Ng Chuen Kung

Ng Chuen Kung (CK Ng) was born at home in Lai Chi Yuen, Tung Tau Village, in 1924. His family hired a midwife to deliver his birth and collected a birth certificate for him. When he was born, his father was already in his 50s. Because it was so long ago, he did not know well about his grandfather or his the former generations. He just knew that their tombs were in such places as Tseng Lan Shue and Lion Rock Mountain. His father had a large house of a couple storeys in Lai Chi Yuen. CK Ng and all his elder brothers were born in that house. A tiled house with a small courtyard, it faced a big garden of tens of thousands square feet. There was an orchard full of fruit trees on the uplands nearby.

CK Ng's schooling started at home school in Sha Po Village at the age of 5. The school was a village house operated by Sha Po villagers, and no school fees were charged. The teacher wore a long gown and held a smoking pipe. All students were surnamed Ng and from Sha Po and nearby villages. Before school started, students had to worship Confucius on bended knees. After studying at the home school for 2 or 3 years, CK Ng went to study Primary 2 at Longjin School, a government school that charged no school fees. Located in Kowloon Walled City, Longjin was a full-day school with classes from 8 am to 3 pm. CK Ng went to school by himself with a rattan book basket. At lunch, he ate porridge and rice rolls bought from a hawker who carried the goods on a pole on the open ground off the school. CK Ng studied mainly the Chinese language in his classes. It was not until Primary 3 that he had had English lessons. Some students were villagers and some were non-natives who lived around Nga Tsin Wai Road and Ta Koo Ling Road. He finished Primary 6 at Longjin, and then applied for a place at Tao Kwan School on his own through a friend’s referral.

He was already 14 or 15 years old when entering Tao Kwan School, a Chinese school that taught both the Chinese and English languages. His schoolmates were mostly Hong Kong locals. When CK Ng was in Form 3, the Japanese army invaded Hong Kong, and he dropped out due to the war. About a year after Hong Kong’s fall, he and his Tao Kwan schoolmates went to the mainland, where he had no contacts with his family for several years. His family still lived in the large house in Tung Tau Village during the Japanese rule. When CK Ng returned home, the whole family was intact. But during the Japanese rule, the Japanese army requisitioned a half of the house to expand the airport. After peace was restored, the British government compensated them with 5 cents per square feet.

As peace was restored, CK Ng went into a small business, building cabins for sale on the farmland in Wong Tai Sin and Diamond Hill. In those days many mainlanders took refuge to Hong Kong, pushing up the demand for houses. Since his family’s farmland had been requisitioned, he rented farmland from well-acquainted landlords, many of whom were villagers from nearby villages such as Sha Po and Nga Tsin Wai. He also rented farmland through others’ referrals. CK Ng signed contracts with the landlords with unlimited lease periods that would only end until the government’s recovery of the land. A piece of farmland was rented on tens of dollars for one year. The rent was paid yearly, and could be paid in instalments. Before he built the cabins, CK Ng would compensate the affected farmers for the vegetables. He rented over ten plots, each over a thousand square feet on average. Two cabins could be built on each plot. Measuring 20 feet in width and length, the 400 square foot cabin came with two bedrooms and a living room.

The cabin was a single-storey structure a tiled roof and granite walls. He relied on well-acquainted casual workers who were specialized in concrete finishing or carpentry in building the cabins. Different procedures were done by different kinds of workers. The cost of building one cabin was a thousand dollars or so, and the selling price was 3 or 4 thousand dollars. CK Ng’s business was quite good. Buyers were rich mainlanders. Relying on each other’s trust, the buyer and seller drafted the deeds on a piece of blank paper without registering with the Land Registry. The buyer had to pay ground rent or pay rent to the landlord straight, or had CK Ng transfer the rent to the landlord (in that case, the ground rent was included in the selling price). Later on, the Squatters Control Unit sent their men for an inspection. The cabins still under construction had to be cleared, but those already completed could remain. Since the Squatters Control Unit took control, CK Ng closed down his business that had been run for about two years.

Later on CK Ng went into the business of renovation and construction and opened with a close friend a contracting company (commonly called ‘Main Contractor’) that took orders from construction companies. CK Ng provided the capital needed while his partner was specialized in the knowhow of concrete finishing, plastering, brick laying, etc. CK Ng never learned about construction, but building cabins was so easy that only simple tasks such as brick laying were involved. No licence was needed for their company. The cabins they built had an asbestos roof, four walls, a door and windows, which differed from common village houses. They were built mainly around Wong Tai Sin and Diamond Hill. After a year or so, they ended their partnership due to their different views.

After that, CK Ng was still in the construction field. He set up a contracting company named ‘Kung Shing’ and underwent commercial registration. He took orders from smaller construction companies because advance payments were needed for the projects and he was not capable of dealing with the sizable companies. As the employees were well acquainted with him, his company did not require an office. The company mainly dealt with construction works of buildings which included 6-storey tenement blocks and buildings of over 10 floors and with escalators. To CK Ng, the success of his business lay with careful costing of wages and material costs before tenders. Kung Shing had been operated for over 40 years. CK Ng had been in charge of the company until he retired at the age of 70.

