Ng Siu Kei

Ng Siu Kei lived with his family in 5th Lane when he was small while his grandfather and his fourth wife lived in 4th Lane.  Ng Siu Kei’s eldest aunt served various Westerners in Whampoa Dock as an amah. When she and a few other domestics pooled some money to buy ‘Cash Sweep’ tickets, they were amazed to win third prize! She subsequently used her portion of the prize money to buy three houses. Two of them were in 5th Lane while the remaining one was Ng Siu Kei’s grandfather’s residence in 4th Lane. The owners of all three houses were Ng Siu Kei’s eldest aunt and father, each of who held a 50% share. After Ng Siu Kei’s father passed away, his father’s good friend Lee Foo took Ng Siu Kei and his three brothers to a firm of solicitors to handle the change of name formalities and transfer the ownership of his father’s houses over to them. Ng Siu Kei’s eldest aunt also eventually transferred her own property to the four nephews in view of her old age. And so it was that Ng Siu Kei and his three brothers came to co-own the title deeds to all three houses. 

House No. 3 on 5th Lane was a three-storey brick building which was widely reckoned to be one of the best looking homes in the whole of Nga Tsin Wai. Homes within the village walls usually occupied an area of 0.01 acres while house No. 3 on 5th Lane occupied 0.02 acres, of which half was given over to bedrooms while the remainder was reserved for the family’s sitting room. On the ground floor were located one sitting room and two bedrooms, one of which was occupied by Ng Siu Kei’s eldest aunt. There was also a ground floor toilet with a spittoon and a shower. During the colder winter months, it was essential to boil water if one wanted to take a bath.
The ground floor was also home to a stone staircase leading to the first floor, which was said to be the only passageway of its kind in the village. The staircase connecting the first and second floors was made of wood. On the second floor was a kitchen which led to a false rooftop. In the early days, this space was left open, but was later covered by asbestos tiles, gradually sealed up and used as a storeroom. The kitchen occupied an area of around 0.01 acres and contained two to three kerosene stoves. Back then, Ng Siu Kei’s mother usually prepared the family’s meals on the rooftop, leaving the kerosene stoves on the ground floor for the eldest aunt’s cooking convenience. There was also a space inside the kitchen where family members could empty their bladders which spared everyone from having to scramble to use the toilet.

The first floor was home to a sitting room and two bedrooms, one of which Ng Siu Kei’s parents occupied and the other of which was home to him and a younger brother. The family’s other younger brothers and sisters used the bedrooms on the ground floor where they all slept on bunk beds. The first floor also featured a combination cupboard built of angle iron that had been custom-made by someone hired by Ng Siu Kei’s father. The ancestor tablets and a Goddess of Mercy figure were placed on top of the cupboard while tea cups were placed on the two decks in the middle and the family’s cherished God of Land tablet was placed on the lowest deck.

The sitting room on the first floor was the place where the family came together for meals and other gatherings. When Ng Siu Kei returned to live in the house at 5th Lane, his father had ceased to work at sea and promptly installed a TV set at home. Both Ng Siu Kei and his father loved to watch football matches together in the sitting room. When watching games, Ng Siu Kei’s father used to sit comfortably in what he called a big arm-chair but which was actually a foldable seat made of plastic canvas with something underneath that could be used as a stool for the legs. At dinner times, a foldable wooden table would be set up in the sitting room and then covered by an iron plated table-top.

As of the mid 1980s, Ng Siu Kei’s family still owned three houses. The two families of Lee Foo and Ng Siu Kei sold their houses in 1986 and became the first villagers to sell their homes to CKH’s real estate division. They did not talk too much about the sale because they felt they had been promised preferential terms and did not know very much about other residents’ sale transactions. In 1990, Ng Siu Kei’s mother passed away because of illness. Shortly before she died she instructed Ng Siu Kei and his brothers to take good care of their eldest aunt. At that time, all the brothers were busy raising their own families and moved out of the village. As a result, they all chipped in and arranged for the elderly woman to move into an old folks’ home after their mother passed away. Soon afterwards, the eldest aunt also passed away. Between 1995 and 1996, Ng Siu Kei’s second and third younger brothers emigrated to Canada one after another. Before they left Hong Kong, all four brothers had a meeting and decided that there was no point in keeping the three houses they had already sold. In view of how hard the distance made it to gather all four brothers in one place to sign the relevant documents, the siblings decided to deliver up vacant possession of the three houses and finalize the transaction.  

