A Trip to Sok Gu Wan with a Cantonese Opera Troupe

' A TRIP TO SOKGUWANWITHA CANTONESE OPERATROUPEl Bell Yung •1' ;~t•r Cornell University On May 18, the opera troupe Hing Fung Ninffi f 5r'" ["To Celebrate a Bumper Year"] went to perform in Sok Gu Wanf.f ~ [Bay of Sok Gu] for five days. The occasion was the Festival of the Birthday of the Queen of Heaven. Sok Gu Wan is a small fishing village on Lamma Island to the south of Hong Kong Island proper. The village consists mainly of a section of a road running along the bay, one side of which has about two dozen concrete, two- or three-storeyed buildings. There are somewhere between ten to fifteen small restaurants making their living chiefly out of tourists. Besides this town center, there are clusters of houses, either concrete or wooden, dotting the hillside and other spots around the bay. There are several other such villages on Lamma island; none of them is more than an hour's walk from Sok Gu Wan. In the bay are clustered many fishing junks of various sizes. I was told that most residents of this village (and this island) make their living from fishing. I went with the musicians. There were thirteen of them: four percuss .ionists and nine melody instrumentalists. Of these nine, two were "secondary" players; that is, they only played for matinee performances when the secondary singers took the principal singers' roles. 2 Of the other seven, three played for both the matinee and evening shows, while the other four only played for the principal singers in the evening performances. The percussionists played in all performances. We arrived at Sok Gu Wan around 5 pm on a very hot ffi\d humid day, 49 ,. __ so typical for Hong Kong summer. After disembarking from the boat at the center of the village, we went to see the site of performance, a two minute walk away. A huge bamboo structure was already erected with aluminum sheets as roofing but no "walls" on the three sides of the audience area. There was a good-size stage and backstage, and a seating capacity (~11 folding chairs) of roughly six hundred. We then went to see where we were to stay for the night. The village had provided the musicians with one floor of a new building which had nothing inside; everyone was to sleep on the floor. The wiser ones brought along folding beds, while others had rattan mattresses. This lodging was provided free to the musicians by the village. I was told that the opera troupe also provided them with three meals a·. day. But the food was so poor that most of them bought their own food in the village. The musicians were paid on a daily basis: the salary ranged from about HK$20 to ~200 per dayf depending on experience and position in the orchestra. Usually, the most important musicians are the fiddle player and the drummer who are likely to receive the maximum pay. After putting down our belongings, I went for a walk with three of the musicians with Whom I had made friends. ;:..;A -zt~. The fiddler, Mek Wae-men ~ ;/f• ..Z , ,o;as obviously the leader of the group. He was in his rnid-30's, considered quite young in this field, especially as a leader. The other two were Fung Bing-heng,/~ MtfJ , ~ player (a double".reed, oboe-like instrument) "" ;,_ ;'._ ,k .:11...in his 60's, and Wong Kynm ~, transverse flute player in his 40's. These ,, /f~ three apparently considered themselves as better players than the others; they did not have to play for matinee performances. We first went to a fish market and bought some fresh fish and shrimp. Then we took them to * HK$1.00 = US$0.20 in 1973. I I ! I I ,, l l I l 'I ! I I I I I 51 one of the restaurants by the bay and asked the cook to prepare them for us. We sat and dined around a small mahjong table right on the promenade. There was an evening breeze, which relieved the heat and humidity slightly. One could hear mahjong crackling all around, and people chatting...