3 The Early Years of the Yau, Chan, and Fan Lineages in Tsuen Wan

Trees have their roots; water has its source. How could people not know their ancestors and lineage?

—Yau lineage genealogy

For 300 times 3,000 [years], respectfully maintain the ceremonies, so as to continue the ancestral virtue.

—Chan lineage genealogy

Of the more than 50 lineages present in Tsuen Wan in 1983, more than half had written genealogies, varying in length and amount of detail included.¹ The great majority were in manuscript. Twelve more had them until the occupation, during the chaos of which they were lost or destroyed. It is impressive that, even within these small and relatively poor lineages, there were men with a sufficient level of literacy to create and maintain their genealogies,² and who believed that it was important to do so.

Men from both the Yau and Chan lineages gave us copies of their genealogies. Both had been updated and reproduced in book form shortly before we received them, and distributed to all member households. It is noteworthy that they put so much time, thought, and energy—not to mention resources—into revising and printing them at a time when Tsuen Wan was evolving around them at such an astonishing pace. Rather than turn their complete attention to contemporary matters in this rapidly changing environment, they demonstrated their loyalty to their ancestors and the values that they attributed to them.

According to the Chan genealogy, an early compilation was by two sixteenth generation scholars during the Daoguang years of the Qing dynasty (1821–1851). About 100 years later, eighteenth-generation member Chan Fuk-cheung of Kwan Mun Hau edited it, adding information specific to Tsuen Wan. He laboured over this task with great commitment, according to his son.

When my father was young he found it disappointing that we didn’t have this information and he was eager to have a genealogy, so he went to villages of related branches to gather it. He found one in Luk Keng that had information from the Ming dynasty to the beginning of the Qing, so he borrowed that. He worked by kerosene lamp in the old village to copy all that pertained to our branch. This was our first genealogy, with information from all the families in the village, including his generation, connecting with the old genealogy. Four or five years before his death, many lineage brothers and elders thought that we should have a complete genealogy, and asked him to prepare it. He must have spent a year doing it. He included the information from the past, which had to be rearranged, and then he had to add current information. He also asked neighbouring villages if they had information, and added the children. The old genealogies are different from the new ones. The old ones had sparse information, just the person’s name, who his wife was, and where they were buried. For the new one he tried to add more personal information, such as dates and education. In the past they recorded nothing about daughters…. We were a male-centred society, including only wives as ancestors. He thought daughters should be included, so the generation after him includes sons and daughters. Then the next generation on the daughters’ side will be able to understand their mothers’ family history.

He added that his father also visited tombs to copy their inscriptions. They printed the new version in 1979.

This genealogy begins with a preface, including a mythical surname history. A concrete history follows, starting in the Ming with an apical ancestor and his wife, whose nine sons founded branches that spread over several provinces. After a eulogy and name poems, used for assigning formal given names by generation, there is a list of ancestors for the first 12 generations. The last is the founding ancestor of the Tsuen Wan branch, who arrived in Qianlong 15 (1727). Considerable detail is given on the life, death, and tomb of this ancestor, who lived to be 84. He had five sons, the first of whom was adopted. The last died as a child. Their ancestral hall (or trust) is called the ‘Chan Sam Ying Tong’ (陳三英堂), the ‘Three Heroes Trust’, named for the three sons who apparently established it. Alternatively, it is called the ‘Chan Hau Tak Tong’ (陳候德堂), honouring the name of the founder.

The ancestor’s biography states that at the present location of Tai Wo Hau resettlement estate, he ‘bought good fields, ploughed the land, evaporated salt, and engaged in trade; he founded the two villages of Kwan Mun Hau and Ham Tin, where the lineage lived together’. It then describes the creation of the ‘satellite town’ and construction of the Mass Transit Railway [MTR], when the two villages moved. ‘The lineage prospered in descendants and wealth, living in peace and content with its lot. This was bestowed through the ancestor’s blessed protection.’ It then gives the present location of the ancestor’s ‘blessed shrine’, or hall, and its couplets, which incorporate the ‘three heroes’. It identifies the managers of the ancestral trust, the donor of the gold-lettered stone lintel, and describes in glowing terms the celebration of the completion of the hall, which included a banquet of 100 tables, many guests, and a visit by the governor of Hong Kong and other officials.

In the genealogical information that follows, much attention is paid to the geomancy of tombs, whose orientations were frequently adjusted. The eleventh-generation father (1660–1730) and mother of the Tsuen Wan founding ancestor were reinterred in Tsuen Wan in 1820. Although there are few individual details until the seventh generation, some are given. For example, an ancestor born in 1763 died tragically without heirs at the age of 30, when his boat capsized as he was travelling to the provincial capital to take the civil service examinations. The twentieth-century entries vary greatly, some being sparse and others having considerable biographical detail. One man, born in 1910, ‘always liked to study’ and obtained a teaching degree; his wife, surnamed ‘Tang’, was ‘very intelligent and able’, and raised successful children. Several men born post-war had studied in Canada and England, one marrying a woman with an English name. Deaths overseas, principally in Panama and San Francisco, are also recorded.

The Tsuen Wan Yau genealogy was first compiled by Yau Yuen-cheung (1865–1937), a noted local scholar,³ and edited in 1944.⁴ It was updated in 1966, with a handwritten version reproduced for all member households by mimeograph. The addition of remote ancestors was based on a genealogy borrowed from a related lineage in Lufeng, Guangdong, thus solving the ‘two difficulties’ of unrecorded remote generations and the dispersal of early lineage members. In 1984 a new edition was printed in book form so that it would be ‘elegant, refined, and durable’. Its compilers emphasize the importance of maintaining and updating the genealogy to know ‘the origin and flow of the ancestral line’. They acknowledge that ‘revising a genealogy and copying it as a book is time-consuming; few have been copied and not all descendants have had access to them’, resulting in members’ ignorance of both their distant and close ancestors. ‘For these reasons, we specifically got together and everyone expressed their agreement that we should produce more copies … so that members would be able to continue the genealogy themselves. Kin-cheung and Kin-king were enjoined by the lineage to try their best at this difficult endeavour, and took on this responsibility without daring to be careless.’ Their preface states:

When our ancestor Yi-sau moved from Dongguan to Tsuen Wan, he did not bring a genealogy. He only knew that our founding ancestor was Jilong, therefore later generations had no way to trace the earlier ancestors and could only continue the genealogy downwards.

The seven generations from Yi-sau to the Kin generation name were all recorded in detail, clearly and correctly…. The fourth generation ancestor Yuen-cheung had been concerned that later generations would lose the thread and therefore compiled this genealogy. However, he recorded only the near relatives and their offspring, but did not know about the remote ancestors. Fortunately, we met our classificatory brothers Jintu and Weiching of the Shima branch [in Lufeng] who on the occasion of a visit to Hong Kong in the autumn of 1949 copied and presented to us a volume [of their genealogy]. This enabled our lineage to connect the upper and the lower [strands] and to compile a complete genealogy. These few words are to commemorate our brothers’ gift and to express our gratitude.

An essay from one of these brothers follows, expressing his deep gratitude for the warm hospitality he received from the Tsuen Wan members, and confirming their shared descent.

The resulting volume is entitled ‘Genealogy of the Henan Yau Lineage’. It explains the change in the Yau character to 邱 in 1732 to respect the taboo on using Confucius’s name, lists the first author and seven revisers, describes their movement to Henan and then south, gives the names and locations of ancestral shrines (halls) in Fujian and Guangdong, and the couplets in the Tsuen Wan hall, among which is:

South of the Yellow River the ancestral generations succeed each other

North of the Wei River their reputation is transmitted.

These are followed by numerous pages of historical information, including prefaces written at various times and lists showing single lines of descent, with information on outstanding achievements and experiences of male and female ancestors.

The Tsuen Wan section begins with the 1944 preface and an introduction to the 1949 supplement and revision, followed by name poems and a long and eloquent preface emphasizing the importance of knowing and maintaining their lineage history, and introducing their founding ancestor, Yi-sau. It first gives his immediate descent relationships and movements in Guangdong from Shima, Lufeng to Guanlanxu, which was then in Dongguan. It continues:

In his youth Yi-sau had high ambitions and with all his strength sought to lay foundations and build enterprises, always regarding it as his duty to glorify his ancestors and enrich his descendants. Afterwards, in the Qianlong years, he again moved, to Tsuen Wan. He first dwelt at Lo Uk Cheung…. The ancestor of the neighbouring Chan surname had already migrated there. Yi-sau maintained harmonious relations with his neighbours; he surpassed others in loyalty and honesty, and moreover was laudably industrious and frugal. He was esteemed by the Chan ancestor who subsequently gave him his daughter in marriage, thus forming a marriage alliance. Yi-sau produced two sons, the ancestors Kun-man and San-man. Later, on account of the population’s growth, there was not enough land to live on and till. The elders of the Chan and Yau surnames did not shirk from painful exertions; they moved mountains and filled in the ocean to build a dyke connecting two seashores. The sea in front of the dyke they used for fishing; the area behind the dyke they developed as arable fields. When food production increased, they built houses on the dyke and lived in them peacefully and content. Within a few years a village formed there, the old Kwan Mun Hau village, which has now been developed as an urban area. This fortunate policy was all due to our ancestor’s spirit of determination which enabled him to establish these great achievements. When the village was firmly established, our ancestors chose a place within it so that the descendants could always remember and sacrifice to their ancestors [in an ancestral hall].

