50
BARBARA E. WARD
sun, and continuous weather watching.
Women assisted in most of these jobs, and in addition were responsible for all the interior boat (and house) cleaning, cooking, cutting and collecting fuel and fetching water and, of course, clothes making, washing and mending. The entire care of very young children also fell to them. Unless she was still unmarried and had efficient sisters-in-law or was old with efficient daughters-in-law, a boat woman had virtually no free time. (A third but unlikely possibility would be that she had no children). Those who moved ashore during the 'sixties found life much less exacting. Not going fishing they were neither so fatigued nor so pressed for time, and managing a family household ashore was far less physically uncomfortable and time consuming than on a small boat. The outwork for Hong Kong plastics factories on which the women of Kau Sai were making pin-money in the late 'sixties would not have been possible, even if it had been available, in the early 'fifties.
Men had always a little more time for recreation. Gambling (at poker, Russian poker, or mah-jong), talking, listening to the radio, sleeping and playing with young children were their major pastimes. Sometimes they even went fishing, for fishing remained a sport as well as a source of livelihood. At times they would drift into the shops to buy cigarettes and snacks (sweets, cake, aerated water), and when they were working on any major job (sail-making, for example, in the old days, or drying especially large quantities of fish) there would be a mid-day luncheon perhaps cakes or biscuits bought from the shop, or maybe something special cooked on the boat and sent across to them to eat. Birthdays, too, were often marked in this way.
By about four o'clock the dried nets and fish were being gathered in, the purse-seiners would be preparing to go out again, the children wandering back or being collected by older brothers or fathers or uncles or cousins, the evening meal being prepared. Then after eating and washing once more the fishermen would be off for the next night's business. At sunset each evening as at sunrise each morning incense was burned for the ancestors and at the prow (where was located the water equivalent of the land-
50
BARBARA E. WARD
sun, and continuous weather watching.
Women assisted in most of these jobs, and in addition were responsible for all the interior boat (and house) cleaning, cooking, cutting and collecting fuel and fetching water and, of course, clothes making, washing and mending. The entire care of very young children also fell to them. Unless she was still unmarried and had efficient sisters-in-law or was old with efficient daughters-in-law, a boat woman had virtually no free time. (A third but unlikely possibility would be that she had no children). Those who moved ashore during the 'sixties found life much less exacting. Not going fishing they were neither so fatigued nor so pressed for time, and managing a family household ashore was far less physically uncomfortable and time consuming than on a small boat. The outwork for Hong Kong plastics factories on which the women of Kau Sai were making pin-money in the late 'sixties would not have been possible, even if it had been available, in the early 'fifties.
Men had always a little more time for recreation. Gambling (at poker, Russian poker, or mah-jong), talking, listening to the radio, sleeping and playing with young children were their major pastimes. Sometimes they even went fishing, for fishing remain- ed a sport as well as a source of livelihood. At times they would drift into the shops to buy cigarettes and snacks (sweets, cake, aerated water), and when they were working on any major job (sail-making, for example, in the old days, or drying especially large quantities of fish) there would be a mid-day luncheon perhaps cakes or biscuits bought from the shop, or maybe something special cooked on the boat and sent across to them to eat. Birthdays, too, were often marked in this way.
By about four o'clock the dried nets and fish were being gathered in, the purse-seiners would be preparing to go out again, the children wandering back or being collected by older brothers or fathers or uncles or cousins, the evening meal being prepared. Then after eating and washing once more the fishermen would be off for the next night's business. At sunset each evening as at sunrise each morning incense was burned for the ancestors and at the prow (where was located the water equivalent of the land-
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