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two of those that were placed in this region for defence purposes, and installed at Kowloon Walled City when that was built in 1847.
ANTHONY K.K. SIU
1 Wu T'u-li #, White Banner Manchu, Acting Governor of Kwangtung from the 5th year to the 7th year of Chia Ch'ing (1800-1802).
1 Chüeh-lo-chi Ch'ing, White Banner Manchu, Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi from the 1st year to the 7th year of Chia-ch'ing (1796-1802).
} Sun Ch'uan-mou, native of Fukien Province, Commander-in-chief of the Kwangtung (Marine) Forces from the 1st year to the 9th year of Chia-ch'ing (1796-1804).
4
From the inscription, the name of the Commissioner of Salt Transport of Kwangtung and Kwangsi is illegible. However, from historical record, the one who was in that post was Zhang Ch'uan, native of Chekiang Province.
HONG KONG'S OWN BOAT PEOPLE
In April 1970, I went with one of my friends to visit his mother who lived on a boat in the Causeway Bay Typhoon Shelter. The friend was a boatman who crewed and looked after a pleasure boat for a European firm. He lived in a squatter hut in Chai Wan Cottage Resettlement Area.
The old lady belonged to the indigenous boat population of Hong Kong Island. She had been born on a boat moored off the old Dairy Farm pier inside the present typhoon shelter. This was in 1890. Her father had also been born there in a boat, and she thought this had been so for several generations: at least, this was the family's received information. Her husband had also been born on a boat in the area, and his father before him, and with the same family tradition of local identity.
This evidence is not conclusive, being based only on word of mouth within these two families of boat people. The grandparents might have come into the area upon the opening of the port in the 1840s. On the other hand, a pre-British origin would accord with many other cases known to me, in which Tanka boat people had attached themselves to small bays and local anchorages: by all accounts and certainly by their own traditions for generations, and perhaps even for centuries.
T