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 100 J. W. HAYES exerts itself with unprecedented vigour and hardihood in local affairs. No dispute arises but one or more of these social pests thrusts himself forward between the contending parties, and no fraud on the revenue or wholesale extortion is free from their similar influence". Lockhart (through Governor Blake) says that the New Territory's literati "have hitherto lived by irregular "squeezes" from the people" and he blamed the opposition to British rule to them and to "gamblers and bad characters banished from Hong Kong" and not to the people who were incited by the gentry and elders. See Papers 1899 pp. 520 and 554. 26 Papers 1899 p. 194. 27 Papers 1899 p. 554. 28 Arthur H. Smith Village Life in China (Edinburgh, Oliphant, Anderson and Ferrier, about 1900) p. 121. 29 These affected the coastal and riverine regions of Kwangtung. See C. F. Neumann's Translations from the Chinese and Armenian with notes. 1. History of the pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray 1831). This includes, pp. 97-125, a very interesting account of an enforced stay of eleven weeks and three days with the pirate fleet in 1809 by Richard Glasbrooke, the mate of an East Indiaman. The pirates spent a considerable time on and near Lantau, which must have suffered from their depredations. The clan record of the HO family of San Tsuen, Pui O, on the south side of the island mentions pirate raids and a decision to fortify the village with walls which can still be seen, with several embrasures for cannon. Piracy continued until a much later date. The Cheung Chau police station was attacked and burnt in 1912, necessitating its removal and enlargement, one of the Cheung Chau ferries was pirated in 1923, and in 1925 a band of sixty robbers from the Delta entered Tai O by way of Po Chue Tam creek, killed a woman and made off with young men and a fair amount of booty without any difficulty. The Police Station is situated at the other end of the town and knew nothing of the attack until it was over. See Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories 1912, 1923 and 1925. 30 Papers 1899 p. 528. 31 Foreign Office Report 1606 on Trade of Canton 1894. 32 Salt was smuggled into China from Tai O as the government monopoly and price ring made it profitable to do so. See also Enclosure D to Sir Matthew Nathan's despatch No. 59 of 11 January 1905 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway which mentions rice smuggling from Shum Chun and Deep Bay into Hong Kong. The export of rice from China was forbidden, and checked by the Imperial Maritime Customs. **F O Trade Report No. 1778 for 1895. 34 F O Trade Report No. 1983 for 1896. 33 Papers 1899, p. 540. Brenan, with his thirty-two years' service wrote feelingly "The Chinaman is happiest who never sees an official, who does not even know the name of one". J N CBRAS XXXII (1897-98) 37. 31 Foreign Office Trade Report for Canton No. 1606 for 1894. ================================================================================ 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-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 108 ELSPETH MANEELY The suggestion of glaze on two of the pots, the bronze, the variety of shapes of the polished stone adzes, and the impressed patterns on the pottery similar to Fr. Maglioni's PAT culture, all indicate a Late Stone Age or Early Bronze Age date (Warring States, 481-221 B.C.) for the Man Kok Tsui site. However, the people living in this area may have continued to use stone tools and pottery of this type well into the Han period. REFERENCES 1 William Watson, Archaeology in China, Max Parrish, London, (1960). 2 C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear, “A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hong Kong and the New Territories", Proceedings of the First Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Hanoi, (Jan. 1932), 3 Daniel J. Finn, S. J., Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island Near Hong Kong, Ricci Publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, (1958). 4 W. Schofield, "A Protohistoric Site at Shek Pik, Lantao, Hong Kong", Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, (1938). 5 R. L. Maglioni, S. J., "Archaeology in South China", Journal of East Asiatic Studies, Manila, II, No. 1, (Oct. 1952). 6 R. L. Maglioni, S. J., "Archaeology Finds in Hoifung", Hong Kong Naturalist, VIII, Nos. 3-4, (March 1938). 7 S. G. Davis and Mary Tregear, "Man Kok Tsui, Archaeological Site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong", Asian Perspectives, IV, Nos. 1-2, (1960), 183-212. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 122 NOTES AND QUERIES QUERIES PRELIMINARY REPORT ON THE FINDS AT SHEK PIK At the beginning of March 1962 a bulldozer employed by Messrs. Dragages on the reservoir site at Shek Pik, south-west Lantau, uncovered coins and pottery on the hillside above the abandoned village of Shek Pik Wai. Unfortunately, the find was not reported by the Company and it was only after a member of the Chief Resident Engineer's staff got to hear of it that steps were taken to recover as much as possible from the workmen. Some three hundred coins and several small sherds of pottery and porcelain were handed in to the Waterworks Office by the Chief Resident Engineer, Shek Pik and these were sent to the Curator of the City Hall Museum, Mr. J. M. Warner, who passed them to me for a preliminary examination. On Sunday, 11th March, members of the Archaeological Team of the University went out to Shek Pik and spent the better part of a day looking round the area which had been cleared by the bulldozers. We managed to recover over a hundred more coins and, which was possibly of greater importance, picked up fragments of porcelain from the site. The coins have now been given a preliminary classification in the District Office, Islands. Fortunately, despite their long burial, the characters on most of the coins are still decipherable and it has been possible in all but a few cases to determine to which reign dates they should be assigned. They appear to be copper coins and with the exception of two small groups, have reign titles in the Sung Dynasty (960-1278). Of the sixty reign titles of the eighteen emperors of this dynasty, both Northern and Southern Sung, twenty-nine are represented among the coins which have already been recovered. There is also a group of coins which bear the characters Wang Sung, Shêng Sung, and Ta Sung. These appeared along with coins bearing a reign title, and can also be fixed accurately in time, in these cases 1038-40, 1101 and 1226 respectively. The date of the coins covers the whole length of the Sung period, that is approximately three hundred years from the mid-tenth to the late thirteenth centuries. Besides Sung coins there is a small ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 88 CHEUNG CHAU 1850-1898 INFORMATION FROM COMMEMORATIVE TABLETS J. W. HAYES, M.A.