112
BARBARA E. WARD
ested shrug: “Oh, he's just one of the fokis”. The surnames of those not related to local or locally known people were usually not known. Rationalised, the above believed-in characteristics were explained as the inevitable concomitants of having no stake in the family's business. Fokis took no risks and had no responsibilities, it would therefore be unrealistic to expect them to act responsibly. Above all, they were an expense. If only one had enough sons one need not employ outsiders. Fuk Hei's almost daily mutterings about his lazy fokis were balanced by his frank delight in the birth of his grandsons and unconcealed impatience with the very existence of his granddaughters. In this he was only more extreme and more outspoken than his neighbours. There was no disagreement. Sadly, he did not live to see the foki-less Kau Sai of the late 'sixties.
Fundamentally, these views reflected sound common sense economically and domestically. As we shall see in Chapter 8 purse-seine families with enough able-bodied members not to have to employ fokis did in fact make a better profit, and even in Kau Sai there was at least one example of a fisherman having to go out of business altogether because he could not meet his expenses. If only he had had enough sons, he said, this would not have happened. At the domestic level there were other hazards. The only scandal in Kau Sai for many years occurred during the last months of my stay in 1953. The hitherto barren wife of the harmless but sub-normal and allegedly impotent brother of [name withheld] was found to be pregnant. After fifteen years of marriage this was odd, to say the least. Imagination boggles at the practical difficulties in such small, crowded boats but the guilty parties confessed to having committed adultery in the presence of the unsuspecting husband. Perhaps fortunately, the [surname withheld] family have not needed to employ another foki since then.
The official census of China in 1953 did not enumerate the Boat People as a separate group. 2 Ref: to Chan's and Ho En's books et al. [Ch'en Hsü-ching, Tan-min ti yen-chiu (Shanghai, 1946), and, probably, Ho Ke-en, "The Tanka or boat people in South China," F.S. Drake, ed. Proceedings of the Symposium on Historical, Archaeological and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-east Asia and the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967), pp. 120-123.]112
BARBARA E. WARD
ested shrug: “Oh, he's just one of the fokis". The surnames of those not related to local or locally known people were usually not known. Rationalised, the above believed-in characteristics were explained as the inevitable concomitants of having no stake in the family's business. Fokis took no risks and had no responsibilities, it would therefore be unrealistic to expect them to act responsibly. Above all, they were an expense. If only one had enough sons one need not employ outsiders. Fuk Hei's almost daily mutterings about his lazy fokis were balanced by his frank delight in the birth of his grandsons and unconcealed impatience with the very existence of his granddaughters. In this he was only more extreme and more outspoken than his neighbours. There was no disagreement. Sadly, he did not live to see the foki-less Kau Sai of the late 'sixties.
Fundamentally, these views reflected sound common sense economically and domestically. As we shall see in Chapter 8 purse-seine families with enough able-bodied members not to have to employ fokis did in fact make a better profit, and even in Kau Sai there was at least one example of a fisherman having to go out of business altogether because he could not meet his expenses. If only he had had enough sons, he said, this would not have happened. At the domestic level there were other hazards. The only scandal in Kau Sai for many years occurred during the last months of my stay in 1953. The hitherto barren wife of the harmless but sub-normal and allegedly impotent brother of [name withheld] was found to be pregnant. After fifteen years of marriage this was odd, to say the least. Imagination boggles at the practical difficulties in such small, crowded boats but the guilty parties confessed to having committed adultery in the presence of the unsuspecting husband. Perhaps fortunately, the [surname withheld] family have not needed to employ another foki since then.
| The official census of China in 1953 did not enumerate the Boat People as a separate group.
2 Ref: to Chan's and Ho En's books et al. [Ch'en Hsü-ching, Tan-min ti yen-chiu (Shanghai, 1946), and, probably, Ho Ke-en, "The Tanka or boat people in South China," F.S. Drake, ed. Proceedings of the Symposium on Historical, Archaeolog ical and Linguistic Studies on Southern China, South-east Asia and the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1967), pp. 120-123.]
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