Ng Chiu Ying

Ng Chiu Ying’s grandfather worked on a farm as a child. Because he never received much education, he eventually became a sailor, helping out in the kitchen on a passenger ship bound for New York.  Ng Chiu Ying’s father was born in the 1910s. A diligent learner throughout his life, he attended La Salle College before studying at a local college of education where he met his wife upon graduation. Both of them eventually became teachers. Ng Chiu Ying’s parents married in the early 1940s. Ng Chiu Ying’s parents eventually had four sons and three daughters of whom Ng Chiu Ying ranks sixth, with three elder brothers and two elder and one younger sisters.  

Ng Chiu Ying's generations had higher academic qualification and all of them emmigrated overseas. The family’s eldest son attended Queen’s College before studying and settling in the U.S. The second eldest sister went to Ying Wa Girls’ School before being admitted to the University of Hong Kong where she majored in social sciences. This daughter subsequently took a job in the Social Welfare Department’s adoption team after graduation and eventually emigrated to Vancouver. Like his oldest brother before him, Ng Chiu Ying’s third elder brother studied at Queen’s College and furthered his studies in the U.S. before settling in Vancouver. His fourth elder sister was educated at Maryknoll College in Happy Valley and enrolled in the University of Hong Kong where her major was liberal arts. This sister then worked in the local business sector before moving to live in Shanghai over 10 years ago. The family’s fifth eldest brother attended St. Joseph’s College at Garden Road and went on to study in the U.S. before moving to Vancouver like two of his other siblings. Ng Chiu Ying himself studied at St. Joseph’s College with his fifth elder brother. He subsequently went on to major in science at the University of Hong Kong, later obtaining a Master’s Degree in business administration at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. After graduation, Ng Chiu Ying worked with various local banks’ commercial lending divisions. His youngest sister went to Maryknoll College and later took a degree in medicine at the University of Hong Kong. After graduating, she subsequently worked in various public hospitals before moving to Singapore about 10 years ago.

After Ng Chiu Ying's family moved to Happy Valley, it was mainly thanks to his father that they maintained in touchconnection with Nga Tsin Wai Village. The whole family subsequently returned there for holidays during every Chinese New Year, Ching Ming and Chung Yeung festivals and also the Birthday of Tin Hau. 

Ng Chiu Ying thinks that his happiest times at Nga Tsin Wai came during Chinese New Year festival holidays. On the second or third day of the Lunar New Year, he returned to the village with his father to pay his respects to his third and fourth uncles, po po, Kam Mui, the village headman and various elders. In those years, Ng Chiu Ying’s father often attended reunion gatherings with his clansmen, while Ng Chiu Ying and his brothers played nearby. In addition toThey liked setting off firecrackers in the open space in front of the village, . their activities included buyingThey also bought different toys using red packet moneys they had been given by generous villagers who they knew. Locals decorated their houses each Chinese New Year and many households fried festive rice and turnip cakes. Ng Chiu Ying went to the village with his family in the early morning and stayed for about an hour before leaving.

The village edge houses in Nam Pin Street (now Tung Lung Road) were mostly used as small workshops for hardware,furniture and radio repair or as shops for haircutting,grocery,clothes and shoes. These small tenancies changed hands every few years. Ng Chiu Ying;s family owned one such house which they leased to an ivory merchant who employed three to four workers for a monthly rent of HK$100-200. Ng Chiu Ying's mother took her children to collect rent once every three months. By the time Ng Chiu Ying had begun secondary school,he alreadly undertook rent collections by himself.   When Ng Chiu Ying accompanied his mother to the village to visit elatives, they mainly stayed at the homes of the boy's third and fourth uncles' or his mother's friend,Kam Miu. While on such trips, they greeted their relatives over tea and chatted at their homes. Ng Chiu Ying did not really understand the accent of his"po po"(i.e. his grandfather's concubine)/ Kam Miu was of similar age to Ng Chiu Ying's mother and had also married into Nga Tsin Wai village. As she was related to a former village headman,her house was roomier and had a more comfortable living environment than most others. 

