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J. W. HAYES
of these persons also appear on the large temple bell presented in 1792. All six donors of this bell were CHANs, all related, and these two are listed as the sons of two elder CHANs. One would expect the members of a tax-lord Tong to subscribe liberally to local projects. Indeed, they could hardly avoid doing so, since they would certainly be asked and could not refuse without loss of face. Therefore it is possible that these CHANs did belong to either the Tung Kwun family or the Nam Tau family which, as I have surmised, may well have been different branches of the same powerful clan. Some of its poorer members may even have settled as shopkeepers on Peng Chau, since when the British took over the New Territories in 1899 persons of this name were prominent among owners of shops and houses in the main street left and right of the one which had been sold in 1882. Perhaps settlement was the only means of collecting the rents from this remote place, which induced the family to send some of its people to live there. It is difficult to get conclusive proof since no members of this clan appear to be left on Peng Chau today and my last suggestion is more conjecture than anything else.28
The CHAN clan were not the only Puntis with an interest in Peng Chau, but with the information at present at my disposal it is impossible to say whether they were the first Cantonese settlers or developers. In 1899 all but one or two shops were run by Cantonese, though Hakkas had been on the island for about a century. Several of the shopkeepers had inherited businesses begun by their grandfathers, which indicates that a measure of stability had been achieved on the island for some time past. However, the merchants and shopkeepers generally may have been less settled and less wedded to Peng Chau than the farming Hakkas.
Turning now to these, the LUIs are said to be the oldest, but whether they were actually the first Hakka settlers is an open question. They have fallen on hard times and there are only two separate families left. A man of sixty-four is of the fifth generation, which on the twenty-five year basis of reckoning would give the first ancestor's birth-date as 1800, whilst a thirty year period, which is perhaps more likely, would give 1780. At any rate the family must have come to Peng Chau about 1800.