MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE
41
Most of these cases are summarily dealt with by the village council... But if either of the parties to a case is dissatisfied, he can appeal to a council of a Tung [Tung='cave', translated by Lockhart as division], or to a general council made up of the representatives of the different Tung.... Each council of a Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section. This general council is styled the Tung P'ing Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section."47 The organization of the Tung P'ing Kuk may be represented schematically as follows:
Tung P'ing Kuk Tung Tung Tung Tung Village Councils Village Councils Village Councils Village CouncilsApart from the description above, little is known about the Tung P'ing Kuk. Hayes, setting Stewart Lockhart's description against local material gathered from his own enquiries in the area, accepts that "a form of genuine local self-government existed in 1898"48. Freedman comments: "I have not yet been able to convince myself that I know what tung are."49 It is likely that what Stewart Lockhart described as a system of "local government" was the formal framework of a militia organization. Everything he says is consistent with this interpretation. Militia organizations commonly undertook responsibility for the maintenance of local order. The title of the general council is also suggestive: the character p'ing ('peace') often appeared in the style of militia forces.
It is possible to get an idea of the areas of the various tung within the northern district of the New Territory from Appendices III and V of Stewart Lockhart's report. Three of the tung, Sha Tau Kok, Yuen Long, and Sham Chun, seem to have been roughly