheung Uk Tsuen was arrested and beaten by the Japanese for drawing with chalk on the beam of an attic.  He suffered from internal injuries and died.  A certain teenager from Lee Uk Tsuen running around in front of the Japanese was also shot to death because he was mistaken as an escaper.  The Japanese would stay in the village for several hours and withdraw on the same day.  They did not leave any guards inside the villages.  Their mission was to catch the guerrillas, so they only went after the young men and did not take liberties with the women.  Sha Lo Tung’s young people spent their nights on the remote wilderness because they wanted to escape from the Japanese’s torture.  They went into hiding on as far away as the hills of Ping Shan Chai.

Sha Lo Tung was formed of three villages: Cheung Uk, Lee Uk and Ping Shan Chai.  Cheung Uk was adjacent to Lee Uk, whereas Ping Shan Chai was more remote.  If one departs from Cheung Uk, he or she had to climb over a mountain to reach Ping Shan Chai.  There were 80 people in Cheung Uk, all surnamed Cheung.  The Lee Uk were divided into three groups of residents - two of which consisted of more than 10 households and the another group had only a few - all surnamed Lee.  Ping Shan Chai was made up of a variety of families.  The Cheungs and the Chengs, with more than 10 households each, were the two major names in the village.  When Cheung Koon Fu was young, people in Sha Lo Tung were impoverished and mostly worked as farmers.  However, there was a lack of agricultural land. 

The villagers could only make a living by gathering firewood in the mountains and digging for potato and sarsaparilla. 
Many villagers then went overseas as indentured workers.  Villagers abroad would return and recruit their folks to sign a two or three-year contract.  Then they would be packed on a large ship to go to Nauru and other remote islands for hard labour, and would not go back to Hong Kong until their contracts expired.  Villagers feared the Japanese troops during the war, but did not have the skills to earn a living in the urban areas, so they constantly remained at home.  Indigenous inhabitants had land and estates in Hong Kong, and did not go to the Mainland during Japanese Occupation.  Some people chose to work for the Japanese as constable and betrayed their nation by being informants.  Many of them ended up being killed by the guerrilla force.

Shortly after the fall of Hong Kong, the Sha Tau Kok squadron of East River Column’s Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Battalion sent a female liaison officer to Sha Lo Tung to promote the resistance efforts of the guerrilla force and to organise the youth into militia under the guerrilla force’s direction.  The enrolees could choose to stay in the village or go for guerrilla training at a base in the Mainland.  Sha Lo Tung became chaotic after the fall of Hong Kong and was looted by the bandits many times.  The villagers did know the true identity of members of the liaison officer at first, but then they gradually had a better idea of the guerrilla force after explanation.  Cheung Koon Fu and family lived in hardship and suffered from the ordeal of Japanese rule, but did not want to just stay idle at home all day.  Having learnt that the guerrilla force was fighting for the country and that it was not bad in nature, he finally joined the Sha Tau Kok squadron in 1943.  He admitted that joining the army was out of a need and was a way to survive.  He felt that human life was cheap in those war years and did not bother to consider personal safety.  Several young men from Cheung Uk and Lee Uk joined the army.  Cheung Koon Fu set off with his brothers from the same village, joined forces with the other fighters in Wu Kau Tang, and then took a wooden ship to the guerrilla base in Mirs Bay for training.

There were more than a hundred male and female trainees in the base who were divided into units of 8 to 10 people each.  Each unit had a leader, and all unit members lived together.  The chief of the base was a caption of the East River Column named Wang Zuoyao, who regularly lectured the unit members.  There was a clear division of labour between women and men - the former served as staff and hygiene officers while the latter went to fight in combat.  Most of the unit members were not much educated.  Cheung Koon Fu had a higher level of education, so he was tasked to be a liaison officer.  A liaison officer was responsible for promoting the benefits of the guerrilla to villagers, organised rural literacy classes, and deal with paperwork at communication stations.  It takes educational qualification and eloquence to be a liaison officer.  Cheung Koon Fu thought eloquence was an inborn talent which is hard to acquire through training.  He thought that himself was not particularly eloquent and was just only able to cope with the promotion works.   However, he was good enough at writing to produce promotional text and to read letters. 