* * Cheung Chau is a small island situated just over five miles west-south-west of Green Island at the western end of Hong Kong harbour. It is adjacent to the southern side of the much larger island of Lantau from which it is separated by a strait of just under one mile. The island is two and a quarter miles long at its greatest extent, but takes the form of a three-ended dumb-bell, each of whose arms radiates for roughly a mile from the low beach area on which the town is built. The three arms reach a height of about three hundred feet, the northern being the highest and rockiest. The other two are flatter and more fertile, especially that to the south-west where most of the agricultural land is situated. The total area is 592 acres (0.92 square mile), of which 91.07 acres were registered as cultivated land at the turn of the century.* There are no large areas of cultivated fields, as most of the fertile land lies in small valleys cutting inwards from the coastal beaches or on low plateaux in the hilly areas of the island. Because of its small size and its low features, there is a general lack of perennial streams and this has always posed a problem for farmers and townspeople, though strangely enough it has never stopped them from staying there. The main anchorage is at Chung Wan facing due west, which together with Sai Wan to the south-west has attracted fishermen as a home port for hundreds of years. It is not an entirely safe anchorage as recent typhoons have shown, but, again, this does not seem to have deterred fishermen from operating from the island. The census of 1911, taken a decade after it had passed under British rule, gave a land population of 3,244, mostly Punti, and a floating population of 4,442.* * Mr. Hayes has been an administrative officer with the Hong Kong Government since 1956. His article entitled "The Pattern of Life in the New Territories in 1898" appeared in Vol. 2 of this Journal. The notes to this article are printed between pages 100-106. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v 106 J. W. HAYES 30 The Tung Kwun association note book says that there was a Po On Wui Sor ★ ★ ƒ in the Ch'ing dynasty, but since this had always led to confusion their association (the Po On Shuc Shat) was renamed the Tung Kwun Wui Sor in the 12th year of the Chinese Republic (1923). 31 A tablet (1953) in the Free School says that this institution dates back to 1921 and local leaders say that the kung sor was rebuilt at this time. The old kung sor was also known as the hon kaam lau ★ ★# or watchmen's building. ** On the other hand it is unlikely that it predates the defence bureau (1863-70) as this would have been a suitable subject for the Kaifong to organise (there is no mention of it on the tablet). 33 Mr. LEUNG Yau recalls that there were two Kaifong junks operating a daily service between Cheung Chau and Hong Kong before the lease (1898). One left Hong Kong (Sai Ying Pun) at 11 a.m., whilst the other left Cheung Chau at the same time. Both were sailing junks and took three hours to make the journey under good conditions and the whole day if otherwise. They were subscribed and run by a number of local gentlemen for public use. A steam Kaifong vessel was bought with public subscriptions in 1910. Administrative Reports, District Officer, New Territories, 1910. & 34 There are now eight district associations on the island for natives of the districts of Po On; Tung Kwun; Wai-Chiu combined ✰✰ *#; Sei Yap ("The Four Towns') i.e. Toi Shan 4, Sun Wui. Hoi Ping, Yan Ping; Ng Yap ♣ (“The Five Towns") i.e. Hok Shan plus the towns of Sei Yap, Shun Tak: Chung Shan ✈ and Chiu Chau (separate), the four last named formed since 1945, all offering a variety of social, educational and charitable services to members. 35 HSIAO, in his interesting and lengthy study of rural China in the 19th Century, does not deal specifically with the internal organisation of the market towns. The market town of Tai O at the south west end of Lantau island (land population 2248 in 1911) would provide an interesting local comparison, though material is not so readily available as for Cheung Chau. I hope to write a similar outline account at a later date. ================================================================================ 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 # PENG CHAU 73 in this region in the late CHING. Their time is obviously short, and as much use should be made of their evidence as is still possible. In this article I have attempted an outline study of an island community which, despite its small size and population at the time of the British lease, included groups of the various sea and land peoples who are common to this region. It is, for this reason, of particular interest, though by no means unique. ## II Peng Chau *** is a small island lying off the south-east coast of Lantau, about four miles from the west end of Hong Kong harbour. Its land area is 213 acres (0.328 square mile), of which 23.13 acres were cultivated and 4.35 built over when, together with the rest of the New Territories, the island passed under British rule in 1899.6 At the 1911 census of the Colony of Hong Kong, the first accurate count of the population of the New Territories, the land population of Peng Chau totalled 642 persons.7 This article attempts to tell something of its history before 1899, for which purpose it is material to its theme to state that it was one of many islands, large and small, inhabited or deserted, which lay off the coast of the Kwangtung province, in this case within the boundaries of the San On district of which the island of Hong Kong itself was formerly an insignificant part. Peng Chau's past is shrouded in mystery. It is likely that its first, and for most of its history, its only users were the fishermen whose boats sheltered in its bays whilst their owners dried and mended their nets on shore or beached their boats at the water's edge with grass cut from the hillsides. Pirates and other lawless men may have visited it from time to time because of its remoteness. Eventually its regular use by the sea people must have attracted land dwellers, mainly Cantonese in the first instance it would seem, who set up shops to deal with the fishermen by supplying them with stores and provisions on credit and acting as middlemen for the disposal of their catch. When this first occurred is not certain. The first dated information now available comes from the local temple dedicated to Tin Hau the Queen of Heaven, a popular goddess with ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 