[
    {
        "id": 210216,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1984",
        "page_number": 187,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "166\n\nR.A. BOWLER, D.S.C. YANG AND A.J.E. SMITH\n\nIndustry organisation\n\nThe Hong Kong oyster industry is a typical unsophisticated artisan fishery with low capital investment and organised on a family basis. Each family may use several areas distributed throughout Deep Bay so that some protection is afforded against localised events which may damage or destroy the oyster beds. Essential equipment comprises a sampan, wooden sledge, tongs, shucking hammer and some artificial substrate to which the oyster may attach and grow (Morton and Wong, 1975). The Lau Fau Shan Oyster Industry Association, the New Territories Oyster and Crustacean United Industries, and to some extent the Lau Fau Shan Chamber of Commerce, are three organisations which represent a majority of active farmers in the Hong Kong industry.\n\nProduction figures have been kept since 1977 by the oyster organisations, and these figures are shown in Figure 2 in comparison with records from the Annual Reports of the Agriculture & Fisheries Department of the Hong Kong Government, and those from previously published reviews (Mok, 1974b; Morton and Wong, 1975). Official exports from China are also shown in Figure 2 and are discussed below.\n\nThe apparent discrepancy in the records of the oyster industry and the Hong Kong Government reports may arise from the interlocked nature of the Hong Kong and China-based industries and the tendency to produce in accordance with market needs. Any supplement to the Hong Kong industry production by the practices of purchasing beds and oysters outlined later in this paper would not be determined by the Agriculture and Fisheries Department figures which attempt to measure purely Hong Kong production.\n\nInterviews in 1984 indicated that about 300 households are directly involved in the Hong Kong oyster industry representing 1,200 to 2,000 individuals. In addition, a further 1,000 are employed on a part-time basis. Additional people are involved indirectly in the restaurant and processed oyster-products industry.\n\nThe industry in China has by contrast some 20,000 individuals",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 211914,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1989",
        "page_number": 329,
        "title": "RAS-1989",
        "content_text": "304\n\ncouplet engraved on wood bearing the words \"presented by the descendants of ancestor Baak-Kau\". The exact details of Dang Baak-Kau's line of descent from Ching-Lok, however, remain obscure.\n\nIt was probably more common that farm land was owned by groups of people who traced their descent from a common ancestor in the form of ancestral trusts than by individual heads of families like Dang Baak-Kau. I overheard two men (one born about 1910, one about 1925) talking about the ownership of fields in the past. They said that among 100 people there were less than 9 who had their own rice fields. Most people farmed ancestral trust land. The rent was cheaper than that for other land. Once somebody had taken up a piece of ancestral land, he never had to return it, and it was quite common for people to sub-let to other people the ancestral land they rented. These ancestral trusts were each founded for the worship of an individual ancestor and for the education of his descendants. The terms \"jou\" and \"tong\" are used by the villagers to refer to an ancestor, his trust, and often the segment of the lineage which consists of his descendants.\n\nThe case of Dang Baak-Kau is representative of the small minority of personally wealthy Dang. Men like him formed the village elite, dominating local and lineage affairs, and monopolising village connections with the government. Most lineage segments and their ancestral trusts among the Dangs seem to stem from personally wealthy elite villagers like Dang Baak-Kau. It is no surprise that his descendants formed an ancestral trust in his name.\n\nThe power of village elites like Dang Baak-Kau may have been undermined by the abundance of outside employment and business opportunities within Hong Kong in recent years. Among our informants were two men born in the 1920s who had worked outside Kam Tin, one with the Agriculture and Fishery Department and another with a Chinese trading firm. We were told that they were exceptions. But such opportunities have abounded in the last couple of decades.\n\nI. THE DANG LINEAGE, ELITES AND LINEAGE SEGMENTS\n\nA. Early History\n\nThe first Dang ancestor to come to Guangdong province was Hon-",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h",
        "rank": 0
    }
]