Layout and Orientation
A Village With a Wall
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A walled village is not simply a village with a wall. Ip (1995) defines the walled village as, “a form of fortified nucleated settlement which forms a distinct enclosure from the surrounding environment. This enclosure is both a physical and a social one, which is manifested in a highly regular village plan.” So the wall itself fulfilled a defensive role, and survival of the inhabitants was directly related to its strength, but it should also be considered as representing a community and the traditions contained within it.
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Punti and Hakka
The villages of the two principal migrant clans, Punti and Hakka, exhibit specific characteristics in layout (note 36).
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Punti walled villages at one time consisted of a square or rectangular walled enclosure, with or without corner towers, within which a gridiron pattern of narrow streets subdivided the village into regular parallel plots of brick houses. A single entrance gateway typically centrally placed led to a central axial street, at the end of which was an ancestral shrine housing the deities that protected the village and its inhabitants. The whole might have been surrounded by a moat. AMO refer to this arrangement as a “fishbone” layout. Whilst villages do vary in shape and size, the adjacent Punti villages of Kat Hing Wai and Tai Hong Wai in Kam Tin are both 100m x 90m, and the nearby Wing Lung Wai 80m x 80m, all of which may be considered typical. Nga Tsin Wai was originally 55x60m (note 37).
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In Hakka villages meanwhile the preferred focus of the central axis is the ancestral hall, serving as the social heart, meeting hall and ancestral shrine. The gate tower may be an extension of this axis. Tsang Tai Uk (Sha Tin) is this type of Hakka village.
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(L) Punti village plan, Kat Hing Wai, Kam Tin. Red buildings gatehouse and shrine. (R) Hakka village plan. Tsang Tai Uk, Sha Tin. Red buildings gatehouse, temple and shrine.
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Non-Standards
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The classic village pattern is not universal; there are many variants of the traditional form including variable size and shape, corner entrances and double entrances. The pattern would vary according to cost and wealth of the lineage. The corner entrance of Tai Po Tau Shui Wai (Tai Po) is unusual. Some villages, such as Sheung Yiu (Sai Kung) or Kei Ling Ha Lo Wai and its neighbour Kei Ling Ha San Wai, are little more than a row of cottages and enclosing wall.
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The changes wrought by time also vary. Whilst most villages retain their entrance gateway, shrine and gridiron street pattern, the remaining physical fabric of walls, towers, and traditional houses has often been, and continues to be, significantly altered, and few moats remain. Due to demolitions, the extent of the enclosing wall is often not evident.
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(L) Hakka Wai, Sheung Shui; rows of houses. (R) Sheung Yiu, Sai Kung; a row of houses with an enclosed yard.
Yeung Ka Tsuen, Yuen Long; a walled and gated farmhouse/temple in a rural location.
Orientation
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A feng shui master would be consulted to calculate an auspicious orientation based on the founding ancestor’s birth date. Ideally for good chi, a village would be oriented to face south, and in coastal regions of Guangdong a good orientation would be south or south east to encourage cooling maritime breezes from the sea. Feng shui though appears to be very much an ideal modified by site realities, and in practice no more villages face south or southeast than any other direction (note 38). This may be due to other factors; facing down a slope to reduce the risk of flooding for example, and the stream-hill relationship discussed above appears to override north-south orientation in all cases. As a result of these various criteria, sometimes adjacent villages are laid out in different orientation, as for example are Tung Chan Wai and Yan Shan Wai in San Tin.
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The wall is a significant architectural device in China, enclosing houses and villages, and sometimes providing landscape configuration as “feng shui walls”. These walls modify any feng shui weaknesses apparent in the location, and can be seen as a secondary function of village enclosure, as many villages did not have the luxury of choice of site upon foundation. At Tuen Tsz Wai (Tuen Mun), the gatehouse was replaced by a solid wall and rebuilt at the corner of the village in 1978 as a feng shui gesture because the former central gatehouse faced onto the newly established Miu Fat Monastery opposite, it being bad feng shui to face a monastery, temple or ancestral hall (note 39).
