RAS-1968 — Page 170

NOTES AND QUERIES

165

he charged two or three cash a chih, with food and a place to sleep as was the custom. That was a lot of money for a man to earn; he could live for a week on one day's labor.

At page 53 it is mentioned that a few years later, at or about the Boxer time, the Old Weaver no longer came to the Chu home to weave cloth each winter, and that no one took his place, it being then cheaper to buy British or foreign cloth in the market.

1. For descriptions of hemp spinning wheels from Chekiang see pp. 167-169 of Rudolf P. Hommel's China at Work... (New York, The John Day Company, 1937). Photographs of two such wheels are at pp. 170 and 171. I have not yet come across any such relics from the Hong Kong region.

2. The Hakkas of Hing Ning district, mentioned above, appear also to have played a large part in weaving foreign cotton yarn imported via Swatow. Consul F.S.A. Bourne in his section of the Report of the Mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce 1896-7 (Blackburn, The North-east Lancashire Press Company, 1898) at pp. 153-4 mentions them as using foreign yarn for weaving cotton cloth "sent down the Canton East River past Hui-chow Fu to Fatshan where it is dyed black and called ch'ung-ch'ang-ch'ing i.e. imitation long black. This cloth, like that of which it is a copy, is very largely exported to Singapore."

3. For local, i.e. Hong Kong, place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960).

Hong Kong, 1968.

JAMES HAYES

THE TUNG CHUNG FORT (LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG)

For earlier references in NOTES AND QUERIES see Vols. 3 (1963) and 4 (1964) of this Journal at pp. 144-145 and 146-152 respectively.

In late January 1966, I heard of, and spoke with, an old lady aged 90 sui (歲) born on 2nd October 1877. She had spent all her days in the Tung Chung valley, having been born in Wong Ka Wai and married into Sheung Ling Pei village. A series of questions...