POPULATION
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from Cantonese, the languages or dialects most widely heard are Hakka, Chiuchow, Kuoyu (the national language), the Shanghai dialect and, of course, English, the popularity of which has increased considerably in the last ten years. Before the war the Colony was not much affected by the movement in China to popularize Kuoyu. The war, however, took many local residents into China, and many came back afterwards with some knowledge of Kuoyu. Though this language is not normally spoken by Cantonese people in Hong Kong, a far greater number understand it now than before the war.
NEW TERRITORIES
The indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories consist of four principal groups, Cantonese, Hakka, Hoklo and Tanka, Although these groups show differences in physical appearance, dress, organization and custom, which suggest that they are racially distinct, it is safer to treat them as linguistic rather than racial groups.
The Cantonese occupy the best part of the two principal plains in the north-western sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. The oldest villages, those of the Tang clan in Yuen Long District, have a history of continuous settlement since the late eleventh century, in the Southern Sung dynasty, with whose imperial family the clan was connected by marriage. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantao Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty, in the late thirteenth century. Subsequent migrations have brought Cantonese from many districts of Kwangtung, and throughout the principal islands they are the majority com- munity. The earliest families in Yuen Long District speak a form of the Namtau dialect, an offshoot of Tungkwun, not very easy for city Cantonese to follow, but city Cantonese (Punyü dialect) is the lingua franca of all the New Territories market towns, regardless of whether the particular area is predominantly Cantonese or Hakka.
A
squatter village and Resettlement
Estate, side by side at Tai Hang Tung.
W. H. Shipway