RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 18 BIRDS OF HONG KONG CAPTAIN A. M. MACFARLANE, R.A. Based on a lecture delivered on September 22, 1960, The birds of Hong Kong are notable for their variety. Over 330 different kinds of birds have been recorded here since 1860, and the list covers a wide range of types, with very few families found in China left unrepresented. I propose to cover the more common species, both residents and visitors, and to touch on a few of the rarities besides. I would normally hesitate to point out to residents of the Colony the geography of their surroundings, but a few features are worth remembering from a bird-watcher's point of view. First, Hong Kong is just inside the tropics, and therefore lies at the southern breeding limit of some of the typically northern birds such as the Black-capped Kingfisher, and at the northern breeding limit of some of the typically tropical or sub-tropical birds, such as the sunbirds and flowerpeckers. Secondly, the year is divided into quite definite seasons, some much longer than others, and so we get summer visitors who breed here, such as the Black-naped Oriole and Hair-crested Drongo; winter visitors such as certain ducks and many species of hawks and thrushes; and of course, passage migrants that pass through the Colony, sometimes in immense numbers, in spring and autumn to and from their breeding grounds in the far north. Examples of the more noticeable of these migrants are the waders, the swifts and the flycatchers. Thirdly, the Colony has a wide range of bird country within its small limits, from the top of Tai Mo Shan, over three thousand feet high, down through the wooded valleys such as the Lam Tsuen valley and the Tai Po Kau Forestry Reserve, across the open paddy-fields and marshes bordering Deep Bay to the rocky coasts and open sea off Hong Kong Island and Lantau. Therefore a bird-watcher can select different areas and hope to see different birds accordingly. Lastly, to the regret of all but bird-watchers, Hong Kong is subject to occasional fierce storms and even typhoons. If these last occur, then it is worth every effort to go out and brave the storm, for unusual birds are blown in, especially of marsh and coastal species. During the last few years, members of the Hong Kong Bird-Watching Society have found that just over 60 species nest regularly in the Colony. Despite the apparent scarcity of birds in the summer months, this number compares quite favourably with an area of English coastline of the same size. Although ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1961 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/vd6724704 Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong Branch RASHKB and author 122 Vol. 1 (1961) ISSN 1991-7295 touch the dead is to run the risk of becoming infected by an aura of ill-luck (sz yan fung) whereby all the misfortunes of the deceased will be transmitted. Amongst fishermen fear of the dead and of ill-luck is particularly pronounced. At Tai O on the north-western end of Lantau, fisherfolk on their death bed may be taken from their boats to die in a special house maintained for the purpose near the cemetery. During funeral processions in both the urban areas and the New Territories it is the practice to scatter different types of paper, representing money, along the route to the burial ground, particularly at cross-roads where traditionally malevolent spirits tend to congregate. It is hoped that in the confusion caused by the evil spirits grabbing the money the spirit of the deceased will be able to pass unscathed. The remainder of the paper money thrown out at points other than cross-roads is for the use of the spirit of the deceased in making his way back to his home three days after death (saam ch'iu ooi wan). In many homes, a corner in a hall or passage may be reserved for a tablet and memorial, to house the spirit on its return to the home. This return of the spirit may at first sight be difficult to reconcile with the belief that the spirit descends into hell. The answer is that according to Chinese belief each dead person has a number of spirits. The descent of one of these spirits into hell is often assisted at the burial by the scattering and burning of specially printed hell bank notes (meng t'ung chí paî), together with paper effigies of clothes, suit-cases, motor cars, steam ships, aeroplanes, etc., often of most elaborate and detailed construction. The impact of crowded living conditions, economy and improved public health have had their gradual effect in changing the pattern of Hong Kong burial custom. Except for paupers, by far the greater proportion of Chinese dead from the urban areas (numbering some 10,000) are now buried in the public cemetery at Wo Hop Shek, near Fan Ling in the New Territories. Coffins may be conveyed by rail from Kowloon daily as a service included within the burial fees that are $5 or $15 according to size of coffin. Only some 20% of the coffins are carried to the cemetery by private hearses at the expense of the relatives. Of the balance brought by rail, not more than half are attended by relatives. It is obviously not possible in a public cemetery to site graves in accordance with individual interpretations of good fung shui. The fact that each coffin is simply allotted the next vacant space in the burial terrace is readily accepted, although it must be admitted that the majority of terraces are well up the hillside with a commanding view of distance and water. Similarly, when the routine six months' notice of intention to exhume remains from the coffin sections is given, it is unusual for relatives ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f Hakka kept themselves to themselves in different villages and there has been a general antipathy between them until recent times. Whether Punti or Hakka the villages were inhabited by clans: either in villages in which there were only persons of one clan descended from a common ancestor; or in villages in which lived several groups of families of different name, that is several clans, having come there together or at different times. Examples of both kinds of villages, large and small, are to be found all over the New Territory. Both Punti and Hakka clans have a history of wandering from the north throughout the last ten centuries at least and it is clear that for all the families who came to what is now the leased territory it was the end of the line, the end of a chapter of wandering that was often interrupted for centuries in some location elsewhere in the province. At Fan Pui, for instance, a small village on Lantau Island, the FUNG clan5 arrived there in the eleventh generation after the first ancestor had entered Kwangtung province. The twenty-second generation are living there still in an adjoining bay, having had to make way for the Shek Pik reservoir scheme. The family came from Ma Tau Wai in Kowloon and had made their way there from Nam Hung district in the extreme north of the province after spending some time in Hok Shan district on the way south. Their neighbours the TSUI clan* of Shek Pik claim twenty-seven generations in Kwangtung and fifteen in Lantau: that is, nearly four hundred years. The first ancestor came from a village in Nam Cheung district in Kiangsi province and settled in Tung Kun district. Eventually, following the example of other members of the main branch who gradually moved southwards, a TSUI of the thirteenth generation came to Shek Pik and was buried there. Their clan history mentions that members of successive generations before the move to Lantau were officials and military officers who won the imperial favour in the Ming dynasty, whereas the FUNG genealogy gives no such claims to fame for its progenitors. Both these clans are Cantonese. The condition of the peasantry impressed Lockhart favourably on the whole, "The inhabitants, though by no means wealthy, seem to be, as a rule, comfortably well off and able to earn Page 80 Page 90 Page 91 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 93 The graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring 清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow1. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau. At New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able-bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties. 550 The whole ethos and action of the clan was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads, who were educated to the Confucian tenets, were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture, and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness, and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 99 three districts in the vicinity of Canton the phrase shui shui, tso shui, tsou shui (£££) literally "sleeping in-come, sitting in-come, walking in-come" which may be thus explained: the incumbent of the first may go to sleep, whilst his emoluments come rolling in; in the second he may sit still, and his emoluments come rolling in; and in the third he must trot around, but his emoluments come rolling in". 12 Lockhart calls these officers assistant and deputy magistrates, Papers 1899 p. 191 and so does Consul Allen in his Trade Report for Pakhoi 1896, FO No. 1983, but there appear in fact, to have been no such titles. There were one or two yuen shing (B) in each district styled to ye (*) who were officers of the sixth and seventh rank and were graduates of kam sang (1) degree. These were appointed from Peking and were transferable every three years like the magistrate himself. They were stationed at places in the district and their powers were very limited. 20 He does not mention officers other than those at the two Lantau forts, but there was another fort on Lantau at Fan Lau, still standing, which may or may not have been occupied at this time, and there were posts on Lamma and Cheung Chau officered by shun tei kun (MILF) (information from Mr. CHEUNG Yau (4) of Tai Ping, Lamma Island, and from a list of donors inscribed on a tablet in the Tin Hau temple on Cheung Chau). There must also have been shun tei kun in the mainland part of the district. More information is sought about their stations and their duties. As far as I know, they were military officers of low rank who controlled ten or twenty men in an out-station, 21 Papers 1899 p. 192. 22 A map showing these divisions, dated July 1899 on the reverse, is to be found in the Registrar-General's Department, in the Supreme Court. It is probably the Map VI referred to on page 192 of the Papers 1899, which was not printed with them. The Councils of the Tung may not have existed in the remoter and more sparsely populated areas. On Lamma for instance the village elders appear to have administered summary justice individually and not in unison. Mr. CHEUNG Yau already quoted, and other gentlemen of similar age, state there was no Council on the island. The map does not assist in this instance, being vague in some details. There were four tung in any district: north, south, east and west. 23 Dyer Ball, The Chinese at Home (London, Religious Tract Society, 1912) p. 189 says "The life of an official in China, if he occupies a high position and rules over a populous district of country, is arduous in the extreme. He knows no hours. His work is never done. He is up before dawn, and official receptions take place in the small or early hours of the morning. The health of many a man is injured by the incessant toil and unremitting anxiety". He calls him "often hard worked, harassed with many cares, and loaded with responsibilities". His is experienced and impartial testimony. 24 Papers 1899 p. 192. 25 Sir Robert Douglas, Society in China (London, Ward Lock & Co., 1901) pp. 120-1 has hard things to say of them. "The mental activity of these men, not having... any power to operate in a beneficent way, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 103 EXCAVATIONS AT MAN KOK TSUI ON LANTAU ISLAND ELSPETH MANEELY * [On 13 May 1961 over fifty members of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society landed from a launch at Man Kok Tsui, a promontory on Lantau facing Hong Kong. Here Professor S. G. Davis and Dr. S. M. Bard explained to the members of the Society how the excavations were carried out and what objects had been discovered. Later the party walked over the hills to Silvermine Bay. This article gives an account of the excavations carried out there in 1958, Ed.] To date, the investigation of Neolithic remains in China points to the existence of three main Neolithic cultures.' This broad classification depends largely on differences in the types of fine pottery. In the north-west traces of the Painted Pottery Culture were first noted by J. G. Andersson at Yang Shao, Honan in 1920, and three years later at the Tao river sites, Kansu. In the north-east, traces of the Black Pottery Culture were uncovered in 1928 at Lung Shan, Shantung. The finds at Man Kok Tsui belong to the third of these Neolithic traditions: the South-East Neolithic, and the characteristic fine pottery found is a hard stoneware bearing a variety of impressed designs. This type of impressed pottery was first discovered in Hong Kong by Dr. C. M. Heanley in 1926 and it was associated with several kinds of stone artifact. It is interesting to note that the traces of these three Neolithic cultures were uncovered within a period of eight years and that in 1926—the year in which Dr. Heanley began his work on pre-historic remains in Hong Kong—the exciting discovery of "Peking Man" took place at Chou Kou Tien, south-west of Peking. Dr. Heanley was joined in his systematic survey of the Hong Kong area by Professor J. L. Shellshear and Mr. W. Schofield and they soon established that the Colony was rich in scattered finds, in general concentrated near the beaches and on the low * Mrs. Maneely has lived in Hong Kong since 1956, and is the Hon. Secretary of the Hong Kong University Archaeological team. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 104 ELSPETH MANEELY 16 hill slopes of the western islands and in the Castle Peak area; but perhaps only four places investigated since archaeological work began in the Colony may be dignified by the term "site". These are: So Kun Wat #, a series of low hilltops to the west of the Tai Lam Chun reservoir; Lamma Island (Pok Liu Chau14), which really comprises several distinct sites; Shek Pik and Man Kok Tsui, both on Lantau Island (Tai Yu Shan). A report on the findings at So Kun Wat was presented by C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear in 1932 at the first Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East held at Hanoi. Father Finn's publications on the Lamma sites, begun in 1932, have recently been reprinted in one volume, Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island Near Hong Kong.3 The Shek Pik site, on the south-west coast of Lantau Island, was excavated by W. Schofield and J. G. Andersson in 1937 and a report was published in the Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, in 1938. The artifacts uncovered at Man Kok Tsui are similar to those found at these earlier sites and are of three kinds: stone tools and ornaments, pottery and bronze. Before describing the discovery of Man Kok Tsui in more detail however, reference should be made to Father R. L. Maglioni's extensive discoveries in Hoifung as they bear a definite relationship to finds in the Hong Kong area. Hoifung lies on the China coast about one hundred miles north-east of Hong Kong. In 1934 Fr. Maglioni, then a priest in the Hoifung region, embarked on a thorough search for prehistoric remains. He located as many as twenty distinct sites. In general the finds were of the same type as those described by archaeologists working in Hong Kong, but Fr. Maglioni was able to distinguish three separate Neolithic cultures. These three he called the SON, SAK and PAT cultures from the capital letters of the romanized names of villages adjacent to the sites. So far Neolithic remains in Hong Kong resemble closely those of Fr. Maglioni's PAT culture, the latest of the three. In April 1958, Dr. S. M. Bard first reported Man Kok Tsui as a possible area for investigation by the University Archaeological Team. The site, given the number 30 by the Team, lies at the extreme tip of the northern arm of Silvermine Bay, Lantau Island. It consists of two sheltered, sandy beaches, a flat fertile valley ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 143 NOTES AND QUERIES MOVEMENT OF VILLAGES ON LANTAU ISLAND FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS During the clearance of the village of Shek Pik in 1960 to make way for the new reservoir, it was found that the village had moved a quarter of a mile to lower ground in 1936, a few years before the Japanese War. The move represented an important decision on the part of the inhabitants who were Punti, since the houses in the old village of Shek Pik Wai had been in existence for several hundred years at least and were substantial buildings in the traditional style with stone foundations, door footings and entrance posts of worked granite, mudbrick walls, and with tiled roofs and decorated eave boards. In 1898 there were over 300 houses, though many of these were used for storage and as cow byres, whilst others were deserted and perhaps in ruins. The reason for the move was, apparently, a continuing decline of population - 202 persons were moved in 1960, whilst the 1911 census gave a figure of 363, which was probably higher still at an earlier date — culminating, in 1936, in an unusually bad epidemic, type unknown, which reduced the population still further. Following this a decision was taken to evacuate the village on the grounds that the fung shui of the place was no longer good, and had become harmful to the inhabitants. Anything which could be used for the new houses was stripped from the old, and their ruination was completed by Japanese soldiers during the war who set fire to what remained so that it could not harbour guerillas. Further enquiries on South Lantau reveal that between the two world wars the two Hakka villages of Lo Wai and San Tsuen immediately to the north of the present 新村 south Lantau Road at Pui O — combined population 165 in 1911, though only Lo Wai is listed—had removed by degrees from old sites on the hillside; whilst a neighbouring village, also Hakka, at the head of the small Shap Long valley had 恰塱 removed to a site on the sea-shore about 1930. The cause of ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 147 Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society. The following additional notes, which are not meant to be comprehensive or definitive, are added for interest. According to YUEN Yuen's revised edition of the History of Kwangtung, the present structure dates from 1817 and has therefore been in existence for nearly 150 years. Its construction followed a period of recommendations, which probably accounts for the curious fact that it was built after the provincial government had finally managed to deal successfully with the large pirate fleets which had terrorized the Kwangtung coastal and riverine regions for the past twenty years. It seems certainly to have been a case of closing the stable door after the horse had bolted; though it may also have resulted from increasing concern with European activity in the delta. The official documents of the time would establish which it was. The fort contains buildings within a large enclosure whose walls measure 225 feet long x 265 feet deep. The front ramparts, through which the entrance gateway passes, are between 15-20 feet thick. The layout at the time of the lease of the New Territories to Great Britain, in 1898, is clearly shown on the survey sheets for Tung Chung, which were prepared soon after the lease. If my memory serves me right, the walls are still in good condition. A village primary school has ample space inside the compound and some of the old buildings, which may have housed the garrison in 1898, are used as offices by the school and by the Tung Chung Rural Committee. The walls have stone foundations to a height of perhaps 8-10 feet and a superstructure built of the common bluish-dark grey bricks of the region. Geologists would be able to say whether, as is likely, the stone and the granite slabs used in its construction were brought from the quarries on nearby Chik Lap Kok, the island which juts north from Tung Chung Bay. In this respect it is similar to the other remaining fort on Lantau. This is at Fan Lau at the south-west tip of the island and has been attributed, probably wrongly, to the Dutch. It is considerably older than the Tung Chung fort and the San On district history states that it was built in 1684. However, it has been long... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r NOTES AND QUERIES 151 evacuation (1662-1669). But it is certain that Tung Chung and Sha Lo Wan had a share in the incense trade which terminated with the evacuation. Wild incense trees can still be found but the art of making incense sticks has vanished. The ancestors of the people living in the valley may have migrated into the area from the north in 1669 but the area has been, until recently, notorious for occurrences of malaria which claimed heavy tolls. The entire population may have been completely wiped out several times, as the oldest of the families has a family history of no more than seven generations. Tung Chung came into the limelight again when Cheung Pao Tsai and his pirate band who had been using the bay as one of their bases to prey upon the coastal trade of the South China Sea, successfully repelled a Ching naval contingent after a ten-day battle in the Ping Chung Bay in the twelfth year of Chia Ching's reign (1807). The trouble was finally quelled in 1809 when Cheung Pao Tsai surrendered and his pirates were disbanded. 2 With the suppression of the pirates, trade flourished. The Viceroy at Canton petitioned the Ch'ing Government in 1817 saying that "Ta Yu Shan of San On District, an isolated island, is on the (trade) route of the ships of the "barbarians". Tung Chung and Tai O are the only places where these "barbarian" ships can anchor. A fort at Chi Yi Kok2 with a Captain(?) and soldiers from the Tai Pang Camp has been maintained but there is no garrison at Tung Chung. As the two places are very far apart, eight garrison houses should be built at the mouth of the Tung Chung Rivers and two batteries (the fort), seven garrison houses and one arsenal should be constructed on the foot of Shek Shee ShanJ. "6 The petition was accepted and the work was completed in the same year. Whether the work was carried out as requested by the Viceroy has still to be proved. However, the fort has been relatively well preserved and seven old 2 Fan Lau (), 24 miles from Tai O. 3 Nan Tau (南頭), Po On District, 15 miles to the north of Lantau. 4 The distance is 6 miles across the main watershed and about 9 miles along the coast. 5 The idea was to prevent the "barbarians" from drawing fresh water for their ships. 6 Kwangtung Annals (廣東通志), p. 2,530. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 REGIONAL APPROACH TO CHINESE HISTORY 11 Thirdly, historians have tended to think of recent Chinese history largely in terms of the "impact of the West", forgetting that for most Chinese the foreigner and his activities were of little real importance. They may have been important to Peking and to some members of the bureaucracy in certain areas of the empire, but the barbarian and his doings could not have loomed large in the day-to-day life of the average Chinese villager or even the average Chinese official. Yet most studies of nineteenth-century Chinese history have been concerned with the Opium Wars, the "scramble for concessions", the Boxer Uprising, the impact of Western thought on Chinese intellectual history. Even the Taiping Rebellion has been thought of largely in terms of its Christian origins and its impact on Sino-Western relations and little has been done, until recently, to treat it as a Chinese phenomenon, which ultimately it was. But what relevance did all this have for the fisherman in his junk off Lantau or the peasant farmer in Szechuan? If there is any validity to the above comments about distortions in Chinese history, it may be that a useful corrective device would be a regional approach to Chinese history. We might be able to gain a better insight into the life and times of nineteenth-century China, for example, by limiting the scope of our studies to cohesive geographic and cultural areas. This would tend to neutralize the all-China, or north-China bias. It would put the impact of the West in its proper perspective. Above all, it might provide answers to the questions raised at the very beginning of this paper: for the person living at a given place and at a given time, what was really “going on”? As an experiment, I have chosen the Hong Kong-Macao-Canton area of south China. This has the advantage of being comparatively small and relatively homogeneous in terms of language, culture, and economic base. Its people were aware of their regional cohesiveness, especially in comparison to outside-province people, though even within this area there were racial and linguistic differences. I have limited my study, more or less, to the first half of the nineteenth century. Politically, the area approximated the territory included in the hsien,3 or districts, which occupied both sides of the Canton River estuary. The districts constituted about two-thirds of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 91 LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE HONG KONG REGION OF KWANGTUNG IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY* JAMES HAYES This article concerns a fringe area of the Kwangtung Province of South China and deals with land and leadership on the island of Lantau. Lantau or in its Chinese form (L) is the largest offshore island of what, since 1898, has been styled the New Territories of British Hong Kong. Lantau is roughly fifteen miles long by five-and-a-half miles broad. The island takes the form of a mountain range which runs, with breaks, along its whole length on a N.E.S.W. axis. The main peaks of this range are around 3,000 feet high. Most of the cultivated land is situated around the coast and at the time of the British lease amounted to a little less than 2,660 acres; that is, only a few square miles. The main crop was and still is rice, harvested twice in July and November. In 1898 the island possessed one market town (population 2,000) situated at its north-west extremity. This place was a salt-producing centre and a considerable fishing port. There were also about fifty small villages on the island. At a carefully-conducted census taken some years after the lease, four of these villages had populations in excess of 200 persons (the largest 363), another seven had more than 100 inhabitants, whilst the remainder were under that figure. The total land population was then over 6,700 persons, mainly Cantonese. Most of the villages were inhabited entirely by Cantonese or Hakka clans, though some of them were of mixed settlement. There was also a boat population of around 5,500 persons whose craft were based on the market town and other anchorages along the coastline. Before 1898 Lantau was part of the San On (**) district of the Kwangtung province. Though it was not far by sea from the This paper is a slightly amended version of that presented at the XVIIth International Congress of Chinese Studies held at the University of Leeds in 1965. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 92 JAMES HAYES district city it was not under the district magistrate's direct rule but was under the charge of one of his deputies. This officer's yamen was in the walled city of Kowloon and he was responsible for many other villages besides those on Lantau Island. There was no civil officer actually resident on the island before 1898 though one imagines that runners would visit it from time to time to chase in taxes and, perhaps less frequently, to make an arrest. The military authorities were more in evidence. A captain commanded a detachment in the fort at Tung Chung, a large valley in the north-central part of the island, and a junior officer was in charge of another body of troops in the market town, Their presence was perhaps due more to European activities in the local seaways, and to pirates, than to any disturbances likely to take place on the island, especially in the latter half of the nineteenth century when there is no remembrance of internal disturbances.4 The people of Lantau were left mainly to their own devices by the government, military and civil alike. From evidence collected locally it appears that as elsewhere in China the clan and village elders kept the peace in the villages, and the Kaifong (#) or Street Association did the same in the market town and paid for watchmen to bar and walk round the principal streets at night. Anything more serious than minor disturbance and petty crime, e.g. piracies or armed robberies, was reported to the military, though by that time it was usually too late for anything effective to be done. Disputes were settled locally as far as possible. Besides these, the elders handled a variety of duties which, irrespective of the size of the community, were sometimes arduous and complex since much depended on handling individuals so as to produce a fruitful result. They organised small public works of benefit to their communities, such as the digging of a well or the construction of an irrigation dam or a small pier: they managed the local temples and arranged the details and financing of all festivals: they were responsible for finding suitable premises for village schools and engaging teachers; and so on. These persons came forward by a combination of such factors as age, experience, ability, ambition, leisure, wealth, lack of anyone else willing to do the job and so on. However, it is also true to say that they had also to be acceptable in their communities, since without local support and goodwill they could hardly operate.5 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 94 JAMES HAYES persons exercising a similar authority in the course of the century, but I have not yet learned who they were. CHAN FU-SHING (c.1800-60) Chan Fu-shing (c.1800-60) was a Cantonese from the village of Sha Lo Wan on North Lantau. He was the eldest of three sons who were brought there by their mother at the beginning of the nineteenth century from Sai Heung not far from the District City of Nam Tau (about eighteen miles away by sea). The mother was presumably a widow. Why she came to Sha Lo Wan is not known -- perhaps a married aunt or sister lived there but when they did arrive it is more than likely that the family had no land of their own because of the circumstances of their coming and the fact that the oldest village clans claim a depth of settlement that indicates arrival in the 17th century. Family tradition has it that the boy was put to work in a grocery store in the market town of Tai O six miles away. Being able and diligent he made himself indispensable to his employer and eventually became a partner in the business. By this means he obtained the small capital that was essential for speculation. He appears to have used this money to make loans to village people either at the customary high rates of interest -- documents show that 50% per annum was common -- or in return for mortgages of land. He was also able to buy land when the opportunity offered and gradually built up an estate for himself and his descendants. It was not a large one. By the time of the British lease the Chan family, all descended from himself or his brothers, owned 19 acres in and around Sha Lo Wan. Most, if not all of this property, must have come from Chan Fu-shing. It is interesting that almost half these fields were placed in common ownership in two ancestral trusts with one or more managers. This ensured that the land would not be divided into small segments every succeeding generation, and would not be at the mercy of a spendthrift or gambler. By way of an aside, it is, in my experience, unusual -- on Lantau -- for so high a proportion of land to be preserved in this way and this prescience must have been exercised by Chan Fu-shing. The Chans' ancestral hall, used as a village school for almost a century, was also due to Fu-shing and his money. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g LAND AND LEADERSHIP IN THE H.K. REGION OF KWANGTUNG 101 Lockhart calls them in his 1898 report on the New Territories.18 He states that the council for the Eastern Tung embraced most of the leased territory and sat in the market town of Sham Chun just north of the 1898 boundary. One imagines that men such as the three who form the subject of this paper might have been members. Here I have had the benefit of conversations with a former mandarin, now deceased, who served as a Chou and then as a Fu magistrate in Hupeh for some years before the Revolution of 1911. He told me that the councils of the poorer districts were augmented by prominent non-literati of the type to be found on Lantau, the normal restrictions on scholar membership being waived in order to secure the presence of persons who carried weight in their localities. If practised in San On this realistic approach, in part occasioned by the need to obtain their help in chasing in and securing the payment of the land tax, would probably have brought in local leaders like Chan, Cheung and Kung. I must record that this is conjecture since no information on their participation in the council, their work there, and their relations with the district magistrate and the true gentry of the District has yet turned up though I am by no means sure, given local conditions, that it ever will. However an account of these men would be lacking unless one hinted at the possibility of their participation in local councils, especially as it is probable that the rural gentry of Lantau and similar fringe areas in South China and elsewhere in the Ching period were similar in origins to these three men. NOTES 1 The New Territories were ceded by the Convention of Peking signed on 9th June 1898; for the text see The Hong Kong Government Gazette for 8 April 1899, pp. 552-553—but were not occupied until the following year. The boundaries were not discussed until March 1899, and some hostilities took place in March and April of that year when the Hong Kong Government took possession of the New Territory. See Sessional Papers 1899, No. 32 "Dispatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong" and No. 35 "Further Papers relating to Military Operations in Connection with the Disturbances On The Taking Over of the New Territory". The Romanisation used in this article is in the Cantonese form. For place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 150 LIN SHU-YEN families the men and women were in their fifties. In the third, the son, who is about thirty, did most of the work. The leaching process, Lin tells us, was carried out mainly by natives of Lantau Island and was the only method inherited from their remote ancestors. In 1962 I was able to speak to an old lady who came in 1898 at the age of 16 to the village of Leung Uk, at the south-west edge of the salt pans, to be married to one of the villagers. She told me that men and women from the locality worked in the fields, some of them from Leung Uk. Not many people worked in the fields at that time, and they were operated by an outsider. The workers were paid on a piece work basis depending on their output, but it was customary for the company to advance money for daily food and deduct the sum from the final wage. For how long the local village people, as opposed to outsiders, carried out the work on the salt-pans is not known. The Leung Uk settlement, since it is named after the Leung family, it is reasonable to suppose that they were the first inhabitants of the present settlement, was apparently settled about 1800. This estimate is based on calculations from a genealogy which also states that the first ancestor came to Tai O from a village near Shum Chun Market to the north of the present Sino-British frontier. These people are Hakkas. The other villages in the Tai O basin, adjacent to the market town, are the similar small settlements of Nam Chung, San Tsuen, and Wang Hang, and it is unlikely that they are earlier than Leung Uk. At the 1911 Colony census, the population of these three small villages was recorded at 50, 42, and 90 respectively, whilst the population of Leung Uk was 104 persons. There were other, larger villages a little further afield, and some of their inhabitants may also have worked at the pans. Since writing the above, I have chanced upon a note in The Hong Kong Naturalist, also in Vol X (1940), by Father R. Maglioni, the noted archaeologist, in which he offers some comments upon Lin's article and an earlier one by Dr. C. M. Heanley on some of the problems connected with local, i.e., Hong Kong archaeology. He writes: "About the furnaces described by Dr. Heanley in The Hong Kong Naturalist (Vol. VI, Nos. 3-4), I must confess that I am not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 154 NOTES AND QUERIES 1626 the Manchus were stopped in their tracks at Ning-yüan by the foreign artillery. But this setback was not to last very long. They saw the usefulness of these weapons and set about casting some themselves. These proved effective in the conquest of the northern frontier (1643-44) and in the years to follow as their armies plunged on down across both the Yellow and Yangtze Rivers to Kwangtung and Kweichow. Columbia University L. CARRINGTON GOODRICH NOTES 1 In this I have consulted Mr. C. N. Tay of the American Museum of Numismatics, New York City. 2 The inscription on the cannon is given below. This cannon was found lying on open ground in the Tsiu Keng sub-district in the northern part of the New Territories. It was reported by Mr. R. E. dos Remedios, Senior Land Assistant in the District Office, Taipo in August 1966. The cannon was completely exposed and must have been in this condition for a long time. It is not clear how it came to be there. * This cannon, which was mentioned in passing in the note on the Tung Chung Fort, at p. 148 of Vol. 4 of the Journal (1964), was dredged from the sea in 1956, either from Kowloon Bay in the course of work on the extension to Hong Kong airport or from Fat Tong Mun (otherwise called Joss House Bay) in the approaches to Hong Kong Harbour—sources differ. It is now mounted with a plaque in Chinese and English outside the Central Government Offices (East Wing), Hong Kong. It was heavier than the one recently discovered; 300 catties as compared with 300 catties. The Chinese inscription, which is much the same, is also given below. 