It then describes the government’s need to develop the urban area, and how the hall had been dismantled and reconstructed at a superior ‘Blue Dragon site’, ‘which certainly bodes well for the descendants’ prosperity and the development of the lineage. In 1964 the whole village, the Chan and the Yau, together moved here’.

The genealogy includes a migration map and a number of charts organizing historical and genealogical information for ease of comprehension, including a clear chart showing the descent lines in Tsuen Wan, with details indicating sons who died young, wives’ surnames, adoptions, many birth dates or sometimes life spans, and often the burial sites of descendants and their wives. It also gives some biographical details, such as those who achieved public office and those who went overseas, including those who died there. It includes, in addition, biographical material on three historical figures, appropriate wording for an announcement on the death of a parent, couplets used for mourning, the phrase used for dotting the ancestral tablet, the ritual for the wedding ceremony in the ancestral hall, and the prayer text to be used when announcing a marriage to the ancestors.

An important foundation document of the Yau lineage, copied and preserved by Yau Yuen-cheung, set out the terms of the property division in 1837 between one son of Yau Yi-sau and the widow of the other, who indicated her assent in her own surname (Wong). The document is called the bafang fenjialu (八房分家錄).⁵ The ‘eight branches’ establishing the lineage structure are descended from Yau Yi-sau’s eight grandsons. It is a proper legal document, 20 pages long, clearly written by a legal clerk of Lo Wai village and detailing a precise division of all the property.⁶ It established the foundation and basic trust of the lineage, the ‘Yau Luen Fong Tso’ (邱聯房祖), the ‘Yau Trust of the United Branches’.

Yau Po-sang (邱寶生), a mid-twentieth-century civic and lineage leader, wrote, or rewrote, another important document, a village handbook setting out the correct forms of interpersonal behaviour in speech and writing. Like the strict acknowledgement of kinship with people of bride-giving lineages, this handbook demonstrates the importance of correct interpersonal behaviour.⁷

The origin and arrival date of the Fan lineage is not clear, as they had no extant written records, but they were said to have arrived later. They had not maintained contact with a related lineage in Shek Kong. They had an ancestral hall in Ham Tin, but it had been sold after the occupation due to poverty. One member said that they regretted this loss but had no recourse. Their numbers in Tsuen Wan remained small, he said, as they always had more daughters than sons.

The three villages occupied by these lineages, Kwan Mun Hau, Hoi Pa, and Ham Tin, were located in central Tsuen Wan. Kwan Mun Hau, their principal village, had two earth god shrines. One was dedicated to Hongshenggong, a popular Hong Kong deity honoured by fishing people, and said to have been worshipped by Kwan Mun Hau people because of their many fishermen. The other was dedicated to the Kau Wai Kung, the ‘Nine Heroes’. The text on the plinth erected in 2016 next to their shrine in the resited village continues as follows.⁸

During this period, when the villagers created fields by reclaiming mountain land and the foreshore, resulting in a long strip of cultivated land, methods of cultivation changed and additional agricultural labour was needed to meet various problems. To resolve manpower shortages, the villagers hired nine long-term agricultural workers to help with farming.

At that time pirates were ferocious and violent, and came to Kwan Mun Hau to rob and plunder, which severely affected the livelihood of the villagers. The nine labourers protected the lives and property of the villagers without regard for their personal safety, and bravely sacrificed their lives.

Thereafter, the villagers conveyed to their descendants that they should never forget the indomitable spirit of eschewing self to serve the public good. At that time, a shrine was erected to the Nine Heroes in the centre of the village, at which incense and candles could be burned in homage and respect.

Today this plinth is erected to inform future generations and provide information about the origins of the Nine Heroes, exhorting them never to forget this history and to pass it on, one to another.

The Management Committee for the Kau Wai Kung

Erected on a lucky day, 2016 (Bing Zhong year)

A Yau elder, who was born in 1919, talked with us on a number of occasions about their history. He said that the relationship among the people of the three surnames was close, and that they lived next to each other in old Kwan Mun Hau with the surnames intermingled, although the Yau were more compact. He added that initially the Yau lineage could not build an ancestral hall, so they used the ancestor’s original house until the late nineteenth century, when they built a hall using funds from individuals and the founder’s trust. We were shown their locations on the government survey map, together with the Yau lineage school (聯房書室).

As old Kwan Mun Hau was by the shore, the village and its fields were subject to flooding during typhoons. According to the survey map, the Yau fields were irregular in shape, and were dispersed from present-day Texaco Road, which extended out onto a peninsula, up to the present village site. The fields that were individually owned were as many as could be cultivated. Those people who opened more fields could use them to establish a trust in the name of an ancestor. They could be rented out to yield income to the lineage or lineage branch in whose name they were established. Significantly, the elder told us that after 1898, under British administration, people stopped creating trusts, as they had to be registered under their own names, and ‘they began to realize the value of private property’. The Chan fields were larger and more regular, extending between Kwan Mun Hau and Ham Tin.⁹ Fan fields were dispersed around the area, with a cluster near Ham Tin.

Before the occupation, trusts were used only to support the worship of ancestors, ‘as they were the ancestors’ property’, and to pay the land tax. The land started to become valuable when immigrants came and paid high rents, almost certainly because of the development of the new market.¹⁰ The property and income were managed by the lineage head (族長), or manager (司理), who also had responsibility for adjudicating disputes within the lineage. Those chosen were educated, honest, senior, and willing to do this unpaid work.

When the government resumed the land between the present site of Kwan Mun Hau and Texaco Road, the Yau lineage was offered money for the trust lands but decided instead to exchange them for property and buildings in Tsuen Wan. According to a member of the Chan lineage,

In the past the Chan had a lot of agricultural land and received substantial amounts of rice in rent. The Yau just had some house plots with broken-down houses. No one wanted them and they had to pay property tax. The Chan lineage sold most of its land in the past as it was good land. We sold it for money and it was used up, spent. The Yau fields in the past were salt fields, which no one wanted, as they couldn’t grow anything. They made a great fortune, which was fate, not planned.

Another said:

Compared with other Tsuen Wan lineages, the Chan and Yau are the most successful, because we have kept our property, we have a lot, and we manage it well. The Chan have less money, because we were richer than the Yau in the past and many of us worked elsewhere: abroad, in Kowloon, in Hong Kong, so we learned more than the Yau did. Our eyes were opened earlier. We learned new things and stopped such rituals as the lantern-raising sooner, before the occupation, because they were too much trouble.

The Chan and Yau both sold some ancestral plots in the past but we mostly divided the money while the Yau tended to use it to buy more buildings. Dividing the money is useless because then there will be nothing left. One sub-branch sold all its property and divided the money, so it’s all gone.

The Yau elder quoted above said that before the occupation only a few men went to the Chongyang (重陽) worship of ancestors at their tombs. The expenses were covered by income from the ancestral trusts. Those of the founding ancestor and his wife are located on a mountainside near Nam Wai in Sai Kung, and he credited a related lineage there with helping them to find the site.¹¹ The wife’s tomb was originally near the Tsuen Wan village of Shek Lei Pui, but was moved to make way for reservoir construction.

Some women accompanied the men to help carry necessities, such as woks and rice, as they cooked at the tombs. They left at 4:00 a.m. and walked over the mountains, arriving at midday. After clearing undergrowth from around the tombs, conducting the rites, and cooking, they walked back, arriving in the evening. Alternatively, they hired a boat that took them to Kowloon, where they bought fresh pork and wine before continuing on foot. At the tombs they conducted the rites, and cooked stewed pork with preserved bamboo shoots, salt fish, and bean vermicelli with dried shrimp. They eat vermicelli on good occasions as they are symbolic of long life, and the stewed pork represents the Hakka people. Later they added steamed pork belly meat (扣肉), layered with taro.

The Chan lineage also had the custom of cooking and eating these special Hakka foods at the tombs during the Chongyang rites. They worshipped with higher-order branches from Hong Kong and the mainland at the tomb of the founder’s father, Man Tai Kung, in Sha Tin, as well as those of the founder and his sons.

Some men were especially skilled cooks, cooking for lineage banquets as well as for events such as weddings, assisted by women. On these occasions, temporary outdoor stoves were built to supplement their large indoor stoves. This custom continued at least through the 1980s.

Older boys and men also contributed to lineage events by playing gongs and cymbals with the special rhythms appropriate to the occasions, often with unicorn dancing, which some also learned.

They played during the New Year hall worship, and at the lantern-raising, when the rhythm played in the procession meant ‘produce sons’ (添丁). The solemn one played to accompany a funeral procession meant ‘to be at peace going up the mountain’, while they played festive rhythms at weddings. In the early 1900s, boys could learn these skills and martial arts under a Hakka master hired for this purpose.

