PENG CHAU
79
provide complementary information which makes it clear that this is the position.
Though this is not stated in the deeds, it is very likely that these two Tongs were related and formed part of one large clan. Of the two, the CHAN Yan Hop Tong is evidently the principal and probably owned more land on Peng Chau than the portion it leased to the other Tong. It is interesting that it still owned land on the Lantau coast after 1898 when the land registers give its address as Nam Tau, the district city of San On. However, on the scanty information at present available, this Tong is rather a shadowy body, though we have a little more information about its lessee, the CHAN Yee Ka Tong, which itself may have been quite wealthy. On one of the 1882 deeds the seller CHAN Kai-sin describes himself as Chung Tong Shi 中堂司 of this Tong. This must have been a clan office and the seller and other members of his Tong were almost certainly resident in Tung Kwun and not in Peng Chau. A few years before (1878) the commemorative tablet in the Tin Hau temple
lists the CHAN Kai-sin Tong4 as having contributed six taels of silver to the repair fund. In the light of the deed, the inscription on the tablet is probably a mistake and should have read CHAN Yee Ka Tong, of which CHAN Kai-sin was a leading member. This gift put this Tong among the main subscribers, thereby attesting its importance on the island. The other is not mentioned on the tablet.
These Tongs were almost certainly absentee landlords, and the first of them may perhaps have had tax-lord privileges for the whole island which may have been granted to it at an earlier and unknown date, in the eighteenth century or even before, in return for services rendered to the imperial government.27 They most likely belonged to a family of scholar gentry of some importance in its own locality, and the rents from its Peng Chau property would help to support its members and provide funds to enable them to study for the examinations and so continue to obtain official posts.
Whilst the 1798 tablet in the Tin Hau temple gives no direct evidence of these Tongs' ownership of land on Peng Chau in the eighteenth century, it does give a few good hints. Two CHANS appear as the principal donors, and it is interesting that the names