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 97 J, FUNG Yiu Tsan, residing at No. 69 in this village, have a farm hut and a piece of waste threshing ground at Lot Nos. 94 and 95, which I hereby sell to a junior clansman FUNG Tak Yau, because I am old, have no son to support me and cannot make a living or obtain the money I need by borrowing. The price agreed upon is twenty-four silver dollars. This has been paid in full, after weighing, to me personally; the money is to be taken home for me to spend; hereafter the above-named payer will assume ownership of the farm hut and waste threshing ground, including the walls, tiles, ordure pit and boundary stones. From now on no arbitrary claims may be made, for this sale is voluntary and payment has been made in full and as agreed. This agreement is irrevocable. Should this property be found to have been acquired under suspicious circumstances, the vendor alone will be held responsible; the above payer is not liable. This written agreement is hereby prepared as proof and for retention by FUNG Tak Yau. Another, drawn up during the difficult days of the Japanese occupation in 1942 reads, This deed of sale on land is drawn up by the vendor CHAN Wan Shing. Because he has not money for purchasing provisions, he first offered to sell to his kinsfolk the nine plots of land, total area three dau chung, located at Nam Pei Tau in Shek Pik Village, bequeathed to him by his grandfather, but none of them are interested. Then, through the medium of a middleman, KWOK Lai Pai of Tai O was approached and he undertook to buy them at a current price of $165.00. Again, through the middleman, CHAN Wan Shing has received a sum of $165 for himself, and with effect from the date of this deed, the lots will become the permanent property of KWOK Lai Pai. For fear that verbal agreement may not constitute evidence, this deed is executed as a certificate to confirm the transaction. During a land court held during the Shek Pik settlement just as a case was being settled in the present possessor's favour in default of proof of the plaintiff's contention that the original document was a mortgage and not a sale (and therefore redeemable, according to custom, despite subsequent transactions) the defendant pulled out a new sheaf of papers for inspection. Among them was a white deed which proved to be the original mortgage of 1918. He thereby defeated his own case. It turned out that he had never bothered to read the papers handed over to him with the white deed of sale drawn up during the Japanese Occupation. Similarly, a sixty year old mortgage elsewhere on Lantau which was discovered in the land registers when succession was being determined, was honoured by the mortgagees, though grudgingly, the real point at issue being the amount of compensation and not the return of the land, as no figure was stated in the original entry. 12 This is recognised in the provisions of the New Territories Ordinance Cap. 97 where the registration of a so manager in the Land Office is obligatory. A change of manager can only be secured after the vacancy has been filled at a properly advertised clan meeting and notices of election, posted by the District Office, have expired without objection, Prospective sales of two land have to be reported to the Assistant Land Officer (the D.O.) and advertised by him, again without objection, before a sale is allowed. Trustees, too, are not permitted to sell land belonging to minors unless the Land Officer has given his ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n Table 2 Villages with Populations Above 100 in 1911 175 Males Females Total Sai Kung Market 320 192 512 Mang Kung Uk * 207 227 434 • Ho Chung Hang Hau • Sha Kok Mei Nam Wai · • Tseng Lan Shue Tseung Kwan O Pak Kong · Ha Yeung Pan Long Wan Tai Po Tsai 159 259 418 262 125 387 152 194 346 178 146 324 124 152 276 · 90 103 193 • · • 75 115 190 93 91 184 86 92 178 • 77 95 172 Yim Tin Tsai 79 83 162 Seung Sz Wan Wong Nai Chau Lan Nai Wan Tai Mong Tsai Tai Wan Tau Yau U Wan ... 79 66 145 Tai Hang Hau • Tai No • 72 70 142 • • 77 65 142 • 75 63 138 · 53 64 117 • • . 