84 J. W. HAYES probably building materials and general goods, including clothing, luxury items and foodstuffs, since Peng Chau produced little more than sufficed for the Hakka farmers who had settled there. In the other direction the boats may have taken salt fish and shrimp paste, and lime for the building trade from Peng Chau's kilns. Peng Chau's development in the nineteenth century and before was assisted by its proximity to the south-east coast of Lantau. The waters in this area, except in the south-west monsoon, are generally calm and are easily crossed by rowing sampans or wind-driven craft. In 1898 there were some half a dozen small villages and hamlets situated along this coast37 which, together with a large settlement on Nei Kwu Chau, used Peng Chau as a market centre, selling their produce and livestock there and purchasing goods of all kinds from the island's shopkeepers. The area east of Tai Pak appears to have been well settled in 1899 by Hakka farmers whose descendants still live there today, but from Tai Pak west to Man Kok the land must at one time have supported a larger population than it did in 1899. The land registers show that many fields were abandoned, and no owners came forward to claim them at the Land Settlement after the lease of the New Territories. Even the claimed land, which in this area was in the minority, was in the course of changing hands, largely by way of mortgage to persons from Peng Chau. A WONG Keng of Peng Chau had recently become the registered owner of sixteen acres situated there and east to Yee Pak and was giving mortgages to other owners. The LAMs of Peng Chau were in possession of many fields at Man Kok and Kau Sat Wan, of which they were the mortgagees. They also held the mortgages of other fields there which belonged to the unfortunate LUI clan of Peng Chau. The large amount of empty fields, unclaimed at the lease, is interesting and the conclusion must therefore be that there were more settlers in this part of Lantau fifty or a hundred years before, and that these persons helped in a small but steady way to increase Peng Chau's prosperity,38 These families had either died or gone away by 1899. In an island community like Peng Chau where different groups found themselves in the course of time committed to joint settlement, and hence to the need to establish a modus vivendi, one of the more interesting relationships is that which subsisted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r FENG CHAU 95 from his own or adjoining villages worked with him. The Shek Pik people were therefore closely connected with the sea despite the fact that their fields were extensive and well-watered. Elsewhere on Lantau, an old account book of the Hakka CHEUNG Kung Tak Tong at Pui O, which is dated 1897-99 (Kuang Hsu 23rd-24th years), shows that the Tong had a regular income from a fishing sampan. 41 It has been shown that the Peng Chau shopkeepers always contributed to the temple repairs. A more illuminating instance of merchants' concern for the safety of local waters is to be found in the Tin Hau temple at Fan Lau on the south-west tip of Lantau, facing Macau and the mouth of the Delta, a remote area two hours' walk from Tai O Market. Here tablets survive from the Chia Ching and Hsien Feng periods (1796-1820 and 1851-61) and contain the names of many Tai O shops. One imagines that few of the donors would ever visit the temple, but they were obviously intent to ensure Tin Hau's benevolent care. 42 Information received from CHEUNG Kai Chun of Ham Tin, Pui O, Lantau (born 1886). But this was not true everywhere. At Shek Pik several families of Tanka used the anchorage for at least fifty years. There was no remembered animosity during this time and these fishermen were allowed to cut grass and firewood without charge. However, they rarely strayed far from the beach and the two groups did not intermarry or have much to do with each other, except in casual contact at the main festivals and when villagers bought fish from them at the jetty, which was over a mile from the village. The fishermen would not go to the village to sell their catch. 43 Information received from the present leaders of the WONG Wai Chak Tong ✯ of Cheung Chau. 44 This statement is based on close knowledge of the Southern District of the New Territories and of the District land registers. 45 Barbara E. Ward "A Hong Kong Fishing Village”, Journal of Oriental Studies (University of Hong Kong) volume 1, no. 1 (January 1954) pp. 195-214, especially p. 211. See also note 42. 46 See my Cheung Chau article for the Cheung Chau district associations before the British lease. At Tai O in the same period there appear to have been associations of Tung Kwun and San On origin, each with a club-house. 47 The number is wrongly given as 28 in note 14 to the Cheung Chau article. 48 A tablet in the Pak Tai temple at Cheung Chau dated January, February 1906 (a lucky day of the first month of spring of the thirty-second year of Kuang Hsü) shows that Peng Chau people also contributed to its repair. 49 See the Cheung Chau article for this institution. 50 The Kaifong of the Hong Kong region, and their like, are local institutions with a fairly long history. The Peng Chau Kaifong is quite likely to have an early date in relation to the age of the present settlement. ================================================================================ 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 148 NOTES AND QUERIES abandoned, broken-down, and over-grown with trees and scrub, probably because it lies in a more remote and less populous part of Lantau, so that there would be no use for it after the garrison left. An interesting feature of the Tung Chung fort is the presence of six old muzzle-loading cannons on its walls, each fixed to a cement base. (There are now none at Fan Lau). How these were preserved at Tung Chung is told in the following extract from the 1918 Administrative Report of the District Officer, South: Miscellaneous Receipts show an increase of $5,000 odd, due to the sale of old cannon for $5,265 which had previously remained neglected in the district. In this connection, it may be noted that any specimens of interest were retained, and that six guns were selected for mounting upon the wall of the old Yamen — the present Police Station — at Tung Chung, Lantau. So the guns at Tung Chung may not always have been there, but may have come from elsewhere, some perhaps from Fan Lau. The cannons vary in weight from 1,000 to 2,000 catties, i.e. between 12 and 24 cwts., and are quite large. An interesting comparison is the Ming cannon dredged from Kai Tak Bay in 1956 during the construction of the new runway, which weighs 500 catties and is now mounted outside the Colonial Secretariat. All six pieces