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NOTES AND QUERIES
Tin Valley is characterized today by the everywhere existent, superbly thriving garden beds.
The development of intense vegetable farming in the traditional society of China seems to have been linked to the proximity of urban central places with great agglomerations of people. Urban marketing has, so it seems, been a prerequisite for a one-sided specialization on vegetable production. The geographic distribution of horticulture has been limited by one particular cultural barrier. Chinese palate calls for very fresh market goods, and every tendency in the marketed products to perish will considerably decrease the saleable price. Thus transportation to the city markets must be short or rapid. As a consequence, the urban areas were often surrounded by limited zones of intense horticulture.
During the latter half of the 19th century, the twin cities of Victoria and Kowloon emerged as a result of foreign intervention and planning. Their growth was related to the attraction the new Colony had on a countryside impoverished under the strain of a fast-increasing population. The appearance of the new urban districts stimulated the interest in the surrounding rural areas, which later were to become New Kowloon and the New Territories, for the cultivation of cash crops. This was within a sector with reasonably good communications to connect with the city markets. According to available information, the start was made on Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula, where the old villages seem to have taken advantage of the new development quite early. The continuous spread of the network of transportation, initiated after the British territorial expansion to the New Territories in 1898, when new roads were constructed and the Canton-Kowloon railway was laid out through the district, gave rise to new opportunities and the possibility to expand the zone of intense vegetable cultivation beyond the Kowloon Foothills. The Sha Tin valley is located just behind this range of mountains, but, contrary to what one might expect, vegetable farming was not to become important there until recently, in the post-Pacific War period. The obstacle against a switch over to horticulture may be found on the managerial side of production, but this by no means accounts for everything. An important barrier to change may be found in the social values and knowledge of the village population.
In the Sha Tin valley, paddy fields are still to be seen scattered around in the area. The New Territories are situated in the double-