Cheung Koon Fu was trained at the base for about six months, learning how to use guns and to march.  His superior also observed his conduct and character.  He once went to a village near the base to perform a drama the he himself wrote to promote war efforts.  During the training, the superior did not explain the content and methods of promoting the guerrilla force; the unit members had to set their own promotional strategies.  Cheung Koon Fu thought training was rigorous and helped him learn a lot of skills.  After the end of training, Cheung Koon Fu was promoted to the rank of "political fighter" (a military rank similar to "platoon leader").  He worked in the Sha Lo Tung and Fung Yuen areas.  His duties were to organise literacy classes, manage communication stations, and educate youth men in the villages.

After the completion of training in the East River Column’s base, Cheung Koon Fu returned to Sha Lo Tung with the responsibility to promote the guerrillas to villagers, manage documents at the communication station, and organise literacy classes for villages.  Literacy classes met every morning from 9.00 to 12.00 hours, and were open to villagers.  It was mainly young men who enrolled, but there were a few young women as well.  All of them were Cheung Koon Fu’s peers in the same generation.  Each class had about 8-10 students, but the actual number varied.  The guerrilla force did not provide teaching guidelines, so the liaison officers designed their own curriculum.  Many rural young people were illiterate, and Cheung Koon Fu taught his students to read and write "Dad", "Mum" and other simple characters.  He bound the exercise books himself, wrote Chinese characters on each of them, distributed them out for students to copy characters on, and held regular dictation.  Lunch time was at noon.  After lunch, Cheung Koon Fu would talk and play games with his students.  Sometimes they performed dramas by the villagers’ demand.

Cheung Koon Fu and students talked about the wartime situation, and used facts to depict the brutalities of the Japanese as well as the need for resistance.  He only discussed what he knew.  He was just an ordinary New Territories villager before joining the force.  With limited knowledge on national issues, he dared not make any causal talks.  Those who attended literacy classes wanted primarily to learn to read.  Cheung Koon Fu gradually established friendship with them and emphasized to them the benefits of the guerrilla force.  He gave them an honest account of his own background, and hoped to let the older generation know about guerrilla force through the younger people.  Since they were not acquainted well enough, they rarely talked about family matters.  After getting along for a long time, Cheung Koon Fu earned the young people's respect, which indirectly led other villagers to recognise the guerrilla force.  Cheung Koon Fu was the only liaison officer in Sha Lo Tung, but his superior occasionally sent a person to the village to make contacts and to inquire from villagers about the performance of the officer.  However, the representative of the superior did not engage in publicity works.  Later, the liaison officer in Fung Yuen left.  Cheung Koon Fu Fung Yuen was ordered to lead the literacy class in Fung Yuen as well.  That class was only made up of young men.

During the time when Cheung Koon Fu organised literacy classes in Sha Lo Tung, the Japanese occasionally raided the village.  Compared to the early days after the fall of Hong Kong, the frequency of the raids had lowered.  To evade the raids, he sometimes slept in the hills at night.  The villagers knew the guerrilla members’ identity.  There was a traitor in Sha Lo Tung who held grudges against a fellow brother participating in the guerrilla force, and he turned in information of that brother to the Japanese.  The traitor was eventually arrested by the guerrilla force.  The force’s pistol team sometimes entered the villages during daytime and chatted with villagers, but disappeared during the night.  The pistol team was untraceable.  Whether they would enter a village or not depended on the level of risk.  Some indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories worked for the Japanese as the district chief, interpreter, etc, but a lot of them ended up getting killed by the guerrilla force.  Examples were a certain mayor named Ma and an interpreter in Sha Tau Kok named Lam. Cheung Koon Fu thought that rural New Territories at the time was controlled by two parties:  the Japanese army and the guerrilla force.  The villagers must be careful in their political orientation, or else they might lose their lives by mistakes. 