carry inscriptions, of which only four are now legible. A typical description reads as follows (though there is room for dispute as to the precise translation): Cannon; weight - 2,000 catties (23-8 cwts.) YIK, Border Pacification General by Imperial Appointment. CHAI, Minister of Constant Support, Junior Guardian of the Heir Apparent and Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi. LEUNG, Assistant Minister of Defence and Governor of Kwangtung. LAU, Acting Prefect of Fat Shan Prefecture. CHEONG, Hoi Fung District Magistrate, on Reserve, supervised its manufacture in the 21st year of Reign of To Kwong, 10th Moon (1842) by Cannon Artisans LI, CHAN & FOK. ================================================================================ 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 149 An expert could say what the ranges of such cannons were, but after you have landed at the pier and walked to the fort, you will appreciate that it is 1,200 yards from the coast. It is unlikely that guns in the fort could be really effective at this range, so that one questions the wisdom of its planners in placing it so far from the sea, if it was meant to be a work of coastal defence. What of the garrison? In the later Ching period there were at least three military installations on Lantau at Tung Chung, Tai O and Fan Lau, another on Cheung Chau, and a considerable number of troops in the Kowloon Walled City. These were all sedentary garrisons drawn from the Tai Pang (Mirs Bay) battalion of the Chinese regular forces, which was scattered in forts and guard posts all over the eastern and southern part of the Sun On district, of which the present Crown Colony of Hong Kong formed the major part. The garrison at Tung Chung was commanded by a subordinate officer and probably consisted of a score or two men who were very likely without modern weapons. Writing in 1903 Dyer Ball said of the Chinese military forces that "matchlocks, gingals, bows and arrows, spears and lances are still the weapons of many". Their military efficiency was probably very slight. A missionary, who wrote an interesting account of the San On district for the last number of the transactions of the old Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, 1859, has an amusing description of the guard post at the Shatin Pass. However, they probably had a deterrent value, but owing to the poor state of local communications at that time, they were much too far away to assist if anything happened elsewhere on Lantau, particularly on the south side, though their influence was felt there. When the local leaders of the Pui O community (South Lantau) rebuilt the Hung Shing temple there in 1875, they persuaded the garrison commander at Tung Chung to make a contribution. In the commemorative tablet recording the event he is styled Fu Ye, a respectful form of address for this subordinate officer. To bring these rather rambling notes to a close, the fort was used after 1898 as a police station. The District Officer who recovered the cannons for the fort has left a vivid picture of his occasional magisterial visits there about 1920: ================================================================================ 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-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 9 # ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY IN AND ## AROUND HONG KONG A lecture delivered on 15th February, 1965 S. G. DAVIS The exhibition of neolithic finds in our City Hall has for the first time brought together the choicest specimens from the collections of Rev. Fr. D. J. Finn S.J., who concentrated his main work on Lamma Island, Rev. Fr. R. Maglioni who worked along the Kwangtung coast around Swabue, and the University of Hong Kong Archaeological Team that excavated at Man Kok Tsui on Lantau Island. The sites were all dug carefully and have fortunately been written-up in detail and published. But they represent a very small fraction of the total number of sites that have been recorded together with those not so far discovered in this part of South China. Many sites have only been examined cursorily and there is still very much work to be done with well-organized "digs". Unfortunately many sites have suffered and many finds have been lost through free-lance enthusiasts with varying degrees of competence not working systematically and not keeping detailed records. The vast amount of pottery and artifacts already found in this area certainly indicates the population in neolithic times was considerable and that there were well-established communications throughout. The types of materials used, the quality of design and the workmanship also point to a civilization that was highly cultured and organized. It is strange that neolithic archaeology in China was neglected or barely known until the present century. Berthold Laufer claimed in his Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty (12) that the first mention of Han pottery in European literature was made by S. W. Bushell in his book Oriental Ceramic Art (New York, Editor's note: Numbers in parentheses in the text are references to fuller particulars on specific book titles in the bibliography which accompanies the article. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 ARCHAEOLOGICAL DISCOVERY 11 found. The explanation for this is that this part of South China has been rising relative to sea level. This positive rise is connected with isostasy and eustatic movements of the oceans that cause cycles of submergence and emergence. Assuming a rise of one foot every hundred years then, Hong Kong in the last 2,500 years has risen 25 feet, Dr. Heanley and his friend Mr. Walter Schofield, a government administrator, gathered a large and varied collection of celts from Kowloon, Cheung Chau and Lantau Island. Examination of this collection by experts soon established that they were not just freaks of nature but definite human artifacts. Since Heanley's first notification, other workers have found them in practically every part of the Colony, and contrary to his belief that they were principally found on granite hills, they have been found often in abundance on every other rock outcrop represented in the area — especially volcanic rock. It may be that because of the extreme susceptibility of granite to erosion, which causes 'badland country' with thin or no vegetation cover, the celts can be seen more easily, Including the places mentioned by Dr. Heanley, celts can still be found in the fields, on raised beaches or on low hills at Tai Wan, Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan, Aberdeen, Tai Po, Castle Peak, San Hui, So Kun Wat, Tsun Wan, Shatin, Shataukok, Man Kok Tsui, Ha Tsuen, Sheung Shui, Shek Pik, Sai Kung, Lai Chi Chung, Sok Ku Wan, Fanling and Kau Sai Chau. Much is owed to Dr. Heanley, Mr. Schofield and Professor J. L. Shellshear, who was head of the Anatomy Department in the University of Hong Kong, for their conscientious and patient work in combing the Colony for other archaeological remains and sites after the celts had been identified. I have been told by our Vice-President, Sir Lindsay Ride, who knew all three intimately and often accompanied them on their field trips, that they were superbly energetic and covered tremendous distances in a day at great speed. Only fit and enthusiastic walkers could hope to last a whole day with them. They located several prehistoric sites, the most notable being So Kun Wat, Shek Pik and those at the northwest end of Lamma Island. