The 5th Day of the 9th Month of the Lunar Calendar

It was in the 9th Lunar Month when New Territories villagers held ceremonies to honor their ancestors. On each day of the month, there were villagers gathering to hold the memorial ceremony around the graves on hillside. The ceremony carried out by the Tang Clan of Ping Shan area on the 5th day of the 9th lunar month was quite distinctive. They set stoves to cook and had meals in an open area, the so called ‘Hek Shan Tou’.

As time changes, most clans had abandoned the custom to save the trouble and the risk of causing a forest fire. They may now eat cooked food prepared beforehand or dine at restaurants afterwards. Some clans chose to cook in the ancestral halls so that their people could take the food away and ate it at home. All these changes had led to the gradual disappearance of the ‘Hek Shan Tou’ practice.

The Disappearance of Ritual

During the memorial ceremony in the old days, a number of Wai Sun Tong’s elders would be the master of ceremony and some would play music. The elderly attended the ceremony wearing robes to show proper respect for the occasion. But these traditions are already gone with the older generations and only the custom of ‘Hek Shan Tou’ is preserved. As seen in the field, people who came to the ceremony were mostly women, children and men who have well passed their youth, hoping to receive blessings from their ancestor. They had neither joined the session of sacrificing live pigs in the morning, nor did they come at a particular time. Most of them arrived at around eleven o’clock in the morning and started awaiting the serve of Poon Choi (food contained in poons) (basin containing food) after individual worship.