Tongxianghui, literally 'comrades' group', played a key role in immigrants' lives, making bearable their separation from homes hundreds of kilometres away. As assistant professor and deputy director, Centre of Asian Studies, University of Hong Kong historian Elizabeth Sinn puts it: 'They eased the feeling of being a stranger among other strangers.'

It's hard to overstate the part these associations played in the lives of the isolated men and women who clung to them for support and respite from overwhelming homesickness.

Ko Bei-cheen, 88, is living testament to migrant woes. 'We felt lonely,' Ko says. 'Most migrants meant to return home once they had earned enough money. But many died here in a foreign land and only one in 10 ever returned.'

When Ko smiles, his eyes close slightly like a baby. Everyone respectfully calls him Ko Lo or elderly Ko: he is the only surviving member of one of Hong Kong's first regional associations, Fuzhou Bang Sanshan Xing She, which dates back to the earliest days of the British occupation in the 1840s.

Many of its members, including Ko, were recruited into the group which succeeded it, the Foochow Association Hong Kong in 1937.

In his biography Remembering The Past, which he wrote in 1999, Ko recalls his mother and the pain of parting. 'In the autumn of 1935, on the night before I left for Hong Kong, mum did not sleep, she stayed up all night and sewed two sets of new clothes for me, before I left for the sky's cliff [meaning the distant horizon].'

Living in a strange land, Ko found his only comfort in the association in Sheung Wan. Here he shared the news and gossip from home with his comrades, ate Fuzhou meals and spoke the Fuzhou dialect. They even sang Fuzhou songs and operas.

'Hearing the songs and the dialect, I felt closer to home,' Ko recalls.

Another group, the Lee Clansmen's Association, was set up in 1948 in a sixth-floor flat in Leighton Road, Happy Valley. This fellowship lent support to those with the surname Li from Guangdong province.

The migrants included lawyers, doctors, restaurant owners, civil servants, policemen, factory workers, actresses, even hawkers. They brought their own knowledge to their new land and helped each other.

Financial assistance was also available. Members in the 1950s, for example, paid an annual subscription of $6 to a welfare fund. Whenever a member died, his family would be given $600 to cover the cost of the funeral.

The group also helped families in need and assisted with school fees.

A native of Toishan, Lee Sai-yin, 85, came to Hong Kong when he was a teenager. He worked for his father, a tailor in Central, later taking over the business. Lee joined the group when it was founded and soon he was dressing most of the members - who later became his close friends. Staring at the wall fixed with black-and-white marble pictures of his late comrades, Lee seems to have retreated into his memories. 'We were close and called each other brothers and sisters,' he murmurs, his blurry eyes looking vacantly into the distance. 'We never argued or clashed.'

For half a century, Lee and his comrades from Toishan would meet in the Leighton Road apartment. The camaraderie continued until 1994 when the group administrator died and there was no one to take up his duties. The flat was closed and the group dispersed.

Last year, 67-year-old Lee Kwong and several others joined forces to reform the Happy Valley group. They found the 1,200 square feet premises much as it had been left - lights dangling from the ceiling at the corridor and the words 'Lee Clansmen's Association' buried in darkness.

One of the reasons for the decline of regional associations is a better provision of social services by the Government. Another, according to Sinn, is the loss of regional identity among local-born generations.

Li Fook-wing, 74, a veteran member of Lee Clansmen's Association, says: 'My son thinks the association is a feudal, decaying organisation for old men . . . now people only talk about benefits, such as money.'

Re-establishing the association was not easy. The members called their old friends only to find that many had disappeared. Some had moved as squatter homes were cleared, some had emigrated, others had died. Eventually they tracked down only about a dozen of the veterans, and reopened the association at the same address.

Separated from the group since its closure in 1994, 76-year-old Li Shu-chun has since visited the group more than 10 times. Still, he admits he has almost forgotten the way to the association, now surrounded by high rises.

