Government. They are usually built of locally made blue brick or cut granite with a tiled roof and cement floor though some of the poorer type are built of sun-dried mud-brick faced with plaster. A typical village dwelling consists of one ground floor room, entrance being made through the front door-there is no back door-into a partially roofed-over space, one side of which is reserved for cooking, and the other side for storage of dried grass, the principal fuel. An inner door gives entrance to the single room, the rear portion of which is screened off with wooden partitions for use as a bedroom. Over this rear portion, raised some 8 feet above the floor level, is a wooden platform or gallery known as the "cockloft" which is used for storage purposes or for extra sleeping accommodation if the family is large. The house has no ceiling, except the rafters and tiles, and no chimney. Windows are few.
Dwellings are sometimes built in rows of a dozen or so in the larger villages, with the front of one row facing the back of another row; whilst at other times they are built haphazard to conform with "Fung Shui" ("wind and water"), a form of Chinese geomancy which traditionally governs the siting of dwellings and graves. The streets between the dwellings are usually not more than six to eight feet wide, and the drainage is primitive. Latrines are erected apart from the dwellings, and are similar, though inferior, to those still found attached to some rural cottages in the United Kingdom. The houses are for the most part kept in reasonable repair and the structural design is never altered. Furnishings consist usually of trestle beds, perhaps a table, and a few small stools.
European-Type Housing.
In normal times-and the year 1947 was still far from normal, -the European resident lives in a suburban type villa, flat or small house not unlike many in the United Kingdom. Increasing numbers of permanent Chinese residents also favour the European type of house. In Kowloon, suburbs of European- type houses developed extensively during the period 1930 to 1940, the houses built being not unlike those in an average London suburb, with the addition of servants' quarters and, in most cases, of the verandahs which the semi-tropical climate requires. At the western end of the Island of Hong Kong the higher altitudes have been developed for European-type dwelling houses by a system of roads cut into the steep hillsides. The temperature at 1200-1400 feet is normally about 6° lower during the summer than the temperature at sea-level, but against this advantage must be set the higher humidity during the damp spring season.
Rebuilding.
Tenement-type housing for 160,000 persons and European- type housing for 7,000 persons suffered destruction or serious. damage during the years 1941 to 1945. The damage to European houses was caused mainly by looting and the destruction of tenement houses was due chiefly to Allied aerial bombardment.
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