108
BARBARA E. WARD
intelligent and a willing worker. With about four years' village schooling as a boy in China behind him, he was better educated than most Kau Sai fishermen at the time. Nevertheless, he remained a foki, unmarried and without prospects. This was largely because he had no kinsmen of any kind, all having been lost to him during the Japanese occupation of Kwangtung and Hong Kong. By birth a land child, he had taken to work on fishing boats faute de mieux when he found himself alone in the world at the age of about 16. Now, a dozen or so years later, he was indistinguishably a boat man. His earnings were too small to make it possible for him to marry, unless someone else would put up the bride-price for him (a most unlikely occurrence, though not unknown), and although he could have saved enough to buy at least a sampan of his own, he preferred the freedom from responsibility of a hired man's life on his employer's boat, with all found and a chance to supplement his earnings every now and again.
In this, he but followed the pattern of all the other unmarried fokis: a married man liked to have his own boat, however small, or a woman alone might also own her sampan; unmarried men seldom, if ever, did so. Only 3 of the 31 fokis employed in Kau Sai in 1953 owned small boats of their own. All were married men over thirty years of age with more than one child. Two of these boats were small sampans, normally acting as houseboats for the man's wife and two or three young children, occasionally journeying to Sai Kung, where the boat population was much larger, or to one of the local Boat Peoples' festivals, when short-haul water transport was in demand to make a small income from ferrying passengers. The third boat, with a somewhat larger complement, including the owner's two adult brothers as well as his wife and children, acted as a hand liner catching smallish quantities of good-quality fish and selling them direct to local consumers or tea-houses in Sai Kung. Both the adult men on this boat were unmarried and had previously worked as fokis on other men's boats. They were prepared to do so again if their present experiment failed. Unfortunately, on my return to Kau Sai in 1959, I found they had moved away, and I have no further record of their story. The other 3 married fokis in Kau Sai in 1953 had their wives living with them on their employers' boats.
108
BARBARA E. WARD
intelligent and a willing worker. With about four years' village schooling as a boy in China behind him, he was better educated than most Kau Sai fishermen at the time. Nevertheless he remained a foki, unmarried and without prospects. This was largely because he had no kinsmen of any kind, all having been lost to him during the Japanese occupation of Kwangtung and Hong Kong. By birth a land child, he had taken to work on fishing boats faut de mieux when he found himself alone in the world at the age of about 16. Now, a dozen or so years later, he was indistinguishably a boat man. His earnings were too small to make it possible for him to marry, unless someone else would put up the bride-price for him (a most unlikely occurrence, though not unknown), and although he could have saved enough to buy at least a sampan of his own he preferred the freedom from responsibility of a hired man's life on his employer's boat, with all found and a chance to blue his earnings every now and again.
In this he but followed the pattern of all the other unmarried fokis: a married man liked to have his own boat, however small, or a woman alone might also own her sampan; unmarried men seldom, if ever did so. Only 3 of the 31 fokis employed in Kau Sai in 1953 owned small boats of their own. All were married men over thirty years of age with more than one child. Two of these boats were small sampans, normally acting as house boats for the man's wife and two or three young children, occasionally journeying to Sai Kung where the boat population was much larger or to one of the local Boat Peoples' festivals when short- haul water transport was in demand to make a small income from ferrying passengers. The third boat with a somewhat larger complement, including the owner's two adult brothers as well as his wife and children, acted as a hand liner catching smallish quantities of good quality fish and selling them direct to local consumers or tea-houses in Sai Kung. Both the adult men on this boat were unmarried, and had previously worked as fokis on other men's boats. They were prepared to do so again if their present experiment failed. Unfortunately, on my return to Kau Sai in 1959 I found they had moved away, and I have no further record of their story. The other 3 married fokis in Kau Sai in 1953 had their wives living with them on their employers' boats.
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