4 An insight into the happenings of these troubled times is preserved in the family record of the Tsui (徐) clan formerly of Shek Pik on Lantau island, to which their ancestor had removed in the 16th Century. The family came from Mong Ngau Tun (望牛墩) in Tung Kwun district (東莞) where they had settled in the Sung dynasty from Kiangsi province. There was fighting in Tung Kwun against the Manchus after their success in the North. The record which gives no precise date for this occurrence, though it must have been within a few years of the change of dynasty in 1644 — reads — Sau Yeung-kap, a civil officer, and Li Shing-tung, a general, instigated an uprising against the new dynasty in Tung Kwun. As the revolt gathered momentum, oxen and horses were killed for food, and rice and corn became as expensive as pearls. For miles, one could see nothing animate; the fields were covered with dead bodies. In some places, human flesh was eaten by the starving people, and piles of human bones filled the ruined houses. A detachment of the Manchu army was sent to besiege the district city, then occupied by the rebels. In the conflict that ensued, human beings were massacred as though they were ants, and law-abiding people and bad characters alike were destroyed. Fortunately, our clansmen, then living at Mong Ngau Tun, escaped this calamity. However, many of our former neighbours and fellow-natives in Ming Ka Lane lost their lives and [as the record says in another place] all the dispensations of the previous dynasty were regarded as scrap paper. (I am grateful to Mr. Gilbert Louie for this translation. Ed) Readers will note that Li Shing-tung (Li Ch'eng-tung) is mentioned in Prof. LO Hsiang-lin's Additional Note where he is described as Governor of Kwangtung. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 82 FAN LAU AND ITS FORT: AN HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ARMANDO M. DA SILVA* Site and Situation Fan Lau is located at the extreme southwestern tip of Tai Yu Shan or Lantau Island. It is almost equal in distance from Hong-kong and Macau and it is situated about twenty-five miles due east of the latter. Fan Lau can be reached by sampan or fishing boat either from the market towns of Cheung Chau or Tai O, or by walking along the water catchment from Shek Pik reservoir to a point above and beyond Kau Ling Chung, and then by descending a steep stony path towards the settlement. Another route is to strike out from Tai O, taking the coastal footpath through Yi O, and thence to Fan Lau. There is no motor road to Fan Lau. The area of Fan Lau includes a headland known as Kai Yik Kok (†) meaning "chicken wing point" where an old fort is located (see map 1).† The high point of the Kai Yik Kok promontory rises to about 380 feet above sea level. In the north of this headland lies the cultivated waist of Fan Lau where a small settlement is located. Looming above the settlement is Kai Yik Shan1 from which two streams supply irrigation water to the padi fields. Two fine beaches, Tung Wan and Sai Wan, flank the waist of the peninsula. Tung Wan, though exposed to prevailing easterly winds and a long fetch from the village, can accommodate deep-draught junks. The actual territory associated with the village extends beyond the physical boundaries of the settlement. Fan Lau villagers, for example, cultivate fields located in Tsin Yue Wan (see map 1) and records show that, at least in 1904, padi fields in Kau Ling Chung (since abandoned) were also cultivated. Situated at the entrance of the Chu Kong or Pearl River estuary, Fan Lau enjoyed a strategic location in the past. This position was reflected in the construction of numerous forts and guard stations * Mr. da Silva has a Master's degree from the University of California at Berkeley and is at present with the Department of Geography, University of Hawaii. † Maps 1-4 are located at pp. 92-95. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d NOTES AND QUERIES 163 cloth, of which they make their winter dresses. In the Jin-on district [= San On] the spinning of the hemp of which grass-cloth is made, is more frequently seen, but the women do not weave it, and there are journeymen weavers who go round in the villages with their primitive looms to do the weaving for the families. It is interesting to note that these Hakkas did not restrict their visits only to Cantonese villages in this region, but that their services were also utilised in Hakka ones. An old Hakka man born in 1886 in the village of San Tsuen at Pui O, Lantau Island states: When I was a boy we wore clothes made from hemp cloth. We grew the hemp ourselves and the village women cleaned and sorted it and prepared it for weaving. They did not weave the cloth themselves but relied on itinerant Hakka-speaking men from the Lung Kong and Tam Shui districts who came yearly to our village and the nearby settlements to weave the hemp yarn into cloth. They brought their tools with them. I think this was an old practice and had been going on for a long time before I was born. These people stopped coming when I was about thirteen or fourteen years old. The cloth they wove was very strong and hard-wearing, suitable for wear in both seasons but best for summer use. Though they did not weave, our village people knew how to make clothes. Clothes were much simpler then and much wider, the sleeves being 6-8 inches wide, San Tsuen is a Hakka village in a mixed Hakka-Punti complex where both dialect groups are of equally long settlement. According to his family's genealogical record, my informant's ancestors have been settled there since about 1710. Yet it appears that not all local Hakkas relied on visits from their fellow-countrymen from North-east Kwangtung. An old Hakka woman who was married into the Hakka stone-cutters' settlement of Ngau Tau Kok in East Kowloon at the age of nine in 1897, recalls that her sister-in-law bought hemp in Kowloon City market and brought it home to weave, took it back to Kowloon City to be dyed and later brought it back to the village to make into clothes for the family. Making bed-clothes and mosquito nets was also mentioned. Most items were dyed black in colour. Her ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d NOTES AND QUERIES 165 he charged two or three cash a chih, with food and a place to sleep as was the custom. That was a lot of money for a man to earn; he could live for a week on one day's labor. At page 53 it is mentioned that a few years later, at or about the Boxer time, the Old Weaver no longer came to the Chu home to weave cloth each winter, and that no one took his place, it being then cheaper to buy British or foreign cloth in the market. 1. For descriptions of hemp spinning wheels from Chekiang see pp. 167-169 of Rudolf P. Hommel's China at Work... (New York, The John Day Company, 1937). Photographs of two such wheels are at pp. 170 and 171. I have not yet come across any such relics from the Hong Kong region. 2. The Hakkas of Hing Ning district, mentioned above, appear also to have played a large part in weaving foreign cotton yarn imported via Swatow. Consul F.S.A. Bourne in his section of the Report of the Mission to China of the Blackburn Chamber of Commerce 1896-7 (Blackburn, The North-east Lancashire Press Company, 1898) at pp. 153-4 mentions them as using foreign yarn for weaving cotton cloth "sent down the Canton East River past Hui-chow Fu to Fatshan where it is dyed black and called ch'ung-ch'ang-ch'ing i.e. imitation long black. This cloth, like that of which it is a copy, is very largely exported to Singapore." 3. For local, i.e. Hong Kong, place names see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960). Hong Kong, 1968. JAMES HAYES THE TUNG CHUNG FORT (LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG) For earlier references in NOTES AND QUERIES see Vols. 3 (1963) and 4 (1964) of this Journal at pp. 144-145 and 146-152 respectively. In late January 1966, I heard of, and spoke with, an old lady aged 90 sui (歲) born on 2nd October 1877. She had spent all her days in the Tung Chung valley, having been born in Wong Ka Wai and married into Sheung Ling Pei village. A series of questions... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 182 COHEN, Paul A. THE LIBRARY Some sources of anti-missionary sentiment during the late Ch'ing. Ann Arbor, Center for Chinese Studies, University of Michigan [1962?] Extract from China Society, Taiwan. Journal, v. 2. COHN, William. Chinese art. London, The Studio, 1930. COHN, William. Chinese painting. London, Phaidon Press, 1948. COLE, Fay-Cooper. The peoples of Malaysia. New York, Van Nostrand, 1945. COTES, Everard. Signs and portents in the Far East. New York, Putnam, 1907. COULING, Samuel. The encyclopaedia sinica. Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1917 reprinted 1964. COWDRY, N. H. Plants from Peitaiho. [Shanghai, Kelly & Walsh, 1922] Reprinted from Royal Asiatic Society. North China Branch. Journal, v. 53, 1922, pp. [158]-188. CROSSMAN, Carl L. A design catalogue of Chinese export porcelain for the American market. Salem, Mass., Peabody Museum, 1964. DAVID, Armand. Journal de mon troisième voyage d'exploration dans l'Empire Chinois. Paris, Hachette, 1875. 2 vols. DAVIS, S. G., ed. Economic geology of Hong Kong. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964. DAVIS, S. G., ed. Land use problems in Hong Kong: a symposium. Hong Kong, University Press, 1964. DAVIS, S. G. and TREGEAR, Mary. Man Kok Tsui (†); archaeological site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong. Hong Kong, University Press, 1961. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d TUNG KWU ISLAND 79 or saucer, painted with an open flower in underglaze blue, crudely executed and very badly glazed; and the third, found at 78 cm. in the sandbank, was a bronze button wrapped in a fragment of coarse cloth, hollow and containing a small object which rattles. I interpret this as a fragment from a modern burial: its depth is noteworthy. A group of late pottery fragments is recorded on my last visit but one to the site. Three of them were at 69, 71 and 76 cm. from the surface, and one, probably a piece of tile, at 61 cm. They were near the north end of the west beach, where rainwash from the hill has increased the depth recordings compared with those on the sand isthmus. Other pieces of tile, with textile impressions on their concave sides, and gray in colour, apparently old-fashioned, lay at 1 m. depth in rainwash 25 m. north of the group described. These tiles evidently mark an occupation level, most likely fishermen's huts of the Yuan or later period; some of the fishermen may even have been using pieces of porcelain left behind by the Sung court after its retreat from the Kowloon district to its final end on the Ngai Mun mouth of the West River. The accumulation of rainwash over this level points to the island's deforestation as having started about the Sung period, when Chinese immigration from the north had increased the population, and with it the demand for timber and firewood, as the log runways on the Lantau hills testify. PUMICE An interesting feature of the site is a layer, roughly 32 cm. thick, and from 75 to 107 cm. from the surface, containing fairly numerous rolled pebbles of pumice, stained yellow by the sand. It is confined to the east shore of the isthmus. This layer evidently points to an eruption that took place in Japan or the Philippines, possibly submarine, and coming from a magma of the acid type rather than the basic, from which the 'froth' was expelled by explosions, and was drifted by wind and currents on to the Tung Kwu beach. Similar beds of ancient pumice are found at eight other sites in the Colony, very likely more, and give a very useful datum line for correlation, like a zone fossil in geology. This holds good also in some sites on the Tonkin (North Vietnam) coast visited by Dr. Andersson in 1938; his results were published in the Stockholm journal of the Museum of Far Eastern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 130 ARMANDO DA SILVA 5I saw bits of red paper tagged to certain bushes attributed with medicinal properties at Ma Nam Wat, Saikung peninsula on Chinese New Year, January or February 1963. The man who placed the red paper tags explained to me the significance of the tags. I do not know how widespread this custom is. It could be an isolated incident but I personally don't think so and I believe this custom to be widespread, at least in the past. It was seeing this act of consecration to plants that aroused my curiosity about useful and medicinal plants around and about coastal villages. 6 The Chinese botanical reference book I used for plant identification is Chik Mar Hok Tai Tsz Tin published in Shanghai, 1918. Unfortunately Chinese plant names in that book are of North Chinese reference only, and are not applicable to South China or the Hongkong area. The modern Chinese reference work on "koon yeuk" medicine I consulted is Chung Wa San Yeuk Mat Hok Tai Tsz Tin published in Tientsin, 1934. Again, plant names and treatments described in that book are not applicable to South China and the Hongkong area. All of the Cantonese terms and characters were supplied to me by shang choi yeuk collectors at Mui Wo, Lantau. These collectors were seen (in 1963) at Mui Wo ferry pier returning to Hongkong with their loads of shang choi yeuk plants. I am sure that even now (1969), you can also with patience encounter shang choi yeuk collectors at Tai O, Taipo or Shatin. At Cheung Chau, in 1963, there were even a few professional seaweed collectors still left! A common seaweed collected there is a Gelidium called shek fa choi (stone flower vegetable). It is the chief jelly ingredient in the preparation of the Cantonese jelly dessert called "pak leung fun", and it is the demand from restaurants in Hongkong and Kowloon that makes seaweed collection profitable for the handful of seaweed collectors left. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d THE SAN ON MAP OF MGR. VOLONTIERI 145 The pattern of settlement presented by the map must be treated with some caution, for there is a distinct difference in the degree of complexity between the two portions divided roughly by an imaginary line running from the middle of the top margin south-westwards to the bottom edge. To the east of this divide practically all the villages known to have been in existence at that time were accurately located and named, but on the other side of the line, the settlements were under-represented and the locations of those actually cited were rather inaccurately plotted. Furthermore, some six to eight miles of the north-western boundary with Tung Kun District is conspicuously missing, but it does not seem that any part of San On lies beyond the margins of the map. The distortion of the coastline and the lack of relief contrasts on which Volonteri must have based his observations, were part of the reason for the imprecision, but the full explanation for the omission of many village sites in western San On must be sought elsewhere. Although there was a larger number of small villages in the eastern peninsula, the concentration of population was definitely in the more prosperous and long established western plains. The broad valleys of the rivers emptying into Deep Bay were settled by the Cantonese Tang clan as early as the tenth century, while the hilly tracts of the east had to wait a couple of centuries for the arrival of the Hakkas. Several farming communities on the large island of Nam Tao (Lantau) have a history dating back to the Ming and even to the Sung Dynasty, but none of these were recorded on the map. There are two possible explanations which may account for this unfortunate lack of information in western San On. The first must be that Volonteri, like his successors, found that the Hakkas were, on the whole, more receptive to Christianity than were the more wealthy and tradition-bound Cantonese and hence a concentration of missionary efforts on these communities in the early days. In view of the Tai Ping Rebellion (1850-64), with its religious and ethnic implications, the timing of Volonteri's arrival and survey work was certainly not the most opportune. He would therefore have spent more time with the Hakkas and have become more familiar with the areas around the five strategically located Roman Catholic churches in the eastern section. The result was that his knowledge of the remainder of the district did not seem to have extended far beyond ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 156 NOTES AND QUERIES or gingall. That on the right is badly placed; its view is obstructed by a great rock, which possibly was not there when the wall was built. Other loopholes are set at intervals of 12 feet in the wall all along, and are very roughly and crudely made and badly placed. Only one or two command the path in fact. Immediately beside the stair leading to the gate platform once stood a small guard house, fragments of the red tiles of which can still be seen. The lines of its east and north walls (of ‘chunam') can still be traced. A fragment of an earthenware bowl embedded in decomposed granite was seen, and other fragments of pottery were seen on the ground. The East wall is about 12 feet long; the other say 6 feet. The South wall foundation of the guard house, of stone, is in place. WALTER SCHOFIELD REMOVAL OF VILLAGES FOR FUNG SHUI REASONS: ANOTHER EXAMPLE FROM LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG The 1963 Journal included notices of village removals for which Fung Shui reasons were given by those concerned.