Cheung Koon Fu did not get any salary as a member of the guerrilla force.  He only got a supply of morning and evening meals.  Every day, he had breakfast with the Sha Lo Tung militia and then taught the literacy class.  In the afternoon, he would go to teach in Fung Yuen and then dined with the Fung Yuen militia.  He would return to Sha Lo Tung after dinner.  Cheung Koon Fu stressed that he did not join the force for fame or fortune, but only for bread and butter in order to ensure survival for himself and his family.  His family did not oppose his participation in the force because that way the family had one less person to feed and it helped relieve the pressure on food supply.  After becoming a liaison officer, the family's food supply improved slightly and meals were guaranteed for family members.
 
Cheung Koon Fu taught literacy classes and managed the communication station in daytime.  He used an abandoned civilian house as classroom and communications station, which made it difficult for outsiders to notice.  To evade the Japanese’s early morning raids, Cheung Koon Fu slept in the hills at night with his teammates.  Rainy days in winter were most difficult because the teammates' cotton blanket became so wet that even three people could hardly lift them up.  The Cheung family and the whole Sha Lo Tung village knew he was with the guerrilla force.  He believed he could not conceal his identity as liaison officer to the villagers if he were to gain their trust and carry out propaganda work.  Nobody in Sha Lo Tung worked for the Japanese, and Cheung Koon Fu was not worried about any traitor in the village either.  The guerrilla force did good intelligence work, so it was easy to detect, arrest and kill traitors by tracing their whereabouts.  Some indigenous people in New Territories worked for the Japanese as constable in order make ends meet.  Constables wore uniforms, so they were hard to hide their identity.  They dared not mistreat the villagers or report guerrilla movements to avoid becoming targets of the guerrilla force.  Cheung Koon Fu lamented that the lives of villagers during the Japanese Occupation were cheap.  Unarmed, they were vulnerable to extortion in the face of bandits, the Japanese army and the guerrilla force.

After the war, villagers in the New Territories lived in poverty.  Many people enlisted as police officers, artillery officers, fire fighters and other government disciplinary forces.  In 1946, Cheung Koon Fu joined the police force at the age of 25.  His police ID number was 938.  After completion of training in the academy, he stationed at the Police Station No.8 on Hospital Road on the Mid-levels.  Later, he was transferred to Central Police Station on Pottinger Street, Central and then assigned to office work.  Cheung Koon Fu felt that his salary as a policeman was low and that it was expensive to commute between the urban area and Sha Lo Tung, so he made a request to the Station’s Chief Inspector of Police for transfer to the New Territories.  Soon, he took up a post at the Lok Ma Chau Police Station. 

In 1947/1948, the New Territories’ Superintendent of Police founded the Village Police Patrols, informally known as "pangolin" and in short as "VPP".  The Superintendent of Police invited Cheung Koon Fu to join the VPP, considering that Cheung is an indigenous Hakka person of the New Territories.  Cheung led a four-person unit, patrolling villages, liaising with villagers and helping villagers apply to the government for the construction of bridges and roads.  The VPP was a special unit in the police force, which worked four days a week and took rest on the other three.  The team members prepared their own equipment rather than signing out firearms from the police station.  After becoming part of the VPP, Cheung Koon Fu was promoted to corporal- a rank commonly known as "two chevrons".  Two to three years later, he was further promoted to Sergeant - a rank referred to as "three chevrons".

A few years later, the Superintendent of Police in the New Territories was made CID chief.  His successor changed the members of VPP and made Cheung Koon Fu a general police constable.  He had stationed in Tai Po, Sheung Shui, Lok Ma Chau, Sha Tau Kok, Ta Kwu Leng, Yuen Long among other police station before returning to do office work until his retirement in 1969.  Subsequently, Cheung Koon Fu illegally went to The Netherlands to make a living.  He settled in Amsterdam, but due to the lack of skills and knowledge, he found it hard to find work.  Fortunately, he had established friendship with many villagers when he was a member of the VPP.  One of the Chinese immigrants in The Netherlands knew Cheung Koon Fu, and asked him to help look after a gambling hall. Cheung Koon Fu had learned to read before so he was responsible for recording the words and speeches of the boss. He had no legal residence status in The Netherlands.  He was arrested three times by the Dutch police when his identity blew.  Finally, after the third arrest and subsequent unsuccessful pleading, he had to return to Hong Kong.  He spent a total of three years in The Netherlands.