From about 1880 until the 1920s, little local employment was available. The Yau elder said: ‘People had to go away to work then. All they could do here was farm. There was very little business to do, and there weren’t enough fields. They had to earn money.’ His own father had gone to Panama to work on the canal, and then tried to establish a business there, which failed, so he returned to operate a stake net and market the fish.

The employment of men who remained in Tsuen Wan before the occupation depended on their abilities, their families’ economic situations, and their families’ needs, all of which helped to determine their level of education. We knew of only two older men who were actually illiterate, one because of a disability and the other because of his family’s poverty. Another man born in about 1910 had studied for only one year because his father had died when he was 8 years old. He said that he often had to guess at characters, which was embarrassing. He also had little opportunity to learn Cantonese. He had a complex employment history, starting at age 12 carrying beef to a boat from an abattoir on Hong Kong Island, then selling fish, farming, and working at Texaco, first as a labourer and then at semiskilled work. After the occupation he worked in gambling establishments and then in the Country Village Store.

Like him, poorly educated men in impoverished families lived by farming and doing miscellaneous kinds of manual work. A Fan man, born in about 1890, studied only a few years in a village school taught in Hakka, and then had to stop to care for his mother. His son also had to decline educational opportunities because the family needed his help. The father initially did fuel-cutting and watched cows, but he also farmed on land rented from others, growing rice and pineapples. He later did many other kinds of work, including cooking for the crew on the local ferry, marketing fish caught by fishing families, digging water tunnels for the Shing Mun Reservoir using a steam hammer, and carrying kerosene from the storage facility at Texaco.

One man of the Chan lineage had only three years of village education but still obtained employment as a salesman at the Sincere Company, where he increased his literacy and learned some English. Another found employment as a waiter on a passenger liner, and ‘got fat from eating steaks every day’. After the occupation he worked as a customs inspector, and later for a cable car company.

At the higher end of the economic spectrum were those whose families could educate their sons well. One elderly woman said that her husband had a better education than most because his father had sent remittances from overseas. He worked for a shop as a purchasing agent, carrying messages to and from Hong Kong Island every day, and did not know how to farm. Two of the better educated men were teachers, although one later worked as a foreman for Texaco. A Chan man worked as an apprentice mechanic on a motor boat from age 15, sailing out from Hong Kong. During the occupation he returned to Tsuen Wan and opened a teahouse, which he ran until the 1960s. Two other men worked long-term for Texaco and were rewarded with gold watches for 25 years’ service. One operated a forklift truck for much of his career and was justifiably proud of his award.

There were others who worked in businesses, some their own and others for which they worked as employees. A Chan family of three brothers ran a successful medicine shop business in Tsuen Wan and Kowloon, starting in the pre-war period. One had worked as a driver in his youth. His undivided and relatively well-to-do family had owned a transportation company. They grew sufficient rice for their needs and had nearly 30 people eating together, including several full-time labourers. Starting in 1934, from the age of 20, he worked as a lorry driver in the New Territories and was then recruited by the Chinese and the British governments to drive heavy lorries around south China. After the war he returned, and although their transportation company had been destroyed, he was hired to drive military cars at a good salary.

A well-educated Yau man worked in a European-run shop on Hong Kong Island, returning home on Sundays. As he was a friendly and talkative man, he would describe events there to Tsuen Wan people, earning him the nickname ‘radio broadcaster’. When that business closed, he returned and became the overseer of the market. His son, who had studied English, worked on Hong Kong Island for British civil servants as a cook and an interpreter, returning after the occupation.

Those few families whose male members were fortunate enough to have the education and attributes that led to success lived in a reasonably comfortable way. Men could improve their families’ standard of living through hard work and capable decisions,¹² or destroy it if they succumbed to addictions.

Most shared in Tsuen Wan’s general poverty. Families like the one described above, whose members could eat rice all year around, were probably few; others often ate it cooked with sweet potatoes. Those who had more than two sets of clothes, or a second set to wear over the first to try to keep warm in the winter, were considered fortunate. They had no special clothing for cold weather or rain, with the exception of palm-leaf capes and pointed hats, which were not adequate. Many, if not most, houses had dirt floors and earthen walls, which were impossible to keep clean. There was little comfort of any kind.

No one denied the fact that all women had to work hard, regardless of their family’s economic standing. This was emphasized by many people, who acknowledged that they always worked, and that they generally worked longer and harder than men, although men sometimes did heavier work. Carrying water was women’s work, regardless of their health, as was grass-cutting, which girls learned when in their teens; men did these tasks only under duress.

In most families in the early twentieth century, women had primary responsibility for growing rice. Older women dried it while attending to housework and child care, while younger women grew and processed it, husking and milling rice on days when it was raining too heavily to do outdoor work, or in the evenings. If a family had enough women and fields, they could grow sufficient rice for their needs. Between wage labour and farming, a woman could support her mother-in-law and her children. As wage labour became available, younger women combined this with their other work. Rice agriculture must have diminished correspondingly, as families became increasingly involved in a cash economy and could buy at least some of their rice.

A woman born in about 1905 described her daily schedule, which was typical:

Every day I got up at 4:00 to carry water. Then I applied water and pig manure to the fields, and returned home to eat rice with salted vegetables at 8:00 with the family. I was 30 years old before Texaco offered carrying work. I carried kerosene, paraffin, and sheets of steel, 280 jin (斤) [336 lbs.] between two women. My mother-in-law cared for the children, and during the harvest brought rice for us to eat in the fields. She also took care of the pigs and watched the rice as it dried. The senior wife raked the fields, washed the clothes, cut grass, and sometimes worked carrying kerosene. She didn’t have to carry steel, and was more comfortable than I was. When there was no carrying work, I had to cut grass and firewood; there was no time to stop. When I worked building the reservoir, another woman and I carried six or seven bags of cement in a day, one bag at a time. It was a very long way uphill. Then I carried water. After 7:00 we ate again, and then I milled rice and cut up pig vegetables until 10:00 or later.

Wage labour for some women began in the 1920s, or perhaps earlier, in the small-scale enterprises that existed then. The Shing Mun Reservoir project employed many Kwan Mun Hau women during the 1930s, and the oil depot, which was conveniently located, offered increasing employment opportunities.

Another important economic activity for women was pig-raising. This, too, was hard work, and unrelenting, as the pigs had to be fed regularly on plants that were cut up and cooked. The water hyacinth that was their primary food was grown in water, and harvesting it was heavy and unpleasant work. Raising pigs involved families in a cash economy, as did selling grass and wage labour.

Women’s work was heavy and unceasing, making virtually no allowance for their state of health or for childbearing. As one woman said, ‘We had time to die, but no time to be ill’. They worked long hours, generally carrying loads heavier than their own weight on carrying poles. This made their shoulders sore and thickly calloused, as were their feet, as they often worked barefoot. Their mothers-in-law were their taskmasters, as they must have seen their sons’ wives as women who would help to release them from their own burdens, and it was their responsibility to manage their households. In the immediate post-war period, the younger women were rarely home in time to eat dinner with the family. One, a mother of eight children, said that the best situation was when, after a day of cultivating and harvesting vegetables, cutting grass, and working at Texaco, she returned at 5:00 to apply pig manure to the vegetables and feed the pigs. She then carried water for the family and returned home at 6:30 for dinner. More commonly she could not return until 10:00 when she ate leftover rice and scraps of salt fish, as the best food had already been eaten by others. They were treated, she said, ‘as though we were not human’.

These work routines continued during pregnancy, the exception being that pregnant women did not carry steel, as that was considered to be too dangerous. The woman quoted above told of how, when she was heavily pregnant with her second son and had a carrying pole loaded with grass, she fell about 20 feet onto a field of green onions. She was pinned there until someone finally came and shouted at her for flattening his onions. She asked him for help lifting the pole. When she got home her mother-in-law also scolded her. Fortunately, her baby survived and was born one week later. Her first son had been born only about two hours after she had finished carrying water for the family. A few days after she had given birth to another baby she had to go into water up to her waist to harvest food for their baby pigs. Other women said that they had to carry water within a few days or a week after childbirth, as there was no one else who could or would do it. One woman actually gave birth while she was on a mountainside cutting grass. Fortunately she was with other women, who cut the cord with a grass-cutting knife, wrapped the baby in an apron, and supported her on the way down.

Their daily schedules and activities varied somewhat, depending on the woman’s age, and the size and composition of the family. Some mothers-in-law were reasonably supportive, whereas others were harsh and critical. Furthermore, there were women with no mothers-in-law, but who had to work regardless. Without an older woman in the family, there was likely no one to care for the children while their mother was out working, and they were neglected. Small children were left at home alone, often tied to a table leg, dirty, crying, falling asleep on the floor. One elderly man attributed his leg problems to such a childhood. He said that he ate cold rice, or occasionally congee if an older woman relative gave him some. Young girls learned how to do basic cooking, and sometimes were left with responsibility for small siblings, who were strapped to their backs. Life was cheap, women said, and the babies might live or die.