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 16 S. G. DAVIS The findings of the Man Kok Tsui site showed similar remains to those reported by Father Finn and Dr. Schofield at Hung Shing Ye, Yung Shu Wan and Tai Wan on Lamma Island and Shek Pik on Lantau Island. There was also a similarity of seashore settlements on raised beaches and low hills. Geologically however the sites are dissimilar. The Lamma sites are on granodiorite, Shek Pik on volcanic rock and Man Kok Tsui on porphyritic granite. Although the finds at Man Kok Tsui were not as varied as those from the other sites mentioned above, the area of study was wider and closer attention was given to the relative position and distribution of finds. These showed a rough zoning of finds leading to a possible theory of "working", "dwelling" and "burial" areas. The map of archaeological sites and positions of discovered remains indicates the richness of our Hong Kong area. Recent site studies have been made at Ha Tsuen, Deep Bay; Fanling; Upper and Lower Shek Pik villages, Lantau Island; and at Kau Sai Chau, Rocky Harbour (27). During the levelling of the Shek Pik Reservoir in March 1962 the bulldozing machines brought to light coins clearly dated in age from A.D. 713 to 1226 (Tang Dynasty to Sung). Also found were richly glazed potsherds, These finds come from poor farming land, until recently malarial and with no nearby natural resources of economic value. They might have been the property of a rich man (or party) who was possibly in transit or resting, or as has been suggested was the property of the court of the boy Sung emperor, Ti Cheng. In A.D. 1277 when the Mongols were extending their control over China, Ti Cheng in his flight stayed for some time in Kowloon City. Later he crossed the mouth of the Canton River over to Chung Shan, and thus probably travelled along the southern shore of Lantau Island, going ashore for food and rest. In 1954 when the Shek Pik area was being surveyed for a reservoir, the University Team was first to do archaeological work there by trenching across the sandy raised beach, where in 1938, Professor W. Schofield had reported artifacts. During the work, a rock carving behind the beach was found about 200 yards from the seashore on the east side of the valley. It was cleaned up and later in 1958 had a protecting wall built round it, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 18 S. G. DAVIS BIBLIOGRAPHY 1. Bard, S. M., Chiu, T. N., and So, C. L. "Stone Ring at Loh Ah Tsai, Lamma Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, VIII. 2. Ch'en Kung-che (1957). "Archaeological Surveys and Excavations at Hong Kong," Kao Koo Hsueh Po, No. 4. 3. Davis, S. G. (1952). The Geology of Hong Kong (Archaeology), Government Printers, Chapter XI, pp. 188-194. 4. Davis, S. G. and Tregear, M. (1961). "Man Kok Tsui. Archaeological Site, 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, IV. 5. Davis, S. G. (1962). "Hong Kong University Team Archaeological Activities for Period 1958-61," Asian Perspectives, V, 53. 6. Davis, S. G. (1964). "Rock Carvings at Shek Pik, Lantau Island, Hong Kong," Asian Perspectives, VII, 19-21. 7. Finn, D. J. (1933-1936). "Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island, Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, Reprinted 1958, Ricci Hall Publications, University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong. 8. Heanley, C. M. (1928). "Hong Kong Celts," Bull. Geol. Soc. of China, VII, 209-214. 9. Heanley, C. M. and Shellshear, J. L. (1932). A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hong Kong and the New Territories. 10. Heanley, C. M. (1935). "Fields of Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, VI, 233-239. 11. Heanley, C. M. (1938). "Letter to the Editor on Archaeological Finds in Hoifung," The Hong Kong Naturalist, IX. 12. Laufer, B. (1909). Chinese Pottery of the Han Dynasty, American Museum of Natural History Publication, East Asiatic Committee. 13. Laufer, B. (1914). Chinese Clay Figures, Part I, Chicago Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 154. 14. Laufer, B. (1917). The Beginnings of Porcelain in China, Field Museum of Natural History, Publication 192, Anthropological Series, XV, No. 2. 15. Lo, H. L. (1956). "The Sung Wong Toi and the Location of the Travelling Courts by the Seashore in the Last Day of the Sung," Journal of Oriental Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 185-217. 16. Maglioni, R. (1938). "Archaeological Finds in Hoifung District, China," The Hong Kong Naturalist, No. 8, 208-214. 17. Maglioni, R. (1940). "Archaeology: New Nomenclature," The Hong Kong Naturalist, X, No. 2, 130-133. 18. Maglioni, R. (1940). "Some Aspects of South China Archaeological Finds," Proceedings of the Third Congress of Prehistorians of the Far East, Singapore, 209-229. 19. Maglioni, R. (1952). "Archaeology in South China," Journal of East Asiatic Studies, No. 2, University of Manila, Philippine Islands, 1-20. 20. Meanelly, E. (1962). "Excavations at Man Kok Tsui on Lantau Island," Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 2, 103-108. 21. Schofield, W. (1935). "Implements of Palaeolithic Type in Hong Kong," The Hong Kong Naturalist, VI, Nos. 3-4, 272-275. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 24 T. HARRISSON and carved wood have also survived there. Some fifty rush mats and wrappings survived under late neolithic or early metal burials in the West Mouth of the Great Cave. PUBLICATIONS Many smaller caves have been studied; and many others are available for study - over fifty. But there is no point in constantly repeating work that is very costly. Rather we seek constantly to define and re-define the project, so as to add new data, modifying or widening ideas — in preference to multiplying the established points. So far, about fifty papers have been published on the Niah results in Asian Perspectives (annually), Archaeological Newsletter, Journal Royal Society of Arts (a general review to 1963), Man (three papers), Oriental Art (Oxford), Artibus Asiae (Switzerland), Bijdragen (Holland), and the Geographical Journal (Royal Geographical Society, London). The full background and a long series of technical reports are published in the last eight issues of the Sarawak Museum Journal (Kuching, Sarawak, East Malaysia). The S.M.J. papers include specific contributions from Dr. R. Brothwell of the British Museum, Miss J. Clutton-Brock of the Institute of Archaeology, Dr. Calvin Wells of the Norwich Museum, Dr. D. A. Hooijer of Leiden and Professor G. H. R. von Koenigswald of the University of Utrecht, Dr. W. S. Solheim of the University of Hawaii, Drs. R. Inger and Wayne King of Chicago, the Earl of Cranbrook and Miss Pat Aldridge (now Dr. P. Marshall) of the University of Hong Kong. While those who have made specialist studies on the spot, working in Kuching, include Lord Medway (both here and at the University of Malaya), Dr. Alastair Lamb (glass beads), Dr. Solheim with Mrs. Lindsay Wall (prehistoric earthenware), Mrs. E. Moore in association with Miss Mary Tregear at the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford (Yueh and other early porcelains), Mr. Benedict Sandin and Mr. R. Nyandoh (links to cave and other Niah folklore), Mr. Geoffrey Barnes (burial rites), Mr. J. Revers (U.S. Peace Corps; topography), Professor N. Haile (geology; now of the University of Malaya), Mrs. Barbara Harrisson and her husband. Work of this sort involves multiple cooperation, as has already been well demonstrated by the University team from Hong Kong working on Lantau Island. In 1965-66 we hope to get additional outside help from Dr. ================================================================================ 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 The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung 25 area, e.g. some places on Lantau island (Tai-yu-shan) were salt-producing fields. All such fields, together with the people living in the villages, were under the administration of the Salt Administrator of Kuan-fu Ch'ang. In the Yuan Dynasty, the political status of the Kuan-fu Field underwent a drastic change. Kuan-fu as an independent salt-producing area under a salt administrator was abolished and was incorporated into the Huang-t'ien (†) Field which was one of the original four fields in Tung-kuan. In the third year of the reign of Hung Wu, the first Emperor of Ming (1370), Kuan-fu's status was changed from that of a salt-field into a Hsun-ssu (3), a political sub-district still called Kuan-fu but under the charge of a Hsun-chien (K). The name of Kowloon was not officially adopted until 1840 (Tao Kwang 20th year, in mid-Ch'ing), when Kuan-fu Hsun-ssu was changed to Kowloon Hsun-ssu under the charge of a Kowloon Hsun-chien, still under the general administration of the Hsin-an District. Three years later (1843) the Manchu Governor-general Ch'i-ying (**) constructed a city wall around the Kowloon Tsai (formerly the Kuan-fu Tsai) with the explicit purpose of warding off a British invasion. The wall was completed in 1847. It may be added that this city wall was demolished by the Japanese when they occupied Kowloon, using the stones for the construction of the extended air-field; but the so-called Kowloon Tsai still exists. III. THE LANDING Let us now go back to May 1277. 1277. The exact place where the royal party landed was along the beach on the western shore of the Kowloon Bay from the Sung Wong Toi Hill to To-kua-wan in the south. There were three villages along the coast, namely Ma-tau-kok (§i§}), Ma-tau-ch'ung (‚§§Ã¡Ã¦) and To-kua-wan (LA). They were fairly large in size and populated by many fishermen and workers of the salt-field. Upon the arrival of the royal party the local villagers extended to them an extraordinarily warm welcome. The Imperial Court rewarded them with some parasols made of yellow silk and embroidered with many Chinese characters, in gratitude for the enthusiastic reception and loyal protection they had received. Years later the original gifts wore ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g The Travelling Palace of Southern Sung 35 its followers to a nearby islet, Ku-ta (†) or Ancient Pagoda, Tung-lung Island.19 In the autumn they proceeded to Ch'ien-wan (*) which is now definitely identified as Tsun-wan (now written) along the western coast of Kowloon. Two months later, the Mongol army, which had been pursuing them along the shore, began to attack. The boy Emperor sailed to Hsiu-shan (ƒ), now known as Hu-men or the Bogue. Continuously under pressure from the Mongols, Tuan Tsung passed by Hsiang-shan District (at present Chung-shan) and reached Tseng-o (#4), south of Macao, where his ship was badly damaged by a typhoon. He himself fell into the sea but was rescued. The terrible shock led him to contract a fatal disease. He was sick on board ship until the spring of 1278, when the whole fleet sailed northward back to the harbour at the mouth of the Pearl River. By that time Canton had been recaptured by some royalists and so they felt safe enough to anchor and encamp at Kang-chou which is identified as Ta-yu-shan or Lantau Island20. Two months later he died there. His younger brother Ping succeeded him on the throne and became the last emperor of Sung. He named the new reign Hsiang Hsing (#) and the 1st year began in the next month, still 1278. In the 6th month the new emperor had to sail away with the whole fleet southwestward until they arrived at Ya-Shan of the Hsin-hui District. Finally, in the 2nd month of the next year (spring 1279), they fought the last battle against the Mongol forces commanded by the arch-traitor Chang Hung-fan (K). As a result of the defeat the whole army perished. The boy Emperor with his royal seal was tied to the body of his prime minister, Lu Hsiu-fu, who plunged into the sea, to be followed by thousands of court officials in a mass suicide. When the Queen Mother Young heard of the tragic and heroic death of the Emperor she also drowned herself, thus ending the long reign of 315 years of the Northern and Southern Sung Dynasty. Before concluding this talk let me point out that besides the above story there is a deep and important meaning to be derived from our study of the Travelling Palace of Southern Sung in Kowloon. Throughout the Sung Dynasty, China was frequently invaded by neighbouring foreign tribes. Almost every year there was war, not only against the Hsi Hsia (the Tangut), but also, in turn, the Liao (Khitan), the Chin (Nuchen) and the Mongols. ================================================================================ 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 96 JAMES HAYES the Pui O group in South Lantau. Unlike Chan, who had been a newcomer, Cheung's family had been settled in the area for upwards of two centuries before his