In the days when Ng Chiu Ying returned to the village as a child,there were still many vegetable fields in the surrounding areas. Crops like cabbages that were easy to plant and quick to ripen were popular with the local farmers. That said,some of the farmlands were already deserted. The nearby public housing blocks and factory buildings in San Po Kong were eventually completed in the 1960s. Ng Chiu Ying did not regard the rural landscape of Kowloon City as interesting since agricultural development in Kowloon City was nowhere like that in Shatin where his older aunt lived. 

He believes that Nga Tsin Wai was a bit more urbanised than Shatin’s Siu Lek Yuen, which had retained more rural traditions. Ng Chiu Ying’s older aunt was a wealthy woman in the latter villageSiu Lek Yuen, owning living in a standard three-storey 700 square-foot village house she owned and with large expanses of farmland. The old ladyOlder aunt liked farming, raising chickens and used to make sticky rice dumplings to celebrate Lunar New Year. Farmers’ crops here were for their own families’ consumption, with and if they had any surplus, they liked to distributed share among the neighbours. Built to a lower density than in Nga Tsin Wai Village, homes houses in Siu Lek Yuen were spacious and had better sanitary conditions as each household had a septic tank for treating sewage. 

Back then the village houses in Nga Tsin Wai were arranged in a similar layout to what it is like today but the cramped, small houses of that time were in poor sanitation. As a result, an unpleasant odour could be smelled immediately as one entered the village. Having an area of only 100 to 200 square feet, the houses along the edge of the village were built with just a few pieces of wood and iron sheets. The dwellings were even shabbier than houses at the inside. Some houses had no water or electricity supply and their roofs leaked when it rained.

Ng Chiu Ying’s father and brothers owned four ancestral houses, three of them were located in the middle section of 3rd Lane, while the fourth was at the village edge. Ng Chiu Ying’s father moved out of the village as soon as he could afford to improve his living standard while his third and fourth brothers stayed behind. Each man occupied one ancestral house while the remaining two units were leased out. The village houses in Nga Tsin Wai were cramped and small, with only an area of about 100-200 square feet. The villagers cooked outside their homes on kerosene stoves. There was no standard toilet inside these houses back then. Indeed, so poor was sanitation that the discharged sewage meant the village literally stank. In the old days, villagers used to fetch their water from the wells. When Ng Chiu Ying returned to the village to visit relatives as a kid, water pipes had already been connected to their homes. The houses of Ng Chiu Ying’s  third and fourth uncles each covered an area of over 100 square feet. Both units had a cockloft with a ladder for climbing up and down to increase the living space. The two houses also had radio and TV and a lower floor that accommodated a bed, stools plus a folding table and connected the toilet and kitchen.  

Influenced by his parents since childhood, Ng Chiu Ying had developed heartfelt affection with Nga Tsin Wai. Although he spent most of his youth in Happy Valley, he still regards the village as his spiritual home. Ng Chiu Ying knew that his grandparents were born in Nga Tsin Wai which had a long history of 600 years. When he joined his university classmates for gatherings, Ng Chiu Ying never concealed his ancestral identity with the walled village. He also updated them the recent development of this village. In recent years, Nga Tsin Wai was acquired by Cheung Kong Holdings (CKH) and the URA for redevelopment. This made Ng Chiu Ying feel sad and helpless. If his spiritual home could be preserved, he would be a very happy man. The village’s ancestral hall is one of the sources of his sense of belonging to Nga Tsin Wai. Even if the ancestral hall will be relocated in the future, Ng Chiu Ying says he will continue bringing his descendents to worship the ancestors there. Before he emigrated to Canada, Ng Chiu Ying had spent his whole life living with his father in Happy Valley until father died in 1995. After emigration, Ng Chiu Ying regularly returned to Hong Kong for ancestral worship mostly during Chung Yeung Festival. Sometimes he also returned to Hong Kong during Tin Hau’s birthday, taking the time to attend the preparatory meetings of the Tin Hau Temple.

In recent years, Ng Chiu Ying was the member of his family who returned to Hong Kong most regularly. As a result, he became the contact person for his brothers. Ng Chiu Ying felt sad that in recent years the Nga Tsin Wai villagers had gradually dispersed living elsewhere and their interest in their village’s affairs was no longer as strong as before. Their concerns about their homeland were less than the fellow clansmen who had emigrated overseas. Chiu Ying related this situation to the history that the overseas Chinese were more enthusiastic than the local natives about their homeland when Dr Sun Yat Sen called for national revolution.