Outdoor work gave older girls and women many opportunities to be together, to talk, and to sing mountain songs. Unlike Cantonese women, they had no maiden houses where unmarried girls might stay together to be taught womanly knowledge by an older woman,¹³ and there were no bachelor houses for young men. Women’s work required that they be outdoors, and they enjoyed camaraderie in this context.

Women stayed together in age groups to cut grass and do wage labour:

Women used to go in groups of 20 or more to cut grass, all from Kwan Mun Hau: Yau, Chan, and Fan together. We would call to each other to leave, and then wait for each other to return. We each would gather and bind together four bunches of grass, weighing in all more than 100 catties. We went out even in the rain, as otherwise we would have no fuel. We also went in groups to gather shellfish. Old women would go along for that. If young women in their teens wanted to go out in the evening to get measured for clothes we would get several together and ask an older woman to go along. Otherwise the tailors might feel us here and there while they were measuring us, and people would say that we had no shame.

In the past there were a lot of songs. Now I don’t remember all of them. We felt very happy then, with nothing to worry about. Whenever we went to cut grass we would sing. Sometimes we sang when we were carrying kerosene, but mostly when we were cutting grass. You could just follow the group and learn how to sing.

They even imitated laments¹⁴ that they had heard. Some were wedding laments, those sung by a weeping bride to her parents and her ‘sisters’ (姊妹), the group of young women, including lineage sisters, with whom she had worked. If a member of their group was getting married, the others might pool some money from their savings to buy her a gift: an alarm clock, a pair of vases, a length of cloth for a set of clothes, or, most extravagant, a silver ring, perhaps also giving her some money from what was left. Although there were no maiden houses, they might spend two weeks beforehand together with an older woman, learning wedding laments and giving support to the bride, who was young and afraid. A bride who could learn well might lament for as long as four evenings before her marriage. A woman born in Sha Tin said she had done this, with the villagers gathered outside listening. She was unusual among pre-war brides in that she was literate, as remittances from her emigrant father had allowed her to study, so she learned some laments from a book.¹⁵

After marriage, ‘sisters’ also supported each other if they were mistreated at home: if the family had saved no breakfast for them, for example.

Someone had fed it to the pigs. So when I went to work that morning people asked me what I had had to eat and I said ‘nothing’, and so they all gave me a little piece of whatever they had. Sometimes husbands gave money to their wives. When we worked together we would talk about it: how much did he give you? People would admire the women who could get more money from their husbands. This was to be kept secret. No one should tell their mothers-in-law. If they did, the mother-in-law would be angry, asking why he gave money to her. If a woman told the mother-in-law, that woman would be blamed and not allowed to enter the group of women anymore.

Women’s marital status was indicated by the only ornament that they wore on their otherwise plain dark clothes. These were beautiful, colourful ‘patterned bands’ fadaai (花帶) ending in tassels made of silk or cotton thread. They wove them on the rare occasions when they had a little time, in the evenings or on days of heavy rain. Women who had not learned to weave got them from others.

The tassels, colour combinations, and patterns varied between districts, and were minutely named. Unmarried girls and older women wore those in darker colours, whereas young married women’s bands featured red or pink with yellow. This showed men how to address them, as different terms were used for young married women. They wore them to fasten their head cloths, with the tassels on one side; to fasten their aprons; and on their ‘cool hats’ (涼帽), flat hats with a round opening at the top and a fringe of black cloth about five inches long to shield them from dust and the sun. The tassels hung at the sides, and one of the mountain songs describes how attractive this made the wearer to a man:¹⁶

The hat is new, the person looks so smart.

It is not your hat I like;

I like the two fadaai.

Brides were expected to spend the days before their weddings weaving large numbers of them to give to women relatives and to wear themselves. They also served as ritual objects in their weddings, and decorated the lanterns celebrating the birth of sons.

Women were supposed to contribute substantially to the families into which they married. They were seen as labour force, and were treated as such. This was reflected in one woman’s description of the procedures leading up to her marriage when she was 12 years old, in the 1930s.

My own marriage was introduced by people who were not my relatives. My husband’s family had already looked at two girls and rejected them before considering me.

They sent two men to a pineapple hill to look at me, an uncle and another old man. My mother sent me to gather pine cones to cook fish, carrying my younger brother. The two men approached me on the road, asking if we had any small pigs for sale, or any pineapples. I answered them: ‘Who would have pineapples at this time of year?’

They watched me, seeing how I walked. I said: ‘So rude, watching how people walk!’ They were the only ones who saw me, not my husband. He was only 14 years old. They liked how I looked, that I looked strong and sturdy enough. They didn’t care whether I was pretty or not.

Primary marriages in the pre-war period were blind, and arranged either by professional matchmakers or through relatives. Sons’ marriages were arranged by their fathers, if present, whereas those of daughters could be arranged by their mothers. What the matchmaker said had to be taken on faith, and families might be deceived about the man’s family’s property, the number of brothers who would share it, or the personalities of the man and his family.

It was customary for women married before the occupation to say that they had been sold into marriage: ‘When I was sold here… .’ In 1984, Elizabeth heard the son of one such woman responding with incredulity and some derision when his mother said this, asking her: ‘How much were you sold for?’ This was a specifically Hakka way of describing marriage, and could also be used by mothers-in-law as a way of expressing power over them.

The wedding negotiations included reaching agreement on the amount of bride price and the gifts to be given to the woman’s family. It was impressive to hear how precisely women could remember these, as though they were, in fact, a calculation of their value. The woman quoted above said:

His family said that they wanted a matchmaker, so they got a red paper with my name and horoscope and brought it to their house. They waited for three days, and if during that time nothing bad happened, nothing was broken, no cats died, and so on, I was considered acceptable. Then they sent the bride price (帶禮), which was different then. The gifts included:

one hen and one rooster

one big pot of rice and more than 30 catties of glutinous rice

one big pot of wine

nine salt fish

nine duck eggs

nine squid

mung beans

vermicelli

one measure of pork

My family accepted everything, and poured 2 measures of water from washing rice into the wine pot, leaving one catty of rice in the rice pot to return, and returning the rooster.

In her case, the bride price was 99 dollars. The matchmaker was paid about 40 dollars, as well as a pig’s hind leg.¹⁷ For her dowry, her mother gave her a chest, three sets of clothes, a wash stand, a small bucket, a ring, and a foot-washing basin, which did not use all of the bride price. The foot-washing basin was a fertility symbol, as women gave birth into them at that time. Her future husband’s family also gave her some sets of clothes, which meant that the bride price could be less.

On the day of her marriage, she was carried in a sedan chair, as cars were not used until the 1950s, with gongs and cymbals, unicorn and lion dancers, and a piper: ‘really festive’. On the second day she poured tea for her new husband’s relatives, receiving lucky money, and the couple was presented to the ancestors in the hall. On that day her husband’s family held a banquet, cooked by village men on temporary outdoor stoves at which she had to worship. On the third day women and children from her natal family came with gifts of wine and special foods, an occasion called sung chah (送茶). The groom’s family normally provided a banquet for them, and they stayed overnight. The next day they would be given sweet congee and a midday meal,¹⁸ and then escorted on their way.

A very old woman, born in about 1890, said she had been engaged at the age of two, when the boy’s family gave the bride price of money, sugar, two catties of pork, fish, and vermicelli. She was not married until she was 19. Just before her marriage, unmarried girls came to stay at her house, some for as long as a month, to accompany her and lament for several days, learning from the older married women. She lamented because she did not want to leave her parents, and to thank them for raising her.

On the night before her wedding, the bride was seated in her family’s main room for the ceremony of seuhng tauh (上頭), in which a woman with a ‘good fate’, as she had both sons and daughters, combed her hair into a bun with ornaments while saying auspicious phrases, and the bride lamented her pending separation from her ‘sisters’.¹⁹

I am very close to my sisters

I hold a sugar cane and divide it. I want to break it.

I am very close to my sisters.

I hold a piece of malt candy. I will divide it equally

At night I slept in the same bed with my sisters, but

I will become a bride.

You will return to sleep with your parents

Each evening we could use each other’s shoes.

We could exchange our clothes.

Tonight I am going to see the God of Hell (閻王).

Tonight you will see your father and mother.

She also cursed herself:

Since I was small I never wore a set of new clothes.

Today I am wearing a full set of new clothes.

I am like grass being dried in the sun to die.²⁰

She also could curse the matchmaker in a lament, but she had to follow this with a lament to release her. She lamented her coming separation from her mother, who wept or lamented in return, and also from her father. If he had died, she lamented in front of his tablet, and wore a white belt.

She was taken to her ancestral hall to make offerings, the only time in her life she worshipped there: ‘The white flower worships 1,000 times; the red flower worships once.’²¹

Along both sides of the hall are many people,

Brothers and their wives fill a table.

Worshipping at the hall, the lane full of people of high repute,

It is my turn to worship a single time.

Many guests attend my wedding.²²

When the sedan chair came to get her, the bride cursed for the last time before her transformation into a wife began:

My younger brother scoops some sand in front of the door

To allow those people from hell (陰間) to place their flags.