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With limited time and resources to establish the village, the idealised location was not always available, in which case alterations to the landscape would be made, perhaps in the form of a feng shui lake, or planting of a feng shui wood, to manipulate wind and water in auspicious ways (note 40). Some of these features remain resolutely preserved, as Wesley-Smith (1994) notes, ensuring “a particular, and particularly pleasing, aesthetic to the Chinese landscape... through which architectural good manners are enforced.” This is an interesting observation when considered alongside the reality that feng shui is founded on common sense good practice.
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Diagram of the axial orientation of villages (shrine centre to gatehouse perimeter); few conform to the ideal South to Southeast. The gatehouse of Tuen Tsz Wai, Lam Tei, relocated in 1978 in order to not face the newly built Miu Fat Monastery.
Notes:
36. Notes on Punti and Hakka typologies derived from Ip (1995), Wang (1998), Knapp (2000), Cahn (2006), Degan (2015), and from personal interview, Ng (2019).
37. Hase (1999).
38. Notes on feng shui orientation derived from Knapp (2000), and from personal interview, Ng (2009). Boyd (1962) claims a N-S axis with entrance to S for all architectural forms from the city (ch3), to the house including Hakka villages (ch4), “(architectural compositions) … were assembled into a unified whole, the whole and the parts being built up of south-facing axial walled enclosures.”(p50). Personal fieldwork and analysis of village plans confirms this is not the case in Hong Kong.
39. Notes on feng shui walls derived from Ip (1995)
40. Notes on landscape derived from Poon (2009)
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The Wall
Freestanding wall with corner towers, San Wai, Fanling. Part of the collapsing wall at Ma Wat Wai, Fanling, 3 bricks wide with no cavity.
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Wall and gatehouse, Lo Wai, Fanling.
The village wall would be a brick built defensive structure with minimal openings in the form of gun loopholes. At its top might be a wall-walk with parapet to the outside. There is no evidence that the walls were ever crenellated, or that the wall was initially built as a short term reactive measure, using wooden stakes or similar as the first iterations of European castles were; they appear to have been of brick construction from the outset. The wealthiest lineages could afford lofty walls of expensive grey brick. The wall could be up to 2m thick, a double brick skin with rubble core (note 41). The wall at Fui Sha Wai was 4 to five bricks thick, laid in seven stretcher to one header bonding, with buttresses at intervals and small holes for gunfire. The wall at Kat Hing Wai (Kam Tin) measures 84m x 88m, is 5.5m high, has square watchtowers 8m high, and a 6m wide moat (note 42).
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Loopholes at Lo Wai and San Wai, Fanling. Blocked loophole at Ho Sheung Heung Lo Wai.
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Sometimes the wall is formed of a packed elongated row of houses whose entrances face inside. To the outside these houses have minimal openings for firing weapons or ventilation, in walls thickened to over 50cm; being lower than a freestanding wall, they are less defensive. These house-wall typologies were either built as a single entity, with continuous ridge line, or as separate individual buildings with discontinuous roofs. Hakka village walls are normally of the elongated house type, usually for residential use, known as heng wu (literally, side house)(note 43). Sam Tung Uk (Tsuen Wan) is an example of this typology. The wall at Tsang Tai Uk (Sha Tin) is a house-wall type where the wall walk at the top of the houses runs through the corner towers. Gun holes are at regular intervals along the wall and at corner towers (note 44).
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Punti walled villages would always initially have a perimeter freestanding wall. House-wall typologies would either be Hakka, or be mixed clan, or result from subsequent rebuilding and replacement of the wall with house-wall and lean-to structures (note 45).
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The foundation design of village walls is unknown; archaeological excavations at Kat Hing Wai reached 4m below ground without reaching the base, and were stopped due to the high water table. The walls would have deep foundations to allow for moat water depth, less apparent today following the filling-in of most moats (note 46).
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House-wall typology at Sheung Cheung Wai, Ping Shan. Wall abutment buildings at Ping Kong, Sheung Shui.
Pigsties and Storage Barns in the Wall Thickness
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In addition to defensive features, within the thickness of free standing walled structures or buttressed against them adding to stability were service areas, pigsties and barns, or storage for agricultural implements (note 47). These facilities protected prized assets and may have formed an insurance against prolonged attack.
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Corner Towers and Wall Walks
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Corner towers served as watch towers surveying the surrounding landscape, and as stores for weapons and farming implements. The towers might be higher than the wall – Hase (1999) gives a height of 25ft (8m) for Nga Tsin Wai. A terrace might provide a high observation point, and might lead out onto a wall walk. Loophole openings might be provided for guns to fire at attackers. Corner towers appear less frequently where the wall is composed of houses, but this may be simply due to later replacements.