Ng Siu Kei got married at the age of 29 and his eldest daughter was born soon after in the same year that the sons of his third younger brother and fifth younger sister entered the world. Ng Siu Kei’s father loved his three grandkids very much. Regardless of their genders, he treated his grandsons and daughters the same without showing any favouritism. The kids were so close they all began studying at the same kindergarten, arriving home each day at between 3:00 and 4:00pm. To welcome them back, their grandfather would place three bowls of macaroni from Ngan Lung Restaurant in the table on the first floor of the 5th Lane for them. Ng Siu Kei’s mother had a very traditional mindset, taking better care of her grandsons than her granddaughters. Ng Siu Kei’s wife was unhappy about this and grumbled. Sometimes, the situation between his mother and his partner stopped just short of outright confrontation. As a result, his wife suggested they move out and set up her own home.

Ng Siu Kei eventually gave into his wife’s nagging and they bought and moved to a flat in Kowloon Walled City to avoid further arguments. Having to leave a place he had lived in for 20 to 30 years made Ng Siu Kei very frustrated and sad. The pair’s move also made his parents very unhappy. This was especially true of his father who hoped very much to maintain the traditional walled village bonds where the entire family, both young and old, lived together. Although he now worked at the airport and had moved out of 5th Lane, he returned there regularly after work and only used his flat in Kowloon Walled City for sleeping in.

Ng Yun Chor, Ng Siu Kei’s grandfather, was a very authoritative person in Nga Tsin Wai Village. Sharing the tall posture of most Shantung people, he was nicknamed ‘Red Hair Uncle’ and liked to knock people’s heads when he lost patience with them. The old man took four wives in succession and Ng Siu Kei’s two elder aunts, father and younger uncle were all born by the man’s first wife. Ng Siu Kei had never met his natural grandmother, but had heard from his elders that his grandfather regularly scolded and beat her up badly. The woman worked hard on the farm and doing chores around the house until the day she died. Ng Siu Kei had no impression of his grandfather’s second and third wives and only met the fourth wife ‘Ah Por’ when he was small. The latter woman never officially married his grandfather but lived with him in the house at the end of 4th Lane. She subsequently served him until he passed away. 

A native of Shek Lung, Ng Siu Kei’s mother got married to his father in Nga Tsin Wai after the pair were brought together by a match maker. Ng Siu Kei feels that his mother was a stubborn and hard-working woman who did well to adjust to married life in a traditional walled village. Ng Siu Kei’s father made his living during the 1950s and 1960s as a seafarer. While he was away at sea, his wife had to play the role of both father and mother. During the time of water rationing, this meant she had to go and fetch the family’s supplies from the public taps outside the village, taking the water back to not only her home but also that of her father-in-law. Ng Siu Kei’s mother was not sociable in the village and only cared about her own family’s business. That said, when it came to Tin Hau Festival or Jiao Festival, she would happily offer to help her neighbours with their work.

In those years, the family was very poor and mostly lived on vegetables and salted fish. Ng Siu Kei’s mother did not have any hobbies to pass the time and used to mend clothes rather than buying new ones. Nor was she very happy if her children bought her new garments! The best way for the kids to show their filial piety was to give her money! She had a habit of squirreling away bank notes in dark corners of her home in order to prevent her kids and grandkids from finding and spending them. When their mother passed away in 1990, Ng Siu Kei and his younger brothers and sisters went back to the old residence in the 5th Lane to clear the place up. While doing so, they found several thousand dollars in the gap of a nylon chair plus various other bank notes either rolled up inside or wrapped around paper napkins! In the end, their collective haul amounted to tens of thousand dollars, including some ‘big cotton blankets’ (as HK$500 bank notes were then known). Everyone took home their share of the unexpected cash windfall. In the Jiao Festival of Nga Tsin Wai in 1976, she even played the role of a ‘blessed woman’ and went into Tin Hau Temple to take the ‘Ma Lang’ (Tin Hau) outside. Traditionally, only female villagers recognised as being blessed women with husbands, children and grandchildren were entitled to play such a role.

Since he started to understand things, Ng Siu Kei had had the impression that his father was working for the Village Office and the Ancestral Trust every now and then. Only for only a couple of years had his father been out of the village, sailing a ship for a living. After Ng Yau Fat (Uncle Fat) and others passed away, there was little wonder that the villagers constituted his father Village Headman as due to his dedication to serving the village. His term of Village Headman was not long, yet he cared not about the title but was only concerned with what he could do for his village. He cared about everything concerning the village, big or small. He was concerned even with trivial things such as the replacement of Chinese couplets on the village gate and the shortage of players in a mahjong game at Village Office. His handwriting was good, and he handled most of the clerical jobs of the Village Office. To Ng Siu Kei, of all his father’s contributions to the village, the most impressive one had to be the Pavilion of Wind and Rain. It was jointly funded and organized by his father, Lee Tong and Luk Ching Shan (running steel works at Nga Tsin Wai’s edge ) to provide shelter for villagers against bad weathers.

