EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY
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period of emigration, leading to a situation of nearly complete male absenteeism, a steadily increasing amount of paddy fields has been abandoned.
Thus agricultural production is diminishing and the villages now depend entirely on the inflow of external income from emigrants working mainly in Britain. This heavy specialization in one trade—Chinese-style restaurants—in one particular country—has given rise to a rather uniform socio-economic pattern.
The earlier situation was characterized by one focus of social interest in the home community and many scattered foci of economic interest in more or less remote areas. Extension was then tentative and exploring. The sojourners were scattered in small kin groups or were by themselves on their own all over the world. Apparently, there were no contacts between such groups, at least not if they were residing in geographically separated areas. During their absence, their influence on home affairs was limited. As I understand, money that was remitted to the home community was handled by the wives, if the husband's parents were dead or too old to control the economy of the extended family unit. I have heard some elderly ladies mention that they have bought land and rebuilt houses with remittances sent by their husbands. A mother could also act in the same way. Actually, I have not come across one single instance in which a father has rebuilt a house with money remitted home by a son, or a father and son together have invested in a new building. If this is not just an occasional situation, it might be interpreted as indicating that sons working overseas show unwillingness to make larger investments as long as the father maintains economic control over the household. This needs further investigation. There is a good chance, of course, that fathers tended to regard the incomes of the sons as money of their own, especially if they had been working together overseas.
It seems, however, that the routine remittances home were used mainly to meet daily expenses. Savings were made by the sojourner himself, to be used for special remittances accompanied by instructions or to be taken back on his own return. On the whole, external income, and especially overseas income, was beyond the control of the home community. On the other hand, political control in the home village was beyond the reach of the