According to Teng genealogies, three men surnamed Teng (two brothers and a close agnate) and their families settled in what is now the northwestern New Territories in the 1360s. Over the years the descendants of these first Teng founded a number of hamlets near the original settlement. Gradually the Teng expanded their hold over the surrounding territory so that by the nineteenth century, perhaps earlier, they controlled a considerable area that included their own hamlets as well as 14 villages belonging to their non-Teng neighbors. These neighbors remained under the political and economic dominance of the Teng well into the twentieth century. Today the Ha Tsuen Teng are commonly regarded as one of the most powerful lineages in the New Territories.

The Teng were not, however, always so powerful and well organized. Although groups of Teng households were established in their present-day village site as early as 1400, the available evidence indicates that these households were not drawn into a unified lineage until the mid–eighteenth century. Why did Teng men join together to form a corporate lineage, and how did they come to dominate the surrounding countryside? Two events are crucial to understanding this dual process of lineage formation and territorial domination: one was the construction of a walled market in Ha Tsuen (to be discussed in Chapter 4), and the other was the endowment of an ancestral hall, Yu Kung T'ang (or “Hall of Fraternal Reverence”).