He sets down a bucket of water to send them on their way.²³

The elderly woman said that on the day of her wedding, she had worn a ‘phoenix crown’ and bells. Her uncles and parents, wearing formal robes, accompanied the sedan chair, with gongs, cymbals, and a dancing unicorn, halfway along the road, until they were met by her husband’s people. They might then have held a banquet for relatives and friends in their village, financed by the bride price. Three days after the wedding, her parents sent gifts of rice wine and dried seafood.

The grooms’ families made their own preparations for weddings. Details changed over time, but there normally was a gathering of village people, primarily women, to make red dumplings, tongyuhn (湯圓). The groom worshipped in the temple, and then worshipped the ancestors in the hall for the ceremonies of seuhng tauh and the initial audience with the ancestors yit jou (謁祖). For these ceremonies, his hair was combed by lineage elders. He wore a hat in which gold ornaments were inserted, and sat on an inverted rice measure placed on a flat basket to receive congratulatory words (祝文) from the master of ceremonies, a senior man skilled at reading these texts. On the morning of the wedding he worshipped at the temple, and then he, or his representatives, went to meet the bride at her home, accompanied by lineage brothers: unicorn dancers, and others playing gongs and cymbals. After the bride’s ceremonial arrival, she descended from her conveyance, now sheltered under a red umbrella. That day or the next, the couple worshipped the Baak Gung, and then the ancestors in the hall for the rite of gaau jou (告祖) or gaau jih (教子) that is the principal marriage ceremony.²⁴

When the bride arrived, if there was a baby under one-month-old in the village she had to walk from the sedan chair on flat baskets, because her saat hei (殺氣)²⁵ was extremely powerful and could harm the baby. Likewise, small children were kept facing away from her, as were other people, including the women carrying her dowry.²⁶ Her pathway to his house was marked with water in which red rice had been soaked. The groom’s family then held at least one banquet for their relatives, the number and scale depending on their means.

Brides were made to feel their place in their new families on the second day. They were wearing new clothes, and the family might confront them with a wok filled with hot greasy water. In it were nine 10-cent coins, nine bowls, and nine pairs of chopsticks. They poured water onto the ground, and the bride was made to kneel in it and retrieve the objects with a spatula, placing them in her apron, then putting them into a kerosene container and pulling it into the house. New clothes were rare and special, and this was very hard. Some with stubborn temperaments refused, which probably did not earn them favour in their new homes, while others cried. Another way of teasing the bride was to hold up a chicken head or a piece of orange and tell the couple to eat it, or to have her light his cigarette. This proximity would have been extremely embarrassing.

Several elderly women spoke of how marginal they had felt when newly married. They did not presume to eat with the family or, if they did, dared not look up, and just reached for the food. One did not know for some months what her husband looked like. Another said that when her mother-in-law boiled pork soup she was not given any. One said that this poor rapport had a negative impact on the number of children they bore, as there was no relationship between husband and wife. The young women were shy, and dared not talk to their husbands. Women also were expected not to draw attention to their sexual characteristics. They bound their breasts, and dried the breast-binding cloths out of sight under the bed after washing them. If they breast-fed their babies on their doorsteps, older men would hit them.

A number of people emphasized the fact that marriages then were not based on love, and may never have evolved into love, although some did. There was no reason why the couple should be compatible, and if they could even cooperate this was fortunate. One very old woman said that her husband certainly did not help her, and that if he did not shout at her this was good. Another talked about the preparations she had made for her death, saying that she had moved to the ground floor so that her body would not have to be carried downstairs ‘but if I have to be with that man in the underworld, then I would prefer to live longer’.

After the occupation, marriage customs changed and the couple had some chance to get to know each other or, at a minimum, to see each other. One form that disappeared quite abruptly post-war was ‘small daughter-in-law’ sanpouhjai (新抱仔) marriage, in which a girl was brought in as a child, and actually married when the couple were mature.²⁷ Many families had chosen to marry their sons this way before the occupation because it cost less and brought a worker into the family. The wedding ceremony could be simpler and less expensive. Some girls were brought into their future husbands’ families when they were only a few months old and were fed their mother-in-laws’ milk together with their future husbands. One had been only 40 days old, from a poor family. Her husband’s family gave nothing for her, as her family was considered fortunate that they did not have to raise her. She was actually married when she was 19 years old, and she could then visit her natal family. Others were small children, or a little older. One had been carried in under a red umbrella when she was about 6 years old, wearing a necklace of red cloth. When she was about 16 and was married, they sent gifts to her natal family. The girls were expected to work hard for the families, and people reported that their condition in general was poor, as they were dirty and dressed in ragged clothes. They were taught to address the boy’s parents as he did, and to address him as older brother. When they reached maturity, their marriage was completed with the basic ceremony of combing her hair, pouring tea for the family members, and worshipping in the ancestral hall. The mother-in-law bought them a bed, and said: ‘You are now adults, husband and wife. Be good to each other; don’t quarrel like you did when you were children.’

A mountain song relates to this form of marriage:

Older brother is poor; younger sister is poor.

We work together.

Older brother does not have good trousers to wear.

Younger sister does not have a good head cloth.

Younger sister, suffer every day.

Suffer one or two more years

When you have a son life will be good.

When you have a daughter-in-law, it will be splendid!²⁸

The mother-in-law was expected to give the bride some gifts, including lucky money after the bride had poured tea, and, if she was wealthy and willing, a pair of gold bracelets or, at a minimum, a ring. Her natal family might also send gifts to her. If the family had the means, they might hold a banquet. Three days after the wedding, her female relatives would come for sung chah, with gifts of chahgwo and special foods. They were offered meals in exchange, as with any other wedding. After one month the bride could visit them, giving them chahgwo and pork, and staying overnight. The woman whose wedding procedures were described earlier was technically a small daughter-in-law, as she was only 12 years old, but her husband’s family decided to have a full wedding ceremony when she was brought in, thus compressing the rituals with a ceremony that was more lavish than was usual for such marriages. She then slept with her mother-in-law for three years. When she was 16 years old, her mother-in-law told them that they were adults, got them a bed and their own room, and they began sleeping together.

After the occupation, however, there was a full-scale rebellion by young men against this form of marriage. The young women did not have this power. The men did not want to marry girls with whom they had been raised, and the girls had been teased because they were addressing their future husbands as brothers, and his parents as though they were their own, perhaps without fully understanding what was to come. The boys also were teased, and would tell the girls not to address them this way. The mother might then tell the girl to avoid addressing him, or to call him ‘small husband’ (老公仔). Furthermore, as the girls were often maltreated and made to work hard, they likely did not appear attractive to their future husbands, and their long-term proximity undermined attraction. To have sexual relations with them was felt to be incestuous, and believed to be shameful.²⁹ Men then refused to marry the girls their parents had raised. Their ability to resist probably came in part because by that time they could be independently employed, rather than being dependent on their families, and the young women began to have alternatives. Furthermore, by then couples were beginning to have a degree of free choice in marriage.

The girl could be treated like a daughter or kaaineuih and married to someone else, returned to her natal family if her parents were still alive, be introduced to someone else and married out from a relative’s house or, most likely, she could run away. Elizabeth was told of five women who had run away from Chan families and three from Yau families, all within a relatively short period of time. As long as they were still virgins they could marry another man. Virginity was important, and those who were not virgins could remarry only in a very simple way, just wearing red clogs.

The situation of widows was rather like that of rejected small daughters-in-law in the solutions available to them. Much depended on whether or not they had children. As one woman said: ‘Some did remarry, because if they had no children and were neglected by their husbands’ families and had become strangers in their parents’ homes, they should remarry. If they didn’t, they were like fish in a dried pond’. These decisions depended in part on the structure of the family. If they had sons who were the family’s only descendants, the sons might be considered essential to its continuity and their mother more likely to stay. One woman gave an analysis of the various situations of widows and their children, saying that if the widow had no mother-in-law she could take her children with her when she remarried, but if the children were mistreated by their new family, they might think of returning. Their uncles might not want them back, however, as sons might claim shares of the family property. The most fascinating aspect of what she said was that if the children stayed with their mother they would keep the surname of their deceased father, but if their stepfather was good to them, getting wives for the boys and marrying the girls into good families, then they might also use his surname: ‘Their bones might be surnamed Yau and their skin surnamed Ho.’ This was analogous to the traditional system of land tenure, in which the surface rights were referred to as the ‘skin’ (地皮), and the subsoil rights as the ‘bones’ (地骨).