After the war, Cheung Koon Fu joined the police force.  When the police later organised the Village Police Patrol (VPP, known as "pangolin") in the New Territories, they appointed Cheung Koon Fu to be the first captain.  The VPP was a special police unit under the New Territories’ Superintendent of Police who worked at the Tai Po District Office.  The VPP took a day of rest after every three days of work.  The patrol area on each work day was decided by the New Territories’ Superintendent of Police.  Team members could randomly set their own approach to their work, as the Superintendent would not give clear guidelines.  For example, the team members could play mahjong with the villagers as a way to build relationships.  The time of stay at a village as well as the number of patrols were not fixed.  They all followed the orders of the Superintendent. 

Members of VPP must be indigenous Hakka in the New Territories because Hakka people had an edge in language, wide kinship networks, and geographical knowledge in the New Territories’ villages.  Cheung Koon Fu led four teammates who were all chosen by him.  The VPP’s jurisdiction covered the New Territories and the Lantau Island area, with patrol area reaching as far as Lok Ma Chau, Lung Kwu Tan and other places.  Occasionally, they also carried out duties in the urban area.  In the early post-war period, Hong Kong residents thought of the police poorly, especially those in the urban area.  Cheung Koon Fu lamented that the public did not understand the difficulties of police officers.  New Territories villagers felt that the officers were strangers; they neither hated nor welcomed them.  They generally thought that the police was not needed in the countryside.

The VPP had their own formal uniforms, but could also choose to patrol in casual wear.  The team members could make their own decisions.  VPP’s main duty was to patrol the countryside and make contact with the villagers.  They also conveyed villages’ wishes to their superior in the police on matters such as the construction of dams (in Hakka language, “bai teu”), or notify villagers of news such as collection of cement from the Kadoorie Farm.  When Cheung Koon Fu entered the villages for the first time, he reported his parents’ identity to the villagers, an act informally known as "tat dor", which was a way to build rapport by playing up the sense of kinship and rural affection.  His parents were both indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories with relatives and friends scattering around different villages, hence the VPP successfully established a good relationship with the villagers.  The VPP would write report to the New Territories’ Superintendent of Police.  If villagers committed any illegal acts, the Superintendent would issue them penalty tickets and ordered the district police station to enforce the law.  Cheung Koon Fu was tolerant toward gambling and opium in the villages, which reduced the workload of the district police stations and avoided causing dissatisfaction of the Sub-division Inspector (SDI).

Through marriages, the Hakka settlers in New Territories formed extensive kinship networks.  When Cheung Koon Fu first started working for the VPP, the villagers did not know his background and treated him with indifference.  He therefore always reported his family background when he made contact with the villagers, which successfully moved villagers.  The villages in the New Territories had their own self-defence forces formed of young people with good character.  The VPP supplied firearms to the self-defence forces; this built a sense of mutual goodwill.  Cheung Koon Fu also collected demographic information from village headmen in order to understand the status of employment and immigration.  At the same time, the VPP would pass messages to the villager, such as telling people remote villagers through the village headman to go and collect chicks and vegetable seedlings at the Kadoorie Farm.  During the inspections in coastal villages, Cheung Koon Fu would inquire about illegal immigration and tell his colleagues to intercept illegal immigrants crossing on wooden boats from the Mainland.  But villagers sheltered smugglers and informed them of VPP operations.  This prevented the police from finding anything.

Cheung Koon Fu used to patrol the whole New Territories, and he believed that the villages were similar in terms of environment.  There was not a great difference between Punti and Hakka villages.  After the war, immigrants from the Mainland settled down in the New Territories, and built houses mainly next to indigenous villages where transport was convenient and a variety of families lived.  Cheung Koon Fu thought that old and new villagers got along well.  The immigrants, knowing their status as foreigners, seldom struggled with the indigenous inhabitants for power and rights.  Village matters were still under indigenous inhabitants’ control.  The rural disputes that VPP dealt with mostly involved only the indigenous inhabitants. 

