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to get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!'.
Also according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, "nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years." Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside'.”
Tea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green "cloud and mist tea", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et al. (1988).
Hill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make
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to get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!" ".
Also according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, "nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years." Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside” ”.
Tea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green "cloud and mist tea", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et. al. (1988).
Hill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) & Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make
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