LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES
101
See paras. 38 These feuds, often of long standing, persist to-day. 77-79 of Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's annual administrative report for 1955-56 as District Commissioner New Territories for a good instance of traditional hostility. For other cases see paras. 97 and 43 of the annual departmental reports for 1957-58 and 1958-59.
See Smith Village Life in China p. 286, also p. 222 "The local Magistrates take care not to intervene too soon or too far, lest it be the worse for them. When the fight is over the officers put in an appearance, arrests are made, and the machinery of government recovers from its temporary paralysis", and pp. 282-86 for a northern instance of clan violence.
40 According to Dyer Ball Things Chinese (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903) p. 326 "a dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and the Punteis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties". See also pp. 369-70 of B.C. Henry's Ling Nam (London, Partridge, 1886),
41 From information supplied by elders of Ho Chung village who were at school during or before 1898.
42 See the section on Disasters in the San On Yuen Chi.
43 See stone tablet outside Tin Hau temple, Kat O, Tai Po district.
44 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/4/26 (1777) at Yuen Long Old Market.
45 From a stone tablet dated Chia-ch'ing 7/3/23 (1802) at the Tin Hau temple, Kat O.
46 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/lucky month, lucky day (1777) at the Hau Wong temple, Tung Chung.
47 From a stone tablet dated Tao-kuang 21/7/19 (1841) at Tin Hau temple, Peng Chau.
48 From a stone tablet whose date is uncertain, at the Tai Wong temple, Yuen Long Market.
49 Variously, as above.
50 Reminiscences of Mr. TANG Kiu Fong of Fui Sha Wai near Yuen Long, in an article in the New Territories Weekly for January 1962.
51 Tree spirits are quite common in the New Territories where many old trees have joss sticks and red paper inscriptions placed under them on a rough altar. There is, in particular, a very large old banyan tree at Long Kang a few miles east of Sai Kung Market which must surely be the oldest tree in the Southern District. This is visited regularly by devotees. From personal experience of every part of the old Southern District I can say with confidence that belief in tree and earth spirits still exists to-day, and might indeed be said positively to flourish.
52 An ancestral temple is not open to the public: it is for the private use of the clan, for whom alone it has any meaning. Most villages of any age and consequence have ancestral temples, and in multi-clan villages