* These instances were all taken from South Lantau Island in the Hong Kong region of South Kwangtung. Yet another example from this area has recently come to my notice. It was unsuspected by me until a planned walk over the old coastal track led me to make enquiries locally about some ruined houses that lay beside it. After centuries of use this footpath was replaced in 1956 by a motor road on a different route. The removal of the village took place about sixteen years before the new road made the old track redundant. The two events were therefore not connected in any way. The village was the Hakka settlement of Shan Shek Wan (*) which had 19 houses at the time the Hong Kong Government surveyed the settlement shortly after the lease of the New *JHKBRAS, Vol.3(1963) pp.143-144. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 164 S. F. BALFOUR became too old to live in and were abandoned by the richer members of the family, who built new ones elsewhere. This alone shows how prolific the Tang family were, but it is not the only sign of their overwhelming influence in our region. In almost every fertile valley including Lantau and Hong Kong islands, there has at one time or another been a settlement of Tang peasants and the inference that I have drawn is that they undertook the deforestation of these regions. There appears to be only one other landholding family with a record that goes back to Sung times. This is the clan of Hou17 who live near to Lung Yeuk Tau in several walled villages. Their family record shows that they came from Pun Yu or Canton in the year 1026 but gives no notice of their migration to Canton from the north. They have always been a humble family in comparison to the Tangs, although intermarriage between them has been very frequent, and their family book contains no references to any connection with government. What is striking about the early history of the Tang family is the kind of feudal power which they exercised. No doubt at the same time in other parts of South China influential families were occupying land and spreading branches in all directions. It requires a study of their family books to make a complete picture of the influx of peasant population into South China. VII. THE SUNG EMPERORS The story of the journey of the last Sung Emperors through this region must be recounted not only for its sentimental value, but also because it really marks an epoch in the history of the population. It was owing to the pressure of the Mongols from the north that the Tang family migrated, but when the same pressure spread south right to the coast, the migration into sparsely inhabited places became even more frequent, and it is also very likely that the large armies of Sung when they were dispersed settled down as agriculturalists. The journey of the last two kings of Sung began when the Emperor Kung Ti was taken prisoner with his court at Hangchow. The two boys who were known as Yi Wong and Wei Wong were 17. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 165 saved by their uncle, a man called Yang Liang-chieh, and made their way with their mother to Foochow which they reached at the beginning of 1276. Their position was by no means hopeless. Most of Southern China was still loyal to them and they had hopes of reaching Canton before the Mongol armies and forming a line of resistance along the whole coast. With them was a famous statesman and writer Wen T'ien-chiang whose influence was very great. They had a considerable army; according to some accounts, it consisted of 170,000 regulars and was increased by 300,000 volunteers, and their court and retinue included a chief minister, Ch'en I-chung, and the general Chang Shih-chieh who recognized the eldest son as Emperor and were prepared to fight for him. At Foochow they left behind a force under Wen T'ien-chiang and went first by sea to Chuan Chow, the port which had been a centre of foreign trade during the Sung dynasty. But here they found the local authorities hostile to them and carried on to Chao Chow. There a Mongol force appeared and tried to cut them off but they escaped in their boats and reached K'ap Tze Mun where they landed and marched inland with the idea of getting to Canton, but again they found the local authorities lukewarm and not to be trusted. They took ship and reached a place called Mui Wai in Kwangtung province. Mui Wai or Lam Wai, as it is sometimes called, was undoubtedly in our region. The Topography says that the ruins of the travelling court were still to be seen there. But it has been impossible to identify it. On a map contained in the Topography it is set in the sea just opposite the Kowloon peninsula and from descriptions in texts it appears to be very near Kowloon.* It was densely wooded at that time. From what evidence there is one might suppose it was a part of Hong Kong island, or else one of the peaks to the north of Fat Tong Mun which was mistaken for an island or possibly in the neighbourhood of Mui Wo on Lantau, since the two names are euphonious. Wherever it was, the Emperors and their court appear to have settled there for one or two months, crossing several times by boat to a place on the mainland where they settled in the fourth moon of the year 1277. 18 梅蔚 or 监蔚 * See plate 19. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 HONG KONG BEFORE THE BRITISH 169 which had belonged to the last Emperor and in it the seal of the dynasty which was brought back as a token of the complete extinction of Sung. At Ch'ek Wan on the peninsula called Nam Shan just north-cast of our region there is a tomb which purports to be that of Ti Ping. It bears the inscription "Grave of the Little Emperor Hsing Hsing24 of Sung" and it is tended by a family named Chiu which was the surname of the Sung emperors. There are graves of both Tuan Tsung and Ti Ping in other places along the coast of Kwangtung province and it is not certain that this one is genuine. Most likely it was a "garment grave" containing some relic of the Emperor and made to deceive his enemies as to his real burial place. Many Chinese families in the district claim to be descended either from royal blood or from ministers and soldiers of Sung. These claims may be unsubstantiated individually but the fact that they are made in the mass points to a tradition that much of the Sung army settled in South China after their defeat. It may be asked whether the Tang family helped the Emperors whose kins-men they were. Tang Shou Tsu who lived about this time was a minor officer in the Yuan armies and probably fought against Sung. The Tang family nevertheless lost its paramount influence in Tung Kun district after these events, and this may be the reason why members of the elder branch settled more permanently at Kam Tin and in other parts of the region. VIII. T'UN MUN AND THE PORTUGUESE Mention has been made in a previous section of the prevalence of pirates in the South China Seas in early times. The earliest record of any piratical action within the region is as early as the 10th century when a pirate named Wu Ling Kuang attacked T'un Mun but was defeated. A later event was a revolt of the population of Lantau Island in 1278 when the Yuan government attempted to enforce a monopoly of the salt production and arrested the private salt makers. It is recorded that soldiers tried to land on the island but were prevented by means of wooden stakes placed along the coast, and that the Tanka inhabitants then sailed up the estuary and attacked Canton. The civil population fled, but the sailors defending Canton, by using incendiary arrows 24 The reign title of Ti Ping. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 174 S. F. BALFOUR and his friend Duarte Coelho. Alvares died at the beginning of the siege and was buried near the grave of his son. The siege lasted from July to September 1521 and before the final assault Duarte Coelho with three ships managed to evade the Chinese fleet in a thunderstorm and slip away. All the others perished. In 1522 another expedition set sail from Malacca. They were met outside T'un Mun by a large Chinese fleet and although they did not at first return the fire and tried to open negotiations they were chased to the western side of the Canton estuary near San Wui district where another battle took place in which they were all killed or captured. The Portuguese historian places the site of this second battle at T'un Mun also, but since few survived it is more probable that the site at San Wui which is mentioned in the Ming history is the authentic one. The Chinese had by that time under the energetic leadership of Wang Hung learnt to make cannon after the Portuguese model and were not any more at a disadvantage in this respect. But after the last Portuguese defeat the region of T'un Mun was left alone. A Chinese fleet patrolled the estuary and the islands continually from 1523 to 1524 but the foreigners did not reappear for many years. When the Portuguese established themselves at Macao they still recognised in T'un Mun a better trading centre, and although they were not allowed to colonise it, they were interested in preventing any other foreigners from doing so. The Spaniards who arrived at the end of the 16th century created a temporary trading station at a place they called Pinal, twelve leagues from Canton, but it is not certain where this is. The Dutch arrived in China in 1607 and tried in vain to open negotiations with the Chinese government but they were chased away from the island of Lantao by a Portuguese fleet. Later they attacked the fort at Fa T'ong Mun but were defeated by the Chinese. The history of T'un Mun can be carried right into modern times, for a port in its neighbourhood was the aim of the English in the 18th century when Anson was sent to take soundings on the north side of Lantau and Hong Kong island. IX. THE EVACUATION OF THE COAST AND THE HAKKA IMMIGRATION The advent of foreigners naturally made the China seas more turbulent than ever before and the history of our region during ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 178 S. F. BALFOUR that the Hakka immigration embraces a wide area north and east of our region and several islands. In some cases old Punti villages have entirely disappeared but the land then cultivated has been taken up by Hakka who have built their own houses. In others Hakka have entirely superseded the Punti after a period during which they shared villages. It seems most probable that the evacuation gave to the Hakkas an unexpected chance of taking up land in the places where it had been abandoned. The return from evacuation was allowed partly because it had led to greater disturbance than before and partly because of the loss in taxes, which was estimated at 300,000 taels. The first to suggest it was the Hsün Fu or Inspector-General Wang, part of whose petition has already been quoted. The result of his outspoken criticism was that he was disgraced and ordered to return to Peking. He did not do so and died, probably by suicide, in Kwangtung after writing a valedictory address to the Emperor in which he stated as a dying request that the people be allowed to return to their homes. Wang is worshipped in this region and with him the Viceroy of Kwangtung, Chou, who personally inspected the situation in the winter of 1668 and petitioned that the boundary be removed before the fortifications were completed instead of after as had been previously decided, owing to the distress of the inhabitants. Two months later this was allowed. The fortifications alluded to have all disappeared. They should not be confused with the more modern Chinese forts which can be seen here and there in the region. The fort at Kowloon was built in 1810 and the present city walls only in 1856. The fort at Tung Ch'ung, which is one of the best preserved, dates from 1817 as does the one at Kai Yik Kok on the south western tip of Lantau*. The reason given for the building of these forts was to protect the coast against foreigners. Piracy continued to be practised by the Tanka during the intervening centuries. A few of the pirates' names are preserved in the "Salt Water Songs" which the Tanka sing in their anchorages. One of these is about a woman pirate, called Cheng I * But see, for the Kai Yik Kok fort, Armando da Silva's recent article "Fan Lau and its Fort: An Historical Perspective" in this Journal Vol. 8, (1968) pp. 82-95. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g A BRIEF REPORT ON SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG J. C. Y. WATT* THE SITES Over the past thirty years various pottery finds attributed to the Sung period have been made in many parts of Hong Kong. For the purpose of this paper, two representative sites will be described and the finds discussed. The sites are: the area of Kowloon City near the present Kai Tak Airport, and Nim Shu Wan on the eastern coast of Lantau Island, the largest of the islands of Hong Kong. Kowloon City, formerly called Kuan-fu Chai, was the administrative centre of the salt-pans on the north coast of Kowloon Bay. These salt-pans were one of the chief official centres of production of salt in south China during the Southern Sung period2. The existence of the Kuan-fu salt-pans, which we know from historical records, is confirmed by an inscription written by one of the salt-officers, Yen I-chang, in 1274 and carved on a rock which still stands today. The rock is situated behind a Tien-hou temple in Joss House Bay. Kuan-fu Chai was also one of the stopping places of the fleeing court of the last princes of the Sung dynasty3. It is not surprising that a site with so much connection with Sung history should yield archaeological finds of the Sung period. The first group of finds made in this area, which are still partially available for inspection and have a fair claim to be Sung, were unearthed intermittently from a small hill which used to be known as the Sacred Hill. This hill, on which stood the Sung Wang T'ai, the Sung Princes' Rock, was levelled during the Japanese occupation in the Second World War when the airfield was extended. When the hill was demolished a large quantity of pottery was unearthed, which consisted of celadons, green glazed *Mr. Watt is Assistant Curator, City Museum and Art Gallery, Hong Kong. His note "A Pair of Pottery Covered Jars found at Shek Pik, Lantau Island" appeared in Vol. 9 (1969) of this Journal, pp. 161-163. This article is based on a paper presented by the author at the Manila Trade Pottery Seminar held in March, 1968. Plates 1-10 illustrate this article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g SUNG-TYPE POTTERY FINDS IN HONG KONG 143 wares in the shape of Chekiang celadons but with a soft red body, black glazed stonewares and white soft wares (probably from Fukien) and various ying-ching and greenish glazed porcellaneous wares. A large number of Southern Han (905-971 A.D.) and Sung coins were found with the pottery. The Nim Shu Wan site extends over a beach and the slopes of the low hills behind the beach rising to a height of 60 metres. The site was considered by geomancers to be extremely lucky, being flanked at both ends by promontories; the one at the south end, being long and narrow, representing the "green dragon", and that at the north-east end, being wider and broader representing the "white tiger". A more basic factor favouring settlement was that both the beach and bay were well sheltered from the prevailing easterly winds. However, the long southern promontory which used to extend to a distance of about 200 metres into the sea has over the years been partially washed away by wave action leaving a few stacks to mark its former extent. By local tradition, this was one of the market places, hsü, for the villages along the coast of the mainland extending from Castle Peak to Tsuen Wan as well as for those on the islands of Peng Chau, Hong Kong, Cheung Chau and Lantau itself. Its location and geographical features made it an ideal market place for people who relied mainly on boats for transport. However, as the southern promontory began to disappear leaving the bay more exposed to the winds, the "luck" also left the place and by the beginning of this century only a few families lived there. In the last twenty years, as a result of population pressure, people from Peng Chau have begun to move into this area again, using the stones and bricks of the many ruins of old houses for building new ones and for retaining the terraced fields for cultivation. The finds on this site