64
BARBARA E. WARD
certain other "species" (deep sea liners or trawlers centred on Shaukiwan or Sai Kung for example) traversed and went beyond it.
Two further points should be noted here. First, unlike the concept “our bay”, mentioned below, which was a folk concept ("conscious model") frequently invoked by Kau Sai people themselves, the notion of the Port Shelter territory is my construct.29 Although recognizable by my informants when it was put to them, it was not a concept they normally operated with. Second, the territory was not a social group in the sense that those who lived within it ever acted corporately. “It was simply a mappable area whose boundaries marked the limits of ... most intense social interaction. Very few social or economic relationships led outside this territory" (Ward 1963). This observation applies almost as much to the liners as to the purse-seiners, and with almost equal force to all the fishing villages in the territory.30
The second obvious inference from the analysis of the patterns of movement set out in this chapter is that they were closely connected with occupation, both as between different types of fishing practised and, because occupational specialisations other than fishing coincided with ethnic divisions, as between speakers of Hakka and Cantonese.
In general the purse-seiners were much more frequently at their moorings in Kau Sai than were the small-liners and other fishermen. Moreover, they were there by day. Their own statements about their place of domicile were supported by the facts of their actual patterns of movement: they were, as they claimed, unequivocally “Kau Sai people".
The liners were more marginal. Before mechanisation they could be said to have been based rather within the territory as a whole than upon one particular anchorage; after mechanisation most of them anchored most frequently at the market town, Sai Kung. Yet in their own statements they, too, often claimed particular connexion with Kau Sai, and there were among them a number who were uniformly recognised by both purse-seiners
64
BARBARA E. WARD
certain other "species" (deep sea liners or trawlers centred on Shaukiwan or Sai Kung for example) traversed and went beyond
it.
Two further points should be noted here. First, unlike the concept “our bay”, mentioned below, which was a folk concept ("conscious model") frequently invoked by Kau Sai people themselves, the notion of the Port Shelter territory is my construct.29 Although recognizable by my informants when it was put to them, it was not a concept they normally operated with. Second, the territory was not a social group in the sense that those who lived within it ever acted corporately. “It was simply a mappable area whose boundaries marked the limits of ... most intense social interaction. Very few social or economic relationships led outside this territory" (Ward 1963). This observation applies almost as much to the liners as to the purse- seiners, and with almost equal force to all the fishing villages in the territory.30
The second obvious inference from the analysis of the patterns of movement set out in this chapter is that they were closely connected with occupation, both as between different types of fishing practised and, because occupational specialisa- tions other than fishing coincided with ethnic divisions, as between speakers of Hakka and Cantonese.
In general the purse-seiners were much more frequently at their moorings in Kau Sai than were the small-liners and other fishermen. Moreover, they were there by day. Their own statements about their place of domicile were supported by the facts of their actual patterns of movement: they were, as they claimed, unequivocally “Kau Sai people".
The liners were more marginal. Before mechanisation they could be said to have been based rather within the territory as a whole than upon one particular anchorage; after mechanisation most of them anchored most frequently at the market town, Sai Kung. Yet in their own statements they, too, often claimed particular connexion with Kau Sai, and there were among them a number who were uniformly recognised by both purse-seiners
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