The most common quarrels had to do with cattle going out of the boundary or with private arguments between villagers.  Sometimes the VPP needed to intervene and mediate villagers’ fight.  In those cases, Cheung Koon Fu would contact the village headman.  Since he had the headmen’s respect, the disputes would come to a peaceful end most of the time.  New Territories residents rarely had disputes over borders on their land, because the Lands Department clearly defined the fields and houses in all villages.  The Department arranged housing segment and lot numbers, and issued licenses according to the accurate charts that they drew.  However, the villagers normal relied on the elders’ words to determine the boundaries and rarely checked the licenses.  Cheung Koon Fu initially was not aware of the precise scope of his family’s land until he checked the licence when selling the land in Sha Lo Tung.

The VPP’s patrol points were organised by the Superintendent of Police.  Cheung Koon Fu primarily patrolled the New Territories, and only went to Lantau Island when there was the need to suppress bandits.  In the 1950s, Lau Fau Shan, Lung Kwu Tan, Nim Wan, Pak Nai were seriously plagued by bandits mostly from Mainland China in groups of more than 10 people.  Cheung Koon Fu considered the suppression of bandits riskier than serving as a liaison officer for the guerrilla force.  The liaison officers would dodge the Japanese forces and needed not to crossfire with the enemies.  But the police had to be alert at all times when dealing with the evasive bandits.  The bandits were heavily armed and were equipped with box cannons, revolvers and other firearms.  The VPP was not the only unit involved in fighting bandits, but they must be present in the field.  When the shift ended, they could leave the operation and hand over their duties to other colleagues.  The VPP could fire guns freely without a limitation on bullets.  They could also fire during fishing and hunting in their own time, so they all cultivated excellent marksmanship.  Cheung Koon Fu received his ration of bullets from the Tai Po Police Station.  He did not need to explain the reasons for firing shot as all reports were done by his superiors.

During the festival period in the New Territories villages, the VPP must be on duty at the scene to maintain order.  Tsing Shan Kuk’s Jiao Festival was a large-scale festival where young people often got into fight over the canons they were tried to grab.  The VPP did not have fixed shifts.  Even they were familiar with some of the village headmen, they were rarely invited to attend the celebrations.  When teammates stayed overnight in the village, they generally slept in vacant houses in the village or on top of straw in the ancestral hall.  The environment of an ancestral hall was poor and some were dilapidated and mouldy due to lack of maintenance.  Since the VPP had a good relationship with the villagers, they received cotton blankets in cold winter days.  By the time Cheung Koon Fu left VPP, the unit had grown to four teams.  The three new teams were headed by members of the original team, who had been promoted to the rank of "two chevrons".  The fourth team was led by Cheung Koon Fu himself.  Later, due to the transfer of their superior, Cheung Koon Fu was removed from VPP and reposted to a police station on the border.

After Cheung Koon Fu was trained in the East River Column’s base, he worked as a liaison officer in Sha Lo Tung until the Japanese surrender in 1945.   After the war, East River Column departed for Mainland China and the Hong Kong-Kowloon Independent Battalion was disbanded.  Members of the Battalion could choose to go north to China or quit the force and stay in Hong Kong.  Cheung Koon Fu had a wife and daughter, so it was not convenient for him to leave.  In 1946, he was admitted into the police to become Hong Kong's first police officer from Sha Lo Tung. 

After the war, Hong Kong businesses were in a depression, and the young Hakka settlers faced unemployment because village agricultural land was short, causing a serious problem to public order.  To reassure the public, the Hong Kong Government encouraged young Hakka people to apply to join the police, fire service, artillery and other disciplinary forces.  Several villagers from Sha Lo Tung worked in the artillery and fire service at that time.  The police made the exception to admit Hakka indigenous inhabitants.  They sent a Hakka Inspector of Police to the New Territories to recruit police cadets.  Candidates had to pass a language test by writing out a piece of newspaper clipping ready by the police’s translator in the local dialect (Cantonese).  Before the war, young Hakka people only received education in Hakka language, so most of them could not speak the local dialect well.  Many people failed the test as a result and faced difficulties also in finding jobs in the urban area.  Cheung Koon Fu used to study in Tsim Sha Tsui and took private tutoring from a primary school teacher, so he passed the test smoothly.  For those Hakka people who failed test, the government encouraged them to move to Britain.  The immigration application procedures then were simple. Cheung Koon Fu thought that encouraging enlistment and immigration was a political means by the British to solve security problems in Hakka villages in the New Territories.

