EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY
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Kowloon. They engaged in the construction of small bridges, pig-sties, village houses, and urban structures. On the look-out for chances of work, leaving their families behind them in the village, they began to settle, more or less temporarily, in the market towns of the New Territories, and on the Kowloon Peninsula. They lived a life oscillating between the rural and urban areas.
This uniform specialization in a skilled labour trade is difficult to explain. However, I venture to suggest a possible explanation. It seems reasonable to assume that specialization in the masonry trade was a gradually developing process. Some men were making use of the slack season in farming to obtain an extra income. This was a period when rapid urbanization in Kowloon, and increased building by New Territories emigrants in their native villages, would have raised the demand for such labour. Some success could have encouraged them to work on a larger scale, and to recruit extra hands by way of their agnatic bonds of kinship. The enterprise ramified, and more relatives became engaged. Through the stimulus supplied by the possibility of earning money in a short time when the traditional village economy was suffering from the strain of foreign industrialism, more Grass Field people sought a new income along lines already established by agnatic kinsmen. For a time, most households in the village had male members in the masonry trade. The fact that very few people chose existing alternatives can be explained in terms of a strongly kinship-orientated society.
A more drastic solution to maintain livelihood was emigration abroad. All three settlements have experienced this type of migration. But here also there are differences. Before the Pacific War, Grass Village had only a few migrants working in South-east Asia, while in Big Stream Village nearly every household had overseas members. In fact, emigration abroad seems to have started one generation earlier in the latter place than in the other two valley settlements; that is around 1890. In this generation, several men left for the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. I was told that mostly they entered the new countries illegally. They made a start as recruited crew members of ocean-going ships, and later deserted in convenient ports, thus avoiding poll-taxes and other obstacles to unwelcome Chinese immigration. The next generation, setting out in about the second decade of