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ARMANDO M, DA SILVA
One could reasonably suspect that the edifice was used more for signalling and coast watching than for outright defence, and as a navigational landmark. The stone walls are made from local material, the porphyritic granite. Certain nearby boulders of this granite have drill markings on them, the drill holes 3 or 4 inches apart. The fort appears to be built on an older stone base measuring some 225 by 130 feet, the walls of which are surmounted by superstructure walls of fired gray bricks (plate 8). A red clay found nearby, when mixed with lime, blocked and fired, could have produced this type of Chinese gray brick. The stone blocks and the gray bricks are held in place by lime cement made of lime mortar mixed with fine sand particles.5 The possibility that the bricks were produced from materials close at hand should not be dismissed.
Many of the stone blocks and gray bricks have subsequently been removed by villagers for their own use. The Tin Hau temple nearby, for example, may have been partly constructed from bricks looted from the old fort (plate 9).
When was the station constructed? The San On Yuen Chi makes no mention of any date but hints that law and order were established after troops were stationed at various outposts on the Chu Kong estuary after the order for the Coastal withdrawal (tsin hoi) had been rescinded in 1669. We have a brief mention in that district gazetteer that the Kai Yik Kok fort, as well as the forts located at Nam Tau and Chik Wan further up the estuary, were garrisoned by troops engaged in the restoration of order in "dangerous" areas not previously altogether under their control.
The persistent belief, still current today, that the ruin was of Dutch origin derives from the fact that Dutch ships in the early decades of the 17th century frequently stopped by the offshore islands of the Chu Kong estuary to take potable water. They were denied anchorage in Macau by the Portuguese and prohibited from entering Chinese ports by the Chinese. The myth of Dutch origin has been reinforced by confusion of the name with that of the Dutch fort of Castel Zeelandia built on Taiwan in the 17th century, which is also known as Fan Lau ($), meaning "foreign building". It takes no stretch of the imagination to ascribe to the fort at Kai Yik Kok, a Dutch, or Portuguese, or any other foreign origin. Fan
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