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HISTORY
Double-tracking of the Kowloon-Canton Railway line from Hung Hom to Sha Tin was completed in December, 1977, and work on a new loop line and station to serve the new Sha Tin Racecourse began. Work also started on other improvements.
Early History
Investigation has shown that people have lived in Hong Kong from primitive times, but population was sparse up to the 19th century. Small villages maintained them- selves by fishing, by cultivation of the scanty soil available, and by casual preying on coastal shipping. The fishing ports of Shau Kei Wan and Shek Pai Wan (Aberdeen) were noted as the haunts of pirates from the time of the Mongol Dynasty.
The Kwangtung area of the Chinese mainland was first brought under the suzerainty of China between 221 and 214 BC, but even after its conquest by the Han Emperor Wu Ti in 111 BC, it remained for some centuries a frontier area. The Lei Cheng Uk Tomb, which was discovered in Kowloon in 1955, probably dates from before the Tang Dynasty (620–907) and is evidence of Chinese penetration, although Chinese migration on a large scale did not come until the Sung Dynasty (960–1279). The oldest villages in the New Territories, those belonging to the Tang Clan, have a continuous history dating back to the 11th century, and other villages date from the Yuan Dynasty (1280-1368). Hakka and Cantonese, the two main Chinese groups, probably settled in the area over the same period.
A Place from which to Trade
Hong Kong's development into a commercial centre began with its founding as a British colony in 1841. At the end of the 18th century the British dominated the foreign trade at Canton but found conditions unsatisfactory, mainly because of the conflicting viewpoints of two quite dissimilar civilisations.
The Chinese regarded themselves as the only civilised people and foreigners trading at Canton were subject to humiliating personal restrictions. Confined to the factory area, they were allowed to reside only for the trading season, during which they had to leave their families at Macau. They were forbidden to enter the city and to learn the Chinese language. Shipping dues were arbitrarily varied and generally much bickering resulted between British and Chinese. Yet there was mutual trust and the spoken word alone was sufficient for even the largest transactions.
Trade had been in China's favour and silver flowed in until the growth of the opium trade from 1800 onwards reversed this trend. The outflow of silver became more marked after 1834, when the East India Company lost its monopoly of the China trade and the foreign free traders. The company, hoping to get rich quickly, joined the lucrative opium trade, which the Chinese had made illegal in 1799.
This led to the appointment of Lin Tse-hsu in March, 1839, as special Commis- sioner in Canton, with orders to stamp out the opium trade. A week later he surround- ed the foreign factories with troops, stopped food supplies and refused to allow anyone to leave until all stocks of opium had been surrendered and dealers and ships' masters had signed a bond not to import opium on pain of execution. Captain Charles Elliot, RN, the British Government's representative as Superintendent of Trade, was shut up with the rest and authorised the surrender of 20,283 chests of opium after a siege of six weeks.