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Kong Chi Yin
Kong Chi Yin
Treasury, Nga Tsin Wai Village Committee
Sex: Male Birthyear: 1946 Age at Interview: 66 Education: Lower Secondary Occupation: Police Theme: Community, Social Life Located around the corner of the front row (Editor’s note: the junction of Tai Hang Street and Nam Pin Street) in Nga Tsin Wai Estate. CY Kong’s home was a single-storey brick house. The ceiling was built with cement and concrete. It came with an air-vent covered with a plank or zinc sheet, which was often blown off in typhoons. Rain water would then leak into the house. CY Kong and his friends from the village built a canopy together. The house had been mended twice or thrice. When CY Kong was a kid, the house had over 10 occupants, including the lodging relatives. In hot weather, his uncles and others would sleep overnight on woodlouse-bearing bedplates outside the house. Rice vermicelli packages were used to make a tent for blocking the sun and mists. In the house, some family members slept in bunk beds that cost 20 or 30 dollars each in those years. Some slept on bedplates lying on long chairs. A long chair was 3 or 4 feet long and about 10 inches wide. Three bedplates could be placed on two combined long chairs. In winter, the whole family were packed inside the house. Yet the relatives’ stay was just temporary. They would move to new homes right after settling down.
Title Kong Chi Yin moved to Nga Tsin Wai striving to create a shelter for his family Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m38s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-001 Kong Chi Yin was admitted to the primary school from which he eventually graduated following the ...Only with the help from his close friends in Nga Tsin Wai, Ng Siu Kei, CY Kong could finish his primary schooling. He had studied in many primary schools. Every he quitted school because he could not accord tuition fee. His fifth primary school was Oi Kwan School, which was organized by the former Ng Clan Ancestral Hall of Nga Tsin Wai Village. He continued his P4 study. Before Oi Kwan moved into the Ancestral Hall, HK Vernacular Normal School Alumni Association School (VNSASS) was located there. Shortly afterwards CY Kong dropped out and remained idle at home. Then his good friend Ng Siu Kei was studying Primary 5 at VNSASS. A place just happened to pop up there. Ng Siu Kei visited CY Kong and referred him to enrol in the middle of the school term. The two boys went to school together on foot. It took them 35 or 40 minutes to walk from Nga Tsin Wai to Sai Yee Street, Mongkok, saving them a bus fare of 10 cents.
Title Kong Chi Yin was admitted to the primary school from which he eventually graduated following the introduction of a fellow buddy villager Date 09/06/2012 Subject Community Duration 1m11s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-002 During CY Kong's childhood in Nga Tsin Wai, villagers cherished neighbourhood relations. They paid respected to the elderly even if they were not their relatives. In the village lived two brothers surnamed Lee who moved in from somewhere else. The older brother was said to be a retired soldier. He hawked snacks such as candy, biscuits and peanuts outside the gatehouse. Villagers called him as ‘Dried Seed Uncle’. Sometime later he opened a store (i.e. today’s Yan Sang Tong Drugstore) with the help from some senior villagers. CY Kong and other kids often bought snacks from him. He had witnessed the kids growing up. When he passed away, CY Kong and other teenagers took part in the funeral procession all the way up the mountain, for which Dried Seed Uncle’s brother was grateful.
Title Village youths were very fond of the hawker called Dried Seed Uncle Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 1m21s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-003 Kong Chi Yin felt sad that his mother had been evicted from her old home after she had lived ther...CY Kong was a bit regrettable when her mother moved out of the Nga Tsin Wai. In 1986, the property owner sold his house. The sub-landlord demanded that they move out. Afterwards a lawyer and the police came to claim the house. CY Kong’s mother moved out reluctantly, and stayed with his eldest brother in Tuen Mun. His mother got accustomed to the village life. Moving out from an old house which she had lived in for several decades at such an old age surely had depressed and weakened her as she found it hard to adapt to the new environment. CY Kong lamented that if her mother did not have to move out, she could have lived longer. In the old days opposite the Kongs’ house, there used to be two fruit stalls (Editor’s note: the traffic lights at the junction of Tung Kwong Road and Tung Lung Road) built with tents and planks. The stall owners lived inside the stalls with their families. One of the stalls was run by a Chiu Chow couple who had a son and a daughter. CY Kong’s mother was well acquainted with the lady owner.
