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families to find employment elsewhere, put their own wives and children on sampans and hire themselves out as employees to their erstwhile peers. It is a pity that my records do not allow me to distinguish clearly between these two major categories of foki: those whose natal families had merely, as it were, loaned them out, and those who had had to turn to paid employment or starve. Among the former must be included youths like Chung Fuk Woh's son who deliberately ran away from home but nevertheless remained (albeit somewhat grudgingly) a recognised member of his natal family; among the latter, men like Leung Shui Hei alone in the world (whether accidentally or deliberately), and no longer linked into any kind of ongoing group of kinsmen. The elderly bachelor Ma Fung Shan, described below, was in a kind of intermediate position: originally a younger son put out to work on someone else's boat, he was by 1953 the sole surviving member of his father's family of procreation, split off by formal division more than twenty years before from the extended family group which his father's father's sons had at one time formed together. Ma Fung Shan had many local kinsmen, but no family to belong to. Unique in Kau Sai, there were many like him elsewhere.
As long as their natal families remained undivided and they themselves remained recognised members, fokis were expected not only to support themselves but also to send or take back remittances. A number of the younger fokis in Kau Sai did just that, returning home from time to time (particularly at Chinese New Year or the Dragon Boat Festival, but also on other holidays and sometimes during slack periods in the fishing seasons) with contributions to their natal families' funds, on which, of course, they still also had a claim. Such a young man was relatively well-off, in that even if he did not usually look forward to re-entering his natal family crew as a working member (and even this was not impossible when, as occasionally happened, business expanded or re-expanded and a larger crew was needed after all) he was still a member and could hope to be provided both with a bride and a share in the family's property when it was divided.
It is true that only 6 of the 26 male fokis in Kau Sai in 1953
110
BARBARA E. WARD
families to find employment elsewhere, put their own wives and children on sampans and hire themselves out as employees to their erstwhile peers. It is a pity that my records do not allow me to distinguish clearly between these two major categories of foki: those whose natal families had merely, as it were, loaned them out, and those who had had to turn to paid employment or starve. Among the former must be included youths like Chung Fuk Woh's son who deliberately ran away from home but nevertheless remained (albeit somewhat grudgingly) a recognised member of his natal family; among the latter, men like Leung Shui Hei alone in the world (whether accidentally or deliberate- ly), and no longer linked into any kind of ongoing group of kinsmen. The elderly bachelor Ma Fung Shan, described below, was in a kind of intermediate position: originally a younger son put out to work on someone else's boat, he was by 1953 the sole surviving member of his father's family of procreation, split off by formal division more than twenty years before from the extended family group which his father's father's sons had at one time formed together. Ma Fung Shan had many local kinsmen, but no family to belong to. Unique in Kau Sai, there were many like him elsewhere.
As long as their natal families remained undivided and they themselves remained recognised members, fokis were expected not only to support themselves but also to send or take back remittances. A number of the younger fokis in Kau Sai did just that, returning home from time to time (particularly at Chinese New Year or the Dragon Boat Festival, but also on other holidays and sometimes during slack periods in the fishing seasons) with contributions to their natal families' funds, on which, of course, they still also had a claim. Such a young man was relatively well-off, in that even if he did not usually look forward to re-entering his natal family crew as a working member (and even this was not impossible when, as occasionally happened, business expanded or re-expanded and a larger crew was needed after all) he was still a member and could hope to be provided both with a bride and a share in the family's property when it was divided.
It is true that only 6 of the 26 male fokis in Kau Sai in 1953
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