include glazed earthenware funerary urns of a type that was prevalent in the Pearl delta during late T'ang and early Sung times (Plate 1). Apart from these, a large number of stoneware and porcelain sherds have been picked up on the beach from time to time. The fact that the quantity of sherds to be found on the beach remains fairly constant and that the breaks of the fragments are usually fresh and clean would indicate that the pottery has been washed down from higher ground and the pieces were broken on their way down the slope. There seems to be much greater variation in the colour and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g 200 NOTES AND QUERIES ains in Kiang-Si, the charcoal burners constitute the population of almost all the villages. The houses of these landowners may be at once recognised by the vast piles of charcoal in front of them.' ** Gray may be right in implying that charcoal was in great demand for domestic use at the time he wrote, but observation and enquiries in New Territories' villages show that wood has long been in general use at the kitchen stove and even in the portable earthenware stoves known as fung lo () in this area. The observant traveller on the local hills can still find evidence of charcoal burning in the past, but first-hand information is now hard to come by. This note only deals with a few areas where I am familiar with the older local people. On Lamma, for instance, an old person born in Yung Shue Long Village about 1887 recalls that there were a lot of charcoal burners on the island when she was a girl, mostly outsiders who employed the village women and girls to carry the charcoal from the kilns to the waiting junks or to barges towed by steamboats. These Lamma kilns were mostly situated in the more wooded south of the island, at the village localities of Mau Tat, Yung Shue Ha and Tung O. Too young to help, she followed her mother and her aunt there from their village in the northern part of Lamma. Along with other villagers, they were paid 2 cents (sin) a day for the work. On the south coast of Lantau Island an old villager of Tong Fuk, born in 1889, recalled, as a boy, having seen charcoal burners at work near his village and on the hills above. He said that (as on Lamma) these were not local people. A few miles east, there are pits on the hills above the Pui O group of villages; but though linked by village tradition with charcoal burning, the oldest men said they had not been worked in their lifetime. In the first few decades of this century charcoal burners were still to be seen on the hills behind north-west Kowloon, near the present Shek Lei Pui reservoir, formerly the site of a Hakka farming village of that name removed for the water scheme in 1923. An old village woman from Cheung Sha Wan, born 1892, recalls seeing them there as a young girl when grass cutting in the area. A second woman who married into another of the Cheung ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g NOTES AND QUERIES + + + 201 Sha Wan villages about also remembers them. When I asked these ladies whether the charcoal burners were village people or outsiders, their reply was typical, and to the effect 'they weren't from our villages and probably not from adjacent ones either, but we didn't go near them to ask.' I have seen the Lantau and Lamma pits only, all linked with charcoal burning by the local people. The kilns, or rather the pits that remain, vary in size. Most are circular and fairly small, about 7 to 8 feet in diameter and a few feet deep at the present time. One of the Lamma pits, near Mau Tat, styled as ‘a big kiln' by the old village person mentioned above, is larger, being 15 feet across. Its earth walls are smooth and impregnated with tell-tale carbon. All these pits are cut into low banks or into the ground. Perhaps the last kilns to be operated in the Hong Kong area are some near the Shek O Road. According to Hok Tsui and Lan Nai Wan villagers living nearby, these were opened and operated by the Japanese during the war-time occupation of the Colony between 1941-45. They recall passing them and seeing them in operation when on their way to market in Shau Kei Wan, though giving them a wide berth for fear of trouble. Shau Kei Wan people say that the kilns were used to provide fuel for the electric plant at North Point, to which the charcoal was transported on little wooden trucks hauled by local men and women workers engaged by the Japanese. These pits differ from the others in that they are domed, being cut into a high bank. They are apparently very similar, though newer, to those north of the Kowloon hills described over twenty years ago by G. A. C. Herklots in The Hong Kong Countryside (Hong Kong, S.C.M.P. Ltd. 1947). His description is worth quoting in full, though he was not clear whether or not the pits were used for charcoal burning and he had not sought to ask in the villages of the area. "There are some curious dome-shaped holes by the path, one is actually immediately under the path. They are roughly six feet high in the centre and nine feet across. The sides are vertical, the roof domed and the floor space circular. The holes are holes in the ground and their roofs are level with the surface of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q (b) that nearly all of them hold British passports and may be assumed to have been born in the Colony, and (c) that they are practically all men of working age, then we may conclude that they represent very roughly, perhaps a third of all the men in the New Territories who were born there and who fall within the economically active years of manhood. Since, furthermore, there are certain areas of the New Territories from which emigration has been especially heavy, despite the fact that men from all areas have participated in the movement, there are grounds for assuming that the effect of migration must in places have been extremely important. 73. The scale and direction of the emigration of the last few years are novel, but they rest on a tradition which reminds us that in this, as in many other respects, the New Territories are geographically and culturally part of southeastern China. For, especially since the middle of the last century, the coastal regions of the provinces of Kwangtung and Fukien have served as a reservoir from which many countries, above all in South-East Asia, have drawn population. Emigration to California and Australia,—the 'gold mountains'—was noted by the first British administrators of the New Territories (for they spoke of loan associations got up to finance men wanting to go to these two countries), but there are hints in the early census reports that New Territories people were scattered more widely. The 1911 census shows a handful of Chinese in the New Territories to have been born in Annam, Hawaii, the Philippines, the Straits Settlements, Siam, and Australia. In 1921 the countries which appear in this context, again with reference to very small numbers, are Annam, India, Japan, British Borneo, France, Italy, the U.S.A., and Mexico. The list for 1931 reads: Indo-China, British North Borneo, Malaya, Netherlands East Indies, Siam, Canada, the U.S.A., Cuba, Panama, Guiana, Peru, England, and Holland. There were, in fact, two kinds of emigrants; landsmen who went overseas to make a living in a particular country, and seamen who, whether legally or not, left their ships to try their luck in places to which they had been carried. The establishment of Hong Kong as a British settlement in 1842 created a demand for local seamen, many of whom were recruited from the Chinese villages lying near the new centre. Men from Lamma Island and from Lantau Island seem at an early date to have taken service in British and other ships. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 156 W. SCHOFIELD on the ridge.* Further afield, on the Hang Hau peninsula, is the paved road referred to above, which runs as far as Ha Yeung: and on Nam Tong, commanding the strait, is the robbers' stronghold with its gun platform. Porcelain near its gate looked fairly modern, from what I remember. Remains of a similar kind can be found on the other islands of the Southern District. Just above the village of Shek Sun at the west end of Lantau stands a Dutch fort built about 1610, rectangular in plan. A few cannon balls and other relics have been found in it, but it is very overgrown and needs clearing if any research is to be done there, or sightseers enabled to visit it. The old fort and cannon protecting the small yamen were repaired when E. W. Hamilton was D.O., I think between 1927 and 1929: I remember that one room in the yamen was inscribed shu shat (library). Another relic of old coast defences, close to Tai O, is the old Chinese guard station already referred to, outside Po Chu Tam creek, and quite ruined. On the south coast, near Shek Pik, a very ancient rock carving on a cliff was found quite recently. In the outlying islands are three interesting structures: one is on the North Soko island, where in a small valley on its south coast are two converging lines of megaliths. The other two are on Sha Chau, one a stone burial chamber on the south isthmus in the form of a 'kistvaen,' the other a ruined guard station on the flat area northwards of the chamber, with an earthwork protecting the landing place to eastward. No doubt there are many other places of interest, especially temples and their contents: one of the finest is the Pak Tai temple in Cheung Chau, with its coloured relief showing the local ferry boat nearing the pier in Hong Kong harbour. Lastly, there is one place of much interest with which I had to deal in 1917 or 1918. The Tang grave at Hau Tei, beside Tsun Wan, made in the Sung dynasty, was naturally affected by the new Castle Peak motor road and a projected reclamation of the shallow sea area beyond it. The Tang elders come to the Secretariat for Chinese Affairs, where I was 2nd A.S.C.A.,† and partly I think on my suggestion the hill of the grave was made into a public park, so as to preserve its surroundings and outlook. The grateful elders presented me with a 'fung shui' map of the grave site for my efforts on their behalf; and the good influence of their virtuous ancestor continues to augment the prosperity of their descendants, and of Hong Kong generally, if there is anything in 'fung shui'! * See Mr. Schofield's note in JHKBRAS 9 (1969): 154-156. † Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 NOTES AND QUERIES 195 A STUDY OF THE CH'ING FORTS ON LANTAU ISLAND During the Ch'ing period, two forts were built on Lantau Island. They were the Fan Lau Fort and the Tung Chung Fort: the latter including the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort in the Tung Chung Valley. The Fan Lau Fort Fan Lau Kok 汾流角, also called Kai Yik Kok 鷄翼角, is a promontory which lies on the south-west tip of Lantau Island.3 It has a height of about three hundred and eighty feet. To the north of the promontory is the Fan Lau Sai Wan. The Fan Lau Tung Wan lies to its south. On the top of the promontory, there was a fort known as the Fan Lau Fort.1 It was erected in the late Ming Dynasty. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, the coast of China was evacuated,a and the fort was abandoned. Then in the 7th year of the Yung Cheng reign (1729), the fort was rebuilt and again fortified.9 During the early 19th century a famous pirate, Cheung Po-tsai, plundered along the south-east coast of China. His fleet was so strong that the Ch'ing navy was also defeated. He had taken Tung Chung, Lantau Island, as a base for his fleet.10 Fan Lau was quite near Tung Chung. Thus, the Fan Lau fort might also have been in his hands during that period. After the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1810),11 Ch'ing forces recovered the fort.12 Before the Opium War (1841), foreign influence along the coast increased. The Ch'ing government strengthened the forts and the guard-stations of this region. The Fan Lau Fort was still fortified.13 During the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated. Most of the forts along the coast were abandoned. In 1842, British officers travelling in the region found that the Fan Lau Fort was not manned.14 The Fort has a length of one hundred and fifty-five feet, and a breadth of seventy feet. It is formed by four rubble walls, about ten feet high. It has an entrance which faces east. The entrance is about five feet wide. There are steps for mounting the walls. The Fort has remained in ruins till now. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 The Tung Chung Fort NOTES AND QUERIES Tung Chung15 is a valley which lies on the north coast of Lantau Island. It is surrounded by hills on three sides,16 facing the sea on the north. The valley is well-drained by streams, giving fertile farmlands to the people. A century or so ago, there was a walled area, called the Tung Chung Walled City; and a fort which guarded the coast, the Shek She Fort A6. The Tung Chung Walled City was erected between the Sheung Ling Pei village #17 and the Ha Ling Pei village 下嶺皮村 T## 18. During the early years of K'ang Hsi period, there was only the Tung Chung Shuen (post)✯✯ under a Tsin Tsung +(or lieutenant) of the Tai Pang Battalion 19. However, the post was quite isolated, and it was far from Tai O where there was the Tai Yue Shan Shuen 大嶼山汎20. After the surrender of Cheung Po-tsai in the 15th year of the Chia Ch'ing reign2, foreign intercourse and influence increased; and fortifications along the coast were strengthened. In the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign (1817), the Tung Chung Walled City and the Shek She Fort were erected 22. The Walled City and the Fort remained strongholds on the island until 1898, when the New Territories were leased to the British. Then the Walled City was used as the Police Station and later as the Wah Ying School **** during the Second World War.23 It is now the site of the Tung Chung Rural Committee's office and the Tung Chung Public Primary School. The Walled City measures 225 feet by 265 feet. It is backed by the Tai Tung Shan. It has three rubble walls: its front wall is about 15 feet thick. The building stone of the walls came from Chik Lap Kok Island.24 The Walled City has three gateways: The East Gate was called Chip Sau ✩✩, the West Gate was called Luen Kun, and the Main Gate, Kung Sun. The East and West Gates are now blocked by bricks, and the main gate is used as the entrance to the Rural Committee and the Public School. Inside the Walled City, there is a playground. Behind the playground, there are two old houses, which are the remains of the guardhouses built during the 22nd year of the Chia Ch'ing reign.25 These houses are now used as the office of the Tung Chung Rural Committee. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 CHINESE MONASTERIES, TEMPLES, SHRINES, ALTARS 9 These are the wooded valley running down from Lantau Peak through Luk Wu to Tai O, the wooded area around Lo Wai to the north of and above the new town of Tsuen Wan, and the oldest of all, the easterly wooded slopes of the hill known to foreigners as Castle Peak. (Plate 2) Buddhist temples can also be established by a monk wishing to set up an establishment of his own to earn credit. The usual pattern would be first to open a small temple consisting of a Buddha Hall, a living room and kitchen. As others join him, if of course they do and if the temple retains its popularity, so the establishment will thrive and grow. However, should he die prematurely, his establishment usually dies with him. Buddhist monasteries, nunneries and temples usually follow a pattern based on the origins of the monk who first founded or organized the establishment. Hence, a monk from Shandong will reflect his provincial background in the organization and iconographical features of the establishment. Buddhists rarely have simple temples. Whereas traditional folk religion temples consist of a single storey, monasteries tend to have an upper and lower hall. Buddhist and Daoist monasteries and temples may best be described as being a series of "boxes" which, unlike a very high proportion of traditional temples, do not need to be symmetrical. They tend to run to complexes with their numerous rooms and halls, separate buildings and shrines, each housing one or more images. In each devotional hall the main sanctuary or altar which holds the image or symbol of the deity (or in the case of the Halls of Long Life and Rebirth, the spirit tablets) serves as the focal point of devotions and rites. Some monasteries and a few temples have a separate hall dedicated to the Ten Judges of the Underworld (with Di Zang Wang on the main altar) or the Eighteen Luohan (the disciples of the Buddha Sakyamuni). There are, in addition to the devotional halls, monks' and nuns' quarters, kitchens, visitors' halls, refectories, study rooms, reading and meditation halls. Many small images are to be seen in each, though they are not always Buddhist. The occasional state religion cult hero or folk religion deity may be seen usually donated by a not too discriminating devotee. Abbots rarely refuse an image, particularly if it is accompanied by a donation to the establishment. *路盧遮那寺 in Lo Wai. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 94 On drier land are grown pea-nuts, taro, ginger, onions, and many other crops. Pineapples are grown in some places, always on the hillsides, and nearly always among pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years. On the Islands pineapples are grown only on Tsing Yi, Ma Wan, and Lantau. Other fruit is grown near villages: laichis, oranges, lungngan, pumeloes, and papaya; the last especially in North Lamma. Fishing is almost entirely in the hands of the Tan Ka and the Hoklos. Big junks go out from Tai O, Cheung Chau, and Hong Kong to trawl on the continental shelf beyond and around the Lemas and Ladrones; smaller boats go in for line fishing and prawn catching; the dried and salted shrimp paste is what gives to Cheung Chau its "ancient and fishlike smell". But the main fishery of the year is that of the "wong fa", which migrate from near Kwongchau Wan every autumn up the coast towards Swatow. Night fishing with acetylene lamps is very common: these first came into favour about 1920. Stakenet fishing is very common, but does not pay very well. Rock oysters, the sort that cut your feet when bathing, are picked in great numbers by women and children, especially at low tides in summer, all round the coast. Crabs and lobsters (the sort without claws) are caught in nets and traps. Forestry is confined to the growing of firewood for use and sale. The plantations are generally near villages, but some on the islands belong to owners who live elsewhere. Nearly all Tsing Yi is divided between three forestry lots: yet on Lamma there are no forest lots, though there are trees all right. The biggest forestry lot is at Tung Chung. Very little planting is done except when encouraged by the District Officer: trees are allowed to sow themselves. Grass, growing thick in summer, is cut for fuel everywhere in autumn; it is the chief cooking fuel of the New Territories. Its cutting is women's work. Other island industries are salt-making, confined to Tai O; lime-burning at Pingchau, Tsing Yi, and formerly at Naikwuchau; shell and coral are used. Limekilns on a small scale are found everywhere along the coasts; the place-name "fui yiu", not ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 95 uncommon, always indicates a kiln. Lime-burning boomed after 1918 but slumped badly in 1925 in the great strike in Hong Kong, and never revived seriously. Distilleries for making spirits, generally from molasses, sometimes from rice, are found in the towns, also soy and preserved vegetable factories. Mining of wolframite is done only in North Lantau. There are two or three small granite quarries on Cheung Chau and Lamma. A good deal of these various products are sold outside the islands and bring in cash and foreign goods of all kinds. Some remote valleys are still, however, living what is essentially a "subsistence economy" life, in which the village grows nearly all it needs, and has very little left over to sell. Much rice is exported, and rice imported from Annam to replace it; rice from Annam is cheaper and a profit is made on the difference. Cheung Chau is the biggest business centre of the islands, thanks to its excellent harbour, the ferry service, its big fishing business, and its flat land suitable for building. It does all the business of South and East Lantau and the smaller islands nearby; it supplies a small European settlement; has several factories, numerous shops, and does a very big fish and shrimp paste business; it has distilleries, and boat and junk builders' yards. Its chief drawback is water shortage; water boats bring supplies from Lantau, but the problem is a very serious one for the growing population. Tai O is a port which has grown up to supply the needs of the fishermen in the shallow waters of the Delta, the best fishing ground on this part of the coast. Its harbour is poor and rather silted up, and the deeper part is very exposed. It has not much industry beyond its saltpans. Pingchau is a business centre for North Lantau, many of whose inhabitants cut grass to feed its limekilns; the lime is got entirely from coral and shell, and as the sea near it is almost worked out, coral fishermen have to go far afield. Ma Wan is a village which seems to have grown up round the old Customs yamen, now the school. It has little business and few shops. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 96 In the North District the islands are much barer and less cultivated than in the South District. Only two business centres of any importance exist; Tap Mun and Kat O. Both have shipbuilding sheds; the former has or had a launch service with Taipo, and the latter a distillery which gave a good deal of trouble to the Revenue Department. The business centres of these islands are in fact on the mainland; the Crooked Harbour islands look to Shataukok, the Port Shelter isles to Saikung. A very important element in the economy of the islands is the returned emigrant or seaman: Lamma has a good many of them; Lantau also. Emigrants generally go to America or Borneo, and a few to Singapore. Some returned emigrants are from Australia, they usually buy land, build a house and settle down. Tour of the Islands To get a view of each island as a whole, I suggest that a tour be taken as if in an imaginary launch, starting from Kowloon and going west as if to reach Canton through Kapshuimun ("Rushing Water Channel") but turning south of Lantau, passing the East Lamma Channel, and round Cape d'Aguilar into Port Shelter, and so up the East coast to Taipo and Crooked Harbour. Stonecutters: or Ngong Shuen Chau ("High Junk Island”). Most Chinese placenames are descriptive and have meanings. This one needs no elaboration, I think. Tsingyi: (literally "Green Clothes": but the real meaning is uncertain). Has a fair harbour, a few shops and several villages in the northern half. The hills on this island are unusually high. There are two or three limekilns. A ferry calls about four times a day. Once a reclamation was started at the head of the harbour but it came to nothing and only two or three walls now mark where it was meant to be. The inhabitants are Hakka. In 1856 this island was the scene of a small naval action against a number of pirate junks flying the rebel flag of the Taipings. The captain of H. M. S. Sampson states in his dispatch: In proceeding through the mandarin channel (going west) some junks were observed at anchor inside the island, close ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 98 cave with a low pass behind it across to the other side of the island. Further west, Tai Ho ("Big Ditch") and some other villages lie in a small plain with a bad harbour. Near the middle of the north coast is Tung Chung ("East Creek") which was once the most important place in Lantau; it has the biggest plains, the most villages, and the best harbour for small boats in the island. The harbour is, however, too shallow for anything bigger than a launch, and is silting up with hill wash and river muds from the Delta. Tung Chung was the administrative centre of the island, and a station of the Taipang coast defence force was built here. This was the only Chinese yamen in the islands, and a library building still exists, showing the place was once, and perhaps still is, a scholastic centre. It was fortified, and the headquarters of a squadron of war junks: the guns of some of its batteries were dug out of the sand by my predecessor in office and mounted on the yamen wall on cement carriages. These guns may be connected with a naval action in 1857. H.M.S. Auckland, with the steam tender Eaglet, saw five mandarin junks in the harbour as they sailed north from Tai O to Namtau. They returned and attacked them. The captain of the Auckland goes on: Owing to the shallowness of the water I had to anchor in three fathoms, the ship grounding as the tide fell, otherwise we should not have been within range. The Eaglet, on taking up a position near the junks received the fire of five batteries in addition to that of the junks, and soon expended her ammunition, having received three or four shots in her hull, Mr. Ellis (her commander) coming for ammunition, I sent the Auckland's boats to tow the Eaglet, to destroy the junks, the Auckland attacking the batteries and junks with shell and round shot at the same time. A smart fire was kept up on both sides for a short time; the boats of both vessels then charged and fired the junks; Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 102 The first valley is that of Shek Pik ("Rock Wall"). This lies right under the steep south-west face of Lantau Peak. The main village stands at some distance from a creek with a big sandbar which makes a good harbour for small boats. To the east is a little hamlet, Tung Wan ("East Bay"), where a sandbar has silted across the mouth of a stream, making a marsh. A bay a little west of the creek faces the surf, and so has no landing and is in consequence deserted except for cultivation and pasture1a. Shui Hau and Tong Fuk ("Creek Mouth" and "Banked Happiness"), which form the second group of villages, have poor landing-places. They lie at one end of the long stretch of beach which extends to Pui O (“Cup Haven")14 which is the name of the third group of villages. The chief features of Pui O are its fine woods with their ancient trees: the very long sand-spit enclosing a lagoon where boats can lie: and the double storm beach, the second one to the rear being the older. There is an old brick or pottery kiln built on this beach. Passes go from Pui O to Mui Wo and Shap Long. Beyond Pui O to the southeast is a rugged granite peninsula; it only has one village of importance, Tai Long ("Great Waves"). This village has one very fine sand beach with another to the west, which, because it is much more exposed, has no village15. To the east of Tai Long are the wells from where the Cheung Chau waterboats get their water. On the north coast of this granite peninsula are bays and hamlets where sand junks used to dig sand. At its innermost point is Shap Long ("Ten Ridges", but this translation is particularly doubtful), a plain with a sandbank in front; the sea is so shallow sand junks cannot approach. A few years ago an epidemic of smallpox made the villagers think something was wrong with their abode, so they left the houses all standing and moved into huts further down the valley, on its northern side. The next point of interest on the Lantau coast is the Silver Mine Bay, a beautiful valley with a big sand beach in front, and with four villages, Mui Wo ("Plum Nook"), Tai Tei Tong ("Big Land Pond"), Luk Tei Tong ("Deer Land Pond"), and Pak Ngan ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 103 Heung ("White Metal Village"). The last is by the old silver-lead mine, which was opened about 1891 by a company which also worked a mine in Hainan. The ore was treated on the shore and shipped away; but the mine closed down later. The ore now found about the mine is not concentrated enough to be paying; and silver-lead is not of very high value. Another enterprise, which was carried on for a short time in 1926, was the making of cement bricks on the sand bank; but this soon failed; another of the many derelict enterprises which litter the New Territory. This beach was also worked a long time by sand junks, in fact until some fields were wrecked by salt water; but this has ceased now. Northward, navigation is impeded by rocks, and villages are mostly small and unimportant, except Tai Pak and Yi Pak ("Great and Lesser White").1 These are Hakka villages. The villagers here protected their fine beaches by piling stones in the water 100 yards off shore, so that sand junks could not get near: if they did, the villagers repelled them with guns. Now, Tai Pak is a great centre for the distilling of "moonshine". Besides Tai Pak and Yi Pak there is Sam Pak (“Third White"), a deserted valley with an old kiln; each of these places has a sandy beach, but whether the "pak" refers to that, or to the deserted fields (pak tin) the Hakka settlers may have found when they first came, it is impossible to say. There is another Tai Pak: it is the islet just opposite the village1 close to Pingchau, with a large limekiln on it, The hamlets at the north end of Lantau furnished in 1934 an emphatic warning of what may happen to strangers who rashly lease New Territories land against the will of their neighbours. A Chinese doctor and his wife from up country leased some fields for cultivation from District Office, South. This inconvenienced some villagers of the hamlets nearby, who conceived they had a better right to them. One night they came in a body, hacked the doctor to death, chased his son into the sea; he escaped by swimming and tied up his wife and daughter to a tree. They were released next day. It was a year before any of the culprits were caught, and out of five only one was hanged. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 104 Before moving on to discuss the larger islands to the south-east of Lantau, it is worth just mentioning the small islands off Lantau. There are small islands both to the north and the south of the main island. The Islands north of Lantau are six in number. East Brother, Reef Island and West Brother; fishermen sometimes live there. Chek Lap Kok ("Red Sea-perch Point") is a barren island of low granite hills which lies in front of Tung Chung, sheltering its harbour. Big reefs of quartz run through it. Two formerly prosperous quarries on this island were ruined by the 1925 strike. Now there is only farming and fishing. Kwo Lo Wan is a ruined village on the southern isthmus: it is a common placename. Shau Chau ("Guard-station Isle") 18; has three dumb-bell isthmuses, two covered at high water, and a third, on which there is a settlement of early man. There is a deserted temple here. Tongkwu (“Brass Drum") 19 has the chief early settlement of men in this area. The objects found show very little Chinese influence. Later settlements in Sung and Ming times were at the northern end of the beach. The island is used now for fishing and pasturing cattle, and there is a lighthouse. It is a very good example of a dumb-bell island - a sandy isthmus connecting two hills. Urmston Roads, as the waters between Tongkwu and the mainland are known, was a frequent anchorage for foreign fleets in the 1839 and 1857 wars, despite a strong tidal flow. It was used by a French squadron in 1857, and one ship left a record of her presence by inscribing a stone at Castle Peak with "Nemesis 1857". We now pass south of Lantau. All this coast suffers from lack of harbours: only bays facing south-west are any good. There is always some swell; and it can be very violent sometimes. Taking the small islands to the south of Lantau, we have firstly the Soko Islands. There are eight islands in this group ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 209 CHUE MO PENG (#Ł), A FEVER REPORTED FROM VILLAGES IN THE HONG KONG REGION, AND ITS CURE, TOGETHER WITH OTHER VILLAGE REMEDIES FOR EXCESS HEAT JAMES HAYES This note deals with chue mō pêng (Meyer-Wempe Cantonese but variously romanized below) the subject of a disease often complained of by local villagers, in my experience. Eitel's Dictionary* mentions it under mo; ‘Chu mo ping or chut chu teng, a common disease in South China. It begins with high fever and after vigourously rubbing the chest, bristles an inch long appear through the skin, after their removal the fever goes down' (vol. 1, p. 619). A similar account, under "Chu Mo Teng", appears at pp. 171-2 of S.H. Peplow's Hong Kong Around and About, published in 1930 by the Commercial Press, Hong Kong. The author was a Land Bailiff with the District Office South, New Territories of Hong Kong and would have been well acquainted with village life. "A common disease in South China. The translation is: chu—a pig. Mo—hair. Teng—nail. A disease where hairs, like pig's bristles or nails issue forth. It is purely a native fever." By chance, I came across a dramatic instance of this disease in my early years as a government officer when engaged in compensating and rehousing villagers who were to be displaced for the Shek Pik reservoir on Lantau Island, 1957-60. The village people attributed a major epidemic that caused many deaths about the year 1936 to this disease (100 persons were said to have died, though this is probably an exaggeration). * A Chinese-English Dictionary in the Cantonese Dialect by Dr. Ernest John Eitel, revised and enlarged by Immanuel Gottlieb Genähr of the Rhenish Missionary Society (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 2 vols., 1911 and 1912). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 247 THE CULTIVATION OF THE "INCENSE TREE” (AQUILARIA SINENSIS). JU KOW-CHOY There are several popular theories concerning the origin of the name Hong Kong (#). One is based on the legend of a female pirate named "Heung Ku" (Aunty Heung, ). A second relates to a hill on Hong Kong Island Hung Heung Lo Shan (Red Incense Burner Hill). A third refers to the stream near Pokfulam which provided a source of "Fresh and Fragrant Water" to passing ships in the old days. Professor Lo Hsiang-lin and Madam Chang Yuet-ngo, however, consider that the name was derived from the Incense Tree or Heung Tree.* A book by Professor Lo and colleagues published in 1959 and entitled Hong Kong and its External Communication before 1842, includes a chapter on "The Cultivation and Exportation of Incense", a summary of which follows:- "Incense" is a product of the southern part of Kwangtung Province. There are several varieties, each from different species of trees. The general name of the varieties of incense (solidified wood sap), produced in Tung Kwun and Po On districts, which included Hong Kong and the New Territories in those days, was "Kuan-heung" from Incense Tree (Aquilaria Sinensis Gilg). Originally a native of Tonkin (North Vietnam), it was introduced to Kwangtung during the Tang Dynasty (619-907 A.D.). In Hong Kong, the best brand was produced in Lik Yuen (now Shatin) and Sha Lo Wan (the western seaboard of Lantau Island). The successful cultivation of the Incense Tree depends on three conditions. Firstly, suitability of soil; secondly, adoption of proper cultivation methods; and thirdly, the mastering of tapping and cutting techniques. "Kuan-heung" was highly valued by the people of the provinces of Kwangtung, Kiangsu, and Chekiang, who used large quantities annually. Locally, the produce was collected by the See Plates 18-19. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 269 My notebook says “We had tea at all these villages all locally grown". The list includes Tai Hang Hau, Sheung Sze Wan and Ha Yeung, but I visited others in the group without making special mention of tea. At Ha Yeung I was told that they had 100 trees of what they called shan cha (山茶) (“hill tea”), not wild but planted by themselves. Tai Po Tsai, one of the larger villages of the area, claimed to have 50 trees, but the largest village settlement, Mang Kung Uk, reported "only a few tea bushes not many." However, the little island settlement of Fu Tau Chau in Junk Bay gave me hill tea to drink, from its own trees. Further towards Sai Kung Market, I was given hill tea to drink at Nam Wai, and also at Pak Kong Au, though the village reported "only 8 to 10 trees". East of Sai Kung, people in the hamlet of Shan Liu said that “tea was formerly grown (i.e. cultivated) but only wild bushes are now harvested”. But it was at Nam A, east of Sha Kok Mei, that I learned most. "A really nice, almost English village", I wrote enthusiastically. "We drank hill tea (excellent) from trees planted twenty years ago in the hills behind the village, but not many. It is best brewed in porcelain, they said. Their supply lasts six months in all, but is harvested four times a year - once in the winter months, once at Easter and twice in the summer. The best is the Easter crop.” Nothing was said, or asked, about preparation but each crop was kept in a drawer for two months. My note ends "The cows like to eat it!”. On Lantau, the villagers of Pa Mei, otherwise known as Shan Ha, said they collected hill tea from Tai Tung Shan Keuk (大東山腳), that is the north western slopes of Sunset Peak. On South Lantau the people of the Pui villages also went up to Tai Tung Shan to collect leaves from wild bushes there in the second to fourth moons. Previously there had been many trees, but hill fires had reduced their number. It was used as leung cha (涼茶) for cooling the system. At Tong Fuk my notes state, "they gather tea leaves from bushes on the hill and use it a lot. The tea comes from the Fung Wong Shan peak behind the village, and the leaves used are plucked in the second and third moons.” Rather surprisingly, the villagers of Upper and Lower Keung Shan, though located on the mountain slopes of a sheltered valley with good tree cover, had never cultivated tea bushes, or at least not within living memory. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 271 At 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. These 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. However, 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 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT ............. HON. TREASURER'S REPORT HON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT ARTICLES: • Dian H. Murray, Pirates in the Pearl River Delta ... Dan Waters, A Brief History of Technical Education in Hong Kong • Steven A. Leibo, Not So Calm An Administration: The Anglo-French Occupation of Canton, 1858-1861 Wei Peh T'i, Through Historical Records and Ancient Writings in search of the Giant Panada • Carl T. Smith, The First Child Labour Law in Hong Kong vii xviii xxiii • 1 10 16 • 34 44 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Tai Po 70 Sung Hok-P'ang, Legends and Stories of the New Territories; Castle Peak 26 76 Sung Hok-P'ang, Ts'in Fuk 86 Violet Mebig Chan Lew, A Sentimental Journey into the Past of the Chan and Jong Families 94 Harold M. Otness, "The One Bright Spot in Shanghai" A History of the Library of the North China Branch of The Royal Asiatic Society NOTES AND QUERIES: • David Faure, The Man the Emperor Decapitated Carl T. Smith, The Archives of the Basel Mission 185 198 203 P. H. Hase, The Lanterns of Chuko Liang O. William Borrell FMS, A Silver Bracelet with an Ancient Greek Coin found in Wewak, East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea · 207 212 James Hayes, The Tai Sheung Lo Kwan Temple, Chai Wan 217 • E. W. Wright, The Hongkong Milling Company's Failure 218 P. H. Hase, A Traditional New Territories Latrine James Hayes, A Note on Rice Hullers 222 226 James Hayes, A Glimpse of the Land Settlement at Shek Pik Village, Lantau Island, Hong Kong 228 BOOK REVIEWS 234 · vi Page & ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 89 touched anything belonging to the people, however. They then ventured up the Canton river, burning ships and attacking Canton itself. At last Chau was captured by the Ts'ing general, Cheung (), and Lei put out to sea again and kept his junks near Taai P'aang (A) now Kowloon city. In the 3rd year of Hong Hei, 1664, a battle was fought off Kowloon city between Cheung and Lei. The latter was beaten, and was forced to take refuge at Tung Ch'ung (Hafi) on Taai Ue Shaan (AMBULI), Lantau Island. There now followed a time of great distress for the unhappy country people. More villages were forced to move, and the people treated with great harshness. Many of them who refused to go or even hesitated were killed by the soldiers. At the beginning of the Ts'in Fuk the people imagined that it was only a temporary measure and they managed to keep together with their wives and children. But after three years had passed they found themselves without means of livelihood. So the husbands left their wives, the fathers left their children, and the elder brothers younger brothers, each pushing north in the hope of finding work, leaving behind them the sound of crying and sorrow. In the 8th month of the 3rd year of Hong Hei a man named Yuen Sze To (AP48), a Foo Muk (11) (an official title meaning "Head of relief and soothing of the people") disobeyed the order to move over the boundary, and collecting a crowd of discontented country people, he made a stronghold in Lik Yuen (HM) a village near Sha Tin. He had other quarters in Kwun Foo (1fif), now Kowloon city and his followers acted as bandits robbing and killing as they pleased. They gave much trouble to the Ts'ing government, as when the soldiers were sent out to search the solitary parts for people hiding in order to avoid being moved, they were often set on by Yuen's band and either robbed or killed by them. Eventually they were exterminated after a long time by an officer named Tseung Wang Yun (1479) who was sent with a large company of soldiers to Sha Tin for that purpose. The following year a system of beacons was started along the coast to be used as signals in case of attack. In the same year the retiring Viceroy Lei Sut T'aai (4) in his Wai Soh (6) a valedictory address to Emperor Hong Hei, asked him not to press too firmly the question of removing the people over the boundary. "When I was in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 396 was frequently invaded by the Wo Chao, i.e. the Japanese pirates. Tai Yu Shan lies on the south coast of Kwangtung Province, and was an important military base against the Wo Chao. During the Wan Li Reign, the Nam Tau Chai #9, i.e. the Nam Tau Naval Battalion, with six guard stations, was created. One of them was at Tai O ✰ on Tai Yu Shan." In 1521, the Ferangi, i.e. the Portuguese, invaded Tuen Mun P¶. In 1522, they were defeated by the Ming troops which lies on the north coast of Tai Yu Shan, at Sai Chao Wan 15 between Tai O and Sha Lo Wan. At that time, there were nine settlements on the island: Kai Kung Tau O, Sha Lo Wan, Tung Sai Chung, Tai Ho Shan (now known as Lantau Peak), Mui Wo, Lo Pui O 螺杯澳 (now known as Pui O) and Tong Fuk 唐復、16 Dynasty, In the 1st year of the Kang Hsi Reign of the Ching, the coastal areas, especially the Kwangtung, the Fukien and the Chekiang Provinces, were frequently disturbed by pirates. Thus the government imposed the Coastal Evacuation. It was only in the 8th year of the Kang Hsi Reign (1669) that the coastal restriction was abandoned, and people were allowed to return to settle on the island. There were no fortifications then. In the early part of the Yung Cheng Reign, Yeung Lin, the governor of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces built the Fan Lau Fort on the west tip of the island. The fort was known as the Kai Yik Fork. It consisted of eight cannon places and twenty barracks." Later, in the Chien Lung and the Chia Ching + 19 periods, owing to the increasing influence of the pirates and the foreigners, the Tung Chung Hau □ guard station was created. In 1817, eight more barracks were built at Tung Chung Hau," and two forts were built at the foot of the Shek She Shan. These two forts, with seven barracks and an arsenal, together were known as the Shek She Fort HWS." In 1831, the Tung Chung Walled City 東涌寨城 was built at the foot of the Sheung Ling Pei Shan 上嶺皮山。20 After 1841, the Tung Chung Walled City and the forts remained as important military bases. Besides, guard stations were established at Tai Ho, Sha Lo Wan and Mui Wo. These remained in position until 1898, when the New Territories and the adjacent islands were leased to the British. After that, they were redundant.2 After the coastal restriction was abandoned, five villages were resettled, namely: Tai O, Tung Sai Chung, Lo Pui O, Shek Pik and Mui Wo." In the Chia Ching period, more villages were created, there were ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 398 16 See Chapter 32 of the Yuet Tai Kei 1 Wan Li edition. 17 See the Map of the East Coast of the Kwangtung Province in the Ching Cho Hoi Keung To Shuet. The book was prepared in the Reign of Yung Cheng (1723-1736). 18 See Chapter 10 of the San On Yuen Chi. 1819 edition. 19 20 + See Chapter 125 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1822 edition. See my article "More about the Tung Lung Fort", Vol. 22, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1982. 21 See my article "Distribution of Forts and Guard Stations on Lantau Island during the Late Ching Period", Vol. 18, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1978. 22 See Chapter 3 of the San On Yuen Chi. 1688 edition. 23 See Chapter 2 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition. TUNG LO WAN 銅鑼灣 Tung Lo Wan, the small bay which lies on the north coast of Hong Kong Island, got its name because it has the shape of a bronze gong. Before the 1840s, there were only a few Tanka boat people living in these small bays and anchorages. They fished in the local waters and lived in some proximity to the land people of the two nearest local villages of So Kon Po 掃管莆 and Wong Nai Chung 黃泥涌, Before 1840, the area was known as Hung Heung Lo Shan. Legend said that in olden days, there was a red incense burner floating on to the shore which landed at the site of the Tin Hau Temple (Tin Hau Temple Road). Thus the hill was known as Hung Heung Lo Shan; and in 1810, a guard station (shuen) was posted there, + In the early 1840s, the land around Tung Lo Wan was known as Tang Lung Chau, which means Lantern Isle. It stretched from Tai Hang 大坑, through Causeway Bay 銅鑼灣 to Kellett Island 奇力島. The incense burners placed in front of the Tin Hau Temple of Causeway Bay and the couplets inscribed by the window of the Lotus Palace of Tai Hang are evidence to this old name. The Tang Lung Chau Market in the area is important evidence, too. However, the origins of the name Tang Lung Chau are unknown. In 1871, the Causeway Bay Police Station at Causeway Bay was built, and in 1884, 23 acres of land were reclaimed at Causeway Bay. With the construction of the causeway joining Kellett Island and the shore of ! ------ ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 object of encouraging an active interest in East Asia, and in particular China, through the medium of lectures and discussions and by publishing an annual Journal”. These objectives must always be borne in mind and so it was particularly gratifying to see that the Hong Kong Standard thought we were worthy of space in their special 150th anniversary issue on the Foundation of Hong Kong, published late last year: I am grateful to Carl Smith for writing this article and to see that it brought forth many favourable comments. It is interesting to note that in spite of a 112 year gap in our history the influence of the Royal Asiatic Society is very much in evidence. This evidence can also be seen in other areas. I would hesitate to call this Society a watchdog for the History of Hong Kong but nevertheless we are concerned about matters which could erode the historical heritage of our local community. For this reason the Council thought it appropriate to write to the Urban Council urging them to think again about the proposed charges for entering museums under their control; this is a new departure for the Urban Council and we will inform you in due course whether our representations make any headway. Again, whilst the Society does not have direct representation on the Antiquities Advisory Board, (a matter of some controversy), there are three members of the Council on the Board and we are therefore in some position to make our views known. We have also at their request written to the Government about the conservation and rescue programme for the area affected by the Airport and Lantau Port Study Areas. Finally I would like to turn to the future. Whether 1997 was on the horizon or not a Society such as ours needs to ensure that it continues to meet the aspirations of its members, have an active and interesting programme, a Journal which is worthy of the best, and that we are in a position to make our contribution within our objectives to the community at large. The Society was asked to comment by OMELCO on the Bill of Rights and we responded by emphasising the need for real freedoms, as opposed to paper ones and that such conditions in the Bill of Rights should also be included in or be in accord with the Basic Law when it comes into force: in particular, members of Council agreed on the need for freedom of academic research and that there should be no diminution of existing access to government and other records. We shall continue to watch developments, but if we are to succeed in continuing as a viable and active society we will xii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 250 generating their own supplies, switched to Hong Kong Electric. In 1924 there were 1,369 gas street lights, compared to 469 electric. By 1936, few gas lights remained. During the invasion, in December 1941, a small group of Hong Kong Electric engineers and other staff, a few of whom were veterans of Britain's past wars, held the Japanese at bay in the epic defence of the North Point Power Station. Casualties were heavy. Of these, Vincent Sorby, the general manager, later died of wounds in prison camp. Except for early days and the war years, blackouts have totalled only two hours 50 minutes. One was caused by a fire at North Point Power Station in 1930, and another when a shoal of fish was sucked into the cooling system in the same year. China Light and Power China Light and Power is younger than Hong Kong Electric, and until it was established, apart from a few lamps, the streets of Kowloon went lightless at night. Robert George Shewan registered the company in 1900 (some records say 1901). His main business was as a partner in Shewan, Tomes and Company. Its predecessor was Samuel Russell and Company (liquidated in 1879), which started business in Canton in 1818, an American trading firm originating in Boston which merged with Perkins and Company, another American company, in 1842. Lawrence (now Lord) Kadoorie, Hong Kong's first peer, was born in Hong Kong and raised in China. His father, who became Sir Elly Kadoorie, arrived in Hong Kong, via Bombay, in 1880 from Baghdad where his was one of the leading Jewish families. Lawrence Kadoorie joined the board of China Light and Power in 1930. Since then, he has been one of the driving forces in the company. China Light and Power commissioned its first power station, at Hung Hom, in 1903. In 1989, the company supplied electricity to nearly 1,400,000 customers in Kowloon, the New Territories, Lantau, and some outlying islands. 'China Light' is not dealt with at such length here as Hong Kong Electric because it did not come into ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 81 The vegetation on the Peak corresponds to the fung shui woods (where stillborn babies are sometimes buried) positioned at the rear of traditional, symmetrical New Territories' villages. In addition to acting as, so called, 'green dragons', untouched shelter belts and firebreaks, these fung shui groves, which may house a temple or a shrine, are considered almost sacred. These woods also act as barriers against malevolent forces. They are the homes of spirits and gods and are considered essential for the wellbeing of a village. There are well over 300 fung shui woods in Hong Kong (Webb, 1995:44), and, although the largest covers as many as 14 hectares they average two hectares each. Historically, they provide materials for culinary, medicinal, ceremonial and structural use, if, for instance, a length of timber is required for repairs to the temple, or bamboo carrying poles are needed for weddings or funerals. Banyans, heung (incense) trees, camphor, bamboo, rose-apple, longan, lychee, mango and breadfruit, some of which play important parts in Chinese folk religion, are common in fung shui coppices. One of the best examples of a fung shui wood is in Shing Mun Country Park, at the north end of Jubilee Reservoir. This wood is reputed to be around 400 years old (Dudgeon, 1994:73). A well-sited village is not only protected from the elements, such as typhoons, heatwaves and pollution, by fung shui groves. Such a site is also sheltered by hills and spurs. In turn, graves are situated out of sight on a hill behind the village. And so, as is written in Ecclesiastes 1,4: One generation goeth and another generation cometh the earth abideth for ever But sacred woods are not just found in Chinese communities. In India, Nepal, Bhutan and Japan, as well as in various parts of Europe, people have their groves where religious ceremonies are performed. The druids in ancient Britain, who were also bards and soothsayers, had sacred woods. Oaks in Sherwood and other forests were the abodes of spirits. The fruit of the oak, the acorn, was also sacred. So was the mistletoe. But even in Hong Kong views can change and modernisation can take its toll. In the mid-1990s, a venerable fung shui banyan in a Lantau village was felled merely to improve television reception. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 177 scheme a success. The hospital and the tomb established in 1878 are still in existence to this day, and a memorial tablet for the deed was mounted on the front wall of a shop near the hospital. It is still in existence, too. NOTES 1 Ch 2-7, A Brief Record of the Pacification of the Kwang-tung Rebels. A 1865 edition. 2 Ibid. Ch 8. 3 Ibid. Ch 9-10. 4 Thick, Ch 1-12. 7 Ch 72, Fung Kwan Gazetteer. 