OLD BRITISH KOWLOON
133
NOTES
The place names are all in Cantonese and can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication The Place Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1960). Where not otherwise stated my authority for information given in the paper comes from the old people mentioned in note 16. The aim of this article is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century.
1. E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, p. 360.
2. The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. The text can be found on pp. 198-199 of the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, i.e., papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899.
3. Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong and Kowloon for 1864... presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty in 1865 to be found in Parliamentary Papers, China, 1861-66, p. 16.
4. C.O.129/85 in the Public Record Office, London.
5. The Commissioners sent an abstract of these documents to London. These were as follows:
"No. 1 | List of Red Deeds Owners not belonging to the Teng Family—contains 91 Deeds, comprising an area of 176 acres value computed at $25,865.32
No. 2 List of Deeds belonging to the Two Branches of the Teng Family contains 78 Deeds comprising an area of 276 acres value computed at $40,561.52
No. 3 List of squatters showing the number to be 222—spread over 90 acres value computed at $13,226.16*
The "Teng" family mentioned in Nos. 1 and 2 above is the Tang (*) family of Kam Tin, who are Cantonese and are the oldest, richest and best-known of the New Territories landed families. See SUNG Hok-Pang. "Legends and Stories of the New Territories" Parts III-IV, Kam Tin, in The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII.
6. Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860. The population at this time contained a preponderance of men; 3356 to 971 women and 778 children (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 22 February 1862).
7. For instance, the genealogies (##) of the Ng (吳) clan of Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po and the Lam (林) clan of Chuk Yuen and Po Kong show that their settlement dates back to this period.
8. I base this statement on personal knowledge of the fifty or more Hakka villages in the Sai Kung district of the New Territories.
9. Hong Kong Government Blue Book for 1871 p. 148.
10. See G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" in Sessional Papers 1912 p. 55 and J. H. Stewart Lockhart in Sessional Papers 1899, p. 189. My second statement is based on conversations with families of Hakka stonecutters at Ngau Tau Kok Village, Kowloon.