MODEL VILLAGE, KOWLOON TSAI, HONG KONG
JAMES HAYES
Dr. Patrick Hase made mention of Model Village in his article Beside the Yainen: Nga Tsin Wai Village, published in Vol. 39 of the journal, pp. 1-82. As stated therein, this was a village created by the Japanese military authorities during their wartime occupation of the Colony for families displaced by the extension of Kai Tak airfield from the central Kowloon area near Nga Tsin Wai.
In 1966, I went to Model Village, and spoke with a number of persons living there. Some had been among the original inhabitants, whilst others had moved there after the war. Their accounts throw further light on this interesting place, and its wartime origins. Together with photographs taken at the time of my visit, they fill out the information given to Dr. Hase by the Nga Tsin Wai elders. On the basis of notes taken during our conversations, I have let the Model Village people speak for themselves. Ages are given by the Chinese reckoning, usually one or two years less than by Western computation.
My Informants' Account of Themselves and of Model Village
'I am Yip Choi, a Hakka, born in April 1897 in Tarn Shui of Waichow County. When I was five or six years old, my father took me to Po Kong Village in central Kowloon. At the time of the extension of the airfield, I was living in a stone house in the village. It was ordered to be demolished and we were told to go over to Model Village. We had to help the contractor who was given the job of building the houses there by the Japanese authorities. There was no pay, but those persons who worked on the site got one catty of rice per day. This area was originally known as Shi Ling Village (Lion Ridge Village) but the Japanese commander in charge of the rehousing operation said this was not a peaceful name, and changed it to Model Village. I also have a vegetable field at the village, and am still farming.'
T am Madam Ng Lin Tai, Cantonese, aged 77. My father's family (Ng) was originally from Ng Uk Village, near Nam Tau, but I know that my father and grandfather were born in Kowloon Tsai Village (I am not sure about the older generations). We kept up the Nam Tau connection, as my mother was a Yip from Chan Uk Village, also at Nam Tau. There were over ten families of Ng in Kowloon Tsai, but we had no ancestral hall there. There were two parts to the village, an upper and lower part - Sheung and Ha Wai. We lived in the Ha Wai There was a Tin Hau temple at the village, and we had puppet shows on the goddess' birthday every year when I was young. We also had a Ta Chiu in the village every ten years.'
'I was married to a Li of Sheung Sha Po Village when I was 18. My husband was a revenue officer in the Customs service. We had three houses in the village, but they were all demolished for the airfield extension. We were sent first to a vacant tenement house in Cheung On Street [not identified in a modern street guide, but very likely to have been in nearby suburban Kowloon] whose owner had left. We were there for 4-6 months, before moving to Model Village.'
'I am Shing Sung, now 55, a Hakka. I was born at Nam Tau and came to Kowloon when I was 18 to join my uncle who owned a wooden house at Tsat Kan Uk [The Seven Houses], a place north of old Kowloon Tsai Village. I later built a wooden hut there for myself. 1 came to Model Village after the war. I remember that there were private fields in the general area, as well as government land. People named Fung, Hui and Tsang owned fields there before the war.'
'1 am Madam Law Mui, aged 57, also Hakka. I was born at Nam Tau, and came to Kowloon when I was 20, to marry Shing Sung's elder brother - also to The Seven Houses. We farmed government land there, for which we had a permit and paid fees, both before and after the war. There were many people at Ap Tsai Wu (Duckling Pond), the name of the general area where we lived and farmed. They were scattered here and there, because we were all vegetable farmers and you built your own house beside your own plot of land. Like Shing Sung, we moved to Model Village after the war.'
'I am Madam Kwai-fung, aged 64. I am a Hakka, born at Sha Po Tsai, Kowloon, where my family had lived for several generations. My father kept a store in Lower Sha Po, near Blacksmiths' Street in the Kowloon City suburb. When 1 was 22, [ was married to Ng Sam-hong, a punti, of Old Kak Hang Village, next to Nga Tsin Wai, when we had gone to live in a newly repaired house. We had two houses of our own at the time the Japanese ordered the demolition of houses for the airfield extension. Each family was allocated only one house at Model Village, no matter how many of the houses in its ownership had been demolished. Our house here is still quite good - it's still standing after twenty years."
Further Information
I then bad a joint meeting with the five persons named above, at which the following facts were established. The Japanese had allowed for 125 houses to be built at Model Village. There was not one contractor, but many. Dispossessed villagers could work for the contractors and receive a daily payment of rice. Mr. Yip and his daughter had worked for the contractor on their house; so had Madam Li Ng and her son, and sometimes her daughter in lieu; whilst Madam Ng Tai had also helped to build her home. They were glad of the rice, not having enough to eat at the time. These houses were built in pairs, with one party wall. Each measured 15 feet by 12, giving a irontai span of 30 hang (feet?): but, obviously, at leas! one of the 125 had been built as a single dwelling.
Mr. Yip and Madam Ng were still living in their houses, but Madam Li's home had been burned down in a fire, like many others over the years. Some had fallen into disrepair. Only about twenty of the houses built in 1943 were in their original state. The two Shing brothers, who came to Model Village postwar, had built their own modest homes in the village. Another man present had bought one of the original Japanese houses.
It was agreed that the 125 houses were quite insufficient for the number of families that had been dispossessed. This corroborates what the Nga Tsin Wai people told Patrick Hase. Some of the hapless "overflow" had moved to the New Territories, Karo Tin was mentioned for one group, but my informants did not know where the rest might have gone.
Information from Other Persons.
At various meetings with other residents of the villages of central Kowloon, more information about Model Village and the clearance operation for the airfield extension was provided, shedding further light on the events of that time
It seems that the Japanese authorities, strict though they were, did take the initiative which led to the provision of Model Village, and that it was they who had appointed contractors to carry out construction, and had allowed those involved to work on the project and to receive a payment in rice for a day's work.
Such payments were received on other projects of the time. One such was the construction of the new stormwater nullah that ran alongside Nga Tsin Wai - referred to in Patrick Hase's article on the village. Two ladies from Ngau Tau Kok village in East Kowloon, interviewed in 1967, had both worked as earth coolies on it, and also on the demolition of houses and the lowering of small hills for the extended airfield. Stones from the houses had been used to build the nullah. The two had carried the 100 piculs of soil and stones needed to earn one catty of rice, but said that men who could manage 140 or 150 piculs would earn proportionately more. The working day was 7 am until 12 noon, and then 1-5 pm.
At that time, rice was precious, and more useful than money. As one village woman told me (born 1880), "you could buy 40 catties of lice for a dollar when 1 was young, but during the Occupation, one catty cost two dollars - if you could get it.' Another villager, one of the elders of Nga Tsin Wai, born in 1884, said that 'people would sell a whole roof of tiles and wooden beams to contractors, for two dollars.'
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