SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 205
greatly in importance in recent times, but it is now, as far as I can see, a large-scale charitable organisation of business men which, while it rests in theory on the representation of villages falling within the area once covered by the old yeuk-complexes, is in fact essentially both city-based and city-run. (At the present eighteen villages appear to be represented in the Lok Sin Tong: one in Sha Tin, one in Tsuen Wan, and eight each in Sai Kung and New Kowloon. But I am not sure that the representatives are members of the villages they represent).
25. Yeuk existed also in the Sha Tau Kok area (note the Nam Yeuk mentioned in the early British records) and in the area of Ho Sheung Heung (Hau Yeuk). It will be seen, therefore, that at the time of the advent of British rule many central, southern, and eastern areas of the mainland part of the New Territories were covered by a network of yeuk which, while certainly not including every village, nevertheless generally affected the political organisation of these areas. The striking omission is the west, that is to say, roughly the modern Yuen Long District. As far as I have been able to discover (my enquiries in this area were cut short by my premature departure from the Colony), the term yeuk has no traditional meaning here. (I stress 'traditional'. The British used the word for their own purposes; demarcation districts for land and the broader administrative districts were called yeuk after the new regime was established; and, as a result, by hearing the word used today one may be misled into thinking that it has a longer local history than it in fact has). Similarly, I know of no evidence that there were yeuk in the islands. Groupings of villages there certainly were in the Yuen Long area, under the names of heung (although I am not sure how old this usage is) kung shoh, just as these groupings sometimes appear in the areas where yeuk also existed; but the absence of yeuk seems to call for comment.
26. If we look again at the evidence on yeuk-complexes, we may perhaps conclude that they were formed to protect the interests of the weak against the strong. The powerful Liu of Sheung Shui were never members of a yeuk. Indeed, on their own they were the enemies of the Luk Yeuk of Ta Kwu Ling. Similarly, the Tang of Lung Yeuk Tau (in which name, incidentally, the character for Yeuk is not the one we are concerned with here) and Tai Po Tau stood aloof from yeuk. It is probably significant that the Man of Tai Hang formed a yeuk on their own when they assumed leader-
SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 205
greatly in importance in recent times, but it is now, as far as I can see, a large-scale charitable organisation of business men which, while it rests in theory on the representation of villages falling within the area once covered by the old yeuk-complexes, is in fact essentially both city-based and city-run. (At the present eighteen villages appear to be represented in the Lok Sin Tong: one in Sha Tin, one in Tsuen Wan, and eight each in Sai Kung and New Kowloon. But I am not sure that the representatives are members of the villages they represent).
25. Yeuk existed also in the Sha Tau Kok area (note the Nam Yeuk mentioned in the early British records) and in the area of Ho Sheung Heung (Hau Yeuk). It will be seen, therefore, that at the time of the advent of British rule many central, southern, and eastern areas of the mainland part of the New Territories were covered by a network of yeuk which, while certainly not including every village, nevertheless generally affected the political organisa- tion of these areas. The striking omission is the west, that it to say, roughly the modern Yuen Long District. As far as I have been able to discover (my enquiries in this area were cut short by my premature departure from the Colony), the term yeuk has no traditional meaning here. (I stress 'traditional'. The British used the word for their own purposes; demarcation districts for land and the broader administrative districts were called yeuk after the new regime was established; and, as a result, by hearing the word used today one may be misled into thinking that it has a longer local history than it in fact has). Similarly, I know of no evidence that there were yeuk in the islands. Groupings of villages there certainly were in the Yuen Long area, under the names of heung (although I am not sure how old this usage is) kung shoh, just as these groupings sometimes appear in the areas where yeuk also existed; but the absence of yeuk seems to call for comment.
26. If we look again at the evidence on yeuk-complexes, we may perhaps conclude that they were formed to protect the interests of the weak against the strong. The powerful Liu of Sheung Shui were never members of a yeuk. Indeed, on their own they were the enemies of the Luk Yeuk of Ta Kwu Ling. Similarly, the Tang of Lung Yeuk Tau (in which name, incidentally, the character for Yeuk is not the one we are concerned with here) and Tai Po Tau stood aloof from yeuk. It is probably significant that the Man of Tai Hang formed a yeuk on their own when they assumed leader-
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