Before the war, many New Territories residents already migrated abroad, mainly to the United Kingdom.  In the early years after the war, local industry had not flourished yet.  There was a serious unemployment problem in the New Territories, and the government recruited a lot of New Territories’ youth into the police, fire service, artillery and other disciplinary forces.  To Hakka people who could not be enlisted due to language barrier, the government encouraged them to go abroad to earn a living.  Application to go abroad was easy then.  The applicant simply needed to submit a letter of guarantee from an overseas relative to the District Office to get some simple procedures done.  Cheung Koon Fu thought that encouraging enlistment and immigration was a political manipulation used by the British high officials in the government.

Cheung Koon Fu’s daughter went to The Netherlands to work before 1970.  She had no right of abode there and was an illegal resident working as a server in a Chinese-run restaurant.  Cheung Koon Fu subsequently left Hong Kong as a tourist and entered The Netherlands by a land route from France, where immigration restrictions were lenient.  This was the common approach used by immigrants heading to The Netherlands.  Chinese in The Netherlands were from China, Hong Kong and Singapore, mainly running gambling halls and restaurants in Chinatown.  Some of them possessed the right of abode. 

After Cheung Koon Fu arrived in Amsterdam, he had difficulty finding work because he was 50 years old and lacked work skills after spending many years with the police.  Fellow villagers from the New Territories introduced him to work as a marshal in a gambling house, managing the collection of mahjong commission along with other tasks.  He counted himself fortunate because, after he took up the job, many Singaporean patrons came to gamble and brought satisfactory profit to the business.  Later, in order to increase revenue, he also ran booths for playing zihua and fan tan.  The person-in-charge of the gambling house found that Cheung Koon Fu could do beautiful calligraphy and asked him to be his private secretary to help draft business documents.  Cheung Koon Fu was then referred by that person-in-charge to draft commercial contracts and import Hong Kong films.  During his time in The Netherlands, he was engaged in multiple jobs and led a busy life.

The Dutch police enforced the law leniently on illegal immigrants.  Many gambling hall managers knew the ways to bribe the police.  Coupled with the fact that the halls were stocked with firearms, the police did not casually interfere.  Cheung Koon Fu was interrogated by the Dutch police for three times.  In the first two times, his daughter and colleagues helped intercede.  Dutch police were also sympathetic of the fact that Cheung was once a policeman too, so they did not ask him to leave immediately.  When he was questioned for the third time, the police, seeing that Cheung was still remaining in the country, decided to ask him to return to Hong Kong.  Cheung Koon Fu had to comply and flew back to Hong Kong.  He had stayed in The Netherlands for a total of three years.

In the early days after the war, a lot of Hakka people faced unemployment in the New Territories.  Many chose to go to Europe and made a living in the United Kingdom, The Netherlands and other countries.  Among those people, many went to The Netherlands without the right of abode and worked as illegal residents.  A lot of people already left Sha Lo Tung and went overseas before the war; many others who were without means of income after the war also left for relatives in Europe.  They operated small bistro that were commonly known as "Small Potato Room" and specialised in take-way food.  Youth in the early post-war Sha Lo Tung mainly went abroad or joined the army.  They rarely went out to the city to work.  Cheung Koon Fu thought it was better for Sha Lo Tung villagers to work abroad than to work in the city.  The rent in the UK was low then, enabling small businesses to survive.  Most of the residents of the New Territories did not plan to settle down overseas but to return home after making enough money.  Usually, they returned when they were 50 to 60 years old for retirement.  Due to the complete social welfare system in UK, the New Territories residents held UK citizenship even after they returned to Hong Kong.  They travelled back to the UK every six months to get the relevant department stamps for residency renewal.

