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isolation of China. In the immediate post-1949 years little contact (aside from intermittent remittances channeled through Hong Kong) between Southern Fujianese and their mostly male kinsmen in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was possible, causing great human and economic hardship. When China relaxed her emigration policy following the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, however, thousands upon thousands of Fujianese women and children began arriving (illegally) in Hong Kong with the intent not of going to the Philippines or elsewhere to join their overseas husbands and fathers but merely to rendezvous with them in Hong Kong. Weeks and months, if not a year or two, though were often necessary to make the arrangements to bypass or overcome Filipino travel restrictions. For many Fujianese their "temporary" stay in Hong Kong turned first indefinite and then permanent as they both adjusted to Hong Kong life and sought ethnic comfort in the Fujianese community.
Sai Ying Poon, the early destination of nearly all these Fujianese, could not accommodate all these newcomers into its crumbling and dilapidated housing. As the immigrative stream swelled in the early 1960s, Sai Ying Poon rents soared and more and more Fujianese began to settle directly in North Point which, we may recall, was at that time experiencing a housing boom and a drop in rents. North Point's attractions to these Fujianese also included a population who could speak Mandarin, the Chinese lingua franca, as well as a middle-class ambience which accorded well with the orientations of many of the more bourgeois, wealthier and overseas-related Fujianese.
Although Fujianese emigration to Hong Kong slowed to a trickle during the Cultural Revolution in China (1965-1969), North Point continued to attract residents from Sai Ying Poon and by the end of the decade had far surpassed it as the center of Southern Fujianese life in Hong Kong. The resumption of legal emigration from Fujian in 1972 has helped spur the growth of satellite Fujianese communities in nearby Quarry Bay and across the harbor in Hung Hom, To Kwa Wan and Kwun Tong but the hub of the Fujianese settlement in Hong Kong has remained in North Point.
Little Fujian as Sub-Neighborhood
The postwar expansion of North Point has thus been quite swift, with the peak population increase corresponding roughly to the
116
GREGORY E. GULDIN
isolation of China. In the immediate post-1949 years little contact (aside from intermittent remittances channeled through Hong Kong) between Southern Fujianese and their mostly male kinsmen in the Philippines and elsewhere in Southeast Asia was possible, causing great human and economic hardship. When China relaxed her emigration policy following the Bandung Conference in Indonesia in 1955, however, thousands upon thousands of Fujianese women and children began arriving (illegally) in Hong Kong with the intent not of going to the Philippines or elsewhere to join their overseas husbands and fathers but merely to rendezvous with them in Hong Kong. Weeks and months, if not a year or two, though were often necessary to make the arrangements to bypass or overcome Filipino travel restrictions. For many Fujianese their "temporary" stay in Hong Kong turned first indefinite and then permanent as they both adjusted to Hong Kong life and sought ethnic comfort in the Fujianese community.
Sai Ying Poon, the early destination of nearly all these Fujianese, could not accomodate all these newcomers into its crumbling and dilapidated housing. As the immigrative stream swelled in the early 1960s, Sai Ying Poon rents soared and more and more Fujianese began to settle directly in North Point which, we may recall, was at that time experiencing a housing boom and a drop in rents. North Point's attractions to these Fujianese also included a population who could speak Mandarin, the Chinese lingua franca, as well as a middle-class ambience which accorded well with the orientations of many of the more bourgeois, wealthier and overseas-related Fujianese.
Although Fujianese emigration to Hong Kong slowed to a trickle during the Cultural Revolution in China (1965-1969), North Point continued to attract residents from Sai Ying Poon and by the end of the decade had far surpassed it as the center of Southern Fujian- ese life in Hong Kong. The resumption of legal emigration from Fujian in 1972 has helped spur the growth of satellite Fujianese communities in nearby Quarry Bay and across the harbor in Hung Hom, To Kwa Wan and Kwun Tong but the hub of the Fujianese settlement in Hong Kong has remained in North Point.
Little Fujian as Sub-Neighborhood
The postwar expansion of North Point has thus been quite swift, with the peak population increase corresponding roughly to the
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