The sound of the sea on the Sai Kung shore echoes centuries of history and legend.

words marissa brodney

“Who has the water has the power,” declares Victor Lee, lifelong Sai Kung resident and managing director of Sai Kung’s Victor Workshop. Lee’s family lived through WWII here, and Victor has grown up with the town. He now sits in his store just a few blocks away from a waterfront that bustles with fishermen and elderly residents, many of whom spend their days out on the docks telling stories. Indeed, Sai Kung fishing village seems to be swimming in stories that form a great brackish mix of history and legend, as Lee very well knows. “All knowledge is from the old people,” he confides. “I go to the shore and talk to them often, that’s why I opened a shop here.”

But just what kind of knowledge? Sai Kung residents know a great deal about their town and will tell you about the history behind nearly every place name and parking structure, if you ask. And what is most striking is just how much of this history seems to have risen from the waters, washed into the stuff of narrative. Lee shares that the story behind the name Sai Kung stretches back to the time when a Ming Dynasty emperor sent a high official westward through the South China Sea. When this official travelled past Sai Kung, residents brought him gifts. As he then travelled westward on his journey, he gave presents to the leaders of countries he encountered. In Chinese, ‘Sai’ means ‘west’ and ‘kung’ means ‘to give’ – to go to the west to give something.

Centuries before China’s ceding of Hong Kong to Britain, Hakka and Tanka peoples made their homes in Sai Kung. Much of the Sai Kung population descends from those people, and villages thrive in the area surrounding bustling Sai Kung town. Sai Kung has its roots in rural settlements developed by farmers and fishermen with their lime kilns and Tanka junks, and grew up in an age when pirates roved the nearby waters and strategically-designed Hakka villages made use of fortress-like stone walls to keep sea invaders out.

Guarding against such dangers, Sai Kung developed and cemented a connection to Tin Hau, goddess of the sea and motherly protector of fishermen and others tied to the water. The Tin Hau temple at Fat Tong Mun facing Joss House Bay is the oldest Tin Hau temple in Hong Kong, and remains a popular destination for Tin Hau worshippers. Legend has it that Tin Hau, born as Lim Bek-niu during the Song Dynasty, used to wear red and stand by the seashore to help guide fishing boats home. One night, when her father and brothers were at sea during a dangerous typhoon, she fell into a trancelike dream in which she saw her father and brothers drowning. She managed to grab onto her brothers but lost hold of her father, whom she had briefly managed to support in her mouth. When her two brothers returned home the following day, unfortunately without their father, they reported that they had been miraculously held up in the sea amidst the raging storm.

Temples like the famous Tin Hau structure at Fat Tong Mun may testify to a centuries-old devotion to the Taoist goddess, but Tin Hau’s presence has not disappeared with the passing of years. Sai Kung resident Cindy Liu, owner of flower shop Cindy Florist, moved to Sai Kung from Kowloon nearly 25 years ago and built her business after learning how to sell flowers for a friend’s father in Sai Kung’s wet market. As she explains, “Tin Hau protects the fishermen, the Sai Kung people who live around here. The fishermen, they go to Tin Hau. Every time they need to go very far to catch fish, they must go to Tin Hau and pray to ask
her to protect them.” She adds that while today many no longer believe in Tin Hau as a religious figure, the goddess’s role as a component of what gives Sai Kung its character is still there.

And she is, in quite a big way. Artist/architect Raymond Fung is currently working to complete a massive sculptural undertaking that speaks to the strength of the Tin Hau story in Sai Kung. In what has become known as the ‘Visual Corridor’ project, Fung is constructing a series of 13 bell towers that will be spaced in a straight line stretching from the small Tin Hau temple in Old Sai Kung to the pier on the South China Sea. Representing the district’s 13 temples, they would form a visual corridor for Tin Hau to follow from her temple to the water. Two towers have already been completed, with plans for the other 11 in the works. Judy Love-Eastham, Sai Kung resident of 11 years, is founder and publisher of Explore Sai Kung, an informational resource on the area and its happenings. She explains that the small Tin Hau temple now set back in Old Sai Kung a few minutes’ walk away from the shore once sat directly on the water. After the flooding of the High Island Reservoir in the 1970s following years of recurring droughts, Sai Kung’s coastline changed as land was reclaimed to house residents of the 10 villages displaced by the floodwaters. Hence the current division between Old Sai Kung and New Sai Kung, and a Tin Hau temple artificially distanced from the sea and the fishermen it was built to protect.

Sai Kung is home to its fair share of water-related legends and stories that are, shall we say, a bit otherworldly. Tiu Keng Leng (translated as Hanging Noose Ridge), for instance, might just be home to a ghost in addition to an MTR stop. A popular myth says that Canadian businessman and Hong Kong Milling Company founder Albert Rennie committed suicide there in 1908 by simultaneously hanging himself from his failed mill while jumping into the sea – an act which would have required some tactical manoeuvring considering the distance between the mill and the sea was a good three kilometres! But no matter, the name of the site was changed from Chiu Keng Leng (Viewing Mirror Ridge - because the sea looks like a mirror when calm) to Tiu Keng Leng in accordance with the sensationalized account of Rennie’s actual suicide-by-drowning.