45, 46. By that time, Lai Chun-hot was the commander of the 'Shung' Naval Battalion stationed in Chikrang. In the 5th Moon of the 2nd year of Tung Chi reign (1863), he found that his Battalion had only a few sloops but too many officers. Thus, he transferred his brother Lai Chun-pin back to Kwang-tung. During his time in Kowloon, he had dedicated a memorial board to the Hau Wang Temple in the Kowloon City in the 6th year of the Kuang Hsu reign (1880). The board is still hanging inside the temple today. As per note 6. The charitable hospital was called the Fong Bin Hospital. The tomb was called Yee Chung Yuen, and was situated on the slope facing the sea at Tai Shek Flat, not far from the Tin Hau Temple of the region. To my knowledge, Jar O on Lantau Island had one, formed by charitable subscription, and indeed, there was one at Lai Chi Kok, Sai Ying Pun and at Lai Ping Shan Street on Hong Kong Island. It was known as Kong Fuk Yee Charity Hall but in 1851, also formed by charitable subscription. It was taken over and extended as the Tung Wah Hospital in 1870, after which it became a hospital in the western style. Detail of the story of the scheme can be seen on the memorial tablet established in the 4th year of the Kuang Hsu reign (1878). It is still in existence. Because of recent development on the island, the slope with the charitable tomb was levelled. The tomb has been moved to the cemetery which lies on the north of the island. The shop, with the one next to it, were purchased with the charity fund at the time of the establishing of the Fong Bin Hospital. They were rented, and the money so got was used as the expenses of the hospital. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 185 be a stone or brick fireplace in which paper money and other paper offerings are burned. Occasionally a Tai Wong may be dedicated to a particular deity, such as at Pak Kung near Sai Kung which has its Tai Wong dedicated to Tin Hau, protective goddess of fishermen. A large village may have its own Tai Wong, but it may sometimes be shared with other neighbouring villages of the same lineage, as occurs with the Lam Tsuen villages. The Paak Kung shrines, of lesser importance, are more simply built, often no more than an "archway" arrangement of stones upon a flat rock, with perhaps wooden boards on which paper scrolls are pasted. In any village there would normally be several Paak Kung. The village of Pat Heung, for example, has around ten Paak Kung and earth god shrines. In some cases, especially with the lesser ranked Paak Kung, the shrine may be the tree itself and is only marked by the presence of joss-sticks and porcelain cups for rice wine offerings, sometimes on a flat stone at the base of the tree. Examples of such tree spirit shrines may be seen by the large banyan trees behind Sheung Ling Pei, and the enormous camphor trees, Cinnamomum camphora, behind Sha Lo Wan, both on north Lantau. In both cases, the surrounding fung shui woods were felled by the Japanese during the Occupation in the Second World War, with the exception of these trees, which are now venerated for having "saved" the village. The camphor tree at Sha Lo Wan is one of the biggest in the Territory, with a girth of over seven metres. In the New Territories, the fung shui tree par excellence is the banyan, Ficus microcarpa, which symbolizes longevity, fecundity, and perseverance in the face of adversity. Apart from its natural resilience in the face of typhoons, the ability of the tree to survive in an environment where wood has been at a premium is explained by Ng (1983). "Its wood is gnarled and so cannot be used as timber, it will not flame and so cannot be used for firewood. Its very lack of useful properties ensures its invulnerability and survival. It is often favoured as a single fung shui tree, when it becomes the home of a local tree spirit and is given great respect and provided with offerings, so that it often appears to be a form of tree worship. The "grandfather" tree at Kuk Po is an example. Sometimes the fame of a particular tree-dwelling earth god extends beyond the locality of the village. Near the village of Lam Tsuen, a venerable banyan is claimed to have a spirit which is especially efficacious. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 9 By their differences in dwellings and occupations, already observed, these four communities can be grouped into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers, the Cantonese and Hakka being the former and the Tanka and Hoklo the latter. 43 The Cantonese, or Punti as they are sometimes called, had their origins in North China and speak a Chinese dialect of the western section of the Yueh language which evidences their claim to be of pure Chinese stock. There is no record of their arriving in the province of Kwangtung, which they colonised, earlier than the Sung Dynasty (960-1278 A.D.). In the van were a clan surnamed Tang who settled in the Yuen Long district of the New Territories late in the 11th century. This clan became the largest landowners with their main centres at Kam T'in, P'ing Shan, Lung Yeuk Tau and Ha Tsuen. They exercised "a kind of feudal power, and the tradition they had brought with them was so strong that they not only became the founders of the Cantonese settlement but to this day exert a great influence in affairs. The Cantonese occupy most of the two principal plains in the northwest sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty in the late thirteenth century. The livelihood of the Cantonese is dependent mainly on the cultivation of rice. The Hakka migrated originally also from North China and, moving gradually southwards through Fukien and Kiangsi in the 10th century, reached Kwangtung Province during the latter years of the Southern Sung Dynasty. They speak two dialects or sub-dialects of the eastern section of the same Yueh language that the Cantonese speak. Arriving after the Cantonese, the Hakka settled usually upstream of them, that is, on the poorer ground. They have, however, steadily over the centuries encroached on the land first occupied by the Cantonese. For example, after the Manchus in the 17th century had evacuated the entire population of the China Coast inland to guard against the fleet of the Ming Dynasty based on Formosa, the Hakka apparently took the opportunity of resettling in the abandoned coastal area. Again, Hong Kong island is said to have been originally occupied by the Tang clan but the British in the 19th century found it almost entirely inhabited by Hakka. A third example of Hakka encroachment is said to be Lantau Island which in recent times was depopulated by... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 146 to get it planted. Another great difficulty was to find forest guards who would do their job: a former A.D.O, North once minuted 'Where forest guards abound, there do abuses much more abound!'. Also according to Schofield (1983), pineapples were grown on the hillsides, "nearly always under pine trees; these help to shade the plants and hold the soil together, otherwise the heavy summer rains would wash it all off and make the hillside a desert. The plants last seven to nine years." Other users of hillsides were noted by Hayes (1977), “On Tai Mo Shan as on other hillsides, there are the collectors of the plants and herbs that form so essential a part of Chinese medicine; and those who trap birds, snakes and wild creatures, or comb the mountain streams and pools for items that serve the same medicinal purposes. These they sell to shops or individuals, or consume at home. These persons are usually outsiders in a skilled line rather than local villagers, although these can also be found carrying home plants and leafy branches for use at home in the bath, to soothe or invigorate the body. The collectors include the springtime pluckers of wild tea bushes, high up on the mountain, for, as mentioned briefly in the gazetteer it is famous for tea, producing a favoured type of green tea. Besides the cultivators of distant upland padi fields, village users of the mountain include boys tending draught cattle which rove across its slopes when not at work: and, most distinctive of all, the village grass-cutters, women as a rule, looking from a distance, as Heywood described them just before the war, 'like miniature haystacks wandering on the mountainside'.” Tea cultivation took place on even the highest hills. The Xin An Gazetteer of 1688 refers to tea cultivation on Tai Mo Shan, which was terraced to near the summit to produce the famous green "cloud and mist tea", and on Castle Peak and Lantau Peak. Former tea terraces can be seen on other mountain sides in the New Territories and on Lantau, so that human impact on the native vegetation was not confined to the lowlands. The age of the terraces is not known but they probably predate the Hakka settlements. An account of traditional tea growing in 1986 around the village of Mau Tso Ngam on Kowloon Peak, where tea trees, Camellia sinensis (L.) O. Ktze, are planted here and there on the edge of the hills near the village, is given by Hase et al. (1988). Hill slopes were formerly used to grow heung trees, Aquilaria sinensis (Lour.) Gilg., the wood from which was ground to make ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 Table 28 Urban Population: New Territories. 1911 63 Northern District: Town Males Females Total Yuen Long 458 81.9% 101 18.1% 559 Sai Kung 320 62.5% 192 37.5% 512 Hang Hau 262 67.7% 125 32.3% 387 Ha Tsuen Sh 120 67.4% 58 32.6% 178 Shek Wu Hui 29 67.4% 14 32.6% 43 Tuen Mun San Hu 72 67.3% 35 32.7% 107 Tai Wo Shi 377 79.9% 95 20.1% 472 Tai Po Old Market 104 53.3% 84 44.7% 253 Tap Mun 168 66.4% 85 33.6% 253 Sha Tau Kok 43 70.5% 18 29.5% 61 North District Total. 1910 70.8% 789 29.2% 2699 Southern District: Town Tai O land population 1159 51.6% 1089 48.4% 2248 .boat population 3159 58.4% 2254 41.6% 5413 Total 4318 56.4% 3343 43.6% 7661 Cheung Chau land population 1918 59.1% 1326 40.9% 3244 :boat population 2601 58.6% 1841 41.4% 4442 Total 4519 58.8% 3167 41.2% 7686 Ping Chau 434 67.6% 208 32.4% 642 Mui Wo Kau Chun 11 61.1% 7 38.9% 18 Southern District Total 9282 58.0% 6725 42.0% 16007 New Territories Total. 11192 60.0% 7514 40% 18706 * Most of Sha Tau Kok was in China this is the New Territories part of the town Tsuen wan is not included as the census includes a large rural population with the town. Some of the Cheung Chau boat population was probably at Ping Chau, and some of the Tai O boat population was probably at other anchorages on Lantau, but only a small percentage in each case It will be noted that there was no town in the Northern District as large as Ping Chau, and that Cheung Chau was more than 24 times as large as all the Northern District towns put together. There were rural populations included within the total for, especially, Tai O, but, nonetheless, the differences are very real. The 1921 Census includes population figures for only one town, Sai Kung the figure it gives (an overall figure of 606) is in line with the 1911 figure. It is noticeable that the population engaged in “urban” occupations can be comfortably fitted into the recorded populations of the Southern District towns, with a substantial excess over to cover the fishermen and ocean-going seamen living in the towns In Northern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 151 THE HOUWANG CULT AND TUNG CHUNG'S COMMUNAL CULTURE HON-MING YIP AND WAI-YEE HO' While the ancestral hall often serves as the socio-political centre of a single-surname village, a temple of folk religion always stands out as the focal point of local people's social and cultural life in such a multi-lineage rural community as Tung Chung. For the dozen or so villages in the Tung Chung valley, the Houwang has long been their principal deity and the Houwang Temple, their main local shrine. For years, the popular worship of the Houwang has functioned as a cultural and social binding force to hold this secluded community together. In what follows, the development of Tung Chung's Houwang cult is traced, and details of the area's religious and social activities and their cultural as well as political significance for the locality are expounded. Tung Chung as a Secluded Community of Multi-Surname Villages Situated on the north shore of Lantau Island, Tung Chung used to be a strategic port for maritime defence and trade during the early Ch'ing period. The area's economic development was also facilitated by its favourable position in sea transportation at a time when the northwestern New Territories were Hong Kong's economic centre of gravity. With the British occupation after the Opium War, however, the north end of Lantau suffered gradual marginalization and isolation as the colony's economic core shifted eastward to Hong Kong Island. The decline of ocean transport to north Lantau and underdeveloped overland communication with the southern part of the Island, in effect, kept Tung Chung in a state of seclusion. Hills to the east, south, and west separated this valley from other parts of Lantau. Between Tung Chung and Bak Mong in the east, Mu Wo and Tong Fuk in the south, and Tai O in the west, there were only muddy paths over the mountain or along the shore. Before transportation improved in the 1960s, travel between Tung Chung and these districts on Lantau required two to three hours by foot, roundtrip. Communication was even more difficult with regions outside of Lantau. Beginning from the 1920s, a few ferries carrying goods sailed on Pl ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 98 province. In 1941, construction of a 457m-long tarmac-surfaced runway at Kai Tak for military use on an approximate south-east/north-west orientation, which had already necessitated the dismantling of the RAF hangar, was due to start on 8th December 1941, the precise day on which the Japanese invaded the New Territories and attacked Kai Tak airport. Military/Defence Works Prior to the British administration, there were several forts in the New Territories going back to the early years (17th century) of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the oldest existing fort (1717) probably being that on Tung Lung Chau overlooking the narrow Fat Tong Mun passage in the eastern approaches to the harbour, and the largest still remaining at Tung Chung (60m by 80m) on the northern coast of Lantau, which was completed in 1832. Little remains of the old 4m-high walled Kowloon City, a garrison fort (120m by 230m) with its sturdy granite parapet wall complete with embrasures and watchtowers, which was finished in 1847 soon after the British established themselves on Hong Kong Island. Subsequently, the British military have been involved in a considerable amount of civil engineering. The Royal Engineers were first involved in 1841 in the early construction of Queen's Road in Victoria. Perhaps their most impressive roadworks over the years, constructed before the Pacific war, have been Jat's Incline, which provides access to the upper levels of the steep hills overlooking Kowloon. Nevertheless, the main military engineering effort was expended on providing defences and back-up facilities (for example, naval dockyards, aviation needs, storage depots, barracks, and hospitals), principally against possible seaborne attack by Russia last century and later against the increasingly land/sea invasion threat by Japan in the 1930s. Novel defence measures included excavation of a cavern at Lei Yue Mun towards the end of the nineteenth century to house the sophisticated Brennan torpedo, which, after launching down a ramp, was controlled from the shore with a wire attached to the rudder. Regarding defence facilities, at the outbreak of the Pacific war in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2003 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2v242g390 6 incorporating the existing country park in Ma On Shan, marine park, hiking trail, holiday camp, water sports centre and festival market in the town. Moreover, Tai Long Wan - a traditional dwelling with its nearby beautiful beach in the eastern part of Sai Kung - was also included in its developmental guidelines for selected areas pending the preparation of Outline Zoning Plans (OZPs). However, the contested issue in Tai Long Wan is going to be the first case I will introduce. Tai Long Wan is especially well known among hikers and trail-walkers due to it being situated on the way from Long Ke to Pak Tam Au, forming the MacLehose Trail Stage Two. Nonetheless, we realize that the Town Planning Board (TPB) also deferred the Tai Long Wan zoning decision which was included in the SENTDSR for the intensive tourism/recreation and conservation/landscapes planning in Sai Kung area. After the Environmental Protection Department (EPD) rejected plans to build the Sheung Shui to Lok Ma Chau spur line project and the Lantau North-South Road link between Tai Ho Wan and Mui Wo, it perhaps was not surprising that the main reason for the postponement of the decision was the existence of certain rare plants in the area. And, TPB worried that natural resources in the proposed village zone area, in which indigenous people want to build houses, would be negatively affected in relevant development. A closer investigation of the situation in Tai Long Wan highlights the significant role of the government and implications of its policy and plan in balancing indigenous livelihood and the natural conservation. Tai Long Wan Tai Long Wan is a traditional settlement consisting of five villages and villagers with different surnames living together. It was probably founded more than 200 years ago even though we are not able to tell whether they came before or after the Coastal Evacuation 1662-1669.* Historically speaking, in 1899, there were already 700-800 villages including tsuen (not walled) and wai (walled) in the New Territories, and the two major dialectic groups were Punti who spoke Wai-tau language, and Hakka who spoke Hakka language. Those villages were grouped together in different regional alliances; however, after the official land registration at the beginning of the British colonial regime, the previous Chinese administrative units of heung and yeuk were strongly affected as well as weakened. In South China, the heung, ================================================================================