If a small daughter-in-law or widow decided to leave, she was expected to do so in secret. She might take a basket of clothes, pretending that she was going to wash them, and, if a widow, perhaps some small dowry items. She then would disappear under cover of darkness without telling the family, and by late afternoon they would know that she had left. She generally would never be seen in the village again, as she had no place there, although we knew of several exceptions.³⁰ For men married to small daughters-in-law, one solution, if they were dissatisfied, was for them to take a second wife if family finances permitted this. In the pre-war period polygyny was practiced openly, and the two wives were expected to live together. In one Chan family there were three successive generations of polygynous marriages. The senior wives in the first two generations had been small daughters-in-law, although in the third generation the wife who appeared to be senior had been married in as an adult with full ceremony. In fact, she was not senior to the other, but equal, as this marriage was another form, called pihngchaaih (平儕), in which a man married two equal wives at once. His family had raised a small daughter-in-law for him, but he did not like her, and wanted them to find him someone else. The arrangement they made, which they kept secret from the incoming bride and her family, was that he would marry both at once and that they would be of equal status. The son agreed because he thought this would add a worker to the family. Both women wore bridal regalia and worshipped in the hall together. When they were teased, they had to cooperate in lighting a cigarette for him. The small daughter-in-law remained a virgin, however, as he did not enter her bedroom. The occupation soon followed and she left to marry another man.

Another kind of polygyny could occur if an engaged woman died before marriage. In one case, her incense pot was brought into the groom’s village at the same time as his new bride, so that her soul could be worshipped as his first wife.³¹ His second wife, the one brought in as a living woman, died before bearing any children, so he then married a woman who was, in effect, his third wife, who bore his children. In a similar case, a woman to whom a Kwan Mun Hau man had been engaged was killed in an accident before they were married. When arrangements had been made for him to marry another woman, her family insisted that a sedan chair be sent to their home to receive her soul tablet. His family sent another chair to pick up the living bride, but the one represented by the tablet was considered to be the senior wife. Her family probably wanted this arrangement so that her soul would have a final resting place (歸宿) and would not be untended in the next life. This belief may also have been a reason for families giving their daughters as small daughters-in-law, because if they died young their souls would still be cared for.

Adultery was taken extremely seriously, although we heard of no cases in which women were complicit. Men caught in adultery were actually put into pig cages for their fates to be determined, and then likely sent away. Even if adultery was not the woman’s fault, she could be blamed. There were several such cases in Kwan Mun Hau. In one, a man in Sheung Kwai Chung went out and told his wife to leave the door open for his return later that evening. His uncle heard him and went in and raped the woman. She was immediately married out to a man from a poor family in Kwan Mun Hau, who could not afford to be concerned about her lack of virginity. She was given a pair of covered baskets to take with her and wore red clogs; there was no other ceremony. One reason why they were willing to give her up was that she had been a small daughter-in-law, and therefore not expensive.

In addition to working for the family, women were expected to bear children. Both were necessary, but their working conditions were such that they made childbearing, and the survival of their children, difficult and precarious. Women sometimes suffered miscarriages from carrying heavy loads. Before the occupation and for a decade or so thereafter, babies were delivered at home either by older women, such as neighbours or relatives, or sometimes even by the mother herself, alone. Women who helped others as midwives were said to be skilled, but they could not manage if there were complications, and some women died. The lack of medical care, such as suturing, after birth, and the fact that most women had to resume carrying work within a few days meant that some suffered a prolapsed uterus, which could not be cured with the medical care then available. A few fortunate women had older family members who were aware of this risk and encouraged them to rest after childbirth. A woman who had given birth tried to do somewhat lighter work for a while, but if there was no one to help she got little respite.

Especially in the earlier years of the century, women stayed in the birth room as much as possible. Their husbands would not enter, as the room was believed to have the odour of birth pollution. The new mother could carry the baby out so that he might see it. She would not enter others’ houses because she carried pollution. When their work took them outdoors, women had to wear hats, as the discharge made them appear like a spot of blood, offensive to the heavenly gods. If they did not, they risked having a spot of blood appear on their foreheads. During the first month, the mother was expected to sit only on a designated stool, and to be given food rather than helping herself. After the first month, the room, the furniture, the bedding, and the woman herself were cleansed by washing them with pomelo leaf water.

During the first month, people, especially strangers, were warned not to enter the house by certain protective objects such as rice husks placed in a ceramic container outside the front door, and objects hung on the bedroom door. Among them might be an old mirror, a grass-cutting knife, a brush, fishing nets, a rain cape, an almanac, or old shoes. People believed that these objects were pixie (辟邪), supernatural barriers to prevent malevolent influences from entering the house. This practice stopped in the early 1950s, when they began to gain more confidence in Western medicine and thought of it as an old custom that was no longer needed.

In the early twentieth century, when the new mother was in the room with her baby she might see ghosts coming with chains to take it, and she would hold it tightly. Other people couldn’t see them. She would try to keep it from crying, perhaps because that would attract ghosts. At that time some babies were believed to be locked to life for a certain number of days, after which they would die. Under the conditions of life then, their lives were indeed precarious, and on average women lost half the babies they bore. The experiences of some were especially tragic. One woman gave birth to 12, one each year, and lost 11. The last, a son, was fed by a wet nurse, as she herself had no milk, and he survived. Another gave birth to seven, three of whom were sons, but lost six. Only a daughter survived. The first was killed at birth by her mother-in-law, who was said by others to be a truly black-hearted woman. Measles and smallpox were especially common. The only medical knowledge available was that of old women, who gave sick children ‘tea’ made by pouring boiling water over cockroaches, centipedes, or spiders found in the toilets, following the principles of sympathetic medicine: that poison destroys poison. Alternatively, they touched them with burning grass.³²

The fact that women generally had to leave their children while they went out to work put them at considerable risk. A grandmother might feed a baby wuhjai (糊仔), sweet rice flour paste, but they sometimes used their fingers, which was not hygienic. Babies often got diarrhoea, especially once they could crawl and were teething, which was a risky time when many died. Women fed them breast milk, but if they had been out for some hours the baby might vomit it, and they also feared that if they drank unboiled water while out this might make their milk unsafe. Tinned condensed milk became available in the 1920s, and those who could afford this fed it to their babies, using a bottle fitted with a nipple.

New mothers were believed to be at risk from supernatural powers. One of these was called fung (風), or saang jaifung (生子風). If a woman opened a window or did not wear clothes that fully covered her, she was at risk of being blown on by these ‘winds’, making her fall unconscious and die suddenly. Women were still taking precautions against this in the 1960s. In contrast to some parts of China, however, a woman who died in or shortly after childbirth could receive a normal but simple burial, and her soul could be installed in the ancestral hall when she would have reached the age of 60 and there were no family members senior to her still alive.

On the twelfth day after the birth, women from the mother’s natal family came to visit, bringing rice wine, pigs’ feet, chahgwo, chickens, and eggs for her. It was customary for her mother to bring gifts for the baby: a baby carrier, a hat, and some clothing. The chickens and wine were to be used for worship at the family’s earth god shrine and at the Baak Gung, as well as in the ancestral hall. They were restoratives for the mother, together with ginger cooked in sweet vinegar, and salt duck eggs, if her mother-in-law treated her well.

If the baby was a son and they had the means, the family might hold a full month (滿月) banquet. His grandmother could take him to the ancestral hall to worship, offering a chicken that his mother’s natal family had brought. If the baby was a girl, they might worship without her. After the month was over, the mother could return to visit her natal family, taking as a reciprocal gift some of the chicken cooked in wine.

Families resorted to various means, natural and supernatural, to try to protect the lives of their precious children.³³ Some were based on a belief called ‘spirit sadism’: that evil spirits took children who were especially valued. To protect them, people avoided praising a child, and if someone mistakenly did this, a family member would respond with a special phrase to counteract it. They might also call a child by a derogatory name such as ‘little dog’, or address a boy as if he were a girl. Children might also be taught to address their parents as though they had been adopted, calling their father ‘younger uncle’ (阿叔), for example.

To be without children was tragic, as a couple had to have at least one son to help them in this life and to care for their souls in the next. Women who remained childless, or who only bore daughters, risked being criticized and, furthermore, their husbands might take second wives. If the second wife did bear children, the first could become marginal in the family. One such woman, brought in as a small daughter-in-law, was pathetic in her old age. She said that she was useless, as she could not bear children. She had wanted to adopt a daughter, but her mother-in-law refused to care for the baby while she worked. Another childless woman did this, a widowed second wife. She decided not to remarry, and adopted a baby girl, with the agreement of her two mothers-in-law. She got her from a family in Sha Tin, and said that the procedures were very simple, just like getting a puppy or a piglet. She walked over to get her, gave her a piece of sugar cane, and carried her back. Later her family gave twenty dollars ‘lucky money’ (利是) to the baby’s family, although they had not asked for anything. Her mother-in-law cared for the child while she worked, and the child slept with her at night. She and her daughter remained close throughout their lives.

The belief existed that if a childless couple adopted a daughter she might ‘lead in’ younger brothers and sisters. Furthermore, a knowledgeable middle-aged woman³⁴ said that her mother-in-law’s generation believed that without a daughter to lament, the funeral rites would not be efficacious in settling the soul, and that it would remain in hell (陰曹). She remembered being taken at age 14 to a funeral in which a young woman had been adopted after the death of her ‘mother’. Her lament began:

When she was alive I did not lament her.

Mother did not see me lament as a daughter.

Now my mother has died.