Title Kong Chi Yin felt sad that his mother had been evicted from her old home after she had lived there for decades Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community| Social Life Duration 1m20s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-004 Kong Chi Yin has recently accepted the invitation of his childhood friends and made a comeback to...CY Kong took part in organizing Jiao Festival again in 2006 because of invitation from his chilhood friend Ng Chi Wing. In 1990, he was promoted to the rank of station sergeant, and since then had been attached to various police stations in the New Territories. After hearing that Nga Tsin Wai was going to be cleared, he went back there less often. Good friends such as Ng Chi Wing and Ng Siu Kei were occupied with work and his contacts with them became less frequent. The year 2006 celebrated both Tin Hau’s Birthday and the Jiao Festival, by which time both CY Kong and Ng Chi Wing had retired. Ng Chi Wing asked CY Kong over the phone to attend Tin Hau’s Birthday, so CY Kong went back to the village to offer incense sticks and incense oil and enjoy some roasted pork.
In September that year, Ng Chi Wing suddenly gave him a call, informing him to attend a meeting at Chi Tak Public School in the village the next day to discuss the 2006 Jiao Festival. With just three months’ time, the preparation was pressed for time. Ng Chi Wing invited CY Kong and Ng Siu Kei to take office of the treasurer for maximum transparency and fairness in the accounts. CY Kong considered himself still clear minded at a time shortly after his retirement, and also took the preparation work more challenging than the sundry duty done before. What’s more, Chi Wing was his friend of a lifetime. In view of these, he agreed to be the treasurer. CY Kong, Ng Chi Wing and his sister’s husband were about to use their own money to make advances for the deficit.
Title Kong Chi Yin has recently accepted the invitation of his childhood friends and made a comeback to help organise village affairs Date 09/06/2012 Subject Community| Social Life Duration 2m45s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-005 In the early years Tin Hau’s Birthday and the Jiao Festival were organized by the seniors. The young were responsible for the physical work. The Jiao Festival and Tin Hau’s Birthday were celebrated by everybody in the village, including the indigenous inhabitants and villagers with outsiders’ surnames. CY Kong stressed that no distinction needed to be drawn between the two types of villagers, and the success of the events lay in whether there was a head. He felt being driven by a natural force to work for divinity and manifest his heart. That was an inexplicable affection. When he went back to the village and saw his primary schoolmates and those who had taught him football, their bonding was maintained through chats, teas and travels. It was meaningful to work with childhood buddies, but outsiders would find it hard to understand this, and they always thought that the organizers wanted to take advantage of the villagers.
Title The reasons for helping out village affairs with childhood friends were apparent without saying Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community| Social Life Duration 58s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-006 Having lived in Nga Tsin Wai for over 20 years, CY Kong said straight out that he kind of missed the old days there. After his moving, whenever he went back to the village, all kinds of thoughts and feelings emerged in him. For reason he could not tell he liked to stand outside his old house and recall his growth in that old house, his departed mother and his childhood. Every time he used to sigh. The flashbacks of the childhood included going to school, tossing coins, clapping picture cards in Ma Temple and others. To him, the most unforgettable place was the open ground outside the Gate House, where Dried Seed Uncle ran his snacks stall and the kids gathered around the stall for chit chatting. When Dried Seed Uncle passed away, CY Kong and other teenagers helped out with his funeral, a manifestation of tremendous human sympathy. CY Kong started tossing coins on the open ground when he studied Form 1. The winner took his opponents’ coins, which was a form of betting.
Title After he moved away, Kong Chi Yin returned to Nga Tsin Wai to reminisce about his life in the past Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 1m37s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-007 To CY Kong, Nga Tsin Wai was 60% his home town. He had never been back to his home Haifeng. When he visited his friends and relatives in the village after his moving out, he was warmly received by Third Uncle, Third Aunt and others. When he was a kid, he was given the other name Yu Kwan. When playing football, everybody called him Yu Lo. When he revisited the village, the seniors cordially called him Yu Lo. In those days, he sometimes went to the Village Office for some chats or mahjong. But now, the noises in the village were long gone, and the surroundings were no longer the same. CY Kong’s siblings moved out of Nga Tsin Wai years ago. They were less devoted to and interested in the village affairs for they had no friends of a life time such as Ng Chi Wing and Ng Siu Kei.
Title Kong Chi Yin regarded Nga Tsin Wai as his home as a result of his long years’ living experiences Date 24/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 1m49s Language Cantonese Material Type Audio Collection Oral History Archives Repository Hong Kong Memory Project Note to Copyright Copyright owned by Hong Kong Memory Project Accession No. LKF-KCY-HLT-008