This collection features rhymes sung by Chi Tai, a senior villager from Shui Hau. The songs revolve around romantic relationships, customs, and light-hearted banter about village life. In the past, villagers would sing while working, either to call out to friends and companions or to amuse themselves and ease their sorrows. Some of these rhymes were sung only on specific festive occasions, such as weddings. Some lyrics were even bold and direct in their flirtation with the opposite sex; Chi Tai jokingly refers to these as “risqué songs.”
Founded in the early 1950s with the approval of the Director of Education, Shui Hau School provided education for children in Shui Hau Village. The land for the school was donated by members of the Chan clan of the village. It had originally been the site of the clan’s ancestral hall, which had fallen into disrepair. Villagers raised $500 to convert it into a school, while the Education Department contributed the remaining cost of $7,800 needed for construction. Completed in 1953 and opened the following year, the school building was a standalone
structure with a pitched roof, measuring 25 feet in length and 20 feet in width. In later years,
teachers, students and villagers developed recreational facilities on the adjacent open space,
including a basketball court and a sandpit.
As you make your way from South Lantau Road toward the sandflats in Shui Hau, where there
is a “mirror of the sky”, it is hard to miss the wetlands that have formed from abandoned farmland. In this humid environment, yellow cattle, egrets and a variety of amphibians and reptiles have found a place to thrive. On the surface, Shui Hau is naturally blessed — it is never short of water. Yet historical
accounts indicate that even this “mouth of water” once faced a period of water scarcity. That
period marked the end of Shui Hau’s self-sufficient agricultural way of life.
Unlike many villages in the New Territories and on Lantau Island, Shui Hau has few structures connected to traditional religious practices and customs. Other than the Chan Ancestral Hall, Shui Hau Village has only a shrine dedicated to Tai Wong Yeh, the Earth God Altar, and the Stone Gate. All three use stones as objects of worship.
In their 1983 book, The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong, internationally renowned marine ecologists Brian Morton and John Morton wrote: “Of all soft inter-tidal shores these are the richest in life; and of the beaches visited in Hong Kong it is perhaps the sand-flats of Shui
Hau on south Lantau that are the most attractive and engrossing.
As the saying goes: “Live by the mountains and eat from the mountains; live by the sea and eat from the sea.” While interviewing the locals, the Shui Hau Diary team frequently heard mentions of traditional foods. Beyond their links to festivals and seasons, the ingredients and preparation methods of these delicacies are infused with Punti and Hakka culinary traditions, which eventually became an integral part of Shui Hau’s food culture.