355 53 63 116 51 57 108 55 53 107 • D Source: 1911 Census Ho Chung, and the Tsik Shin T'ong, that owned the land on which the Ch'e Kung Temple was built, the furniture and dinner utensils needed for village feasts that all members of the village could make use of, and the village school. Nonetheless, without any doubt, the Ch'e Kung Temple was an institution not of the Cheung lineage but of the entire village and surrounding villages. Hence, in the decennial ta tsiu, all the surname groups in Ho Chung and related villages participated. Nam Pin came to the ta tsiu, because it was related to the Tses of Ho Chung. Tai Po Tsai (near Deep Water Bay) and Tai Nam Wu came, because they were related to the Wans, and the Lams of Seung Sz Wan came, because they were related to the Lams of Ho Chung. Mok ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 205 Kok Shan. In general, the significance of Tang Foo is two-fold: 1) by establishing a famous school or study (Lik Ying Tsai #) near Kam Tin, he linked his name with scholarly achievement in San On and Canton, 2) by recognizing the qualities of the area's Fung-shui (風水) and locating his ancestors' graves accordingly, he assured future benefits for his descendents. 10. With reference to the former point, Tang expansion was undoubtedly assisted by the largely fictive "kinship" bonds established within the scholarly civil-service tradition. 11. It will be noted that in the two accounts of Fung-shui appended to these notes,* the landmarks recognized by Tang Foo correspond generally to the boundaries of territory claimed by the Kam Tin— Ping Shan- Ha Tsuen Tangs. Also notice the conflicting tales recorded by Sung and O'Dwyer,† particularly concerning whether Tang Foo was an official prior to examining the Fung-shui. An excellent example of how oral "tales” contradict orthodox doctrine. 12. There is considerable doubt that, after Tang Foo, the Tangs continued to be a force in Sham Tin; but, two generations later, ancestors reappear, and with them mention, for the first time, of the popular territorial division of Kam Tin. Two cousins (grandchildren of Tang Foo), Kwai (#) and Sui (*) settled respectively in Nam Pin (南邊) and Pak Pin (北邊) Villages. 13. The dispersal of their children, known as 'the Five Yuen (五遠)' is the first major migration or fission of the Tangs from Sham Tin. The descendents of the Five Yuen considered together form the highest order grouping of the Tang clan. Kwai (癸) gave birth to Yuen-hei (元喜) who settled in Tung Kwun City (東莞縣城) and Pak Wai (北圍), and Yuen-ying (元英) who settled in Fuk Lung (福隆) of Tung Kwun county. Sui (遂) gave birth to Yuen-ching (元貞) who remained in San On, establishing the branch of the clan at Ping Shan (坪山), Yuen-leung (元亮) who remained in Sham Tin, and Yuen-woh (元禾) who moved to Wai Tak (懷德) of Tung Kwun. These together made up the five great branches of the Tung Kwun San On Tangs. In the K'ang Hsi years of Ch'ing, their descendents established the To Hing Tong (蹈興堂), which built * pp. 214-216. Only one has been printed. † K. O'Dwyer, "Kam Tin, Memories and Legends" The Rock (a Hong Kong Catholic Journal) April 1940. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 212 NOTES AND QUERIES 24. a. Several tales contain information regarding land tenure. For instance, an elder of the 3rd Fong who related the Tang Hei-sui () tale (see Sung p. 253), mentioned that members of the Tso () established after his death each received 100 Tam Kuk each year till 1898, indicating extensive holdings. 24. b. As mentioned above, the Kam Tin Tangs virtually owned the Pat Heung Valley (even the suspect Cadastral Surveys confirm this).* They also possessed land around Yuen Long and further south, Shun Fung Wai (). Ancestral land on Hong Kong Island totalled approximately 1000 Chinese acres, and clan land (shared among the five fongs) in Kowloon was extensive (200 acres in Cheung Sha Wan alone). 