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JAMES HAYES
indicates that the main users of the outer islands through the centuries were probably outsiders, and not Cantonese. Hsü points out that Fukien people use the character yue (shữ) to mean a small island, and use the characters chou and shan for larger ones: whereas the Kwangtung people rarely use yue for this purpose. He cites this, together with the use of the homophonous character for 'fish' in the name for Lantau given in the Ta Ch'ing I T'Ung Chih of 1738, to suggest that the persons who first gave the island this name were either fishermen or pirates from Fukien. There may be something in what Hsü says, because Giles', Eitel's and Wells Williams' dictionaries all support the Fukienese usage of 'Yue'.1 Hsü states that the 36 'Yue' round Tai Yue Shan, mentioned in the older Chinese local sources,2 are islands of this kind, and derive their name in this way. The use of these important local seaways by turbulent Fukienese seamen helps to explain official concern with security.
I shall conclude this section on Hsin-an in Chinese historiography by doing what the Chinese histories do not do; considering the outer islands as settlements and, for the purposes of this article, showing their former connection with parts of present-day Hong Kong.
Most of the Hsin-an and adjacent islands are shown on the 1:20,000 British maps of the Hong Kong area, published in 1948 but based on earlier mapping. They have not been included in the latest maps, now issued in full3 because since 1949 it has no longer been possible to land survey parties on or overfly adjacent Chinese territory, to the disadvantage of all geographers and historians.
By the late 19th century, it seems, their settled inhabitants were mostly Hakkas who had strong economic ties with Hong Kong island, Cheung Chau and Tai O on Lantau. Many women came on marriage to Hong Kong and the inner islands, especially to Lantau. Private property also linked the islands and the mainland, in that some of them belonged in whole or in part to the Wong clan of Nam Tau and Cheung Chau. These connections were
1 Giles, p. 593; Eitel, p. 919; Wells Williams, p. 819. The last named states 'An islet which has level arable land at the foot of its hills; applied to many islands on the coast of Fukien'.
2 e.g. TMITC chuan 79.
3 Cooper, p. 137.
4 See Hayes 1963: 90-92 for this major local lineage.