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groups of men receiving trophies for rowing, for fishing, or for winning the San Miguel beer-drinking championship. Dragons from the head of dragon boats are also hanging up; the club is very strong on participation in the dragon boat races. A much-used ping-pong table occupies one end of the room; at the other sits a caretaker amid piles of plastic heels: he does a little cobbling on the side. In a nearby restaurant the club holds numerous dinners, where guests are entertained with Chinese opera singing, and modern pop songs. Both present and ex-fishermen attend these dinners; it was estimated that at one I attended no more than 10 percent of those present were still active fishermen, (though this estimate discounted women and children and guests present, such as the San Miguel brewery representative.) Probably a greater proportion belonged to active fishing families.
Before the war, Mr. Thirlwall said, there had been no policy for the boat-people, and they had been very socially isolated. From his lighthouse he had befriended them, dressed wounds, and had come to prefer their society to that of the uptight land-based Hong Kong Chinese. After the war, the pace of social change had been very fast, bewildering many older people. The fishing industry had contracted, and despite his local efforts there was very little solidarity among the fishermen, and that they were not represented as a community in the government process. Challenged as to whether the Regional Co-operative Federations did not do this job, he responded that the credit societies were just concerned with the operation of the better-off boats; they did not concern themselves with the slow loss of small anchorages to land reclamation, the difficulties of getting settlement without becoming an illegal squatter. It was said that all the boat-people were keen to settle: why then did the Marine Department have to refuse all fresh registrations of houseboats? In fact a community was being broken up, and many of the members of his clubs in Stanley and Chai Wan were no longer active fishermen. But they would defend their rights to be part of the Shui-sheung-yan community. He did not use the word “Tanka”, however, (“In fact, I hate it"), because it was used by land people to oppress them.
These two clubs in fact bridged the gap between the well-to-do active fishermen and the poor ex-fishermen, partly because of the very evident affection in which Mr. Thirlwall was held by all sections of the community. The clubs were, in fact, an exception to the general rule among the boat-people, not economic organisations, but quasi-ethnic ones, following a very common Hong Kong Chinese pattern, that of the
EDUCATION AS A BY-PRODUCT OF FISH MARKETING
133
groups of men receiving trophies for rowing, for fishing, or for winning the San Miguel beer-drinking championship. Dragons from the head of dragon boats are also hanging up; the club is very strong on participation in the dragon boat races. A much-used ping-pong table occupies one end of the room; at the other sits a caretaker amid piles of plastic heels: he does a little cobbling on the side. In a nearby restaurant the club holds numerous dinners, where guests are entertained with Chinese opera singing, and modern pop songs. Both present and ex-fishermen attend these dinners it was estimated that at one I attended no more than 10 percent of those present were still active fishermen, (though this estimate discounted women and children and guests present, such as the San Miguel brewery representative.) Probably a greater pro- portion belonged to active fishing families.
Before the war, Mr. Thirlwall said, there had been no policy for the boat-people, and they had been very socially isolated. From his lighthouse he had befriended them, dressed wounds, and had come to prefer their society to that of the uptight land-based Hong Kong Chinese. After the war, the pace of social change had been very fast, bewildering many older people. The fishing industry had contracted, and despite his local efforts there was very little solidarity among the fishermen, and that they were not represented as a community in the government process. Challenged as to whether the Regional Co- operative Federations did not do this job, he responded that the credit societies were just concerned with the operation of the better-off boats; they did not concern themselves with the slow loss of small anchorages to land reclamation, the difficulties of getting settlement without becoming an illegal squatter. It was said that all the boat-people were keen to settle: why then did the Marine Department have to refuse all fresh registrations of houseboats? In fact a community was being broken up, and many of the members of his clubs in Stanley and Chai Wan were no longer active fishermen. But they would defend their rights to be part of the Shui-sheung-yan community. He did not use the word “Tanka”, however, (“In fact, I hate it"), because it was used by land people to oppress them.
These two clubs in fact bridged the gap between the well-to-do active fishermen and the poor ex-fishermen, partly because of the very evident affection in which Mr. Thirlwall was held by all sections of the community. The clubs were, in fact, in exception to the general rule among the boat-people, not economic organisations, but quasi-ethnic ones, following a very common Hong Kong Chinese pattern, that of the
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