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farmers could ever raise enough cash for those expenses requiring substantial cash payments, e.g. to build or repair extensively a house or buy a new plough. I was told that careful management could make a plough last almost indefinitely: a completely new plough was needed only if the old one shattered into fragments. The wooden parts could be replaced by the farmer cutting and preparing wood himself, the coulter had to be regularly replaced by a coulter bought new but could be fitted on by the farmer. The blacksmith in Tai Po would accept the old coulter in part payment for the new one; he would then melt it down to recast it. Small expenses (e.g. extra rice, sugar, oil, other comestibles) could be met by the sale of firewood etc. Sugar was very cheap: sale of 1 picul of firewood would enable enough sugar and oil to be bought to last a thrifty family several weeks. As for houses, these were repaired as soon as the slightest signs of wear, cracks, leakage or ants appeared, and would thus survive almost for ever, barring typhoon or fire damage. If a home did get so damaged a poor family could only repair it by mortgaging its fields at a high price (say, at the rate of 1 or 5 picul per harvest per tau). If good years supervened in which there were good harvests and opportunities for wage labour such a family could recover and pay off the mortgage, but if bad years came the mortgage might be foreclosed and “that family would starve and might well die". Substantial wealth in ready cash "usually came from outside" from remittances from seamen etc. as in Wai H.L.'s father's and uncle's case, or the Ng family in West Lane etc. One member of Chan family (Name given me by Wai H.L. but I forgot it) in Tai Wai “about 30 or 40 years older than Wai Siu-ling” (i.e. born about 1855-1865) became very rich as a seaman at the turn of the century or thereabouts or a little earlier. He became the "leader” of an American ship. Villager wanting to go to sea would have to receive his recommendation, and would have to pay to get it. He also smuggled opium to Chinese communities in the U.S.A., making great profits which he used to buy up houses and fields in Tai Wai. He shamed the other villagers "by wearing only silk when they could afford only hemp, and eating pork and chicken when they could afford only rice and salt fish” He also married the most beautiful girl in Sha Tin, However, he was caught when his last smuggling adventure "just before he retired" (1915?) went wrong and was fined very heavily. He could not pay and had to sell all his belongings at an auction. He was considered a "bad man" - not because of his smuggling but because he did not help the village. "Other men who became rich like this would repair the r'ong (ancestral hall) or do other communal acts, but he not only refused but would not even help his