130
JAMES HAYES
However, despite the foregoing recital of disturbances over the years, many old persons in the Hong Kong region who were born between 1875 and 1900 have told me that their early years were very peaceful. This serves as a reminder not to telescope time and place too readily; and not to confuse occasional excitements with the regular rhythm of rural life. Nor too readily to deduce from them that there was a deterioration in institutions at the local level, as at the centre, in the later 19th century—a point made by Rhoads Murphey in his study of China's modernization.1
POSTSCRIPT
There are two other happenings that must be mentioned in this survey of events. One, the establishment and rise of Hong Kong from 1841 on, and its effect on the surrounding and adjacent territory, I do not intend to treat with here.2 The second, rural depopulation, though it might appear to have some connection with the first, is in fact a separate phenomenon. Linked to over-population, malnutrition and disease, it is important enough to warrant a concluding notice.*
The problem of depopulation early intruded itself into my village studies through the preoccupation with feng-shui noted in many places, so much of it linked to a reported decline in the numbers of local populations. I have encountered this in many villages on Lantau Island3 and in other parts of the old Southern District, in places as far distant from Lantau as Pak Lap on High Island in the Sai Kung District, and Ho Pui with Muk Min Ha in Tsuen Wan. These have also claimed depopulation in the 19th century and after. In the northern New Territories the well-known Tang clan of Kam Tin records a similar loss of population;4 whilst at Lin Ma Hang, a large village on the present Sino-British frontier,5 a stone tablet dated in 1893 was erected to detail the geomantic
1 Murphey: 27-30.
2 The first is well-documented, the second scarcely at all, though discussed in Potter 1968.
3 See JHKBRAS 3, 1963: 143-144; JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 156-158 and Hayes 1967:22-30.
4 Sung in HKN, VII, Dec. 1936:256.
5 See Gazetteer: 214.
Especially as, in Hsin-an, it is not to be linked with devastating Taiping campaigns and official retribution, nor with Hakka-Punti wars on the scale that occurred in some parts of the province,
130
JAMES HAYES
However, despite the foregoing recital of disturbances over the years, many old persons in the Hong Kong region who were born between 1875 and 1900 have told me that their early years were very peaceful. This serves as a reminder not to telescope time and place too readily; and not to confuse occasional excitements with the regular rhythm of rural life. Nor too readily to deduce from them that there was a deterioration in institutions at the local level, as at the centre, in the later 19th century—a point made by Rhoads Murphey in his study of China's modernization.'
POSTSCRIPT
There are two other happenings that must be mentioned in this survey of events. One, the establishment and rise of Hong Kong from 1841 on, and its effect on the surrounding and adjacent ter- ritory, I do not intend to treat with here.2 The second, rural depo- pulation, though it might appear to have some connection with the first, is in fact a separate phenomenon. Linked to over-population, malnutrition and disease, it is important enough to warrant a con- cluding notice.*
The problem of depopulation early intruded itself into my village studies through the preoccupation with feng-shui noted in many places, so much of it linked to a reported decline in the numbers of local populations. I have encountered this in many villages on Lantau Island3 and in other parts of the old Southern District, in places as far distant from Lantau as Pak Lap on High Island in the Sai Kung District, and Ho Pui with Muk Min Ha in Tsuen Wan. These have also claimed depopulation in the 19th century and after. In the northern New Territories the well-known Tang clan of Kam Tin records a similar loss of population;4 whilst at Lin Ma Hang, a large village on the present Sino British frontier," a stone tablet dated in 1893 was erected to detail the geomantic
1 Murphey: 27-30.
2 The first is well-documented, the second scarcely at all, though dis- cussed in Potter 1968.
3 See JHK BRAS 3, 1963: 143-144; JHKBRAS 9, 1969: 156-158 and Hayes 1967:22-30.
4 Sung in HKN, VII, Dec. 1936:256.
5 See Gazetteer: 214.
Especially as, in Hsin-an, it is not to be linked with devastating Taiping campaigns and official retribution, nor with Hakka-Punti wars on the scale that occurred in some parts of the province,
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