69
males, while their families remained behind. In other words, those villages with an excess of females are the inevitable reverse side of the coin, off-setting the towns and cities of the area, with their excess of males. Not surprisingly, given the more urban character of Southern District, most of the villages with excess females were in Northern District, as this temporary male emigration was a feature of rural villages, just as temporary male immigration was a feature of the industrial villages, towns, and cities. Appendix I lists the villages with significantly low ratios of males to females (less than 47.0% of total population male, excluding villages with total populations of less than 35, except where the imbalance is extreme) Table 31 maps these villages
It will be seen at once from the map at Table 31 that the villages with low percentages of males are concentrated in the mountainous east of the New Territories, and on Lamma. Because of this, more Hakka than Punti villages are low in males. This is, however, a factor of social and geographical conditions, rather than racial or cultural ones: large Punti villages within the eastern New Territories (such as Siu Lek Yuen, Ho Chung, Sha Kok Mei, Wu Kai Sha, Tai Hang etc) share a shortage of males with their smaller Hakka neighbours. Indeed, in Ta Kwu Leng, it is the Punti villages (Ping Che, Lo Shue Ling, Lei Uk Tsuen, Tai Po Tin) which are short of males, the Hakka villages having either a balanced population, or even a surplus of males (eg Heung Yuen with 53.4% of males, and Ping Yuen with 55.9%). Within the richer western parts of the New Territories, villages with shortages of males are less common, but a few clusters can be seen, such as around Ha Tsuen and Yuen Long Markets. These clusters are probably mostly of villages with significant numbers of males working in the markets (the shortage of males in all the Yuen Long villages with shortages was in total 242: the number of excess males working in the markets at Yuen Long and Ha Tsuen was 197) Similarly, it is likely that at least some of the absent males from Lam Tsuen were working in the market at Tai Po
The shortage of males in the eastern New Territories is to be explained by emigration. The missionaries of the Basel Mission, who were active in the north-east New Territories from 1849 onwards, remarked on the high levels of emigration from villages in this area from 1851 onwards. By 1880, the missionaries were speaking of "emigration fever" in their reports on the area, by 1894 of "deserted