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there to support the dried fish trade in their native places and also to provision the merchant boats which followed the fishing fleets. Their presence is recorded for Shau Kei Wan before 1841,46 which is in line with their presence on Cheung Chau from the eighteenth century.” At Stanley, village tradition ascribes the foundation of the Pak Tai temple there in 1803 to them. This widespread presence of outsider merchants is clear evidence of a substantial trade not limited merely to the immediate marketing area.
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I come now to a particular feature of the Hong Kong scene before 1841 that was to be encountered again in Kowloon in 1860 and in the New Territories in 1899. According to a near contemporary account compiled by three knowledgeable British officers in the 1860s:
“Hong Kong so far back as the Ming dynasty was owned by a respectable family of the name of Tang. When Kanghi ordered the Coast to be cleared of its inhabitants [1662] the possession of Hong Kong was abandoned. But when the Emperor revoked his decree [1668], the occupation of it was again resumed and title deeds granted, authenticated records of which remain to this day in the offices of the chief magistrates of Sin Ngan [ ] and Tungkwan [ ]. The land tax for two centuries and upwards had been regularly paid by this family, its members being considered by the government as its true and lawful landlords.”49
The authors continue that, when ceding the Island to Britain:
“No provision seems to have been made by the Chinese Government for the original proprietors of the soil, who made suit to the British Government humbly praying for remuneration. It was said that some eight or ten thousand dollars were paid for certain fields in Wong-nei-chong and Su-kon-pu not to the members of the Tang family, however, but to the persons occupying the soil and claiming to be its true and rightful owners. Whether they were so or not does not appear.
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The Tang family to whose claims to land ownership of Hong Kong Island I shall return presently continued to suffer from