258
Viewed in retrospect, my report is rather ponderously expressed. My prose tended to be "turgid," the boss once told me, and I resolved to do better! However, turgidity could not disguise my exasperation, which still shines through the contents of the report, loud and clear, 39 years on.
Looking back on that period, my exasperation was increased by the fact that I had to put up with (and more to the point, get over) similar difficulties with village communities in other parts of a far-flung District, from Sai Kung in the east to Lantau in the west. With road works going on at each extremity, I was sometimes rushing here and there, backwards and forwards, dealing with problems of this kind.
There were special difficulties in getting the new extension to the Sai Kung road past Tso Wo Hang Village in regard to the road line, and also with cutting stone at a certain spot where, my notebook says, "the Village Representative was to say when work could start”. It sticks in my memory that none of the other villages affected by construction work for the new road were as temperamental or difficult as this one, and certainly this seems to be borne out by my notes. See my chapter "The Traditional Background: Hong Kong Villages in the 1950s” in Elizabeth Sinn and Patrick Hase (eds) Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Company Limited.
As I have written elsewhere, patience and resolution, leavened with an essential saving dash of humour, were qualities in demand on these occasions. The Tong Fuk episode was certainly one of those in which all of these had to be deployed by my land staff and myself during that period. Mercifully, an antidote was sometimes supplied by the villagers themselves, since their ill humour could be turned to laughter by themselves or even by one of us, and lead to an amicable compromise. When all is said and done, it was fun! What was equally important for me as a young D.O. was that in Ronnie Holmes I had an ideal boss, someone who was immensely able, perceptive and compassionate, and a good Chinese linguist, a man who could see both sides of any situation. Also, he would welcome me home for a drink, listen and laugh at my predicaments, and (usually) endorse my solutions to them.
By way of a postscript to the above, we were by no means
258
Viewed in retrospect, my report is rather ponderously expressed. My prose tended to be "turgid," the boss once told me, and I resolved to do better! However, turgidity could not disguise my exasperation, which still shines through the contents of the report, loud and clear, 39 years on.
Looking back on that period, my exasperation was increased by the fact that I had to put up with (and more to the point, get over) similar difficulties with village communities in other parts of a far-flung District, from Sai Kung in the east to Lantau in the west. With road works going on at each extremity, I was sometimes rushing here and there, backwards and forwards, dealing with problems of this kind.
There were special difficulties in getting the new extension to the Sai Kung road past Tso Wo Hang Village in regard to the road line, and also with cutting stone at a certain spot where, my notebook says, "the Village Representative was to say when work could start”. It sticks in my memory that none of the other villages affected by construction work for the new road were as temperamental or difficult as this one, and certainly this seems to be borne out by my notes. See my chapter "The Traditional Background: Hong Kong Villages in the 1950s” in Elizabeth Sinn and Patrick Hase (eds) Beyond the Metropolis: Villages in Hong Kong (Hong Kong, Joint Publishing (HK) Company Limited.
As I have written elsewhere, patience and resolution, leavened with an essential saving dash of humour, were qualities in demand on these occasions. The Tong Fuk episode was certainly one of those in which all of these had to be deployed by my land staff and myself during that period. Mercifully, an antidote was sometimes supplied by the villagers themselves, since their ill humour could be turned to laughter by themselves or even by one of us, and lead to an amicable compromise. When all is said and done, it was fun! What was equally important for me as a young D.O. was that in Ronnie Holmes I had an ideal boss, someone who was immensely able, perceptive and compassionate, and a good Chinese linguist, a man who could see both sides of any situation. Also, he would welcome me home for a drink, listen and laugh at my predicaments, and (usually) endorse my solutions to them.
By way of a postscript to the above, we were by no means
No comments yet.
Private notes are available after approval.