25. Land was either communally or privately owned. The former ("communal ownership") is divided into a number of categories, the most important of which are Tso () and Tong (). Tong land is appropriated in the literary name of an ancestor (hence early confusion of Tongs as literary clubs). Unlike Tso, the joint holders need not be descendents of a common ancestor. Hence, while Tso land exhibits "vertical solidarity" within a fong across class boundaries, Tong land establishes horizontal ties across fong within class boundaries. 26. For the uses to which ancestral land is put, see the material from the Nam Yeung genealogy and the section on Land Tenure ("varieties of Tenure") reproduced from the Hong Kong Government Gazette, No. 26, 28 April 1900. I would here simply like to add two further uses of ancestral land: 1) defence funding and 2) financing ritual ceremonies. On the former, see Enclosure 7, no. 172 from Extension of the Boundaries. [I add here what might appear superfluous; ancestral land increases in direct proportion to the distance from Kam Tin. Private holdings predominate within the heung itself] 27. As we have seen, the Kam Tin Tangs acted as "unofficial" government of a large section of San On county. One of the essential elements to this system of control was their status as tax-lords. The former is thus explained in Cecil Clementi's report on his work in the New Territories in 1905-1906: "On the recommen- “Suspect" because they do not always reflect the pre-1898 situation: owing to decisions about ownership made by the New Territories Land Court. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 138 H. J. LETHBRIDGE status of China in the world polity and of Chinese in general as citizens of the world). 54 No one believes today that Chinese motivation needs a separate system of explanation, that the Chinese mind has its own eccentric circuitry. Freud, that Columbus of the Mind, revealed that in the unconscious · the deep, dark, oceanic under-world of the individual human beings are very much alike in their mechanisms. This great step forward in social perception has helped to bridge the gap between the races (still opposed of course by politics) and has made murder less incomprehensible, less inexplicable when committed by foreigners; and judges, counsel and juries (perhaps) less perplexed by the act. NOTES 1 George Orwell, Decline of the English Murder and Other Essays (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1965) 9. * 'Our great period in murder', Orwell writes, our Elizabethan period, so to speak, seems to have been roughly 1850-1925. Orwell was writing in 1946, but with hindsight it is plausible to suggest the 'great period' could be extended to the eve of World War I. * See: Jean Chesneaux, The Chinese Labour Movement 1919-1927 (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1968) 122. • See, in particular, Harold Z. Schriffrin, Sun Yat-sen and the Origins of the Chinese Revolution (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1970). Also Nym Wales, The Chinese Labor Movement (New York: John Day, 1945), which contains the biographies of some revolutionary seamen. • Edward Marjoribanks, Famous Trials of Marshall Hall (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1950) 384. At his trial Lock was described as a 'Chinese shipping agent'. • Sir Henry Dickens in The Recollections of Sir Henry Dickens, K.C. (London: Heinemann, 1934) 244-245, writes: He was a good advocate but it cannot be truly said that he was a great one. He had not the gift of far-seeing discretion which is required in a great advocate. He was much too ready to talk at length when addressing a jury, without having previously weighed the possible consequences of what he said'. An old lag once called from the dock to Sir Henry (1849-1933). 'You ain't a patch on your father!', which greatly amused him. T See Marjoribanks, op cit. Doris Lock did not die from her wounds until January 28, 1926. See The Times of January 29, 1926. * There is a full discussion of the origin of the M'Naghten Rules in Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England, vol 1 (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968). * Marjoribanks, op cit, 383. See also The Times February 4 and 8, 1926. