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were currently married, but 16 were under 30 years of age and can be assumed to have been still marriageable. Of the family circumstances of 4 of these I unfortunately have no information. Five were recorded as being fatherless. Only the 7 whose fathers were still alive as heads of undivided families could have had a reasonable expectation of matrimony. I have already mentioned Ma Fung Shan, the foki who was still a bachelor at 43 and expected to remain so. Three of his agnatic first cousins were Kau Sai residents, but family division had taken place some twenty or more years previously and none had any responsibility for him, though most admitted to a moral obligation to offer him employment. The fatherless unmarried men and those for whom I have no information, if not like Leung Shui Hei entirely cut off from all their kinsmen, were likely in due course to find themselves in much the same situation as Ma Fung Shan.
Occasionally an employer might be willing to put up the bridewealth for a good foki whom he wanted to keep. Chung Fuk Hei was said to have done this in the mid-forties, just after the Japanese occupation, when he had recently decided to work his own boat separately from his brothers' and while his one son was still too young to be fully a crew member. But the moral of the tale of this act of generosity, which I was told more than once, was always the same; namely, one should never put one's trust in strangers, especially if they are hired men. Within a year of his marriage the favoured foki went off with his bride to one of the bigger fishing centres where he got a better paid job for himself and a sampan with which to run a water-taxi service for her. Fuk Hei was an irascible man, as most informants were willing to agree, and by no means an easy master to work for; moreover, he paid low wages. Nevertheless the foki's behaviour was universally condemned, and Fuk Hei derided for a fool. What else could be expected from a mere hired man?
Except among the fokis themselves attitudes of this kind were universal. Fokis were considered untrustworthy, lazy, usually incompetent, cheeky, unreliable, greedy, extravagant. Few employers, or even their sons who worked side by side with them, knew much about their hired men. Several times, on asking the name of a particular individual I was answered, with a disinter-
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were currently married, but 16 were under 30 years of age and can be assumed to have been still marriageable. Of the family circumstances of 4 of these I unfortunately have no information. Five were recorded as being fatherless. Only the 7 whose fathers were still alive as heads of undivided families could have had a reasonable expectation of matrimony. I have already mentioned Ma Fung Shan, the foki who was still a bachelor at 43 and expected to remain so. Three of his agnatic first cousins were Kau Sai residents, but family division had taken place some twenty or more years previously and none had any responsibility for him, though most admitted to a moral obligation to offer him employment. The fatherless unmarried men and those for whom I have no information, if not like Leung Shui Hei entirely cut off from all their kinsmen, were likely in due course to find themselves in much the same situation as Ma Fung Shan.
Occasionally an employer might be willing to put up the bridewealth for a good foki whom he wanted to keep. Chung Fuk Hei was said to have done this in the mid-forties, just after the Japanese occupation, when he had recently decided to work his own boat separately from his brothers' and while his one son was still too young to be fully a crew member. But the moral of the tale of this act of generosity, which I was told more than once, was always the same; namely, one should never put one's trust in strangers, especially if they are hired men. Within a year of his marriage the favoured foki went off with his bride to one of the bigger fishing centres where he got a better paid job for himself and a sampan with which to run a water-taxi service for her. Fuk Hei was an irascible man, as most informants were willing to agree, and by no means an easy master to work for; moreover, he paid low wages. Nevertheless the foki's behaviour was universal- ly condemned, and Fuk Hei derided for a fool. What else could be expected from a mere hired man?
Except among the fokis themselves attitudes of this kind were universal. Fokis were considered untrustworthy, lazy, usually incompetent, cheeky, unreliable, greedy, extravagant. Few em- ployers, or even their sons who worked side by side with them, knew much about their hired men. Several times, on asking the name of a particular individual I was answered, with a disinter-
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