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indications go to show that the permanent increase of the American business community will not be great. The French business community who were never very important, have slightly increased, but most of the French nationals are engaged in religious work. Natives of Indo-China have been included under French. Italians and Spanish of European descent are almost all engaged in religious work; under Spanish are classed a few who more strictly speaking are Portuguese or Filipino, but who claim Spanish nationality.
Japanese have increased from 958 to 1,585, and are now to be found in nearly every kind of trade, in the professions, crafts and domestic service. Numbers of them have now brought their families to the Colony, and the number of married women and children is largely increased. Ten years ago the number of married women was very small, but there are now 293 married women. Japanese have largely displaced Europeans in the last ten years in the middle levels between Kennedy and May Roads, while most of the artisans and small shopkeepers are to be found along the Praya in Wanchai between Arsenal Street and Morrison Hill.
The race known throughout the Far East as Portuguese must not be confused with the Portuguese of Europe. They are the descendants of the Portuguese pioneers of Western civilisation who reached China at the beginning of the 16th century, and, after many vicissitudes, finally in the middle of that century established a permanent settlement on the barren rocky peninsula subsequently known as Macau. It is recorded that the first settlers married natives of Malacca and Japan, and during the early years of the settlement they do not appear to have intermarried with Chinese, as has been the case of more recent years. At no time in the history of Macau does the number of females born in Europe seem to have been worthy of note. By 1834 Macau had become a colony in the true sense, the majority of the free inhabitants of non-Chinese race having been born there. At that date out of a population of 3,693 free non-Chinese inhabitants, only 75 males and 2 females were born in Portugal, and these were mostly officials, soldiers or ecclesiastics,
It was not till the prosperity of Macau began to decline with the rise of Hongkong that the Portuguese began from 1855 onwards to migrate to Hongkong and thence to every port in the Far East, till at the present time a numerous Portuguese community exists wherever foreign trade is carried on. The total is probably about 15,000; they form a separate community everywhere, at the present day rarely marrying outside, and speaking their own particular dialect, which portrays in its admixture of Hindustani, Malay, Japanese and Chinese words the history of the race.
Among the surnames of Hongkong Portuguese are found several of non-Portuguese origin. The explanation probably is that children of other European races brought up as Roman Catholics intermarried and became merged in the Portuguese community.
Sexes.-Between the ages of 20 and 25 there are 87 males to 110 females, this disparity grows till between 45 and 50 there are 38 males to 61 females. This disproportion has always been a feature of the race in every Census, and is partly accounted for by the enigration of males as soon as they leave school, and later on in life, when their further prospects of advancement here are small. During the war a number of males left the Colony for Shanghai and North China. The preponderance of females in the present Census is 56 to 44, while in 1834 in Macau the figures were 62 to 38.
Of the 1810 Portuguese born in the Colony only 552 claimed British nationality. Since the abolition of the monarchy there has been marked revival of national feeling amongst this community.
For
Duration of Life.-They are on the whole a comparatively short-lived race. females between the ages of 20 and 60, there is a loss of 59 per cent against a loss of 34 per cent in England and Wales; for males the loss is far greater, but is partly accounted for by emigration.
For 1920 the birth rate was 272 per thousand, the death rate 21 per thousand. Many cases of large families of 8 and over were noticed.