Types of village stone tablets
- Crowd-funded common infrastructure, such as paths, bridges, schools and temples, which reflect the community network
- Clan donations for ancestral hall renovations, which reflect the status of the clan
- Arbitration rulings, which reflect the social context at that time
- Lot boundary demarcations and directions
The most common type of tablets is the first type. Villagers of the past treats donation as a method to make merit. When one has made merit, one has to leave evidence for it to show other humans or even god. Another function of the tablet is act as a form of report to document the activities and spendings of the donation committee.
To take Kat O as an example, the tablet about a short concrete bridge next to the police standpoint documented the origins, name of the donors, donation amount, names of village committee members responsible for construction, and the year of construction. Information on the tablet reveals the types of industries (fishery, boat manufacturing, grocery stores), national identity (Republic of China), names of influential villagers, and even an estimation of the economic statuses of the villagers (by looking at the number of commercial entities on the island, total donation amount etc.). The tablets are important parts of studying village history.
There are also stone tablets related to road construction. There is one of such tablets near Fan Shui Au at the Lai Chi Wo – Kuk Po old trail, which documents names of donors originating from different villagers within the Ten Alliances. The variety of names not only reveals the close relationship between villagers, but also the prominence of the road to the surrounding villagers. It reveals that Sha Tau Kok was once a commercial and political center to the neighboring Hakka villages instead of the sparsely-populated border town it is now.
If you have a chance to board the boat connecting Kat O to Sha Tau Kok (named Kat O Tin Hau Temple Welfare Boat), you would find a tablet at the front of the boat commemorating the crowd funding process for boat making. The donation currencies include Hong Kong Dollars, British Pound, Australian Dollars. The writing at the end of the tablet indicates that the donations come from England, Ireland, the Netherlands, Denmark, Sweden, Belgium and Australia. Although villagers of Kat O have mostly emigrated, they are still engaged in village activities, and they are eager to help when there are needs.
The second type of tablets documents the construction processes of ancestral shrines. Most of them simply note the names of donors and their contributions, yet the simple information could hide complex relationships. In the ancestral shrines of large tribes in Sheung Shui and Yuen Long, at times only people who have contributed to the shrines and have their name documented on the tablets count as part of the tribe, and have the right to inherit properties from their ancestors.
The third type of tablets are exhibited in temples for everyone. Such as the 「奉兩廣總督閣部堂大人批行給示勒石永遠遵照額例碑」(“Stone-tablet-inscribed decree to be forever abided by, as delegated by the Guangzhou governor”) in Kat O Tin Hau Temple. When there are disputes in the village that the villagers cannot settle within themselves, the issues will have to be resolved by the court. The cases are not merely judged based on a legal basis but also influenced by relationships, thus the verdicts might be reevaluated in a few years with influences from new officials or the senior administration. The back and forth could last for decades. When there is a final verdict, villagers would carve it on a stone tablet, so as to settle the dispute among the next generations.
The last type of tablet is smaller in size. Similar to the functions of the famous Victoria boundary stone, they mark the boundaries of villages to avoid land disputes. Such plinths, such as the one at Kai Kuk Shue Ha, reveal the territories of the various clans in the village.
Direction tablets point the way to different villages, which might be old names of villages (e.g. Old name of “Fung Hang” means “windy valley” instead of “phoenix valley”) Apart from showing the paths that were frequently used, it also implies the direction of foot traffic. For example a tablet in Kuk Po says “this path leads to Fung Hang and Nam Chung”, which implies most people walked from Kuk Po to Fung Hang and Nam Chung, being the opposite of hiking routes nowadays.