HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1953
The greater part of the population is Cantonese, but there are large numbers of people from other parts of China, particularly Shanghai. Europeans and Americans permanently resident in the Colony number about 14,500, including about 9,500 British subjects from the United Kingdom and Common- wealth but excluding Service personnel and their dependants. In addition, there are about 4,200 aliens temporarily resident.
The population of the New Territories is composed of Cantonese and Hakka, with a sprinkling of Hoklo. The farmers are the Cantonese, mainly settled, (some families for several hundred years), in the comparatively fertile western plains, and the Hakka, whose incursion into the more difficult hilly land on the eastern side of the peninsula is said to have started about two hundred years ago and may not have finished yet. Generally speaking, the Hakka appear to have occupied any potentially arable land disregarded by the Cantonese. Thus long fingers of Hakka penetration have been extended from the eastern side of the New Territories down into the south-west of the mainland and out on to the islands. The two sections maintain excellent relations, and although Hakka help Hakka more noticeably than Cantonese help Cantonese, it is remark- able that in their penetration the Hakka have been partly guided by existing Cantonese settlement. Thus, for instance, one of the biggest New Territories villages, Wang Toi Shan, to the north-west of Taimoshan, is populated chiefly by Hakka of the Tang clan, who undoubtedly chose that locality because of the existing predominant influence of the Cantonese Tang.
There are few exceptions to the rule that Cantonese and Hakka in the New Territories do not intermarry. There are a few recent settlements which include both Cantonese and Hakka, but in such cases the families live distinctly, and normally a village is either clearly Cantonese or Hakka. There are however certain well-defined exceptions, notably the villages of Ting Kok
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