Cheung Koon Fu’s daughter worked in a Chinese-run restaurant.  The Dutch police was lax in law enforcement, so his daughter was never arrested.  Later, she married a Chinese with the right of abode in The Netherlands and set up a family.  She only occasionally returned to Hong Kong to visit relatives.  Cheung Koon Fu also went to The Netherlands himself to make a living.  Earlier, when he was in Hong Kong Police Force’s VPP, he met the headman and villagers of Ping Yeung.  At first, Cheung Koon Fu could not find any job in The Netherlands.  But he was later introduced by the former headman of Ping Yeung to work in a gambling house in Amsterdam as a marshal.  A few years later, Cheung Koon Fu returned to Hong Kong and was referred by police officers from Sha Lo Tung to work at the Sha Lo Tung Development Co. Ltd.  His job was to assist the company in acquiring the Sha Lo Tung village.   At that time, there were a large number of Hakka young people in the Hong Kong Police Force.  The Hakka population in the force increased to nearly 2,000 people.

Sha Lo Tung was made up of three villages: Cheung Uk, Lee Uk, and Ping Shan Chai.  The date of construction of the village is now untraceable.  According to oral stories Cheung Koon Fu heard from the elderlies, a woman brought three children to Sha Lo Tung about 300 years ago and began to develop the village.  In the early days, Sha Lo Tung’s headman was elected by the villagers, and there was no fix term of office.  Nowadays, election is regularly held and each term is four years long.  The village headman is purely a voluntary position and no remuneration would be given.  Village headmen in the New Territories were mostly men.  When Cheung Koon Fu was working for the VPP, he met only one female head of village who came from Wong Chuk Yeung, Sai Kung.  Sha Lo Tung was located deep in the mountains and was not very accessible.  It was difficult to make a living, so foreigners never lived there.  One villager from an outside family once lived there after WWII.

Sha Lo Tung had little agricultural land.  The villagers planed standing grains in the fields while growing sweet potatoes, beans, cabbage and other vegetables in the highland.  They also mustered wood from the mountains and sold them as firewood.  The amount of agricultural production in Sha Lo Tung was little.  Agricultural products were mainly for self-use, while a small quantity of surplus crops would be sent to Tai Po Market for sale.  When Cheung Koon Fu was young, Sha Lo Tung had no road and villagers had to carry the goods to the Tai Po Market on foot.  Later, when a road was opened, there began to be regular shipment of goods out of the village on trucks.  The market on Fu Shin Street, Tai Po Market, called “Cha Ping” where the villagers sold vegetables and firewood.  The buyers were mostly shop staff and few were residents.  Sha Lo Tung people generally raised pig, and they would buy potato seedlings at the “Cha Ping” for use as fodder.

Sha Lo Tung was remotely located and villagers rarely travelled out of the village.  Most of them gathered inside idle, uninhabited houses in the village and chatted with their family members.  If any major event occurred, the news got spread around swiftly.  Sha Lo Tung had a small population, and there was not Jiao Festival, drama performance, or similar customs.  Spring Festival was the liveliest festive time, when each household would make crispy rice crackers, tea cakes and sweets.  The villagers made their worship at the ancestral hall.  If a male baby was born, a lantern would be hung up in the hall, but generally there was neither feast in honour of the birth nor sharing of pork.

In early Sha Lo Tung, it was common to have arranged marriage.  Young men married their wives, mainly from neighbouring villages, through the help of a matchmaker.  The matchmaker would arrange a blind date for the man and woman.  Both would be accompanied by slightly older relatives in the same generation.  If they considered each other to be appropriate, they would immediately choose an auspicious day for wedding.  Rural men and women did not go on dates; they sometimes even only met for the first time at the actual wedding.  Some families would look to adopt a young wife for the young boy in the family, and married them officially when the boy came of age as an adult.  Rural people held the notion that a married woman should follow her husband wherever he went, so there were few divorces.
 