birth and his father possessed a small number of fields which had descended from his ancestors. The Cheung clan, too, was the most powerful in the sub-district. Its members were settled in five of the nine small villages of the group and included one or two degree holders by purchase among its immediate forebears. However, like Chan, Cheung went into business, but not in the market town and not as an errand-boy, but locally and on his own account. He opened a shop in a small house situated outside the main village of the group and stocked it with goods which he brought over by sampan from the nearby island of Cheung Chau, the local market centre and a fishing port. Again like Chan, Cheung had a good head for business and used whatever money he obtained from his shop to loan sums to other villagers. As usual the loans were made for interest at high rates or in return for mortgages of land. The deeds relating to about a dozen of his mortgages have survived in an old account book. One of them, relating to the year 1898, shows that he was capable of lending what was then, to a farmer, the considerable sum of 120 dollars, the equivalent of 90 ounces of silver in one single transaction. As happened more often than not in deals of this sort, this land, consisting of an acre and a quarter of good paddy fields, was sold to him seven years later. Cheung's career developed along much the same lines as that of Chan Fu-shing. He settled disputes over a considerable area, including villages outside his own group, and helped to arrange various public services, including a regular ferry to the nearby market town of Cheung Chau. Again, he also took the lead in managing the affairs of the local temples and in repairing them when this became necessary.10 It is not certain whether he purchased a degree, but he may well have done so because, as has been said, this was the normal thing for a prospering villager to do at this period. KUNG FONG-CHAI (***) The third member of the trio, Kung Fong-chai (c. 1850-1922) was a Hakka from a village a few miles from the market town of Tai O. Like the Cheungs, the Kung family had been settled on ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 100 JAMES HAYES Fifthly, land was indirectly of the greatest importance for a man's emergence as an area leader. Through acquiring land other than in one's native village a man became known outside it. If he was a landowner renting out the land and clearly a person of ability and presence the way was paved to an extension of his sphere of influence because the local people would, in time, call on him to assist in solving disputes in which no decision could be reached. In a mountainous island where bad communications resulted in the growth of isolated communities the purchase of land or operation as a money lender was almost the only way in which personal influence could be extended without a charge of unwarranted “interference" being made. This much is obvious on a moment's reflection, but it is not always apparent without personal knowledge of an area and its geographical characteristics. Sixth and last, it is probable that the rural gentry of Lantau Island in the earlier part of the Ching dynasty were similar in origins and career to these men. This closes the main part of the article, but I would like, as a postscript, to mention the external and more formal side of their activities; that is, their relations with other gentry of the whole administrative district and with its civil and military officers. There is a distinct lack of definite information with a local content. One imagines, however, that they would have been on good terms with the officers of the military garrison and the naval patrol vessels that called at the island from time to time, combining with the village leaders and the shopkeepers of the market town to entertain them on certain festivals and on public occasions. By way of a return, the officers contributed to local repair projects such as the reconstruction of village temples and gave something towards the cost of local opera shows and festivals. This much is certain because many repair tablets and commemoration boards show this pattern. Besides, the basic nature of government in rural areas has changed very little to this day, being founded on the creation and retention of goodwill wherever and however possible as true for the Hong Kong government today as for the Chinese district government 70 years ago. The position is much less clear on the civil side. There were usually four councils of local gentry in any administrative district, for the East, South, West and South sections or Tung (M), as ================================================================================ 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 102 JAMES HAYES 2 This figure is given in the table at p. 145 in Sessional Papers, i.e. Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, for 1906 (Hong Kong, Noronha & Co., Government Printers) included in "New Territories: Land Court, Report on Work from 1900 to 1905". The figure is for all private lots demarcated, and includes house lots as well as agricultural land. 3 Colony Census of 1911 in Sessional Papers 1911, pp. 103 (22, 26 and 37-38). 4 See Extracts from a Report by Mr. Stewart Lockhart on the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong in The Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899 at p. 541. Also Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (JHKBRAS), Vol. 3 (1963), pp. 144-145 and Vol. 4 (1964), pp. 146-150. 5 This information is based on my own extensive enquiries in the Hong Kong region. They corroborate the usual accounts given in many books, among them E. T. Williams, China Yesterday and Today (London etc., Harrap & Co., 1923) pp. 118-136, Chapter VI, "The Village Republic" and E. T. C. Werner, China of the Chinese (London, Sir Isaac Pitman & Sons, 1920), pp. 161-165, "Local Government”. 6 See p. 12 and notes 15-17 of my "The Settlement and Development of a Multiple-Clan Village" (Shek Pik on Lantau Island) in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories (Hong Kong, Hong Kong Branch of Royal Asiatic Society, n.d. but 1965), 7 See also my note "Village Credit at Shek Pik, 1879-1895" in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch, Royal Asiatic Society, No. 5 (1965), pp. 119-122, for interest rates of 50% of principal per annum, simple interest, from a money loaning Tong in the same area. This Tong's varied means of doing business are paralleled in the surviving papers showing Cheung Kwong-chuen's agreements with local farmers, * See Ping-ti Ho, The Ladder of Success in Imperial China, Aspects of Social Mobility, 1368-1911 (New York, Columbia University Press, 1962), pp. 33-38, "It would not be an exaggeration to say that in Ch'ing times practically anybody who could afford a little over 100 taels could obtain the chien-sheng title and the right to wear the scholar's gown and cap", p. 34. * For more details of the area see my article "A Mixed Community of Cantonese and Hakka on Lantau Island" in Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, cited at note 6 above. 