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approximately between 1900 and 1915. We find that of the four born before 1898, three had attended class for an average of four years, one attended for only one year, and then worked first in the farm for a few years and then in the construction of the railway. Amongst the six born after 1898, however, three never went to school and one claimed that he learnt to read a little when he worked as a shop assistant in a small tea-house at Shamshuipo. Around 1900, at least two teachers are known to have given up teaching, one to work in the Land Office of the New Territories administration and the other to work for his brother-in-law at Taipo. Liao Chung-nan, the siu-tsai who formerly taught a small class at high fees in his own home as mentioned above, eventually had to move to teach at the Wan Shih Tang at a lower fee of about $5 per pupil.
Three government schools providing an elementary English education were set up between 1905-1906, one being situated at Taipo, about six miles from Sheung Shui. Unlike in urban Hong Kong, response to this new educational provision was not great. The school at Ping Shan fared most badly and was closed in 1907 to be replaced by one set up in Cheung Chau. The average attendance throughout 1905-1912 in these three schools was twenty, out of a total of 224 schools in the whole Territories with an average attendance of sixteen each.15 The Report of the District Officer of 1912 states: “Government schools on a small scale have been opened at centres in the New Territories providing an elementary instruction in English, the fee for these is 50 cents per month. There is not, however, a great demand for this instruction of a more modern type in most of the districts, for the people still cling to the old-fashioned learning.”16 We have no record of village people from Sheung Shui attending the Taipo government English schools before 1913.
1913. The social and economic changes resulting from the change of government were still small and the opportunities for new jobs were still limited, and the jobs were mostly confined to manual labour. New demands had not yet appeared to bring marked changes in popular literacy which remained basically rooted in the traditional and relatively confined village society, but it was perhaps beginning to lose its former hold both as a basic education for the masses and, at a more advanced level, as the avenue to position and wealth.