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 253 opportunity alongside a continuing, but declining, traditional education, and finally, from 1932, the establishment of an eventually modern education within the village. Rising from a humble community of Hakka origin, the Liaos [Liu] of Sheung Shui had long paid special attention to educating their sons. Since the founding of the village, they had set their sights on education and participation in the civil examinations as a means of advancement, and for centuries they had been able to win numbers of official titles and honours1. Traditionally within the village, schooling was provided in private houses, the ancestral hall, and the study halls known as shu-shih#, shu-wu#, or chia-shou*. The existence of these study halls was considered an indication not only of wealth but also of the great encouragement given by the clan to learning. In addition to their well-known ancestral hall, the Wan Shih T'ang, there were in Sheung Shui at least six study halls that operated in the nineteenth century. According to the village elders' memories, each hall normally accommodated ten to thirty students, at an average of 20 per hall. Assuming that the Wan Shih Tang was not used regularly as a classroom and there were 15 sons of rich families taught by private arrangements, the total number of children attending class in the village would be about 135. As the population of Sheung Shui in 1898 was estimated to be 1800, school-going children then amounted to 7.5% of the whole population. This figure works out to be about 75% of the male population between 6 to 14. This gives credence to the belief that "very few males of the lineage were prevented from becoming literate." The length of schooling ranged from two to ten years, but the average was four. We can find no evidence of a hierarchy among the six study halls. However, according to the brief biographical notes recorded in the Hsin-an Hsien-chih of the villagers,10 most of the few villagers who achieved distinction at the county level, and indeed, most of the small number who were prepared to take part in the civil examinations at all were tutored first at private houses within the village and then sent to schools at Nam Tau, the county capital, or at Canton. * Plate 6. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 130 ―T towards the end of the century. The original market for the Sha Tau Kok area was Sham Tsun; it was only from about 1825 that the population of the Sha Tau Kok area rose to the point where it could sustain a market of its own, at Sha Tau Kok. The main impetus to the foundation of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz, apart from the purely religious one, and the political one to be discussed below, was to provide a resting-place for travellers on the road to Sham Tsun. This road was long, and the two-mile-long deserted section through the mountains was without shelter, either from the elements or from wild animals (tigers were a serious problem in the area, as village tales and placenames demonstrate). The nunnery was founded, in part, to provide services to wayfarers; in particular, according to elderly villagers, free tea was given to anyone stopping to rest there. Traffic on this road was heavy. At its peak, between 1900 and 1915, about 20,000 people a month passed by, carrying up to 400 tons of goods, according to surveys conducted in 1904 and 1910 by the Hong Kong Government to assess likely traffic on railway lines in the area. 10 The road from Sham Tsun to Sha Tau Kok was important not only because of its local significance to the two market towns, but to a wider area as well. It was part of the main road from the county city of Nam Tau (Nantou) to the Deputy Magistrate's city of Tai Pang (Dapeng), which was the most important east-west route in the county. The main north-south routes in the county were those which linked Kowloon with Sham Tsun, and then on from Sham Tsun with the towns further north, and, eventually, with Canton. There were three main crossings of the Sham Tsun river