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At Chung Sum Wai, Tai Hang, steps lead to the gatehouse upper floor and wall-walk. The corner tower at Fanling Wai gives access to a wall-walk. A staircase inside the corner tower of Kat Hing Wai, Kam Tin.
Notes:
41. Notes on walls from personal interview, Ng (2009). Watson+Watson (2004) state a thickness of 3 to 4 feet (0.9-1.2m), 15 feet (4.5m) high. I have measured the wall at Wing Ning Wai as 0.8m. Hase (1999) states the front and rear skins at Nga Tsin Wai were “of carefully mortared blue brick”.
42. Figures from Knapp (2000). The moat is today filled except for a culvert on one side.
43. Notes on Hakka layout derived from Ip (1995)
44. Notes on Tsang Tai Uk derived from Poon (2009), AAB List (2018)
45. Notes on wall typologies from personal interview, Ng (2009).
46. Notes on wall foundations from personal interview, Ng (2009).
47. Notes on wall rooms derived from Wang (1998)
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Water
Moats
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A moat around the outside perimeter would block access to the wall itself. Moats were of variable width, but fairly uniform depth, about 3m. A narrow path or bridge would lead to the gatehouse. The moat served a defensive purpose, but also provided rainwater attenuation to limit flooding, a habitat to farm fish or ducks, a source of water in case of fire, and a cooling effect created by airflow passing over the body of water. An alternative to a moat would be a thick layer of vegetation, thorny bamboo being optimum due to its rapid growth and dense cover. This planting would supplement a frontal pond where no fully encircling moat was provided (note 48). In front of the gatehouse there might have been a wide communal hetang, or rice-drying ground (note 49).
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Normally a surviving moat exists only on the entrance side of the village. Often the moat takes on a curved form or is semi-circular, a form said to represent heaven, at the same time opposing and complementing the square urbanism of the village representing earth. Poon (2009) correlates the plan of a square village with curving moat to the plan of a human body with forward-stretched arms, a feng shui analogy of landscape to human form.
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Moat, Ma Tseuk Leng
Moat, Fui Sha Wai, Ping Shan
Moats are today usually filled, providing the setting for car parking, or as here at Muk Kiu Tau, a covered event space.
Wells
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Wells are usually outwith the wall, which would appear to be a defensive weakness. Traditionally however, water would be carried into the village from safe supplies locally, and filtered, using charcoal processes. Many villages have wells, but with increasing populations and contamination of the water table from latrines, these were an emergency backup supply rarely used for drinking. Villages today are mains connected (note 50). Mong Tseng Wai (Ping Shan, Yuen Long) has a six-sided well, a type which could be built only by those having a juren degree in the Qing Imperial Civil Service Examination (note 51).
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Tai Tau Leng, Sheung Shui, well and gatehouse recently rebuilt, the well has an adjacent outdoor shrine. Plan of a traditional latrine.
The Latrine
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The excellent modern system of public toilets replaces earlier more primitive provision outside the village walls. The vernacular architecture of a New Territories latrine is set out in Hase (1988). It was built of field stones set in a mud mortar which was lime plastered, with a double tiled roof overhanging 200-250mm. Doors had a stone threshold, timber lintel, with burnt brick jambs and window cills. Interior fittings comprised timber planks arranged as seats, screens and steps. Co-located were a cattle shed, chicken-house and pigsty. The facility was used by four families who would daily tip stove ash into the latrine. Urine drained into a separate pit, leaving the mix of excrement and ash which was laid out to dry then pulverized, forming an excellent fertilizer. Hase states there were “thousands” such structures throughout the New Territories, serving both Punti and Hakka villages, citing Sheung Wo Hang having 30 latrines serving 100 families in 1905.
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Notes:
48. Notes on moats derived from Ip (1995). The moat at Nga Tsin Wai was approximately 10m wide (Hase, 1999).
49. Notes on hetang derived from Cody (1997)
50. Notes on water supply from Edelmann (2008)
51. AAB List (2018)
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Lanes
Axial Lanes: the village spine
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The organisation of the village plan as a gridiron of narrow lanes is functionally the most efficient form of compact settlement. The narrowness would serve a defensive purpose and achieve a compact whole. Lanes are perpendicular or parallel to the direction of houses, with usually doorways opening off lanes lateral to the central axis. An auspicious orientation would channel fresh air currents through the village, moderating the internal climate and humidity. Such channels benefit from orientation toward prevailing wind and placement of openings in strategic locations.