CK Ng lived in Tung Tau Village. His doorplate wrote ‘5A Lai Chi Yuen Tung Tau Village’. The big house did not come with a mailbox and the postmen dropped the mails on the floor. Tung Tau Village was vast and Lai Chi Yuen was one part of it. Tung Tau Village in that era was gone, and replaced with the high rising buildings as seen everywhere today. CK Ng could no longer tell the location of his old house, which probably was located next to the former Ng Clan Ancestral Hall (i.e. today’s Mong Tung House, Tung Tau Estate). In Tung Tau Village most houses were single-storey stone houses of about 200 or 300 square feet each. Some had little mezzanines. As they were quite scattered, it was hard to tell the total number of houses in the whole village. To CK Ng, Tung Tau Village should not be regarded as a village, but only Nga Tsin Wai, where the houses were arranged more orderly, could be said as a village. What’s more, Tung Tau Village residents had mixed surnames such as Ng, Lee and Tong, but there was no dominant surname. Some people in there grew vegetables and raised pigs.  While watercress was most commonly grown, sweet potato shoots were grown as a pig food by quite a number of people, who had built independent pigsite beside their houses. CK Ng’s family had also once raised pigs. The houses in Lai Chi Yuen were also quite scattered, and most of them were built on the field.

The large house of CK Ng’s family came with a backyard. A house was built there as a dry toilet. Its door had a board for covering. The filth inside was covered in soot that came from burned firewood and hay, and was later used as muck. Some family members were sometimes too lazy to go to the dry toilet and would resolve to the spittoon in the house. The kitchen was built outside the house. A small house of 200 square feet or so, the kitchen came with a stove and several braziers.

CK Ng liked to stroll about when small. His pastimes in those years included swimming, ball games, kites, marble games, and fishing. Kowloon had a small population but vast open grounds. He never had to worry about the lack of recreational spots. He bought himself a monthly bus pass on 3 dollars, and sometimes went to Lai Chi Kok for swimming or some ball games. He used to go fishing mottled spinefoot at Kowloon City Pier. In those years the fish was aplenty in the sea. Dozens of it could be caught with a bucket plummeted into water. Mottled spinefoot was sold at 1 cent or 2 per catty. CK Ng was never into books when small. His parents never controlled him, and there were hardly any interactions between the two generations.

CK Ng lived in Lai Chi Yuen, Tung Tau Village, which was near Sha Po and Nga Tsin Wai. It took just 2 minutes to walk to Sha Po. There was a bus stop at Prince Edward Road that was 10 minutes’ walk from his home. He would pass by Sha Po and Nga Tsin Wai when going to the bus stop. His fifth Uncle lived in Sha Po Village. CK Ng sometimes visited him, and shot marbles or flied kites with his kids. Sha Po Village was quite small. It had just dozens of households living in ordinary houses. It could hardly be regarded as a village. Sha Po had single-storey or two-storey tiled stone houses. They were ranged more closely than those in Tung Tau Village as it was common to find several houses aligned together. There was a home school in Sha Po. CK Ng used to study there. Before the war there was no village office or temple in Sha Po.

On the evening of every Mid-August Festival, a show called Pok Sheng Ngau Chai was put up by the yard in Sha Po. One villager or two would come up for some kungfu. They would introduce their schools and claim to be disciples of Maoshan masters. They still looked good after fires were ignited on them. Drums were played to cheer for them. CK Ng recalled that the performers’ skills could hardly be spotted the other days, but that evening they acted as if they were possessed. The show lasted for an hour or so with villagers speculating around the yard. CK Ng always went to the show. This tradition vanished after the restoration of peace. With plenty of places for hanging out, CK Ng seldom went to Nga Tsin Wai when small. He could hardly recall anything about it. There used to be a ‘Chui Lok’ Club outside Nga Tsin Wai (Editor’s note: i.e. Chui Lok Luen Sau Tuen). It was a gathering place for grown-ups. CK Ng and other kids seldom went inside.

Outside CK Ng’s house watercress was grown on strips of land that did not form a vast plot. The large house had an independent 7-foot-tall wall full of flowerpots on the top. The main door of the house was a wooden sliding door. The wall had another door. Between the wall and the large house there was a big yard, which was 40 feet in length and 15 feet in width, occupying an area of about 700 square feet. During the Seven Sisters Festival in July of the lunar calendar, the family sometimes built a bamboo shed by the yard. CK Ng’s elder sisters asked their girl friends to come over and celebrate the festival. In the evening inside the bamboo shed, they worshipped the deities, burned joss paper and prepared sundries such as jewels. The Seven Sisters Festival was noisy, and those who worshipped the deities were mostly single women.

When small, CK Ng was keen in tomb visiting, and he never missed any occasion. Everyone involved got an allotment of money. Even kids were benefited as long as they were boys. In those years everyone could get about 10 cents or so. At every Chung Yeung Festival, CK Ng went everywhere to visit tombs, including the ancestral grave in Cheung Sha Wan, Wong Tai Sin, Diamond Hill and Cheng Lan Shue. CK Ng did not follow the grown-ups when visiting tombs. He gathered with other kids of the same age on the mountain. Kids could not tell which tomb was for which ancestor. They just left after getting the money. CK Ng’s parents were buried in Diamond Hill. It was a large ancient grave approved by the government. CK Ng regarded the visits to his parents’ grave as visiting a private graveyard. The new generation now hardly visit the graves for worship.