between the New Territories area and Sham Tsun: the Liu Pok ferry to the southwest of Sham Tsun, which carried the traffic on the Yuen Long-Sham Tsun road, and the Lo Wu ferry and the Law Fong bridge, which between them carried the Kowloon-Sham Tsun traffic. The most direct route from Kowloon to the north was the road from Tai Po to Sheung Shui, and thence over the Lo Wu ferry. This ferry, however, was expensive, and could only be bypassed by using a waist-deep ford, which was difficult and dangerous, and impossible after rain. Many travellers, therefore, preferred the slightly longer, but cheap and safe Law Fong bridge crossing. There were two routes from Kowloon to the Law Fong bridge. One crossed the mountains north of Tai Po by the Kat Tsai Au pass, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1994 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g 213 Thomson, David Patrick, Eric Liddell, The Making of An Athelete and the Training of a Missionary, 1971 Thomson, James Claude Jr. While China Faced West: American Reformers in Nationalist China 1928-1937, Cambridge (Mass). Harvard University Press, 1969 Thompson, Wardlaw R, Griffith John: the Story of Fifty Years in China, London 1908 Thurston, Miss Lawrence and Ruth M Chester, Gining College, New York: United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1955 Tietjens, Eunice, Profiles From China, Sketches in Verse of People and Things Seen in the Interior, Chicago: Ralf Fletcher Seymour, 1917 Timkovski, Egor Fedorovich, Travels of the Russian Mission Through Mongolia to China, and Residence in Pekin, in the Years 1820-1821, London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1827 Tipton, Laurence, Chinese Escapade, London: Macmillan, 1949 Tobar, Jerome S.I., Inscriptions pavées de K'ang-feng, Shanghai: Mission Catholique, 1912 Todd, Oliver Julian, The China That I Knew, Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 1973 Topping, Seymour, Journey Between Two Chinas, New York: Harper & Row, 1972 Trawick, Emma Penton, China and Japan, Louisville, Kentucky: Morton, 1902 Tregear, Thomas Reloy, A Geography of China, London: University of London Press, 1965 Tuchman, Barbara, Notes from China, New York: Collier Books, 1972 Turner, John Arthur, Kwang Tung, or Five Years in South China, London: Partridge, 1894 (Hong Kong Reprint: Oxford University Press) Varg, Paul A, Missionaries, Chinese, and Diplomats, the American Protestant Missionary Movement in China, 1890-1952, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1958 Wales, Nym (b.1897), My China Years, a Memoir by Helen Foster Snow, New York: Morrow, 1984 Wallace, L. Edhiel, Hua Nan College: the Women's College of South China, New York: United Board for Christian Colleges in China, 1956 Walmsley, Lewis C, West China Union University, New York: United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia, 1974 Watson, Andrew, Living in China, New York: Littlefield, 1977 Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 37 and Hong Kong) where males found resident in the New Territories were born." Females are recorded in addition as born at Lung Chuen, Lo Ting, Ko Chau, and Lei Chau, but in each case only in ones and twos. It will be seen that the world of the New Territories villager was effectively bounded by the coastal strip, and the central, Delta, area of Kwangtung Province. The Islands were in contact with other ports from Chiu Chau to Lim Chau, but not much further. Neither the 1911 nor the 1921 Censuses refers to anyone born in Fukien, and there is only a single reference in 1921 to a man born in Vietnam. The coastal trade must have been essentially kept within the bounds of the province, although oral evidence mentions also traders from the very southernmost part of Fukien. At the same time, contact seems to have been close and easy with the Pearl River Delta area within 100 miles of the New Territories, but beyond 100 miles contacts were slight. Only one man is recorded from Ho Yuen, Ying Tak, and Yeung Kong. The three recorded in 1911 from Kwangsi fall into the same pattern, as also the