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fortunate to get back to the New Territories, to the Tsuen Wan District, in 1975 and I stayed there until 1982. This was the time of the most tremendous, fast-paced, redevelopment programme I ever wish to be involved in. At the same time, it produced good opportunities for collecting documentary material, if it existed, because (again) we were moving old villages out of the way of development.
When I was in the Southern District in the late 1950's, I was rather down-hearted, despite what is now being said about the exciting and encouraging documentary side of the Oral History Project, at the absence of certain types of material, especially land deeds. There really were not a lot of land deeds around from the late Ch'ing period, and I found it was just the same in Tsuen Wan 20 years later; not because of those 20 years of ongoing development but because there really were not many available. The reason for this was that the British Administration, having surveyed the land and set up its land courts, naturally requested villagers to bring in their evidence of title to their holdings. Thereafter it did not seem to have given them back. I have met old villagers who have been very vehement on the subject, and have also come across a few hints in official documents that indicate that at some time between 1905 and, say, the end of the Second World War, these retained documents disappeared. It is conceivable they may still turn up one day. When and if they do, they will be the most magnificent source of information on the economic and social background of the New Territories when set beside other documents.
That was one thing I wanted to mention, and reaffirm, from my Tsuen Wan days.
Another point is that I have always been very interested in genealogies; in other words, family records. Again, and until fairly recently, the "mythology" of scholarship—and I call it that deliberately—was that it was only gentry families and very large clans which kept such records, that these were usually kept in the form of printed books, that manuscript ones were not found very frequently, and that small families and small clans did not have any.
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fortunate to get back to the New Territories, to the Tsuen Wan District, in 1975 and I stayed there until 1982. This was the time of the most tremendous, fast-paced, redevelopment programme I ever wish to be involved in. At the same time, it produced good opportunities for collecting documentary material, if it existed, because (again) we were moving old villages out of the way of development.
When I was in the Southern District in the late 1950's, I was rather down-hearted, despite what is now being said about the exciting and encouraging documentary side of the Oral History Project, at the absence of certain types of material, especially land deeds. There really were not a lot of land deeds around from the late Ch'ing period, and I found it was just the same in Tsuen Wan 20 years later; not because of those 20 years of ongoing develop- ment but because there really were not many available. The reason for this was that the British Administration, having surveyed the land and set up its land courts, naturally requested villagers to bring in their evidence of title to their holdings. Thereafter it did not seem to have given them back. I have met old villagers who have been very vehement on the subject, and have also come across a few hints in official documents that indicate that at some time between 1905 and, say, the end of the Second World War, these retained documents disappeared. It is conceivable they may still turn up one day. When and if they do, they will be the most magnificent source of information on the economic and social background of the New Territories when set beside other docu- ments.
That was one thing I wanted to mention, and reaffirm, from my Tsuen Wan days.
Another point is that I have always been very interested in genealogies; in other words, family records. Again, and until fairly recently, the "mythology" of scholarship- and I call it that delib- erately was that it was only gentry families and very large clans which kept such records, that these were usually kept in the form of printed books, that manuscript ones were not found very fre- quently, and that small families and small clans did not have any.
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