246
MAURICE FREEDMAN
round and not treated simply as a general topic that might be generally surveyed. On the other hand, there is certainly a need for basic data on the New Territories as a whole, some of which, as I have already suggested, might be gathered through the Rural Committees. I hope that it may be possible in a few years' time to have a clearer idea of such crucial questions as the uses to which emigrant money is being put, the role of the returned migrant, the social and economic adjustments of communities from which migration has been heavy, the reasons why particular communities have held aloof from the movement, and the part played by emigration in changing the status of individuals vis-a-vis the wider society (especially in the case of the Tanka and Hoklo who have been abroad).
84. It had been my plan to pay close attention to certain other matters in the course of the second half of my stay in the New Territories. But as things have turned out I am not able to do more now than to suggest lines of further enquiry which were indicated to me by my general survey. I shall begin this last part of my report on the subject of land, the importance of which is obvious. A good deal is already known about land use because of the surveys done under government auspices, and many basic facts are available on the economics of agriculture, both in its traditional form and in the newer sphere of market-gardening and pig-rearing. But the ownership and tenancy of land that is to say, the complex of rights to occupation, access, and use which underline economic activity-have not been thoroughly explored since the Administration first took charge of the New Territories. From the 1961 census, which went as far as any census could go towards gathering information on this subject, we can measure the extent to which cultivators are using land which is their own, ‘ancestral', or leased; but the areas involved and the precise rights implied in these categories remain to be determined. The official land records seem at first sight to document the history of land tenure from 1905 to the present; but, partly because they are records of memorials and not deeds, they seem to be out of step with reality; and they cannot of course tell us anything about many forms of tenancy. Again, the land records use categories for collective ownership (tso, t'ong, and ui) the exact significance of which in modern conditions is not always very clear.