Week 5: Cheung Chau - Today we feature the fourth of seven finalists in our Preserving Villages series, a project to highlight communities among the 600 surviving New Territories villages that are working to keep alive their heritage and communal traditions. The Post, together with the Home Affairs Department and indigenous villagers, has spent a year collecting suggestions from district officers, rural workers, businesspeople and friends. We visited more than 40 villages and identified seven finalists. We are featuring the finalists on Mondays and we will reveal a grand winner on October 23
Pong Ning is wiry and strong, but it takes the guardian of Cheung Chau's Pak Tai Temple all his might to hold aloft the sacred sword that protects the spirits of the island.
The 1.5-metre sword is the island's symbol. Stored in a locked glass and hardwood case in a secure pavilion in the Temple of the Supreme Emperor of the Dark Heaven, the fearsome weapon is engrained deeply in the lore of the island, once a pirate stronghold.
Its story is passed unfailingly on to local children. Students of the six primary schools and three middle schools on the island visit the temple every year. The 78-year-old Mr Pong never tires of telling the legend of the sword.
The full history of the 10kg weapon is unknown. Island lore holds that it was dredged up accidentally, caught in the nets of a junk trawling off the shore in the 1880s. At that time, Cheung Chau was ruled by pirate clans; bandit vessels put out to waylay and rob vessels sailing from Hong Kong Island to Macau and boats sailing up into the Pearl River estuary.
Did the sword drop to the seabed after a pirate clash? Was it owned by a Manchu naval commander? Or did it belong to one of the murderous sailors who manned the raiding junks of the legendary woman pirate chief of Cheung Chau, Shek, who married bandit king Cheung Po-chai? Mr Pong shrugs. Nobody knows.
When the British occupied Cheung Chau after the New Territories treaty of 1898, the population was about 2,000. Today, there are more than 25,000 people on the thriving island. Even newcomers whose roots lay elsewhere take part in island rites honouring the temple and its sword. It is part of the island schools' curriculum to visit Pak Tai Temple, where Mr Pong happily recounts tales of the island's turbulent history.