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to Mr. Chan T'aai of Tseung Kwan O, they demanded protection money from the villagers. Eight to ten people would come in a gang, armed with guns. The village elders had to collect money from every one to pay them. Mr. Lei Yun Shau remembered that about twenty days after the Japanese had passed through, bandits attacked his native village of Man Yee Wan. At the time, he operated a ferry boat between his village and Sai Kung Market, and the bandits spared his house. Just outside Sai Kung, in Wong Chuk Long, Mr. Wan Yau was robbed of over ten piculs of grain the first time the bandits came. Thereafter he hid most of his food reserve on the hillside, and his pigs in a damaged kiln. Even then, the bandits found the pigs. Mr. Chan Shing of Tai Long remembered that the bandits came every several days, demanding food and money. All their grain was taken, and the villagers survived on roots and leaves. Fortunately, in 1942, there was a brushfire over Chinese New Year, and afterwards the hillside was overgrown with wild lilies. The villagers gathered them for food. The lilies were bitter, but some of this bitterness could be leached out by covering them with ash and salt before they were cooked. These lilies were the villagers' principal diet that winter. In spring, when they were ready to farm, the only seeds they could find were the small amounts that some people had managed to hide on the hillside. By mid-1942, they were so starved that they harvested the rice before it ripened, ground the grain to flour and used it for cakes. In April, when the bandits came again, there was literally nothing that they found worth taking away.71
Some bandits were local people, but most had come over from Sha Yue Ch'ung and Wai Chau. Mr. Chan T'aai of Tseung Kwan O believed that the gangs that looted his village had their hideout on Junk Island. Mr. Lei Yun Shau was once captured by the bandits, while he was transporting rice between Sai Kung and Man Yee Wan, and was taken to Leung Shuen Wan.
He was finally released on the intervention of another bandit, who knew Mr. Lei, and who considered that the local ferries should not be disturbed. Mr. Lei's mother was extremely upset to learn that he had been captured, and might have helped also to arrange his release. Finally, the sum of eight hundred dollars was paid to the bandits.72