And then there is a story of subterfuge and sorcery we learned from Kevin Sinclair, a writer who has called Sai Kung home since the 1960s. Sinclair makes it his business and hobby to know the ins and outs of the Sai Kung he loves, and is eager to share what he has gathered of Sai Kung’s unusual history and stories. As the tale goes, Tat Mun Chau, the Island of One-Armed Men (which earned the name because of its population of one-armed fishermen who forgot to throw their fish bombs into the water before they exploded), was home to the last sorcery murder here – perpetrated by village residents against a Chinese man from Canada. When this man appeared on the isolated island in the early 1970s and announced himself a sorcerer with dangerous powers, the superstitious villagers believed him. As time passed, the entire village was forced to live in fear as they were extorted and taken advantage of… until the day they saw their chance to end the foreigner’s reign of terror, and took it. The angry villagers managed to tie up the Canadian and kill him by throwing him into the water, consequently informing the inquiring police they had just rid themselves of a sorcerer.

Many others who sailed the high seas to Hong Kong found their way to Sai Kung. Sinclair verges on a kind of absurdist laughter as he recounts the story of a band of Italian priests who decided to lead a mission to British North Borneo in the 1800s, but ended up high-tailing it out of there after some unfortunate run-ins with the native Dayaks – sea pirates, who practised cannibalism. They arrived in Sai Kung before it became the British New Territories, and the church they established at Yim Tin Tsai in 1878 is now the oldest surviving Catholic house of worship in Hong Kong.

Another chapter in Sai Kung’s history that has given birth to its fair share of stories concerns the Japanese occupation during World War II. Sai Kung, like many places in the New Territories, was not exempt from the atrocities committed against Hong Kong residents during the period. Many brave Sai Kung residents were undeterred by stories of torture and execution and decided to join the Dongjiang Guerrilla Force, a band of resistance fighters based in Sai Kung. The Dongjiang trained villagers to defend themselves and co-operated with the British army to liberate downed pilots and prisoners of war. Judy Love-Eastham says a vessel of the British Army Aid Group (BAAG), an organization that worked with the Dongjiang to help prisoners escape, provide them with medical supplies, and collect intelligence, used to take off from a dock near her house at To Kwa Ping. Wong Shek pier was another departure point for BAAG vessels, which took escapees to Allied Command Headquarters in Chongqing where they would be debriefed and either sent home or to fight somewhere else in Asia.

The Dongjiang were connected to the Sai Kung waters in more ways than one, as David Faure explains at length in his article Saikung, The Making of The District and Its Experience During World War II. At a time when disrupted trade routes between Hong Kong and Southeast Asia created rice shortages in Hong Kong, Sai Kung guerrillas helped “smugglers” import rice from China via waterways like the East River. By controlling the sea route that brought food to Hong Kong residents, the Dongjiang helped ensure their survival. The Dongjiang itself has truthfully become the stuff of legend, and you can visit Sai Kung’s memorial at Tsam Chuk Wan to these fighters and those other residents who lost their lives under the occupation.

Unfortunately, the presence of these brave resistance fighters doesn’t replace the loss of life that Sai Kung suffered during the period. Which means, in this story-laden seaside town, that decades-old tales of sorcery and century-old accounts of suicide are coupled with contemporary sightings of restless ghosts seeking closure after their deaths at the hands of the Japanese. Victor Lee shares one account of such a sighting at the Sai Kung kindergarten, where the area headquarters of the Japanese military police once stood. “I heard Japanese caught young people around 20, 30 years old,” he says. “They killed them, so a lot of people were killed up on the hill of the kindergarten. When they dug up the soil, there were a lot of skeletons there. I heard from my sister, who studies there, that she saw a ‘ghost fire’.” And then there are small oddities like the apartment building at the corner of Sai Sha and Tai Mong Tsai roads which has stood unoccupied for years… Love-Eastham explains some residents swear it is inhabited by ghosts.

However, to speak of a history shaped by the waves is not to imply that the Sai Kung of today is wholly dependent on the water that helped give it form. Villages once isolated are now served by roads and ferries, Sai Sha Road now connects Sai Kung to Sha Tin, and Kowloon is now linked to Sai Kung via Hiram’s Highway, which earned its name because the British general overseeing its construction by prisoners of war during the Japanese occupation just couldn’t stop eating American Hiram sausages.

Today’s diverse international population has added to, not taken away from, the feeling of near-familial closeness that drew many to Sai Kung in the first place. “Here,” says Cindy Liu, “if I ask you something then you will talk about your son, your grandson… Sai Kung is more free, and there’s trust.” And that means many feel comfortable sharing not only their livelihoods but also their diverse stories with one another; and that, in turn, makes Sai Kung fertile ground for legends in the making.

If you’re looking to learn more about Sai Kung, you might want to check out these informational resources:

Visit Explore Sai Kung (http://www.exploresaikung.com/) to learn more about Sai Kung’s history and what’s going on in the area. You can also book boat/kayaking/snorkling /diving trips here at 2243 1083 or boattrips@exploresaikung.com.

The section of the Sai Kung District Council’s website called “Travel in Sai Kung” (http://www.travelinsaikung.org.hk/
english/intro/index.aspx) is an official resource for information on Sai Kung past and present.

You also might want to read the book History of Hong Kong 1842 – 1984, edited by David Faure (Tamarind Books, Hong Kong 1995). Here you’ll find Faure’s essay on Sai Kung during WWII, as well as other essays illuminating interesting aspects of Hong Kong’s history.

Victor Workshop:
G/F, 30 Yee Kuk Street, Sai Kung Town Center, 2791 9990.
Cindy Florist:
G/F, 1A-3 Tak Lung Front St, 2792 9889.