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Ng Chi Wing
Ng Chi Wing
Village Headman, Nga Tsin Wai
Sex: Male Birthyear: 1947 Age at Interview: 65 Education: Primary School Occupation: Mechanics Theme: Community,Social Life Ng Chi Wing grew up in a big and poor family. Many people in Nga Tsin Wai came from polygamous backgrounds. Among them were the families of Ng Chi Wing’s biggest younger sister’s husband and Mr. Kong. Both families had two mothers and many siblings. Ng Chi Wing’s family members did not mind about the identity of their father’s legal wife or concubines. Only Ng Chi Wing’s aunt deemed the boy’s natural mother as his father’s legal wife. Ng Chi Wing was poor during childhood and the adults were so preoccupied with feeding their many kids that there was little room for conflict. Ng Chi Wing never really cared about who was closer to him in terms of blood and gave his salaries to his second mother for dispatch after starting work. This was because his second mother spent all her time at the family home looking after the children.
Title A large polygamous family Date 26/04/2012 Subject Social Life Duration 3m15s 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-NCW-HLT-001 Ng Chi Wing missed the old landscape of Nga Tsin Wai very much. When he was still a child, Nga Tsin Wai was a village of considerable size with a watercress field that stretched all the way from Lion Rock to Nga Tsin Wai via Lok Fu and Wong Tai Sin. Nearby was an army firing range equipped with paper targets. At what is now Choi Hung Road near Tai Shing School was located an airport gate. In the evening, aircraft did not take off or land, so kids happily climbed over the fence to play football! Ng Chi Wing misses his carefree times in this old landscape very much! Before the completion of its first seven-storey factory buildings, the area around Nga Tsin Wai became lush everywhere after showers and could best be described as “dripping green” as the literati called it! Today, Ng Chi Wing sighs that pollution is always so heavy the sky is constantly grey. He feels urban development is what made the beautiful scenery disappear.
Title Lush green countryside Date 26/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m52s 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-NCW-HLT-002 In the 1950s, Nga Tsin Wai's kids enjoyed an extensive playing space. When he was aged 11 or 12, Ng Chi Wing often went up to Lion Rock with friends to catch jumping spiders, then placed them in a small box for fighting. The spiders made netting between the leaves in trees and capturing them required careful observation. In seeking out their prey, the friends travelled all over Lion Rock and often as far as Shatin’s Hung Mui Kuk. In summer, they played around in the water in the hill pits. Every time they went up the hills, Ng Chi Wing, who was slightly older, took the lead.
Title Village children regularly travelled all over Lion Rock Date 26/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m37s 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-NCW-HLT-003 Ng Chi Wing had many close childhood buddies in Nga Tsin Wai. His best friend in those days was Mr. Kong who was like a blood brother to him. The two were so close, they could almost read each other’s thoughts. Mr. Kong was one year older than Ng Chi Wing and entered the job market earlier, working at a steel mill at the age of 14. If the day after payday was a holiday, Mr. Kong would take two or three good friends like Ng Chi Wing to Mong Kok by bus in the morning and buy them breakfast at the Good Hope Restaurant there. Everyone would then catch an early movie at the nearby Ritz Cinema where a friend, a fellow villager from Nga Tsin Wai, worked as an usher. Mr. Kong asked their pal to buy the morning show tickets in advance and usually bought bargain seats in the last row. After watching the film, the friends would stroll around the streets for a while before going home.
Title Close friends who grew up together Date 26/04/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m36s 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-NCW-HLT-004 When Ng Chi Wing was still a child, people’s understanding of the boundaries between villages was not strong. There were vegetable fields surrounding the various villages and a lot of open space between one village and the next, without official title deeds setting out who owned what. As a result, no one paid Crown rent to the Government for the open spaces and children of the various villages used the areas as playgrounds.
During later years, many people – most of them from Chaozhou and Shantou took the open space as their homes and building houses there. People within the walled village had no objection as the villagers lived simple lives without ever thinking about whether their legal rights may have been affected. As the Mainland immigrants needed to apply for communications and electricity meters, they required a clear address for their houses. As a result, street names such as “Nam Pin Street”, “Pei Pin Street” and “Tai Hang Street” began to appear. For this reason, houses built on the north and south sides of the village tended to be given “Pei Pin Street” and “Nam Pin Street” addresses. In front of the village was a nullah, and houses erected there were given “Tai Hang Street” addresses.
