114
JAMES HAYES
lation hard at work getting in the second crop of paddy. The principal part of the labourers was the women, owing probably to the fact of the men being generally engaged in fishing. The paddy rice grows to a height of about two feet six inches. The fields are little patches of about fifty paces, on account of the unevenness of the ground. The rice is thrashed out of doors: first, in a tub with a screen, by a man, who takes a bunch in his two hands to strike the ears against the edge of the tub and then gives the rice again to be thrashed on a floor made hard with chunam, the Chinese asphalt. Ploughing is here done with a very primitive plough and a wonderfully small bullock, as the ground is soft and does not contain a single pebble, ... After being harrowed, it may receive a crop of sweet potatoes, or ground nuts. The women work with children on their backs. No one appears too young to take a part in the work. In the next fields are sugar-canes.
9.29
Thus long before 1841, the villagers of Hong Kong, and the shopkeepers and local boat people too, had settled into the routine of a settled life. Tied to their fields and houses, and to their businesses and daily occupations, they had established institutions of the kind that is usual in Chinese communities, including the shrines and temples that were the object of periodic and special rites through the calendar year. They were therefore to be numbered among those who, in another place and time, twenty years on at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, were described as "the old inhabitants of this site, who are indeed orderly people” in contrast to newcomers who were suspected of being "thieves and outlaws”.3
30
Their good behaviour struck a series of visitors from outside. The famous botanist Robert Fortune, writing of his experiences on the Hong Kong area in the 1840s commented:
"In all my wanderings on the island, and also on the mainland hereabouts, I found the inhabitants harmless and civil. I have visited their glens and their mountains, their villages and small towns, and from all the intercourse I have had with them I am bound to give them this character.
Another observer, the military surgeon Keith Stewart McKenzie,
Page 135
Page 136
114
JAMES HAYES
lation hard at work getting in the second crop of paddy. The principal part of the labourers was the women, owing proba- bly to the fact of the men being generally engaged in fishing. The paddy rice grows to a height of about two feet six inches. The fields are little patches of about fifty paces, on account of the unevenness of the ground. The rice is thrashed out of doors: first, in a tub with a screen, by a man, who takes a bunch in his two hands to strike the ears against the edge of the tub and then gives the rice again to be thrashed on a floor made hard with chunam, the Chinese asphalt. Ploughing is here done with a very primitive plough and a wonderfully small bullock, as the ground is soft and does not contain a single pebble, . . After being harrowed, it may receive a crop of sweet potatoes, or ground nuts. The women work with children on their backs. No one appears too young to take a part in the work. In the next fields are sugar-canes.
9.29
Thus long before 1841, the villagers of Hong Kong, and the shopkeepers and local boat people too, had settled into the routine of a settled life. Tied to their fields and houses, and to their busi- nesses and daily occupations, they had established institutions of the kind that is usual in Chinese communities, including the shrines and temples that were the object of periodic and special rites through the calendar year. They were therefore to be num- bered among those who, in another place and time, twenty years on at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon, were described as "the old inhabit- ants of this site, who are indeed orderly people” in contrast to newcomers who were suspected of being "thieves and outlaws”.3
30
Their good behaviour struck a series of visitors from outside. The famous botanist Robert Fortune, writing of his experiences on the Hong Kong area in the 1840s commented:
"In all my wanderings on the island, and also on the mainland hereabouts, I found the inhabitants harmless and civil. I have visited their glens and their mountains, their villages and small towns, and from all the intercourse I have had with them I am bound to give them this character.
Another observer, the military surgeon Keith Stewart McKenzie,
Page 135Page 136
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