I was carrying grass down the mountain.

At the side of the road my brother asked me to be her daughter and lament.

So I came to lament.

The ‘daughter’ was well-compensated with a cow and three mu (畝) of fields, as her assent had meant that she had to be in the presence of a corpse. From then on, she was considered to be affiliated to two lines of descent, her own and that of her ‘mother’, and to be given spiritual protection by the woman she had lamented. This belief continued at least into the 1980s, although by then young women no longer learned to lament and simply served as daughters in the rites. At that time, an elderly woman who was blind hoped that a daughter could be adopted to lament her, because her eyes would thus be opened in the underworld.

In addition to this important role, there was further evidence that daughters had value, and that families wanted to have both daughters and sons. A mother of four sons and five daughters in a poor family said: ‘Someone in the village suggested that we should send one or two of my daughters away, but my mother-in-law berated that person, because my husband had been adopted and the family wanted to have as many children as possible. She said we wouldn’t send them away ‘even if we were dying of hunger’. A man from another family also refused requests from two families who wanted to adopt one of his daughters.

Decisions about adopting sons in or out were complex and challenging, given sons’ value and importance for continuing the family line. A man from a relatively wealthy Chan family said that his family was unusual because they had adopted no sons for several generations, unlike his related neighbours. The Yau genealogy and statements made by people of both surnames testify to the precariousness of maintaining family lines. In some cases, this resulted in lineage branches with very few members, a source of potential conflict with regard to property matters, as profits from lineage property are divided equally among the branches.

In adopting a son, the fundamental decision was whether he would come from within or outside the lineage. Sons brought in from outside had to be bought. One man explained his purchase by his parents because their two sons had died, the second by drowning during a flood. His adoption was called ‘replacement exchange’ (帶親), because he replaced the son who had died. He compared this to tihn fong, or ‘replacement’ marriage. The term he used for such adoptions by purchase was hohbaaujai(荷包仔), ‘lotus-wrapped son’, and the woman who had adopted the baby girl from Sha Tin referred to her as a hohbaauneuih (荷包女).³⁵

We wrote earlier of a woman who had lost six of the seven children she bore, a truly hard fate, made worse by the fact that her husband then took a second wife, whom he favoured. Ultimately, she adopted a son. He was six years old when she adopted him, and as his birth family was very poor, her family gave them several hundred dollars and some rice. He was a good son, and remained with her, unlike some others, she said.

Adoption between descent lines within the lineage is called gwo gaai (過繼) and was quite common in the pre-war period. The Yau genealogy shows that among the 80 men in the first six generations in Tsuen Wan, there were 19 sons recorded as dying young, ten childless men who adopted sons from within the lineage, and two from unrecorded sources. Six men remained childless, four at the time when emigration was common. There were various possibilities for adoption within a lineage (過房).³⁶ One was between brothers. An older brother had the right to adopt the first son of a younger brother, whereas a younger brother could adopt a younger son of the older, if he had one.

A Chan man said that they preferred to adopt from a brother, as he is their own flesh and bones, but that there were potential complexities. For example, the oldest son of a younger brother might be nearly grown, unwilling to live with his uncle, and his father reluctant to give him up. He might, therefore, continue to live with his birth father, but as the son of the adopting father. If he was his birth father’s only son, he might continue both lines.

Not everyone agreed that adoption within the lineage was a preferable form of adoption, however, because the relationship was so close and might lead to disputes over property, so some people preferred to buy sons from outside. Such boys were called lo jai (羅仔),³⁷ and families tried to get them while still young.

There was the risk of conflict around all cases of adoption, and some people gossiped about adopted sons behind their backs, referring to them as ‘wild son’ (野仔), or ‘bought son’ (買仔). It was common knowledge which men had been adopted. Even if their adopting parents didn’t tell them about their status, some people looked down on them. When children fought with them, they might call them derogatory names. Another risk was that they might leave when grown, after spending the property they had inherited from their adopting fathers, without meeting their obligations to maintain the family line and care for their parents’ souls.

Another kind of adoption was significant and may remain so: the adoption of a brother’s son to a man who had died childless. The older brother of a man whom we knew had died while in his teens, probably in about 1930, and still unmarried. When the man’s wife consulted a spirit medium she was told by the deceased brother, very clearly, that he wanted to have a son and grandsons. She told him that their second son had been adopted to him; they had already decided this.³⁸ He was incredulous, so they wrote it on a paper and burned it to inform him. This made him very happy, and he said he would ensure that the young man prospered. He had been an outstanding scholar, as is the son adopted to him.

In most families there was one person who was responsible for managing the household finances. This system probably came into effect once Tsuen Wan people became involved in a cash economy.³⁹ It seems that this role was often, but not always, filled by women. Some people said that women were more trustworthy, and less likely to smoke, drink, or gamble. In a family in which there were two women of the same generation and appropriate age, then the decision might have been based on capability.

Women’s lack of formal education did not prevent them from capably carrying out this responsibility. All employed members of the household, married and unmarried, were expected to turn over their earnings so that she could manage the household budget, make financial decisions, and distribute money to members for their day-to-day needs. If there was some special occasion in a younger woman’s natal family, or she needed new clothes, she had to request these funds. Employed women kept back only a small amount of their earnings for themselves, if they kept any at all.⁴⁰ Those who kept some back apparently did so only if they believed that the financial manager was not meeting their needs: not saving enough food for them, for example, or not buying them new clothes at New Year. They also might keep back a little at times when they were engaged in high-paying work, such as carrying steel.

The manager maintained her position until she became too old to do so, and a member of the next generation was old enough to take it over. The process of selection seemed to be a natural one, with the woman who was the obvious successor, normally the most senior, then taking charge. This gave her considerable responsibility. She had to make crucial decisions affecting the entire household, such as when and how pigs should be sold. The purchaser would come to the house and bargain with her. She might also participate in a rotating loan association if the family needed to borrow money. In a household with more than one couple, men liked their own wives to be the managers, as this gave them more power in the household and influenced how much they could keep back from their earnings for personal expenses, such as cigarettes and hospitality. A man’s own wife would likely allow him more money in order to maintain his good will and loyalty to her. As younger wives had less chance of attaining this position, their power in the household tended to remain less.

The financial manager, if a woman, did not control property matters, however, as these were men’s affairs. The only exception was if there was no man present, due to emigration or death. In that case she would have to manage the property, despite the fact that it was in the man’s name, and could buy or sell fields or houses, or arrange a son’s wedding. There was the very occasional financial manager, however, who secretly kept money back and accumulated it over time, little by little. She could do this if her husband was working elsewhere but sending back money, and by eating very frugally. Eventually she might have enough to buy some property, such as a house. Her husband might not find out, and the property would not be included when the family divided, as it belonged to her alone. Ultimately, however, it would be passed on to her son.

Women did have personal property that was theirs alone. This included their dowry items, gifts from their group of ‘sisters’ when they were married, gifts of money they received, and any gifts given to them by their natal families. Money that they had been able to set aside was theirs, and it was called by the Hakka term se-koi (私頦), private money, a term that men would not use.⁴¹

Married women referred to their natal households as their ngoihga (外家): their ‘outside’ households.⁴² This term reflects the fact that once a woman had been married out, she could never again be a member of her natal household, and explains why young women learned bridal laments or, even more impressive, learned to improvise them so they could cry from their hearts. When a bride lamented, her mother almost certainly would lament in response, or at least weep. Before the occupation, brides were young and frightened, as they had no idea where they were going, with whom they would live, and what their futures would be. Almost certainly they knew all too well that the status of young married women was low, and that they would have no power to make their lives easier unless they were fortunate enough to have exceptionally kind mothers-in-law or sympathetic sisters-in-law.

Another fact was absolute, however, and this was that they had the right to maintain ties with their natal families. Even the strictest mother-in-law could not prevent them from visiting on special occasions and staying overnight. During the brief time they were gone, their mothers-in-law had somehow to manage what they could of their workload. Mothers-in-law rarely visited their natal families, as their parents would have died, and members of the next generation should visit them instead. As one woman said:

Once your parents are dead it is not meaningful to go back. When they are alive they will ask about you, your husband, and your children. This is true. In the past, mothers were very devoted to their daughters. If your mother-in-law treated you badly you could go and tell your mother. She wouldn’t have known the mother-in-law was so bad. The mother would pity the daughter. How would a sister-in-law pity her? A sister-in-law would expect her to leave after one night. Her mother would want her to stay an additional night.

There were only a few factors that could keep daughters from making these visits. One was distance, and a woman who married from Bao’an or another distant place was unlikely to be able to return, especially as most were illiterate at that time. If her natal home was as close as Sha Tin, for example, she might leave early in the morning and return the same day. Those from nearby might make brief, frequent visits, as was the case with the woman born in about 1890 in Chuen Lung. She could stop in to see her mother and have something to eat when she was out cutting grass. Once a woman had children, she might not have been able to return if her ngoihga was so far away that she would have to stay overnight.

