In Hong Kong, many traditional villages can still be found. Of the 707 registered villages across the New Territories and islands, at least 100 are ghost communities, deserted by the clan, often overgrown and disappearing under vegetation. The 600 surviving villages are working hard to keep alive their heritage and communal traditions.
|
In the traditional view, it is the duty of every son to provide his own father with grandsons to
carry on the patriline and to worship the ancestral spirits.
A person who dies without heirs is doomed to everlasting misery because no one survives to make
the appropriate offering of food and other goods that nourish the spirits in the afterlife.
Unless some provision is made for these unfortunates, they become "hungry ghosts" that prey
upon the offerings of others.
|
| Sha Kong Wai village |
|---|
Every year the Chinese people believe that the gate of hell will open and ghosts are allowed to roam the earth. During July / August, Hungry Ghost festival or "Yue Lan" takes place in many areas in Hong Kong. In each area, it lasts three days.
|
Lineage segments are property-owning corporations so segment members seek to restrict access to
these possessions by encouraging adoption within the pre-existing group.
A sonless individual select in priority an hair from the most immediate agnatic group,
then if not possible in higher agnatic groups in the same lineage, then beyond the
lineage in an outside family.
|
|
| Sha Kong Wai village house |
|---|
This is also one reason why Chinese men took concubines in the past in order to have a son if they failed to have one with the principal wife.
|
A father is responsible for producing heirs who will carry on the ancestors worship.
On top of this, his personal comfort and security in old age depends entirely on his son's support.
Filial son is more valued than rich son.
|
| Sha Kong Wai village house |
|---|
|
A village house has a balcony and/or a roof area on the upper floor. It is
very popular for barbecue party.
|
|
| Sha Kong Wai village house |
|---|
|
Members of powerful lineages owned the best land, monopolized
commerce and dominated all aspects of local politics.
|
| Sha Kong Wai village house |
|---|
Satellite villages were dependent communities that emerged in the shadow of the dominant lineages.
|
Many satellite villages were hereditary tenants who held cultivation rights
to land owned by powerful ancestral estates.
Fly there with
Google Earth |
|
| Luk Keng Wong Uk village |
|---|
Powerful lineages controlled their territories through private security forces that patrolled daily.
|
In 1905 the British colonial administration granted full
ownership rights to sitting tenants but satellite villagers remained clients of the
powerful lineage until the 1960s.
|
| Luk Keng Wong Uk village |
|---|
The private security forces or guardmen must be members of the lineage. All arms in the district were monopolized by members of the dominant lineage.
|
Guardmen kept a network of informers who reported on the activities of satellite
villagers. Satellite villages were visited on regular basis.
|
|
| Luk Keng Wong Uk village |
|---|
The weaker groups paid rent and protection fees to landlord institutions for use rights over land but so the satellite villages were protected by the powerful lineages, thus allowing them to live in relative peace during disorder periods.
|
The guardmen have to collect donations for temple festivals. Minor temple
cults were tolerated but only of they did not compete with the lineage's major
cult.
|
| Luk Keng Wong Uk village |
|---|
|
Some study halls were built to educate young clansmen in the
classics and were also used for ancestor worship. The study hall served as a venue for clan
meetings and traditional rituals, such as wedding ceremonies and ancestor worship at the spring
and autumn equinoxes.
|
|
| Luk Keng Wong Uk village |
|---|
|
In the first decades of the 18th century,
pirate junks would slide by night along the
shores of the New Territories. Their prey were clan villages, storerooms with grain and fruit,
family gold hidden, pigs and chickens to be stolen, girls to be abducted.
Fly there with
Google Earth |
| Tsang Tai Uk |
|---|
Some villages built stronghouses into which the entire community would retreat if attack happened.
|
Some villages, far from roads, have been abandoned. Their collapsed walls are crumbling under
encroaching vegetation and destructive rains.
|
|
| Tsang Tai Uk |
|---|
Click to see more pictures |
|
|
|
| Home > Society > Villages |
| Page 1 | Page 2 | Page 3 |
|