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market towns can be, as noted above, identified by their imbalanced populations, as can villages specialising in incense pounding, stonecutting, and salt-working (Yim Liu Ha, and perhaps Tsing Shan and Tsing Shan Po in Tuen Mun) Some fishing villages (especially Kau Sai) show what is probably a seasonal population imbalance, with the male population boosted by the temporary presence of "foreign" fishing vessels at the Census date. In all these cases, as with the market towns, the opportunities for wage-paying employment must have led to a certain degree of temporary male immigration into the village in question.
Some other villages may have been "industrial" in 1911 without this being so clearly confirmed by oral evidence as in these cases. Thus, Sheung Wo Che in Sha Tin was the site of the Sha Tin Railway Station; the excess males recorded here, with the nearby Pak Tin and Wang Pok, may have been working on the construction of the railway.
However, when all the urban and industrial villages are discounted, there remain numbers of villages with excess males where there seems little likelihood of immigration, and where some other factor or factors must be at work. A number of very poor villages in the eastern part of the New Territories have more males than are to be expected. It may be that some of these villages were just too poor to pay the fees required to let their young adult males emigrate, and equally too poor to arrange marriages for them until there was land available for them to inherit.
On the other hand, a number of very wealthy Punti villages, especially those in the Sheung Shui plain (including Loi Tung, Lung Yeuk Tau, Ping Kong, with others at just below the 56% cut-off point) also have high male-female ratios. The reasons for this are unclear. It may be no more than a particularly strong unwillingness to report unmarried girls in these villages. J.L. Watson, however, has shown that some at least of the wealthier Punti villages had a “bachelor sub-culture”, in which poorer members of the lineage tended not to marry, but to drift into a society of bachelor clubs centred on the lineage self-defence force. This system, in which unmarriageable poorer lineage sons were nonetheless given a positive role in local society, may have induced higher than average male-female ratios in such villages; emigration was not the only option available to the excess males.13 No evidence of such a “bachelor sub-culture” seems to exist for the
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market towns can be, as noted above, identified by their imbalanced populations, as can villages specialising in incense pounding, stonecutting, and salt-working (Yım Liu Ha, and perhaps Tsing Shan and Tsing Shan Po in Tuen Mun) Some fishing villages (especially Kau Sai) show what is probably a seasonal population imbalance, with the male population boosted by the temporary presence of "foreign" fishing vessels at the Census date. In all these cases, as with the market towns, the opportunities for wage-paying employment must have led to a certain degree of temporary male immigration into the village in question.
Some other villages may have been "industrial" in 1911 without this being so clearly confumed by oral evidence as in these cases. Thus, Sheung Wo Che in Sha Tin was the site of the Sha Tin Railway Station the excess males recorded here, with the nearby Pak Tin and Wang Pok, may have been working on the construction of the railway
However, when all the urban and industrial villages are discounted, there remain numbers of villages with excess males where there seems little hkelihood of immigration, and where some other factor of factors must be at work, A number of very poor villages in the eastern part of the New Territories have more males than are to be expected. It may be that some of these villages were just too poor to pay the fees required to let their young adult males emigrate, and equally too poor to arrange marriages for them until there was land available for them to inherit.
On the other hand, a number of very wealthy Punti villages, especially those in the Sheung Shui plain (including Loi Tung, Lung Yeuk Tau, Ping Kong, with others at just below the 56% cut-off point) also have high male, female ratios. The reasons for this are unclear It may be no more than a particularly strong unwillingness to report unmarried girls in these villages. J.L. Watson, however, has shown that some at least of the wealthier Punti villages had a “bachelor sub- culture", in which poorer members of the lineage tended not to marry, but to drift into a society of bachelor clubs centred on the lineage self- defence force. This system, in which unmarriageable poorer lineage sons were nonetheless given a positive role in local society, may have induced higher than average male female ratios in such villages, emigration was not the only opton available to the excess males 13 No evidence of such a “bachelor sub-culture" seems to exist for the
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