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EDGAR WICK BERG
over 3 acres per owner. Lands located over one mile from the owner's residence were a minor part of the total. It is possible that I have over-estimated the amount of "large owner" (that is, over 3 acres) land. But, for reasons I can explain during the question period, I believe that this figure is approximately accurate and that the total of slightly over 50 percent is also about right.
Tenancy rates are usually expressed in two ways: by the percentage of land that is tenant-cultivated and by the proportion of families that are tenants. In the absence of suitable household records, I cannot do the latter with any precision, but I see some strong indications that in this region of the New Territories, at least, we cannot make a firm classification of owners on the one hand and tenants on the other. Indeed, I am prepared to argue, though tentatively at present, that in the villages of this region 90 percent or more of the households were both owners and tenants. That is, typically, every household owned at least a small amount of land, usually not enough to support the family. To make up the difference, it rented land, most often from a clan, but sometimes from a large owner.
The resulting total might still be insufficient for family support, in which case some members of the family might work as short-term farm labourers. The hiring of such labour, my interviews have thus far indicated, was quite common in the Pat Heung area. A large number of families required short-term assistance at planting and harvesting times, and so hired members of other families. But hiring oneself to others for this purpose was also very common, even among families which were themselves employers of such labour. In addition, certain villages and surnames had developed a practice of supplying adult males as seamen (or, rather, cooks and stokers, usually) to foreign-owned steamship lines. How common this practice may have been is not clear, but it certainly was not limited, in the New Territories, to the Pat Heung region, as is evident from other sources. There may also have been members of several families who emigrated overseas or to urban Hong Kong or Canton. Parenthetically, and in passing, I would say that these last activities for New Territories residents, as a pre-World War II phenomenon, have been little studied, and may turn out, on investigation, to be of some importance.
In any case, the picture I have of Pat Heung villages is one in which families pieced together their income from several sources: farming their own lands, farming rented lands, hiring out as farm labour, doing odd jobs in the colony, serving as seamen, and perhaps
32
EDGAR WICK BERG
over 3 acres per owner. Lands located over one mile from the owner's residence were a minor part of the total. It is possible that I have over- estimated the amount of "large owner" (that is, over 3 acres) land. But, for reasons I can explain during the question period, I believe that this figure is approximately accurate and that the total of slightly over 50 percent is also about right.
Tenancy rates are usually expressed in two ways: by the percentage of land that is tenant-cultivated and by the proportion of families that are tenants. In the absence of suitable household records, I cannot do the latter with any precision, but I see some strong indications that in this region of the New Territories, at least, we cannot make a firm classification of owners on the one hand and tenants on the other. Indeed, I am prepared to argue, though tentatively at present, that in the villages of this region 90 percent or more of the households were both owners and tenants. That is, typically, every household owned at least a small amount of land, usually not enough to support the family. To make up the difference, it rented land, most often from a clan, but sometimes from a large owner.
The resulting total might still be insufficient for family support, in which case some members of the family might work as short-term farm labourers. The hiring of such labour, my interviews have thus far indicated, was quite common in the Pat Heung area. A large number of families required short-term assistance at planting and harvesting times, and so hired members of other families. But hiring oneself to others for this purpose was also very common, even among families which were themselves employers of such labour. In addition, certain villages and surnames had developed a practice of supplying adult males as seamen (or, rather, cooks and stokers, usually) to foreign- owned steamship lines. How common this practice may have been is not clear, but it certainly was not limited, in the New Territories, to the Pat Heung region, as is evident from other sources. There may also have been members of several families who emigrated overseas or to urban Hong Kong or Canton. Parenthetically, and in passing, I would say that these last activities for New Territories residents, as a pre-World War II phenomenon, have been little studied, and may turn out, on investigation, to be of some importance.
In any case, the picture I have of Pat Heung villages is one in which families pieced together their income from several sources farming their own lands, farming rented lands, hiring out as farm labour, doing odd jobs in the colony, serving as seamen, and perhaps
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