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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT
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.
The Hakka (this is their own word for themselves, and is explained as meaning strangers) began to enter this region at about the same time as the first Cantonese, or even before. The Cantonese were the more successful settlers, however, and in the areas where both groups live side by side the Hakka are always found upstream, along foothills, and in general on the worse land. At an early stage they seem to have become dependants or serfs of the powerful Cantonese families. The balance was restored later by heavy immigra- tion from the East River districts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, and the Hakka are now almost exclusive possessors of the Sha Tau Kok, Sai Kung and Hang Hau peninsulas, and of the foothills of Tai Mo Shan. They are the majority community in Tai Po, Sha Tin and Tsuen Wan, and on the islands of Tsing Yi and Ma Wan.
The origin of the Hakka is unknown. They have contradic- tory traditions pointing to both a northern and a southern origin, and, while the greatest numbers of them are found in eastern Kwangtung, there are many in Kiangsi and some in Szechuan and Taiwan. In the New Territories there are certain villages which show indications of being of non- Chinese origin; such villages are invariably Hakka-speaking.