Title Back then, there were no distinctions or boundaries between villages Date 04/05/2012 Subject Community Duration 3m27s 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-NCW-HLT-005 The development of surrounding 'communities' brought a huge impact to the lives of Nga Tsin Wai villagers. Nga Tsin Wai had long been a quiet and harmonious village. Since the construction of buildings around Nga Tsin Wai began in the 1950s with the springing up of Tung Tau Estate, Wong Tai Sin, San Po Kong and other communities, there were now no longer any more green spaces around each village. As a child, Ng Chi Wing often thought: “Why are we being surrounded?” As their walled village home often flooded when it rained, villagers were fortunate to have Kai Tak River in which to discharge their sewage.
Some people felt that such development negatively affected the feng shui in the walled village and caused residents to suffer strange diseases that shortened their life expectancy. Ng Chi Wing believes that the resettlement area was a magnet for bad sorts as the triads would come to recruit new members. At the very beginning there was no connection between Nga Tsin Wai and the surrounding communities. When Hong Kong’s economic development started to take off, industries in San Po Kong began to flourish and many villagers found jobs in factories, improving their employment opportunities and income.
Title The construction of the resettlement estate destroyed many villagers’ way of life Date 04/05/2012 Subject Community|Social Life Duration 2m53s 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-NCW-HLT-006 Nga Tsin Wai villagers only had a vague concept of 'ancestral house'. Ng Chi Wing thinks that only indigenous inhabitants of his grandfather’s generation such as Ng Yun Chor and Ng Wai Chi really understood the true value of an “ancestral house”. His father’s generation rarely used the term “ancestral house”. During his father’s lifetime, many outsiders moved to the village to buy homes. Comparing with the indigenous Ng Clansmen, Ng Chi Wing feels that there were more people with a different surname owning houses and collecting rents. Ng Chi Wing’s father once owned a property, however, as he later acted as a guarantor for someone who eventually defaulted on a loan, he was forced to sell the house to settle the debt. As Ng Chi Wing had no fixed abode in the village during childhood and had moved home several times, he, too, had little concept of what an “ancestral house” actually meant.
Title Village houses became properties and ancestral homes were soon forgotten Date 04/05/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m12s 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-NCW-HLT-007 In the past, Nga Tsin Wai villagers did not care about whether they are 'indigenous inhabitant'. Ng Chi Wing thinks that life was much simpler in Nga Tsin Wai during the old days as no one was interested in tracing back their history or rights. Only when people thought about their small house and burial rights did they discover they needed to look into their identities as “indigenous inhabitants”. Ng Chi Wing stresses that no matter whether in urban area or the New Territories, many people had been living in their dwelling for generations. Many urban residents’ ascendants had come to Hong Kong as far as their grandfather’s or even great-grandfather’s generations. Their only difference between themselves and the New Territories residents was that they did not live in a village. Ng Chi Wing remains puzzled as to why urban residents did not have any small house rights.
Title The distinction between indigenous and non-indigenous residents is meaningless Date 04/05/2012 Subject Community Duration 2m13s 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-NCW-HLT-008 Ng Chi Wing believes that people who grew up together with him are still full of feelings for their ancestral clans. That is the reason why Ng Chi Wing agreed to undertake the village affairs. In fact, in the previous session of the Village Headman election, in which Ng Kau was elected as the Village Headman and Ng Kin as the Deputy Village Headman, many villagers already recomended Ng Chi Wing, who was too busy to serve, for the post. When Ng Kau and Ng Kin both passed away, the villagers elected Ng Chi Wing as the Village Headman. Feeling that someone had to take charge of issues such as negotiating with the URA, District Office and other departments on acquisition and redevelopment, Ng Chi Wing agreed to serve as Village Headman. By that time, Ng Chi Wing had already retired from his career and had more time to come back and visit his family members.
Title Why am I willing to succeed as the Village Headman? Date 04/05/2012 Subject Community Duration 3m7s 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-NCW-HLT-009