Cheung Koon Fu married at about 19 years old.  His wife was from Wo Hang Village, Sha Tau Kok.  The two were introduced by a matchmaker.  Cheung Koon Fu was accompanied at the blind date by a number of his brothers and sisters-in-law, while his wife was accompanied her mother, aunt and sister-in-law.  When choosing a spouse, people considered factors such as facial appearance, look and temperament.  The accompanying relatives would also give their opinions.  If the result of the blind date was satisfactory to both sides, the matchmaker would instant fix a wedding date and the betrothal presents.  The distance between Wo Hang and Sha Lo Tung was two tongs (Editor’s note: each ‘tong’ equals approximately 10 miles).  It takes two hours to walk to from one to the other.   On the wedding day, his wife was taken to his home on the back of a bicycle.  It was not common then for the bride to take the sedan chair.  Cheung Koon Fu married two to three years after the death of his father, and his family was poor.  His mother made the decision to hold a simple wedding celebration.  The format of the wedding depends on the economic situation of the groom’s family.  When wealthy people got married, they used a sedan chair to carry the bride and put up a feast that lasted for days.  For those in poverty, the wedding was complete after making worship.  Sha Lo Tung was a poor village, and even the rich only owned a small number of houses and shops.  Once there was a wealthy warlord who came from Cheung Uk Tsuen.

In the 1930s, Sha Lo Tung already had its own self-defence force equipped with old-modelled guns such as Hung Mo 10.  When Cheung Koon Fu was about 14 to 15 years old, he had witnessed the force firing guns.  Before the war, the villages were peaceful and there were self-defence forces patrolling at night to keep guard against the bandits.  Bandits mostly came from mainland China, and entered Sha Lo Tung via the mountain trails on Kwai Tau Leng.  Cheung Koon Fu Ling learnt from the elderly that there used to be a young local man named “Wong Yau Tsai” on Kwai Tau Leng who was a relative of the Cheung family in Sha Lo Tung.   One time, he guarded the road intersection at Hok Tau by himself.  He warned the bandits, who were trying to rob the village, not to harass Sha Lo Tung, and finally succeeded in dismissing many bandits in the gang.  This became a widely circulated legend. 

On the eve of the Japanese attack of Hong Kong, the British Hong Kong Government collected weapons from the civilians.  However, the self-defence force in Sha Lo Tung did not disband just yet.  The war broke out shortly, and banditry was rampant after the Japanese came into the New Territories.  The bandits roamed in small groups from a few people to groups of over 20.  The villagers, without weapons, were unable to protect themselves.  Sha Lo Tung used to be isolated from the outside world and there was no postman delivering letters to the village.  Letters would be posted to Tai Po Markets.  The villagers would ask shops that they knew well to keep the letters and pick them up later.

When Cheung Koon Fu worked in the police station, he bought a temporary stone house in Ling Shan Village, Fan Ling.  In the early 1970s, as he returned to Hong Kong from The Netherlands, Sha Lo Tung Development Co. Ltd. acquired the houses in Cheung Uk Tsuen and Lee Uk Tsuen with the plan to redevelop them into new residential houses and a golf course.  All of the residents agreed to sell their homes.  Cheung Koon Fu sold his ancestral home along with his stone house in Ling Shan, and then used the sum of money to purchase a flat in Mei Fat Building, Tai Po Market.  After moving out of his ancestral home, Cheung Koon Fu was employed by Sha Lo Tung Development Co. Ltd. to investigate the tax records of Sha Lo Tung Village.  If tax was paid for a house to the government, the compensation for that house was HK$200,000.  On the other hand, if no tax was paid for a house, only HK$50,000 would be given.  Agricultural land was compensated at a rate of $12 per square foot.  Friends of the Earth opposed the development plan because they believed the place was of rich ecological value due to the presence of a lot of rare animals and plants.  Until today, the golf course is still not completed.  The dispute has dragged on for more than 30 years.  In recent years, Cheung Koon Fu sold his flat in Mei Fat Building in exchange for cash to cover living expenses.  He applied for public housing afterwards.   However, since he is an indigenous settler with small house concessionary right, the application process was not smooth.  He had to explain to the authorities the details of his family economic situation before being allocated to his current unit at Tai Yuen Estate.