OCCUPATIONS, WAGES AND LABOUR ORGANIZATION
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been sinking into a subsidiary to other more exciting and profitable jobs, is gradually regaining its proper importance.
The main crop is rice, grown in all the valleys and, wherever possible, on irrigated hill terraces. New Territories rice includes some varieties of a very high standard, and it is the general practice of villagers to take their own rice to town, and barter it for a larger quantity of cheap imported rice, of lower quality, for their own use. Where sufficient water is available, the fields are made to produce two rice crops per year, but in salty land, and where no water can be stored in winter, only one crop (the second) can be grown. The principal winter crop is sweet potatoes, but wherever there is quick transport to town and a sufficient supply of fertilizer, there is an increasing tendency for green vegetables to be grown. These include most of the best-known European summer vegetables, the season for which in Hong Kong is the winter.
Pig-breeding is an important source of livelihood in most villages, and, particularly in hilly areas, there are good herds of the local humped cattle, for beef and draft, but not for milk. Cut grass also has commercial value, principally for breaming (applying fire to ships' hulls to cleanse them from slime, weeds, etc., a process which, in the case of fishing junks, is undertaken about ten times a year), and in villages which are within easy range of fishing towns grass is collected, chiefly by women, and transported to town on foot or in small family-owned boats. Almost all coastal villages own small boats or sampans, used for transport and inshore fishing, the latter being exclusively a man's job.
Certain occupations are traditionally followed by dif- ferent sections of the rural community. The Deep Bay oyster fishing, for example, is a Cantonese occupation, while beancurd manufacture and stone quarrying are Hakka occupations.
The Tanka, and those Hoklo who have not settled permanently ashore (see Population Chapter), live entirely by fishing. The largest boats, suitable for deep-sea fishing, are Tanka, the boats being generally owned by women. Hakka boats are used principally for transport on the eastern side of the New Territories; they are stoutly built, single-masted, with hulls high out of the water along their