204
NOTES AND QUERIES
vides a frame-work endowing meaning to social events and distributing them in time. Rice farming in this area combines two cyclic technical systems, nearly identical in nature, into one cultural and social system. Vegetable farming combines many minor self-contained systems into an agglomeration which assumes no specific cultural or social form as an overall system. Each crop on each plot forms a province of meaning. These are discrete and not necessarily linked to each other. An integration is obtained only by way of converting these crops into cash.
At this point we must consider the decline of rice cultivation in the New Territories. When the British arrived at the turn of the century rice was everywhere the predominant crop. At this time in Sha Tin the balance between paddy fields and dry cultivation comes out strongly in favour of the former. Records from the valley reveal that in 1905 a portion amounting to 90.1 per cent of the acreage was under rice cultivation. I have pointed out already that the growth of urban areas on Kowloon Peninsula brought about a major change in the villages there, in that the farming community increasingly switched over to cash crops — vegetables to be marketed in the new and expanding cities. We do not know exactly how this change came about, only that it happened in the near proximity of the urban markets and in the presence of immigrants in the villages.
It was not until the 1950s that vegetable cultivation rapidly spread into the Sha Tin area to encroach on old rice land. There are two parallel processes on the macro level which we must understand as background for further enquiries into the mechanisms for the drastic change in the agricultural landscape. Let us first consider two facts. Rice cultivation in this area was never very profitable, and landholdings were small in relation to the growing population. The increase in population between 1911 and 1931 was about 14 per cent. There was little space for an accompanying expansion of the arable land. The soil was not very suitable for wet rice and yields were low. The increase in population was experienced as a pressure on the economy in many villages. Many took advantage of the new occupational choices offered in the city areas and they became urban workers, sailors, or emigrés in overseas countries. In the post-war years emigration increased as the possibility of going to the United Kingdom open to holders of British passports (granted to people born in Hong Kong) had a feverish effect on the
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204
NOTES AND QUERIES
vides a frame-work endowing meaning to social events and distri- buting them in time. Rice farming in this area combines two cyclic technical systems, nearly identical in nature, into one cultural and social system. Vegetable farming combines many minor self-con- tained systems into an agglomeration which assumes no specific cultural or social form as an overall system. Each crop on each plot forms a province of meaning. These are discrete and not ne- cessarily linked to each other. An integration is obtained only by way of converting these crops into cash.
At this point we must consider the decline of rice cultivation in the New Territories. When the British arrived at the turn of the century rice was everywhere the predominant crop. At this time in Sha Tin the balance between paddy fields and dry cultivation comes out strongly in favour of the former. Records from the valley reveal that in 1905 a portion amounting to 90.1 per cent of the acreage was under rice cultivation. I have pointed out already that the growth of urban areas on Kowloon Peninsula brought about a major change in the villages there, in that the farming community increasingly switched over to cash crops — vegetables to be marketed in the new and expanding cities. We do not know exactly how this change came about, only that it happened in the near proximity of the urban markets and in the presence of immigrants in the villages.
It was not until the 1950s that vegetable cultivation rapidly spread into the Sha Tin area to encroach on old rice land. There are two parallel processes on the macro level which we must under- stand as background for further enquiries into the mechanisms for the drastic change in the agricultural landscape. Let us first consider two facts. Rice cultivation in this area was never very profitable, and landholdings were small in relation to the growing population. The increase in population between 1911 and 1931 was about 14 per cent. There was little space for an accompanying expansion of the arable land. The soil was not very suitable for wet rice and yields were low. The increase in population was experienced as a pressure on the economy in many villages. Many took advantage of the new occupational choices offered in the city areas and they became urban workers, sailors, or emigrés in overseas countries. In the post-war years emigration increased as the possibility of go- ing to the United Kingdom open to holders of British passports (granted to people born in Hong Kong) had a feverish effect on the
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