[
    {
        "id": 205290,
        "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-1967",
        "page_number": 52,
        "title": "RAS-1967",
        "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n45\n\nOrchards with pineapples and tangerine oranges are located in Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village. These orchards seem to be much exposed to typhoon damage, and are more or less of an experimental nature. Orchards form a new feature in the valley and have been introduced only in the last decade. They are not very profitable.\n\nThe terraces mentioned above were once used for tea plantations also. It is possible to trace the remains of such terraces on the steep slopes all along the valley. They are the remains of plantations of tea and a shrub giving a dye, most probably the indigo plant Indigofera tinctoria, common in South China. The tea plantations are mentioned in an early report:\n\nTea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill. The bushes are grown in lines on narrow steps or terraces out in the rich soil of recently felled woods or along the dividing banks of sheltered vegetable fields, in either case only in fairly elevated situations. There is a tradition that tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces similar to the above are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation has diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone count for it.5\n\nTea plantation in South-eastern China experienced a general crisis towards the end of the last century as Indian and Ceylon tea invaded the Western market. There is no reason to assume that these circumstances had a direct effect on the New Territories plantations, but generally unsettled conditions on the tea market might have contributed to the actual decline. Wild-growing tea shrubs are still plucked of their leaves for local use. As to the dye plant cultivation, it seems reasonable to suggest that the introduction of foreign artificial indigo and aniline dyes in the beginning of this century was the main reason for the abandonment of these plantations. During an earlier period, however, the production of tea and dye-stuff will have been prominent features in the economic activity, complementary to rice production.",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 210321,
        "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": 292,
        "title": "RAS-1984",
        "content_text": "271\n\nAt the present time there is a tea plantation on Lantau at the Ngong Ping plateau next to the Po Lin Monastery. Mr. Brook Bernacchi, for long a leading barrister here, established this plantation at his home there in the 1950s. His plantation is not operated along the traditional village lines, but more on the commercial lines of plantations in other parts of China. However, commercial tea-growing on Lantau peak is nothing new, it seems. In 1971 I interviewed a very old village woman, born in one of the Tung Chung villages in 1879, who had accompanied her mother to pluck tea at plantations in that area which were apparently run by Chinese persons from outside the island. This was in the late 1880s and 1890s, some time before the lease of the N.T.\n\nThese notes, gathered from visits and interviews, are sufficient to show that tea cultivation and tea drinking from local bushes was common in some parts of the New Territories, and together with Dr. Hase's account, that it still lingers today.\n\nHowever, there is also evidence which suggests that tea cultivation was probably a major enterprise at one stage in the Hong Kong region. The 1688 district gazetteer refers to tea growing on Tai Mo Shan where there are what appear to be tea terraces on many of its slopes, especially on the north side. There are also terraces to be seen in the Ma On Shan Country Park and on the hills south west of Crooked Harbour and other places in the north-east New Territories. From the wide extent of the terracing work presumably done for this purpose in various parts of the New Territories, it would seem that a commercial crop was intended, and perhaps realized for a period. The Hong Kong Government's Botanical Report for 1906, commenting on one of these areas, states, \"Tea is cultivated... at the villages lying in the higher mountain valleys about Tate's Cairn and Buffalo Hill ... There is a tradition tea growing was once a thriving industry here and terraces are pointed out on the mountain sides in all parts of the district, which are said to have been made by tea planters. Whether the cultivation diminished through extortionate taxing previous to the British occupation or in consequence of the destruction of the woods and with them the suitable soil, it is hard to say, but the latter would alone account for it.\" It is interesting that this early official reference is mainly to the area in which Mau Tso",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1984.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572",
        "rank": 0
    }
]