Kong and only occasionally refers to particular aspects of that law obtaining in the New Territories, and apart from the two reported cases, there is no published material dealing specifically with Chinese customary law of the New Territories which the courts may apply in cases arising from those territories.
Although such law must be established by proof acceptable to the court, there is an apparent and an urgent need for a restatement of that law. Such a restatement would, it is submitted, be likely to be of assistance to the courts and to the legal profession. The material for such a restatement must naturally be accumulated over years, the most likely sources being the officers of the Administration and of the technical Departments, who are in daily contact with the inhabitants of the New Territories. In 1958 the District Commissioner stated-
we sadly miss the pre-war records. Successive District Officers in each district had, prior to 1941, built up what they called their "Bible" of knotty points of custom, obtained from independent witnesses who were alive in 1899 and were called not by either party to the dispute, but in accordance with Chinese practice by the Court itself.**
(Although that loss may be held to the account of the Japanese, it does appear that nation has more than adequately repaid its debt to sinology by its scholars' researches into Chinese customary law.*4) During the last decade administrative and technical officers have again undertaken the task of collecting material on Chinese customs maintained in the New Territories and it is on the unpublished results of their labours that the ensuing restatement of Chinese customary law is based.
The Country and The People.
The area of the New Territories comprises 355 square miles of land and 673 square miles of sea. The leased territories extend in strict definition from Boundary Street in the middle of Kowloon to the Shum Chun River but the area of 7 square miles immediately to the north of Boundary Street is known as New Kowloon and is administered not as part of the New Territories but as an extension of the Urban Area, that is, the ceded territory of the Colony proper.