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It might often have been the case that they predated the land people of the neighbouring villages. Theirs was not a symbiotic relationship. Even when they lived together in the same locality, they kept apart; the villagers in their houses and the boat people on their little family boats just offshore in the same or an adjoining bay. Despite some interaction, the two communities were separate and individual, contributing nothing vital to the other nor sharing anything important.
It was in such circumstances that my friend's family had probably lived at Causeway Bay for generations before the establishment of British Hong Kong, fishing the local waters and living in some proximity to the land people of the two nearest local villages of So Kon Po and Wong Nai Chung.
The number of indigenous boat people in the Causeway Bay anchorage was apparently not large. In her own words, "When I was young, not very many of the boats in the anchorage were native to the area." These families gained their livelihood, then as in 1970, by fishing not far from home going most frequently over to Junk Bay and by ferrying people to and from the cargo boats and cutters using the anchorage. Some took out guests for a quiet dinner on the water, an entertainment for which this area became quite famous. Taking people out in this way was described as sung-yan t'au-long. Others used their boats for marine hawking, going among the other craft with daily necessities in those days before refrigeration made their services largely redundant.
In the last years of the nineteenth century, as in 1970, their local marketing area was the Tang Lung Chau market. This was the name of that locality, and not of the little island off shore which the British named Kellett Island. It later became the Royal Hong Kong Yacht Club, joined by a causeway to the shore at Tang Lung Chau. To the boat people, the old lady said, Kellett Island was simply known as “Chau Chai" or "the little island”.
The local boat people's main market village was Shau Kei Wan, with which she seemed very familiar. She particularly mentioned the songs of the boat people there, of the kind known as haam-shui.