72
J. T. KAMM
For the purposes of land registration, tu constituted the highest-order unit in the tax system; p'i were essentially equivalent to li. For other purposes, however, notably the collection of the land tax and the policing of the district, tu was subordinated to still higher administrative divisions. Baker (1968), who has studied the 1689 edition of the Hsin-An Hsien-chih (**), mentions the existence of hsiang (*) units superordinate to tu; these are undoubtedly the same units mentioned in the chapter on Administrative Divisions (#) of the 1759 edition of the Kwangchow Fu-chih (✯✯✯✯). In this account, both Tung-Kuan and Hsin-An are divided into hsiang with jurisdiction over discrete tu. The distribution of rural administrative divisions is schematized below; the approximate locations of Hsin-An's seven tu are given in the map on page 28.
文顺歸城 延福
歸化
1 2 3 4 5 6 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
粜
莞
1 2 3 5
新
延福歸城
Diagram I: Administration Divisions of Tung Kuan and Hsin-An, 1759.
By 1819, the hsiang-tu-li system had given way to the ssu-tu-ts'un (]*††) system in official correspondence relating to civil administration.13 Our most complete description of this system appears in the chapter on Hsin-An from the Kwangtung T'u-shuo (✯✯ER). This work, which lists 429 registered villages throughout the county, breaks Hsin-An into four "jurisdictions" for purposes of general administration (excluding defence). The assistant magistrate (**) resided at Tai-Pang (**) and was responsible for sections of the 4th and 7th tu. One deputy magistrate (*) was located at Fuk-Wing (*), and was responsible for parts of the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 7th tu. Another deputy magistrate resided in Kowloon, and was delegated authority over significant portions of all seven tu. Finally, a police master (#), who operated out of Nam Tau, watched over relatively small, apparently remote, portions of five tu.