[
    {
        "id": 204786,
        "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-1964",
        "page_number": 89,
        "title": "RAS-1964",
        "content_text": "PENG CHAU\n\n77\n\nsettlement is given below and it is sufficient to say that at first they owned little beyond their houses22 and seem to have been closely involved in fishing, at any rate in the second half of the century. When their senior elder Mr. CHUNG Fat ## (born 1876) was a boy of fifteen years old, his grandfather owned nine fishing boats of the Hoklo type. These rowing boats were manned with the help of other Hakkas, their friends and clansmen from the Tsuen Wan-Shing Mun-Pat Heung area of the present New Territories. They fished by day or night according to the season, using thread nets made in the shape of a basket and sold to them by Hoklo people. The boats were often out overnight, depending on the distance to which they went to fish and the nature of the catch. They often fished all round the Lantau coast and into Deep Bay, which is a long way for a rowing boat, though anyone who has seen the speed with which the rowers propel these craft off Cheung Chau will not be surprised at this. In 1896 Mr. CHUNG's uncle returned from Sandakan in Borneo, and took him there to work for three years, after which he came back, was married, and together with his uncles and cousins again made the sea his business. This time he did not do the fishing, but with two small sailing boats operated as a fish collector. On behalf of a shop, which was owned by a Punti of San Wui †† extraction then resident on Peng Chau, he went out to the Tanka boats fishing the neighbouring waters and bought their catch, for which he received a commission. At a later stage (1916-46) he worked two boats with which, in the summer months, he collected grass bought from the Lantau villagers opposite Peng Chau. He dried the grass and sold it the following year to fishermen for caulking their boats on a piece of land which he had bought for the purpose. By 1899 the CHUNGs had taken a lot of mortgaged land from the LUI family,23 and all this activity connected with the sea was in addition to farming paddy and vegetable fields, which was mainly carried on by the womenfolk.\n\nThese paragraphs illustrate the diversity of activities in a small coastal settlement like Peng Chau and the danger of assigning one group to its traditional role and no other. It exemplifies what, in 1840, the famous Commissioner LIN of Opium War fame reported as being a local Kwangtung saying, “Seven go to fishing, three go to the plough”, and again “Three parts mountain,",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 206016,
        "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-1970",
        "page_number": 96,
        "title": "RAS-1970",
        "content_text": "CHINESE EMIGRATION AND THE DECK PASSENGER TRADE\n\n91\n\ntrade for their own China Navigation Company. During most of the inter-war years a Norwegian company also operated a weekly service between Swatow and Bangkok in opposition to the China Navigation Company; but the latter's faster and more modern ships enjoyed the lion's share of this trade. The Singapore trade was an inheritance from the Blue Funnel Line, and came to the China Navigation through their close connection with the Holt family.\n\nFor several decades before the First World War much of the emigrant trade to Indonesia was in the hands of German companies, but when German overseas shipping was eliminated after the outbreak of war in 1914 this trade passed to Dutch companies, in particular the K.P.M. and the J.C.J.L. lines. Previous to 1890 a consortium of Dutch planters had employed coolie brokers in Singapore and Malaya for recruiting purposes, and Malaya was always something of a reservoir of Chinese labour for much of South-east Asia, especially for Indonesia and Siam. Entry into Malaya was easier than elsewhere, and there were more frequent and cheaper shipping services between south China and the Straits. It was always a comparatively simple matter for Chinese—authorised or unauthorised—to cross the short Malacca Straits into Indonesia or the ill-defined boundary between Malaya and Siam.\n\nThe Indo-China Steam Navigation Company was not nearly so deeply involved in the southern deck passenger trades as the China Navigation Company, but their Japan-Calcutta ships took part in the Straits trade on their way up and down the coast, and their Hong Kong-Sandakan ships had a near monopoly of the comparatively small trade to British North Borneo. Most coasters on the Hong Kong-Shanghai service called at Canton and carried deck passengers, but there was also a small fleet of specially designed river steamers employed between Hong Kong, Canton, and Macao, which provided daily and nightly services between the three ports, and thus an out and in connection for emigrants. The Canton river steamers were smaller editions of the Yangtse steamers, and their night departure from the Praya at Hong Kong, when they were a blaze of flamboyant and garish lights, was a spectacular sight before the Second World War. The six or seven hour passage between Hong Kong",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1970.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241",
        "rank": 0
    }
]