34
BARBARA E. WARD
By 1970 there was only one set of sails left. The jetties, all the pathways and the large reclamation on the northern bank of the strait were of concrete. All but four of the grey stone and whitewashed houses had gone. Instead there were three wooden ones and thirteen others in bright, fresh, colour-washed concrete. The temple had been redecorated (its beautiful sea-green tiles replaced by asbestos dipped in an analine “emerald” dye), and above it, up a newly constructed concrete stairway, stood a modern, purpose-built school with three well-equipped classrooms, a special bungalow for the teachers and an enclosed basketball pitch levelled out of the hillside. There were no pig-sties, but a fine public latrine, piped running water, electric light and a public incinerator.
Such were some of the outward and visible signs of processes of change which were just beginning to accelerate when I first visited the village in 1950. Other changes less obvious on the surface were even more significant. Most striking of all was the fact that where twenty years before there had been seventeen families living ashore, all but two of them Hakka-speaking landsmen, there were now twenty-one families (not including the teachers) of which twenty were composed of ex-Boat People, speaking Cantonese. Yet the number of fishing junks was slightly larger than it had been. Kau Sai's population was more exclusively devoted to fishing than before, but many of the fishermen now owned houses ashore.
The new houses differed from the old ones not only in outward appearance and ownership but also in internal arrangement, furnishing and use. Built to the specifications of their owners they were basically hollow concrete cubes, with glazed, metal framed windows, and internal partitions made of wood. Each had a wooden front door, in the centre of the wall facing the street, leading directly into a kind of sitting room that ran the whole width of the building and covered about one-third of the depth from front to back. The rear portion was normally divided both vertically and horizontally to form two stories with compartments for sleeping and storage.
34
BARBARA E. WARD
By 1970 there was only one set of sails left. The jetties, all the pathways and the large reclamation on the northern bank of the strait were of concrete. All but four of the grey stone and whitewashed houses had gone. Instead there were three wooden ones and thirteen others in bright, fresh, colour-washed concrete. The temple had been redecorated (its beautiful sea-green tiles replaced by asbestos dipped in an analine “emerald” dye), and above it, up a newly constructed concrete stairway, stood a modern, purpose-built school with three well-equipped classrooms," a special bungalow for the teachers and an enclosed basketball pitch levelled out of the hillside. There were no pig- sties, but a fine public latrine, piped running water, electric light and a public incinerator.
Such were some of the outward and visible signs of processes of change which were just beginning to accelerate when I first visited the village in 1950. Other changes less obvious on the surface were even more significant. Most striking of all was the fact that where twenty years before there had been seventeen families living ashore, all but two of them Hakka-speaking landsmen, there were now twenty-one families (not including the teachers) of which twenty were composed of ex-Boat People, speaking Cantonese. Yet the number of fishing junks was slightly larger than it had been. Kau Sai's population was more exclu- sively devoted to fishing than before, but many of the fishermen now owned houses ashore.
The new houses differed from the old ones not only in outward appearance and ownership but also in internal arrange- ment, furnishing and use. Built to the specifications of their owners they were basically hollow concrete cubes, with glazed, metal framed windows, and internal partitions made of wood." Each had a wooden front door, in the centre of the wall facing the street, leading directly into a kind of sitting room that ran the whole width of the building and covered about one-third of the depth from front to back. The rear portion was normally divided both vertically and horizontally to form two stories with compartments for sleeping and storage.
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