The village edge houses in Nam Pin Street (now Tung Lung Road) were mostly used as small workshops for hardware,furniture and radio repair or as shops for haircutting,grocery,clothes and shoes. These small tenancies changed hands every few years. Ng Chiu Ying;s family owned one such house which they leased to an ivory merchant who employed three to four workers for a monthly rent of HK$100-200. Ng Chiu Ying's mother took her children to collect rent once every three months. By the time Ng Chiu Ying had begun secondary school,he alreadly undertook rent collections by himself. When Ng Chiu Ying accompanied his mother to the village to visit elatives, they mainly stayed at the homes of the boy's third and fourth uncles' or his mother's friend,Kam Miu. While on such trips, they greeted their relatives over tea and chatted at their homes. Ng Chiu Ying did not really understand the accent of his"po po"(i.e. his grandfather's concubine)/ Kam Miu was of similar age to Ng Chiu Ying's mother and had also married into Nga Tsin Wai village. As she was related to a former village headman,her house was roomier and had a more comfortable living environment than most others.