In preparing Poon Choi, which means “basin meal”, ingredients cooked in advance are placed layer by layer in a basin, starting from the bottom. The more refined the ingredient is, the upper layer it forms. There are no specific rules in terms of what to put in a Poon Choi, but in general it includes Chinese turnips, deep-fried tofu, bean curd robes, shiitake mushrooms, and stewed pork, which is the essence of the whole Poon Choi and most challenging to make. Poon Choi feast has been the traditional banquet of indigenous inhabitants of walled villages in the New Territories for centuries. Whether it is a wedding, a newborn baby boy, the Jiao festival or moving into a new house that a family would like to celebrate, the host family do not even need sending out invitation cards. They only have to post a red notice announcing the arrangements of the Poon Choi feast on the village’s notice board or their own door, and their relatives and friends will come to the feast naturally, either in the ancestral hall or grain hall (the place where threshing used to be done). Gathering villagers in a Poon Choi feast also serves as a crucial process in the confirmation of identity. In the first lunar month of the year, any family with a boy newly born in the previous year will light up a lamp in the ancestral hall, and invite fellow villagers to a “lamp gathering”, which is a Poon Choi feast in celebration of the newly born male. It is only after all these ceremonies that a newborn male is officially accepted as a member of the village and entitled to inheriting his great-grandfather’s legacy. As for weddings traditionally, a couple wed and pay tribute to ancestors inside the ancestral hall. After the bride formally became part of the groom’s family, the couple invite their relatives to a day-long feast of Poon Choi and wine, which implies their acknowledgement of the marriage. To many walled villagers, gathering in a Poon Choi feast symbolises unity and equality. Major cla