But here he is at his old place and his tanned, thin face smiles cheerfully.

Dressed in a worn jacket and a yellowed white shirt, Li appears a typical member. 'I am poor, have no money, no knowledge, but I have strength and I can help around in the group,' says Li, who was responsible for recruiting new members in the early days.

Every year in the spring and autumn rituals, he comes to pay tribute to his late comrades and ancestors, carrying with him a fat chicken he raised on his Fanling farm for the ritual and dinner afterwards.

Decades on, Li's emotional attachment and loyalty to the group remains intact. He still carries his wrinkled welfare card showing a picture of him with black hair and a handsome face.

Small regional associations such as the Lee Clansmen's Association are not the only groups under threat. Large groups such as the Kiangsu and Chekiang Residents Association also face an uncertain future. In 1946, a group of rich Shanghainese businessmen who had fled before the communists took control of China in 1949, set up the group in the old Prince's Building in Central. While it is one of the most established regional associations in Hong Kong with 4,000 members, the threat of extinction still hangs over the gathering - young people who have grown up in Hong Kong and consider the SAR their home have different priorities and concerns to their grandfathers. Few young people have joined the group in recent decades.

'It is worrying,' says vice-chairman Chow Pai-ying, who joined the group in 1965. 'Society has changed. Few young people want to join the association. Young people now only want money and enjoyment, but not to help others.'

Will these long-established groups soon become a thing of the past?

Sinn says no, saying there are reasons and means to keep them going. Some own properties and derive income from them, some run or own schools both in China and the SAR, which they subsidise. Others sponsor various welfare projects in their hometowns, she says. And new waves of migrants provided fresh blood for regional associations in the 1980s and they formed their own groups. These new groups have boosted the number of associations to 220.

The Kiangsu and Chekiang Residents Association, originally set up to take care of Shanghainese refugees with the aim of repatriating them to their home city, now provides community service, such as clinics, homes for the elderly and four schools in Hong Kong. It also subsidises other schools in China. Increased economic interest in the mainland has also helped some groups to survive. Since the handover, more young entrepreneurs have joined the Foochow Association Hong Kong to avail themselves of economic opportunities on the mainland, says its chairman Lam Hok-po.

'One can say it's a generational thing - this sort of association may have a stronger appeal for people in their middle age and up,' Sinn says.

David Li Kwok-kit, 44, is a typical example. Decades on, he thought his father's association 'old-fashioned and like an ancestral hall where people wore long gowns'. He refused to join but when he saw his father, Li Hon-kuen, battling to save the group, the son decided to lend a hand. 'My father asked me to join,' he says, gazing emotionally at his father. 'I want to look for our roots.'

Now the association is planning to advertise in newspapers to urge old members to return and to attract new ones.

To preserve the groups, Sinn suggests members enhance their own sense of purpose and self-esteem, by drawing the public's attention to the important roles the groups have played in Hong Kong.

'We should admire those who, while themselves deprived, still did so much to serve others. The tongxiang instinct [camaraderie] was indeed a great source of strength,' Sinn says.

Meanwhile, news of the re-opening of the Lee Clansmen's Association has spread and new members now comprise 40 per cent of the 150-strong group. Many of them are sons and daughters of old members, others are businessmen.

The re-opening of the association has revitalised the lives of its elderly members. 'Whenever they come, they feel refreshed and rejuvenated,' says Clara Li Mi-sim, a new member and the group's secretary.

Grandpa Lee Sai-yin was re-appointed as vice-supervisor, grandmother Li Wai-ching became the women's supervisor, and a former pig farmer took up his old post as the recreation supervisor. New life has been breathed into the old organisation.

And who is the recreation supervisor? Quickly a voice bursts from the sea of grey heads around the table, as polite and orderly as Sunday-school students. 'It is me,' says Li Shu-chun triumphantly, with new-found enthusiasm that echoes in the rest of the group.

Graphic: cme3gfa

Graphic: cme2gfa