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a hundred yards on either side of the main path up the valley. On one side were about 30 two-storey wooden huts, their upper floors divided into small cubicles and sub-let for domestic use. All the ground floors were used for shops, the principal shop tenant often sub-letting one part to a second shopkeeper, and even a part of the pavement to a hawker. Six feet away, on the other side of the path, was a row of some 40 market stalls, all built on platforms over the stream. Throughout the day there would be three or four hundred people thronging the path. Not all of them were squatters, for many residents of Sham- shuipo also came here to buy meat and vegetables, toys and joss sticks. Above all they came to buy fish which were kept half alive in tanks of aerated water piped from the stream. All the structures in the market were illegal and none of the trades was licensed.
20. Adjoining the market, and concentrated haphazardly into two acres of land, were 140 sand-brick houses and 40 wooden huts, many of them having two storeys. Altogether these contained 2,500 people. There was no drainage, no proper latrine facilities, and the only water supply came from a few wells; many of the footpaths were only two feet wide, and these usually served also as drains. Almost all the buildings were illegal and a majority belonged to absentee landlords. The larger ones contained between one and two dozen cubicles, each occupied by a family of four or five persons. For a typical cubicle measuring about 50 square feet the monthly rent was about twenty five dollars: perhaps more if there was a window and less if not. Further up the valley were the four acres of land still remaining under cultivation, most of it illegally. In the upper part of the valley there was another haphazard concentration of 4,000 squatters living in 340 structures, almost all of stone or brick construction. Conditions here were better than those already described. The buildings were more sub- stantial: there was more space around them, less overcrowding in them, and, the rents were also five or ten dollars higher. The remaining 2,500 squatters lived in 250 wooden huts, perched in squalid clusters on the hillsides.
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