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A normal central lane width would be derived from the single jian module used to plan the axial ancestral shrine, but this was never consistent, and perhaps has been eroded over time. At Kat Hing Wai (Kam Tin) a 3m wide central lane connects the gatehouse with the shrine, with 6 sets of 10 row houses to either side (note 52). Whilst similarly planned with rigorous symmetry, most walled Chinese architecture has at its axis the positive space of a central building. The negative space of the Hong Kong walled village central lane is unique in this respect (note 53).
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Comparative plans of a Beijing Siheyuan, where the axis is formed from the positive space of buildings, and a walled village (Pan Chung, Tai Po), where the void space of the central lane is axial. Axial lanes at Tai Tseng Wai and Sha Kong Wai, which retains its granite paving.
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Gatehouse and Shrine: a dialogue
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In the classic fishbone layout, at the end of the central lane opposing the entrance gatehouse would be a shrine, dedicated to village ancestors and deities. This axis is a derivation from the larger Chinese house typology, a public space available for communal use. In Punti villages the shrine is normally built as a single kaijan module, occupying the end of the central axial street, whose width therefore in turn is a derivation (note 54). Hakka shrines also occupy a central rear position, but the axis leading to them is occupied by ancestral halls, a spatial hierarchy denoting the importance of lineage power, structure and settlement (note 55). These qualities are important, but there a number of differs, such as Tai Po Tau Shui Wai in Tai Po which has a corner gatehouse.
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A shrine located on the central axis opposing the gatehouse would be in the best position to deter ghosts, as it is traditionally believed that ghosts can only enter by the gatehouse, and that they can only travel in straight lines. Where shrines are not directly facing the gatehouse, an additional shrine or alternative feng shui device might be provided in the gatehouse itself (note 56). Gatehouses have frequently been relocated at some stage due to feng shui reasons. The gatehouse at Wing Lung Wai (Kam Tin) is now located close to the former south east corner tower. That at Nai Wai (Tuen Mun) was moved to the south wall 200 years ago. At Lam Hau Tsuen (Ping Shan) and Tan Chuk Hang Lo Wai, the gatehouse front wall is canted at an angle for feng shui reasons. Also see Tuen Tsz Wai (Tuen Mun) above (note 57).
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Axial alignment of gatehouse and shrine, L to R: gatehouse aligned with axial lane (Kat Hing Wai), gatehouse with tilted axis (Tang Chuk Hang Lo Wai), gatehouse out of alignment (Fui Sha Wai), gatehouse on lateral side (Nai Wai, moved here c1800), gatehouse at corner (Tai Po Tau Shui Wai). (Author, after Ip 1995).
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A glimpse through the gatehouse of Tai Wai Tsuen along the axial lane.
Lateral Lanes: semi-private space
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Lateral lanes are generally colonised as semi private space by the adjoining house, whereas lanes parallel to the central axis aren't. This may simply be because doorways open off lateral lanes. Lateral lanes provide equal accessibility to the central axis, reinforcing its role as communal spine (note 58). As all houses faced the same direction, no two doorways faced each other, affording privacy even in the tight knit context of an enclosed village.
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Paving
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Some villages retain their granite slab paving to the central lane, but more often this has been concreted or replaced by a continuous line of precast concrete drainage covers, probably at the same time as drainage was installed. The granite slabs often remain in gatehouses, as at Shun Fung Wai (Tuen Mun).
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Lateral lanes of Tai Tau Leng, semi-private space with personalised floors, planting, bike storage, aircon units and balconies. Urban sketch of the narrow lanes of Muk Wu, Fanling.
Notes:
52. Figures from Knapp (2000)
53. Notes on axis derived from Wang (1998)
54. Notes on central lane derived from Wang (1998).
55. Notes on Hakka layout derived from Poon (2009)
56. Notes on ghosts derived from Ip (1995)
57. AAB List (2018)
58. Notes on the significance of central lane derived from Ip (1995)
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