Ng Sui Mo

Ng Sui Mo was born in Shek Ku Lung, a village adjacent to Nga Tsin Wai. His family included many members of his parent’s and grandparent’s generations. Back then, the family owned some big houses and farmland. As each dwelling had several halls, they were larger than typical village houses in Nga Tsin Wai. Each property also had a stove in its front hall; behind this was the living room, followed by a room and a cockloft. There were also spaces for sun-drying grains and a pig site. Ng Sui Mo lived with his grandfather, mother and siblings in such a house, with the old man sleeping in the living room. Ng Sui Mo also had several aunts and a grandmother who lived in the home of his eldest aunt. His eldest aunt grew flowers with her husband by the side of Shek Ku Lung Village. Whenever Ng Sui Mo’s mother was too busy to look after all of the children, Ng Sui Mo would go to his eldest aunt’s home with his grandfather to eat. While the old man had no real need to work, Ng Sui Mo’s mother earned her living by farming after she married to Shek Ku Lung. Sometimes he would help her to do farmwork.  Their farmlands were acquired during the Japanese Occupation of Hong Kong.

Like most people born in rural villages, Ng Sui Mo had a simple childhood. As a kid, he helped his mother to water vegetables and pull weeds, usually picking produce in the morning to bring to the market for sale. In those days, children’s entertainment was very, very basic and usually involved playing with home-made toys. Popular boys’ games included shooting marbles, swimming, kite flying, grabbing paper and patting picture cards. Girls loved rubber band skipping and hopscotch. Adults worked hard every day and liked to sing mountain songs each night to relax. In those days, the village had no electricity supply and the villagers lit oil lamps to illuminate their homes. Every household usually went to bed at around 8:00 pm and rose for work when the next dawn broke. He and his playmates were glad that they did not go astray.  

Ng Sui Mo learned how to farm with his mum since he was young. He was familiar with market location and characteristics of crops. Ng Sui Mo’s mother grew watercress, water spinach and sweet potatoes in Wong Tai Sin. At first, she took her produce to Blacksmith Street’s bazaar next to Sha Po Village to sell. As the bazaar only opened in the morning, villagers went to Hong Kong Island to sell their vegetables in the afternoon. Sweet potatoes took about three months to harvest. The secret behind their growth was to ensure the soil was deep and soft enough to enable the deep planting of the seed potatoes. Potato seedlings could also be used as pig feed. While growing potato seedlings generally required fertilizers for accelerating growth, such chemicals could not be used for growing sweet potatoes as they would adversely affect the harvest. Ng Sui Mo’s mother farmed pigs and grew vegetables at the same time. When she sold the pigs, she would inform customers to collect the pigs at their home. When Ng Sui Mo had free time, he would help his mother out around the farm. At that time he had a proper job.  

In the days when Nga Tsin Wai still had a fish pond, the environment was beautiful. The nearby land was lush and green, with watercress fields in front of the village (now San Po Kong). San Po Kong was originally a beach which was only developed into a vegetable field at a later stage. When Ng Sui Mo was a child, he liked to jump into the nullah (eventually known as Kai Tak Nullah) to swim. The water in those days was very clear. This was especially true after heavy rain. The bottom of the nullah was paved with soft mud and children dived directly into the water from its sides. There were eels and carp in the nullah back then. Carp appeared mostly on hot days. Ng Sui Mo tended to lay his whole body in the nullah, trying to catch the fish by using his body to squeeze them onto dry land. What a funny sight he must have made!  

There were some fruit trees around Nga Tsin Wai Village which were taken care of by the residents whose homes were nearest to them. Children in the village were allowed to pick guava, longan and wampee from the trees at will, usually removing the fruits with a spear before placing them in their mouths. Of all the trees, the longans were tallest and only children were allowed to pick its fruits. The children did not steal eggs and vegetables. When the village’s farmers had surplus produce, they gave it away to their neighbours as a present. There was a fruit and a sauce plant near Nga Tsin Wai. 12 to 13-year-old local kids did like to steal dried plums from bamboo woven screens placed on shelves of the fruit plant for sun-drying. As the factory was surrounded by barbed wire, the youngsters used hooks to steal the dried fruit through wire gaps, taking care not to drop their booty. 

It was an amazing scene that villagers song mountain songs  on opposite sides of Kai Tak Nullah. In the early days, when young men and women went cutting grass in the mountains, they could not talk to each other as they were too far away. As a result, they learned to communicate by singing mountain songs at the top of their voices. Ng Sui Mo’s idle uncle wooed and married his wife, a rural woman from the New Territories, by singing mountain songs! Many unmarried young men and women stood on opposite sides of Kai Tak Nullah every evening, singing such songs in both local and Hakka dialects. Such sessions generally lasted from after everyone’s evening meal to bedtime. The singers often stretched all the way from Sha Po Village at the mouth of the nullah to Tai Hom Village at the nullah’s end. A lot of couples became engaged and married this way. While Ng Sui Mo and other kids often gathered at the side of the nullah to hear the melodious singing, they did not really understand the words of the songs.

Ng Sui Mo favours retaining some of Nga Tsin Wai’s village houses so villagers can hold on to their memories. He also still remembers vividly the stone pestles of the village houses which were mostly built under the staircases to save space. After cutting the grains, villagers took home and ground the rice grains with the pestle in order to remove the chaff, creating loud pounding sounds. In the past every household in Shek Ku Lung Village had its own stone pestle while only a few village houses in Nga Tsin Wai had made a pestle of their own. Ng Sui Mo laments that the passing of the decades may have caused the decline of his village as today’s villagers have no feeling for rural life.