58
BARBARA E. WARD
Marketing Organisation's depot in the local market town at the road head in Sai Kung, or even to the wholesale market at Shaukiwan on Hong Kong island.25 Here were opportunities for buying kerosene and diesel oil, fishing gear, foodstuffs, clothing materials, arranging to have a new boat built or raise a loan, having one's hair cut and shampooed,26 chatting with friends and business acquaintances in the tea houses, and so forth: opportunities which might or might not be taken up on any particular day but which were always available. Women went ashore in these places far less often than men, but they were certainly free to do so if they had occasion. Kau Sai-based children, rather shy in such large centres of population or restrained by anxious parents, tended to stay on board.
It is important to notice that these were at least potentially daily movements. Even under sail the voyage from Kau Sai to Sai Kung seldom took as long as two hours. With a fair wind Shaukiwan could be reached in three. Although by cutting these times to forty minutes and under two hours respectively mechanisation allowed visits to be more frequent, it did not initiate them. Many of the Kau Sai fishermen had contacts in Shaukiwan and Sai Kung that were of very long standing and spread far beyond the mere marketing of fish. It was interesting to observe that when with mechanisation the longer journeys to Aberdeen and Kowloon (and later Cheung Sha Wan) markets became possible, they remained largely ‘one-shot' voyages: the fish once sold the junks turned straight for home.
In the small liners the pattern of daily movement was somewhat different. Less dependent than the purse-seiners on the daily performance of shore-based tasks and requiring less space for the less frequent tasks they did have to do there, they were at the same time more dependent upon being able to sell their fish fresh. It was obviously convenient for them, therefore, to orient the economic/technological aspect of their lives first towards the places where they could sell their fish and only secondarily, if at all, towards a particular village anchorage. With a few exceptions the small liners claiming to be "Kau Sai people" were consistently much less regular in their attendance at Kau Sai's anchorage than the purse-seiners. The movements that took
58
BARBARA E. WARD
Marketing Organisation's depot in the local market town at the road head in Sai Kung, or even to the wholesale market at Shaukiwan on Hong Kong island.25 Here were opportunities for buying kerosene and diesel oil, fishing gear, foodstuffs, clothing materials, arranging to have a new boat built or raise a loan, having one's hair cut and shampooed,26 chatting with friends and business acquaintances in the tea houses, and so forth: oppor- tunities which might or might not be taken up on any particular day but which were always available. Women went ashore in these places far less often than men, but they were certainly free to do so if they had occasion. Kau Sai-based children, rather shy in such large centres of population or restrained by anxious parents, tended to stay on board.
It is important to notice that these were at least potentially daily movements. Even under sail the voyage from Kau Sai to Sai Kung seldom took as long as two hours. With a fair wind Shaukiwan could be reached in three. Although by cutting these times to forty minutes and under two hours respectively me- chanisation allowed visits to be more frequent, it did not initiate them. Many of the Kau Sai fishermen had contacts in Shaukiwan and Sai Kung that were of very long standing and spread far beyond the mere marketing of fish. It was interesting to observe that when with mechanisation the longer journeys to Aberdeen and Kowloon (and later Cheung Sha Wan) markets became possible, they remained largely ‘onc-shot' voyages: the fish once sold the junks turned straight for home.
In the small liners the pattern of daily movement was somewhat different. Less dependent than the purse-seiners on the daily performance of shore-based tasks and requiring less space for the less frequent tasks they did have to do there, they were at the same time more dependent upon being able to sell their fish fresh. It was obviously convenient for them, therefore, to orient the economic/technological aspect of their lives first towards the places where they could sell their fish and only secondarily, if at all, towards a particular village anchorage. With a few exceptions the small liners claiming to be "Kau Sai people" were consistently much less regular in their attendance at Kau Sai's anchorage than the purse-seiners. The movements that took
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