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living in Kau Sai. The special peculiarity of the Boat People, however, is their potentially extreme spatial mobility. Both in their own belief and in others' it is this that differentiates them most from people who live on land. Whether or not the belief is well-founded, any description of Kau Sai which omitted to discuss the rhythms of movement would be misleadingly incomplete.
So far I have been describing Kau Sai almost as if it had been an entity in itself. This was only very partially the case. In fact there was not one single aspect of living that was totally contained within the bay. Life in Kau Sai in the mid-twentieth century can only be understood with reference to a much wider topographical framework. I do not argue that this is an unusual state of affairs. On the contrary, it is implicit in the term 'village', at least as it is used in descriptions of peasant or modern societies, that the entity to which it refers is subordinate to some wider grouping. There are, however, questions of degree. Kau Sai was small and very little self-contained. Without mobility on the part of at least some members of its population it could not have existed. The facts of the situation therefore forced me to consider spatial movement in this case.
During most of the daylight hours of almost every day the purse-seiners' junks were moored in the anchorage. The male members of their crews and their children were ashore in Kau Sai village. Sampans were constantly moving from junk to shore and back again as shore jobs were started and completed, purchases made and so on. These were mostly movements of men and children. Women often acted as ferrymen, but except for the occasional quick visit to the shops, or longer sojourns for washing clothes, fetching water, gathering fuel or taking part in such jobs as net and fish drying they seldom went ashore, though they did some visiting from junk to junk amongst themselves. With the evening meal came the retreat from the shore, and immediately afterwards the removal of the entire family (and its home) to the chosen fishing grounds for the night.
Early morning might see a direct return to the anchorage or (more frequently after mechanisation) a journey to the Fish
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living in Kau Sai. The special peculiarity of the Boat People, however, is their potentially extreme spatial mobility. Both in their own belief and in others' it is this that differentiates them most from people who live on land. Whether or not the belief is well-founded, any description of Kau Sai which omitted to discuss the rhythms of movement would be misleadingly incom- plete.
So far I have been describing Kau Sai almost as if it had been an entity in itself. This was only very partially the case. In fact there was not one single aspect of living that was totally contained within the bay. Life in Kau Sai in the mid-twentieth century can only be understood with reference to a much wider topographical framework. I do not argue that this is an unusual state of affairs. On the contrary, it is implicit in the term 'village', at least as it is used in descriptions of peasant or modern societies, that the entity to which it refers is subordinate to some wider grouping. There are, however, questions of degree. Kau Sai was small and very little self-contained. Without mobility on the part of at least some members of its population it could not have existed. The facts of the situation therefore forced me to consider spatial movement in this case.
During most of the daylight hours of almost every day the purse-seiners' junks were moored in the anchorage. The male members of their crews and their children were ashore in Kau Sai village. Sampans were constantly moving from junk to shore and back again as shore jobs were started and completed, purchases made and so on. These were mostly movements of men and children. Women often acted as ferrymen, but except for the occasional quick visit to the shops, or longer sojourns for washing clothes, fetching water, gathering fuel or taking part in such jobs as net and fish drying they seldom went ashore, though they did some visiting from junk to junk amongst themselves. With the evening meal came the retreat from the shore, and immediately afterwards the removal of the entire family (and its home) to the chosen fishing grounds for the night.
Early morning might see a direct return to the anchorage or (more frequently after mechanisation) a journey to the Fish
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