These past few days we’ve been “eating melons,”–the colloquial expression for watching other people’s drama. This time, its an internecine melodrama starring the Shuiwei and Huanggang Zhuangs.

Early Wednesday morning (some say 3 a.m.), April 24 the Huanggang Village Committee demolished the old Zhuang family ancestral hall that they shared with Shuiwei Village. The biggest question is why?

According to an interview given by “Miss Li” from Shuiwei, its an age-old question of moral righteousness versus the lure of money.

According to both village genealogies, the Zhuangs established Shuiwei in 1368 at the foot of “Yellow Hill 黄冈.” As the clan grew, associated hamlets formed nearby, including Huanggang Village. There is debate over whether or not the new village was named after the hill, or after a successful exam candidate, Zhuang Yougong (庄有恭). The story goes that after Yougong passed his exam, he returned to Huanggang to worship his ancestors. As “Yellow Hill” is a homophone with “Imperial Post 皇岗” the village changed its name. Not surprising Shuiwei holds with “Yellow Hill” and Huanggang went with “Imperial Post.” In recent speculation, observers have split the difference and gone with “yellow 岗.”

Up until 1983 (roughly 800 years), there was consensus that the Shuiwei and Huanggang Zhuangs were branches of the same tree. There was also consensus that Shuiwei was the “older brother” village and Huanggang was the “younger brother” village. However, in the modern era, the villages have been jostling for primacy ever since 1958, when they were merged as the Huanggang Team, Futian Commune.

In 1983, when Shenzhen reestablished the village system, Futian was dissolved into Futian Sub District under the auspices of Shangbu Management District, which was the site of the new city’s new town. That same year, Huanggang Team disaggregated into Shuiwei and Huanggang Villages. No doubt you already see where the story is going. (Shangbu Management Area was reorganized as Futian District in 1990.)

In 1992, the Shenzhen urbanized its villages, which became stock-holding companies. Individual villagers received housing plots (宅基地), eventually building handshakes buildings. At this time, Shuiwei and Huanggang not only became legally independent of each other, but a legal boundary was drawn between the two villages. Shuiwei lay south of Fumin Road and Huanggang lay north of Fumin Road. Here’s the rub: the ancestral hall lay within the newly established boundaries of Huanggang, making Shuiwei the senior branch of an ancestral hall that was in someone else’s territory.

These past few days, many have speculated about how relations between the brother villages deteriorated to the point where Huanggang demolished their common ancestral hall. (Does anyone really want to believe the ancestral hall was razed for something as banal as money? It does feel less damning to believe in slights and ongoing feuds…) The demolition has also brought to light stories of the ancestral hall’s historic importance: Shuiwei and Huanggang ancestors built the hall over 300 years ago during the reign of the Qianlong Emperor; it was the hostel for Zhuangs who crossed the border during the Six Day War of 1899, and it was Bao’an’s first communist information station (红色交通情报站). Of course, the ancestral hall also served as a school for village boys.

Anyway, after the 1992 split, both Shuiwei and Huanggang invested in urban planning for their villages, including park areas, a central plaza and well-kept streets that bustle 24-7. However, there seems to have been no agreement over how to handle the ancestral hall. At the turn of the millennium, Huanggang built a new ancestral hall in their plaza and Shuiwei refused to be part of it, demanding that the original ancestral hall be restored.

The stalemate simmered for (at least) 32 years, until it boiled over on Wednesday morning. The police set up a barrier between the two villages. Eventually, Shuiwei representatives were allowed to cross into Huanggang and retrieve the hall’s ancient stone lintel with an eye to rebuilding their hall. If and where they might be allowed to rebuild are the questions on the table.