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Currency.
6.
7.
Relief Funds.
8.
Communications.
Passage or Chinese Army.
Immediate Projects.
New Aero- drome.
y.
10.
Anxiety was early caused by the publication of Proclamation No.5, relating to currency, the canger being that the townspeople would unload their surplus Military Yen on the slower-witted country people, who would be left nursing a monstrous baby stuffed with worthless Japanese notes. But the country people proved pretty fly after all, and Hong Kong currency is now re-establisned, with C.N.C. in diminishing demand along the border.
Partly to spread Hong Kong currency widely in notes of low denomination, partly to relieve distress among the needy, and partly to get the streets and public places of market-towns cleaned up, and the main road-sides cleared of weeds, the Government provided a Relief Fund for the employment of the poorest on light work of this nature. The country-people, who are used to doing a day's work for a day's wages, regarded unis rather lightly. Local gangs were quickly engaged to repair the work section of the roads, another means of distributing Hong Kong currency as widely and at as low a level as possible. All the vegetable seed available was distributed for immediate planting.
11.
Sucn lorries as remained more or less serviceable after une Japanese occupation were licensea to bring food-stuff into Kowloon and to carry a certain number of passengers, the demand for passenger traffic being
The strong, as there are no buses in the country yet. railway now fills a great need by running two trains in each direction aaily. The means of transportation are still very short, and the miserable practice, which arose during the Japanese occupation, or pushing vegetables on little trolleys for miles into town, is still round necessary by many. Wood cutting is continuing as assiduously as ever, owing to the serious shortage of this form of fuel. Certain ferry services have been resumed.
The passage, which continued sporadically, of the Chinese Central Government Army through the New Terri- tories to Kowloon, probably tended to increase current tendencies to political instability. The welcome they received (fire-crackers etc.) was probably spontaneous, though it became less enthusiastic with familiarity.
The next few months will see the re-opening of Government Dispensaries with doctors in attendance and lying-in facilities; the re-appearance of Government scavengers in markets, a serious effort to arrest the rapid deterioration of the roads caused by increasingly heavy traffic; improvement in the ferry services; and the start of the plan for the diversion of uroan nightsoil to the New Territories. Government schools will be re-opened.
Several changes have been made in tue delineation of the exact site of the New Aerodrome, and, tnough work has started, the final plans are not yet available. It is however clear that at least 8 villages containing about 700 houses and a population of about 1300 will have to go, with the addition of the resumption of about 600 acres of private land, and the probability that
These resumptions more villages and land will have to go. are producing the expected neadache. The villagers are
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