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THE PATTERN OF LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES IN 1898
J. W. HAYES, M.A.*
In 1898 Great Britain signed the Peking Convention which gave her the lease of the New Territories for 99 years. The world has made such material progress since that time and urban Hong Kong has itself seen so many changes that it is difficult for us to-day to imagine the rural part of the Colony as it then was, without roads or wheeled transport other than the wheel-barrow, with inhabitants who knew nothing of cars, aeroplanes, or weapons of mass destruction. But having made this effort, we must think back further still if we wish to obtain a proper appreciation of the situation, as James Stewart Lockhart told the Hong Kong Government in 1898. At the end of his report on the New Territory, as he styled it, he said "Under Chinese rule enterprise has been at a discount, and progress has been at a standstill for centuries. The San On district of to-day must be much the same as it was four or five hundred years ago".
The report is a valuable first-hand account of the area as it was in the year of its acquisition and covers the points in which Government would be most interested such as topography, communications, trade and natural products, population, industries and the existing civil government. It also gave its author's recommendations as to how the New Territory should be governed and looked after in future. This article, whilst making use of Lockhart's report, tries to give the background which he, of course, would take for granted. It does not pretend to deal with every part of the backcloth but only touches on those parts which seem worth mentioning for their share in fixing life in its accustomed mould: the village, the people themselves and their history, the clan system, ancestral worship, education, the district government, the background of affairs elsewhere in the province, the prevalence of disturbance and epidemic, popular religion: all factors which made for integration or disruption in a life that could never have been easy.
* Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer with the Hong Kong Government since 1956.