CHEUNG CHAU
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is needed on this point. The Tong's position commands a special mention. It is the family organisation of the WONG clan who are now in the 27th adult generation at Nam Tau, their principal seat. By allowing a twenty-five year generation period, this will place their origin in Kwangtung in the early Yüan dynasty (1280—1368). However, the introduction to their gene-alogical record was written by a descendant of the 10th generation in the eighth year of the Hung-chih reign (1492-3), so that it seems likely that the generation periods are slightly longer and that the family dates from late Sung times. The Tong itself stems from an eighth generation ancestor, WONG Hing-cheong, a scholar of the chin-shih ± degree who had six sons, giving the Tong six branches, of which the first and third only are now represented on Cheung Chau.
When the Tong acquired the Cheung Chau property is not stated; but since it was the sole ground landlord on the island in 1898 and all the other inhabitants held their leases from it and not direct from the Crown,1 it must have been at an early date, and very likely before the formation of the Tong in the mid-fifteenth century. Whether the whole island was given to the Tong by one grant, or whether, having first acquired a substantial grant of land, it pursued an assiduous policy of aggrandisement which eventually resulted in total ownership, is not certain; but, if a grant, it seems to have been a not uncommon thing in the San On district or the Kwangtung province.2
The island community was not as isolated as its geographical position on the fringe of an outlying district might suggest. It was on the main route between Macau, the West River, and Hong Kong which, as the century drew on, was a factor of increasing importance. Cheung Chau began to share in the prosperity of Hong Kong, though it would probably be going too far to say that it owed its rise to the increasing fortunes of its neighbour.3 Besides its original families it began to attract settlers in larger numbers, among whom were many persons from adjacent parts of the province, such as CHOI Leung, "the kind-hearted man of Tung Kwun”, who originated the Fong Pin scheme in 1872. According to the tablet he had already been trading on the island for several decades before he began his