Another impediment was if the bride had somehow lost contact with her natal family. This happened to the small daughter-in-law whose marriage at the age of 12 we described above. Her father had died, as had her younger brother and sister. Her mother arranged her marriage, and she was able to return at New Year for a visit (called san daam 新擔) when she was first married, with gifts of pork and chahgwo. Then her mother remarried two years later, leaving the girl with no way of contacting her, while her brothers went to live with relatives. She had three paternal aunts, one of whom lived in Kwai Chung and had been asking people about her. By chance they met when the girl was carrying kerosene at the Texaco Oil Depot. They both wept, and she learned where her aunt lived. From then on she knew how and where to contact these members of her ngoihga, which gave her new-found power in her husband’s family. She had the acknowledged right to visit them at festivals and special occasions, carrying gifts of festival foods, wine, and pork, and staying overnight. Women generally stayed one or two nights, but at New Year they might stay longer, from the fourth until the tenth of the year. The principal constraint was that they had to return on the specified day, or their mothers-in-law would scold them.

Mothers-in-law who forbade these visits were seen to be violating their daughters-in-law’s rights. One with an especially harsh mother-in-law asked to return to her ngoihga at New Year, and the mother-in-law refused and locked her in the house. Others told her that she had the right to go, but that she herself should buy pork to take. It is noteworthy that pork was among the gifts taken by women to their natal families, given its cultural significance and the fact that it was a luxury food. When they left, their natal families sent reciprocal gifts with them for their husbands’ families.

Women from her ngoihga also visited her during celebrations and festivals, when it was expected that they be given a generous meal. These visits were more likely to happen if they were relatively young, and the distance was not too great. One woman said that her father’s sister who lived in Sha Tin made the journey over the mountain passes only if she had problems, such as sick children. That aunt would bring them rice and sweet potatoes, because by then they had stopped growing them.

When the younger woman made a return visit, the gifts of food she brought could be used as offerings to worship her natal ancestors, although this was done on a table at her aunt’s home, not in the ancestral hall. The ancestors’ spirits were invited from the hall to receive the offerings. The niece could not participate, because once she was married she could not worship her own ancestors. There was one important exception: if there was no one to worship them in her natal family, then she could make offerings to them at her husband’s home, but only outside the door, as his ancestral spirits and earth god would not let them enter.

When a woman died, members of her ngoihga were notified by her husband’s relatives, unless she had specified otherwise. They took special notices written on white paper to her relatives, who burned them after receiving and reading them, and gave lucky money to the messenger. Both men and women came to her funeral. When they arrived, the woman’s sons and grandsons knelt outside the door to receive them, and her ngoihga relatives had to raise them up. Then those women would begin to lament, followed by women in her husband’s family.⁴³

Funeral laments were heart-breaking, reminding those who heard them of their own losses. Other women would weep and might lament in turn, while men often were moved to tears at the sound of the women’s unrestrained voices, half singing, half wailing, often improvising as they expressed their feelings, mourning their loss and calling to the person who had died at the end of each line. The laments are called haam (喊) oi or gew oi. Gew and oi are Hakka words, haam and gew meaning ‘to weep for’ and oi meaning ‘mother’.⁴⁴ Women lamented the dead at particular points in the rites, but also when they were moved to do so by their own feelings.

Laments were also called haam naahnmehng (喊難命), weeping for bad fortune, and women often used them to express their misery at their hard fates, and even to air their grievances against others.⁴⁵ Whether they were heard was less important than the opportunity this gave to release their pent-up feelings. For example, a woman married into a poor household, and whose mother had died, might lament her:

Having a bad fate, I was married into a poor household.

Today I come; I have lost my mother.

I came and I saw my mother’s tablet.

I have lost my mother and I am miserable.

My mother listened to others

and married out this struggling girl with a cursed fate.

I am so poor that I carry loads until my shoulders look like rough granite.

If I had been married better, I would not be so wretched now.

My feet are full of holes like a rice-drying basket.

When I came for special occasions and festivals my mother came to

greet and caress me.

Today I have lost my mother, who came to greet and caress

this person with an accursed fate.⁴⁶

If women wept and then told her that her sisters-in-law would take her mother’s place, she might answer:

My sister-in-law acting as my mother is not like my real mother

Whenever I had any problem, my mother would ask about me.

When she was 14, many years previous, Chan Shek-ying heard a relative’s lament for her father’s sister’s husband (daaihgujeuhng 大姑丈), expressing her bitterness over the deaths of her children and her husband’s neglect of her in favour of his second wife:⁴⁷

My daaihgujeuhng you are at peace.

You have a son and everything is fine, daaihgujeuhng.

Daaihgujeuhng could never eat all his food, could never spend all his money.

I met daaihgujeuhng at the end of the street, and asked if his wife was well.

How could I be well? I have only forty dollars a month.

If I were like other people, I would have a good fate.

I should have children pulling at my shirt,

children clinging to my legs.

If my children were still alive,

I should have three pulling at my clothes on the right,

three pulling at my clothes on the left.

My daaihgujeuhng also had a second wife.

He as a husband treated them both equally.

Towards the second he showed no special favour.

At one funeral we witnessed, the first wife of the deceased, whose husband had left her for another woman, lamented at his coffin, although she was not in mourning. She was said to have been accusing him of lechery.

The theme of encountering the reality of death and loss was important in women’s laments for their mothers and other senior relatives. For example, a woman might begin her lament for her father’s older sister (daaihgu 大姑):

I come today to lament my daaihgu.

When I came for festivals my daaihgu laughed ‘ha ha’.

Tonight, a white paper says my daaihgu has passed away.

I came to my aunt’s door and she was not here.

A daughter-in-law might include in her lament:

Every morning when I open the door my son could not call his grandmother.

Your grandson and baby now have no grandmother and could not call her.

In the morning I take out one less pair of chopsticks.

In another lament, a daughter blamed the young daughter-in-law for her father’s untimely death, and the daughter-in-law was skilled enough to rebut (bok 駁) her in kind. Antiphonal, competitive lamenting critical of others was characteristic of funerals, and was reminiscent of mountain songs in the improvisational skills it required.⁴⁸

Women were expected to lament for their senior relatives, and those who could not, or did so inadequately, were looked down on. By the 1960s, however, the ability to do so was being lost, as the context for learning this skill had disappeared.⁴⁹

We knew of two cases in which women, with their husbands, had given support to their natal families in the pre-war period, although generally they kept their affairs separate. A Fan lineage man had married a woman from a poor family in Sam Tung Uk. Her mother sometimes came to eat with them and lived with them in her later years to help care for the children after his mother had died.

In another case, a woman from Kwai Chung who married a Kwan Mun Hau man in about 1905 had lost her mother when she was a child of seven. She had no brothers or surviving sisters. Her father was poor, and worked at cutting firewood. She helped him as she grew older. After she had married into a relatively well-to-do family, her father was too old to work. He had his own house, and she supported him by giving him some of the money that she earned by cutting fuel. Her husband and mother-in-law knew that she did this, and her husband also occasionally gave him money, which he came to collect every week.

In cases in which an old couple had no male descendants and no means of support, they might live with a married daughter and then leave to her whatever property they had. The woman described above, who had supported her father in his old age, inherited his property, as there were no men left in his lineage branch. This gave her the responsibility for being the chief mourner at his funeral and ensuring that his soul was worshipped. When she grew too old to do this, the responsibility devolved onto her son, together with the inheritance. His responsibility for the soul of his mother’s father was considered to be unusual, but it was a logical outcome of the situation. There was a somewhat similar case in the late 1960s, when an elderly couple had two daughters but no surviving sons, their adopted son having died. Their closest descendant was their deceased nephew’s widow (侄新抱), who cared for them in their old age. They died within two weeks of each other. She was then responsible for being the chief mourner at their funerals, carrying their tablets and performing the rites, and inheriting their house in return.

The Yau Luen Fong Ancestral Trust was established this way in 1837:

[The legendary history of the family and its growth]

It is true that the branches of a tree are reproduced naturally, just as other life grows naturally. Likewise, the members of a family increase in numbers. As a result, it becomes difficult to have sufficient resources to support them.

The head of a family must therefore think prudently. I considered the fact that my elder brother and I both came from Lufeng and Guanlan, and then settled together in Tsuen Wan. As we worked hard, we earned enough to support our households. Later on, my brother Kwun passed away. I worked with my sister-in-law and our descendants to carry on our business, and we earned a lot of money. My brother Kwun had three sons and I had five sons. All of them have married, and thus our worries have been lessened. As we are now almost eighty years old, I sought my sister-in-law’s consent to divide the majority of our property into eight equal shares, for the benefit of our future descendants. Once this has been confirmed, no one should be excluded, and our prosperity should be maintained. We should make a general copy of this document, and eight additional copies for the eight branches to hold in safe custody.

Dated Daoguang sixteenth year [1837] second month sixth day good hour.

Set up by Sun Man and Madam Wong.

Witnessed by paternal cousins Yee Pong and Tak Chiu and maternal cousin Cheung Wing-wah

Deed written by Cheung Ting-yiu

This article was copied from the original by Yau Yuen Cheung in 1925.