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ensure that the saltfields there were in the same County as the rest of the salt commission Yin Tin (Yantian, 鹽田, "The Salt Fields") almost certainly got its name somewhen in this period However, areas under the control of a Salt Commissioner were often merely the salt-pans, and the adjacent village of the salt-workers, in pockets scattered along the coast, and the presence of a salt commission could co-exist with a totally undeveloped hinterland See Luo Hsiang-lin (羅香林), 香港前代史 一八四二年以前之香港及其對外交通, Xianggang Qiandaishi Yiqian Ernian Zhi Xianggang Ji Qi Duiwai Jiaotong, Hong Kong, 1959, translated as Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1841, but without the footnotes. Hong Kong, 1963], ch 1, n 5, 13, 12, ch 4, n 14 See also ch In 13 See also S Y Lin, "Salt Manufacture in Hong Kong", in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol 7, 1967, pp 138-151 (reprinted from The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vol X, No. 1, January 1940)
4 See Luo Hsiang-lin, op cit, ch 3; SF Balfour, "Hong Kong before the British Being a Local History of the Region of Hong Kong and the New Territories Before the British Occupation”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. Vol 10. 1970, pp 134-179 (printed from Tien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, Vols Hand 12, 1940, 1941), K M.A. Barnett, "Hong Kong Before the Chinese, the Frame, the Puzzle, and the Missing Pieces", Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 4, 1964, pp. 42-67; Sung Hok-p'ang, "Legends and Stories of the New Territories Tai Po, Part I”, in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol 28, 1988, pp 70-76 (reprinted from The Hong Kong Naturalist, May, 1935)
+
6 The Gazetteer mentions pirates in the Mirs Bay area in 1571, 1590, 1641, 1647, 1648, 1664, and 1672, 1688 Gazetteer, ch 12, 1819 Gazetteer, ch 12, Chung Lap Pao edition, 1979, pp. 119-120, and see also 1819 Gazetteer ch 7, and ch 19, Chung Lap Pao edition, pp 80-81, and 154
* The 1688 Gazetteer gives a list of villages in existence in the area in and before 1662 (1688 Gazetteer, ch 3) See the note at ff 13-15, which makes it clear that the villages are those of the period before the Coastal Evacuation of 1662-1668, and not those contemporary with the Gazetteer
The Provincial Governor and Magistrate urged on the returning families the need to get tenants or purchasers to take over land which could no longer be tilled by the descendants of the previous owners (see Luo Hsiang-lin, op cit pp. 145-149, n. 15, 19, 23 relating to dates on the 1710s and 1720s) Within the Mirs Bay area, at least the Lees of Wo Hang settled there in 1692 "on the [official] order to reclaim land", see D Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p 217, n 22 There is at least one case where a lineage abandoned land east of the mountains, to concentrate themselves in the more sheltered west The name of the village of Man Uk Pin, "The Houses of the Man Family") makes it clear that it was once lived in by the Man family That family, however, is now found only in Ta Kwu Ling, to the west, at Ping Che, Tong Fong, and Heung Yuen villages When the present inhabitants of Man Uk Pin, the Chung (鍾) lineage settled there in about 1700, it was deserted - clearly in his case a lineage had concentrated on its best lands to the west, and abandoned the marginal Mirs Bay land to newcomers
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