single male recorded from Kiangsi in both Censuses. Above 100 miles from the New Territories, the only place with which the New Territories villagers were in significant contact was the Ka Ying area in the upper Han River valley, where the stonecutters and itinerant weavers came from, although oral evidence suggests that the villagers knew the name of the area, but not much more. It will be clear from Table 13 that the New Territories was in particularly close contact with a zone no more than about 50 miles wide, i.e., the districts of Kwai Shin (Wai Chau), San On (Po On), Tung Kun, Nam Hoi and Pun Yue (the Canton City and suburban districts), Heung Shan (Chung Shan), Shun Tak, and San Wui (Kongmoon). The villagers' contacts with Central and North China was almost non-existent. Many villagers emigrated for part of their life, but almost always without their families, and the contacts of the New Territories villagers with the wider world outside China is, as a consequence, understated in Table 13. The 1911 Census, however, mentions males born in Honolulu, the Philippines, and Malaya, and the 1921 Census adds individuals born in Japan, Italy, and USA. Probably, by 1911, the New Territories villager was more in contact ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 77 Appendix I Villages with Low Male: Female (Less than 47%) Population Ratios, 1911 District Village No. of males Total population Age of males N San Tong Po 15 47 31.9** N Ngau Ha 6 16 N Sam Tam Lo 1 6 33.3** N Mo To Hang 2 6 33.3** N Ko Tan 8 21 38.1** N Tsiu Keng 15 43 34.9** N Wo Hop Shek 21 48 43.8 N Sheung Tan Chuk Hang 43 102 42.2 N Ping Che Yuen Ha 27 61 44.3 N Tai Po Tin 25 56 44.6 N Fung Wong Wit 39 84 46.4 N Lo Shue Ling 98 209 46.9 N Lei Uk Tsuen 41 94 43.6 N Chuk Yuen 18 44 40.9* N Tsung Yuen Ha 39 85 45.9 N Muk Wu 81 174 46.6 N Luk Keng 182 484 37.6** N Yim Tso Ha 18 47 38.3** N Shek Kiu Tau 37 98 37.8** N Ma Tseuk Ling Tai Long N 47 125 37.6** N Ha Wo Hang 20 46 43.5 N Sheung Wo Hang 66 160 41.3 N Nam Chung 175 443 39.5* N Wu Kay Tang 152 348 43.7 N Lin Ma Hang 165 423 39.0** N Ha Wang Shan Keuk 199 516 38.2** N Ha That Muk Kiu 16 43 37.2** N Kau Tam Tso 27 76 35.5** N Kai Keuk Shue Ha 13 42 31.0** N Fung Hang 47 108 43.5 N Kuk Po San Wai 61 143 42.6* N Tong To 56 126 44.4 N Shan Tsui 47 104 45.2 N Kong Ha 162 367 44.1 N Pok Wai 63 135 46.7 N Tai Che 100 225 44.4 ST Ngau Kok Wo 7 18 38.9** ST Tsung Tau Ha 3 8 37.5* ST 3 9 33.3** The table has been reconstructed for better readability while maintaining the original content and order. The column headers have been inferred as "District", "Village", "No. of males", "Total population", and "Age of males" based on the content. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 83 Tin Wan HKI 67 [[| 60.4* Ma Kong HKI 7 7 100** Chung Hom Kok HKI 10 10 100% = Lan Nai Wan HKI 4 4 100** To Tei Wan HKI 53 54 98 [*1 Tar Tam Tuk HKI 52 76 68 4*! Tong Po HKI 17 18 94.4*** Deep Water Bay HKI 8 8 100 A Kung Nam HKI 161 269 59.9 Shaukerwan НKІ 4317 5908 73.1** Fu Tson Fat HKI 361 585 61.7* Ma Shan Ha HKI 458 742 61.7* Sai Wan Ho HKI 650 876 74.2** Tsai Tsz Mui ΗΚΙ 193 297 64.9** Ma Tau Kok k 145 212 68.4* San Shan k 117 180 65.0** To Kwa Wan k 766 1072 71.5 Shek Shan k 178 277 64.3** Hok Yuen k 789 1272 62.0* Tai Wan k 61 97 62.9* Lo Lung Hang k 178 204 87.3* Wong Nai Yue k 168 250 67.2** Fo Pang k 126 180 70.0** Tai Shek Kwu k 47 70 65.7** Ho Man Tin k 272 470 Fuk Tsuen Heung k 610 861 57.9 70.8** Sz Wo Tong k 258 451 57.2 Wau Chau Tsan k 85 130 65.4** Ap Liu 270 391 69.0** Tin Liu Tsuen SSP 253 337 75.1*1 Chu Liu ssp 84 142 59.2 Cheung Sha Wan SSP 496. 653 76.0** Sheung Chu Liu SND 35 54 64.8** Lai Chi Kok ssp 144 173 83.24* Sai Kok ssp 309 508 60.8* Kowloon Tong SSP 113 185 61.1* Muk Kung Hom NSD 42 62 67.7** Shek Kip Mei SSD 50 72 69.4** Sham Shui Po $52 1028 1577 65.24* + Villages with severe excess of males (more than 60%) ** Villager With extreme excess of males (more than 64%) Fully developed parts of Hong Kong Inland and Kowloon excluded ================================================================================