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household chores Our interviewees seemed to take it for granted that women were the main cultivators Wives, mothers, and daughters all engaged in farming, pig raising, and firewood cutting. Child brides, who were not uncommon in the district until the middle of the century, added to this female workforce in the fields.' Generally speaking, women earned half of the family income by farming, while men made up the other half by working as sailors. As a common practice, the steamship companies, employing the men, sent one-half to two-thirds of a seaman's wage directly to his family."
Modest economic conditions and geographical remoteness strengthened the sense of interdependence among Tung Chung's villagers. While Tung Chung was isolated from other districts, its villages had to depend on each other for survival and resource sharing. For example, they shared the water from two streams, i.e., the East Stream (Tai Yat) and the West Stream (Pak Yat), which were the life-lines for farming on the valley plain. Communal efforts were needed to maintain normal water supply for this agricultural community. Participation in a common drainage system, as suggested by John Brim, may have been an important determinant of village alliance membership in the New Territories." As early as 1900, Lockhart already noticed that villages that formed an alliance often shared an irrigation source.
These village alliances, commonly referred to by rural people as yüeh/#heung or "Alliance", can be classified into two major types, i.e., alliances that consist chiefly of villages populated almost entirely by members of one higher-order lineage and alliances of villages that do not share membership in one dominant lineage." Like the latter, which was also termed by Maurice Freedman as "local alliance," the Tung Chung Hsiang consists primarily of villages of different surnames. In contrast to many single-lineage communities in the New Territories, which are solidified by blood ties or kinship bonds, a majority of Tung Chung's villages are multi-surname communities without ancestral halls and marked by weak lineage organization. Actually, Tung Chung's communal life has transcended lineage lines and characterized a trans-village community. Inter-village coalition has also proved vital for the pooling of economic resources to support collective social functions, which would be too much of a burden for individual villages with
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household chores Our interviewees seemed to take it for granted that women were the main cultivators Wives, mothers, and daughters all engaged in farming, pig raising, and firewood cutting. Child brides, who were not uncommon in the district until the middle of the century, added to this female workforce in the fields.' Generally speaking, women earned half of the family income by farming, while men made up the other half by working as sailors, As a common practice, the steamship companies, employing the men, sent one-half to two-thirds of a seaman's wage duectly to his family."
Modest economic conditions and geographical remoteness strengthened the sense of interdependence among Tung Chung's villagers While Tung Chung was isolated from other districts, its villages had to depend on each other for survival and resource sharing. For example, they shared the water from two streams, 1 e., the East Stream (all) and the West Stream (P), which were the life-lines for farming on the valley plain. Communal efforts were needed to maintain normal water supply for this agricultural community Participation in a common drainage system, as suggested by John Brim, may have been an important determinant of village alliance membership in the New Territories." As early as 1900, Lockhart already noticed that villages that formed an alliance often shared an irrigation source
נון
These village alliances, commonly referred to by rural people as yüeh#fon Istang can be classified into two major types, i.e, alliances that consist chielly of villages populated almost entirely by members of one higher-order lineage and alliances of villages that do not share membership in one dominant lineage " Like the latter, which was also termed by Maurice Freedman as "local alliance," the Tung Chung Hsiang consists primarily of villages of different surnames In contrast to many single- communities in the New Territories, which are solidified by blood ties or kinship bonds, a majority of Tung Chung's villages are multi-surname communities without ancestral halls and marked by weak lineage organization. Actually, Tung Chung's communal life has transcended lineage lines and characterized a trans- village community. Inter-village coalition has also proved vital for the pooling of economic resources to support collective social functions. which would be too much of a burden for individual villages with
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