What’s more, Ng’s father was also enthusiastic about affairs of the Ancestral Trust. In the old days, when worshipping the ancestors in the graveyard, money would be shared among only the males in a clan. One year in the late 1960s, when the clansmen went to worship their ancestors in Shatin, Ng’s father voices out that any female who wanted to worship the ancestors should be entitled to a share of the money. This suggestion was agreed by the clansmen present, and was recorded in the Big Book (editor’s note: a book that records matters about worshipping the ancestors in graveyards and information about participants). That practice passed on to nowadays, and had a big influence over the Ancestral Trust. Ng’s father had always devoted himself in public affairs, and he only let go until he got really ill. Ng Siu Kei took his father as a role model, and was greatly driven by him to serve the village and the Ancestral Trust. He thought that his blood was from his father.

When Ng Siu Kei was around 10, his grandfather, Ng Yun Chor (Ah Gong), passed away. This was a major event in Nga Tsin Wai at that time. In the 8 to 10 days before the old man passed away, the whole village was very busy preparing for his wake and subsequent funeral. The ground floor of the old man’s residence at 4th Lane had even been tidied up with a sedan chair stool and bed plank being placed in the centre of the house. Ng Siu Kei’s grandfather slept on the plank, struggling for each breath in a shroud the family put on him. At the moment of his death, he was still puffing away on his opium pipe in a fruitless attempt to extend his life. He was even storing marble-like opium cakes in the sides of his mouth.

After Ng Siu Kei’s grandfather finally exhaled his last breath, the family asked Doctor Ng Yat Fan to confirm that Ah Gong had in fact passed over. Some villagers banged on the gong to alert the people of all the lanes of the old man’s death, yelling “Red Hair Uncle has gone!” Elderly villagers subsequently took it in turns to enter the house and offer up their incense and pay their last respects. Meanwhile, the village women sang mournful songs in Punti in the lanes while crying and gathered around the gatehouse to sew mourning dresses made of white linen and sackcloth. Men like Ng Yat Fat and Lee Foo dealt with the matter of the old man’s death certificate and at the same time liaised with Hop Cheong Funeral Parlour in Fuk Lo Tsun Road regarding the burial ceremony.

After fixing the day for the funeral parade, villagers erected bamboo scaffolding in front of the gatehouse. The old man’s body subsequently lay in state in the coffin on the bamboo scaffolding for three days and two nights while Taoist priests performed their sacrificial rites. Nga Tsin Wai residents told friends from other villages nearby to come and pay their last respects. On the day of funeral parade itself, residents of Nga Tsin Wai bid farewell to the coffin in front of the gatehouse by performing the rites of ‘carrying the flag and buying water’. The coffin was then carried by the villagers on their shoulders for a parade through the village. A tricycle led the way and conveyed wreaths onto the streets with words ‘Mr. Ng Yun Chor lives forever’ and ‘Bliss and Longevity’ written on them. Immediately behind was a band of about 10 people blowing‘Di Da’ (trumpets) with about 200 family members and villagers bringing up the rear. The procession started from the gatehouse and went around Nga Tsin Wai first before turning into Tung Tsing Road, Kai Tak Road and Nga Tsin Wai Road. When it finally reached Hau Wong Temple, everyone bade their final goodbyes to the coffin. Since Ng Yau Fat knew the Presiding Manager of Tsing Shan Monastery, his grandfather’s coffin was buried inside its walls. Ng Siu Kei thought that his grandfather’s funeral was as spectacular as anything he’d ever seen in his life.

In those days, all weddings and funerals were handled by the volunteers of the walled village without outside help of any kind. Each function was held in the open space in front of the gatehouse. Weddings would have 8 to 10 banquet tables, while coffins for burial at funerals would be displayed in the gatehouse and watched over by villagers for two to three days. During this time clan women would buy sackcloth and white linen to sew their mourning dresses. Tradition dictated that only people surnamed Ng, Chan and Lee were allowed to handle such matters. Those of other surnames did not follow the same belief structure, psychologically feeling that it “ought not to be so”. Having grown up with families of the three surnames and understanding the importance with which their friends viewed such activities, they could however pay their respects to the village’s traditions and customs. Such funerals and weddings continued to take place well into the 1970s. While the observances gradually dwindled away in the following decades, the atmosphere still exists to this day. That said, villagers now tend to attend funerals in undertakers’ parlours.