10 His name heads the list of twenty-six persons who presented a commemorative red and gilt board on the occasion of the last major repair to the Tin Hau temple at Ham Tin, Pui O dated the equivalent of 15 January 13 February 1915. 11 For a brief account of this village see the article referred to in note 6 above. 12 The Census of 1911 lists 5,694 Cantonese and only 944 Hakka out of an estimated land population of 6,710. See Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (22). I have my suspicions about the Hakka figure but have not yet counter-checked by other means. For alleged Cantonese domination see inter alia K. M. A. Barnett, "The Peoples of the New Territories" in J. M. Braga (ed) The Hong Kong Business Symposium (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post, 1957), pp. 261-265, and G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 44 where he says that the imposition of British rule led to the freeing of the neighbours of ================================================================================ 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 103 many Punti villages from "squeezes" formerly levied on them, "especially the Hakkas". 13 The market town of Tai O had a land population of 2,248 and a boat population of at least several thousands, many of whom lived in mat-huts over the water and were therefore part of the settled population. Sessional Papers 1911, p. 103 (26 and 38). The Hong Kong Government's Administrative Reports for 1911, District Officer South, mentions 221 mat-shed permits in respect of pile huts in Tai O Creek. There were said to be 8 schools in Tai O or district at a New Territories School Census in April 1912, with an average attendance of 21. See Appendix G to Orme's Report in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 63. 14 See for instance Hugh D. R. Baker, "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories" in JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25-47 and his references at his note 9 to Sung Hok-pang's prewar articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist. 15 The schedules of ownership attached to the Block Crown Leases for 1898 New Territories' villages show this general pattern of peasant ownership very clearly. They are kept in the District Offices of the New Territories Administration. 16 A hint of the strength of superstition at this time is given by Orme, op. cit., paras. 97-98, 17 They held, in addition, a considerable number of mortgages from Shek Pik people. Those recorded in the 1904 Block Crown Leases for the Shek Pik Valley may well be less in number than in 1899 because, in the intervening years, it was reported that mortgagors were making great efforts to recover unencumbered ownership, e.g., Sessional Papers 1902, Mr. Stewart Lockhart's 'Report on the New Territory for the Year 1901' p. 4. It is not entirely clear from the context whether this was a general reaction or limited only to New Kowloon, 18 Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8 April 1899, p. 546 under the heading ‘Local Government in the Villages'. The information about there usually being four Tung in any administrative district comes from the former magistrate mentioned in the same paragraph of the text. He was in charge of ## and ✯✯ in Hupeh for part of the first decade of this century. Where no sources are cited, the text is based on information obtained from old inhabitants, some of whom knew Cheung Kwong-chuen and Kung Fong-tsai personally, and from documents in Chinese relating to the land and money transactions of these two men and those of the third, Chan Fu-shing, that have been made available to me through the kindness of their present owners to whom I am much indebted for their courtesy and cooperation. I am also grateful for help with translation, especially to Mr. Chan Kwun-ngok, and for the ready help of many Lantau residents with my enquiries, Addition to Note 8. The quotation in the text comes from Professor Ho's "The Examination System and Social Mobility in China, 1368-1911", Proceedings of the 1959 Annual Spring Meeting of the American Ethnological Society, pp. 60-65. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 138 SALT MANUFACTURE IN HONG KONG S. Y. LIN Editor's Note. This article, which is of considerable ethnographic and nearly thirty years after-historical interest, first appeared in the pre-war publication The Hong Kong Naturalist (1930-41), Volume X, No. 1, January 1940. The editor of this interesting series, Dr. G. A. C. Herklots, Reader in Biology at the University of Hong Kong 1928-45 and Principal and Director of Research at the Imperial College of Tropical Agriculture, Trinidad 1953-60, has kindly given permission to reproduce it here. It is hoped that the article will be of interest to present-day residents of Hong Kong as well as providing for scholars a record of salt-production on the South China coast by both the leaching (percolation) and solar (evaporation) processes, now practically defunct in Tai O where the salt pans have been almost deserted for several years past. The author, Dr. Shu-yen Lin, who is now with the Fisheries Division, Joint Commission on Rural Reconstruction Taipei, Taiwan (Formosa) has also expressed his agreement to the article being reproduced. I have added a few notes which, it is hoped, will be of some interest and may encourage others to take up this interesting subject in more detail. In three places only is salt prepared from sea-water in the Colony namely at Tai O, a fishing village on Lantau island, Sha-taukok on the frontier in Starling Inlet and San Hui in Castle Peak Bay. Of these the first is the most important. The salt marsh at Tai O, which occupies an area of about 70 acres and is enclosed by high dykes to prevent flooding at high tide or by storms, is owned by three companies, two of which are slightly bigger than the third. The annual production in 1938 amounted to about 25,000 piculs (1,488 tons) valued at about $27,500. A small portion is consumed locally, chiefly by the fishermen in the salting of fish, and all the rest is exported. The companies lease the salines from Government and sub-let to individual salt-makers or hire them on a piece-wage basis in the form of shares in the profits. In the former case each salt-farmer leases a small saline of about 1/10 acre from the company, paying a rental of $2.00 per month, and endeavours to produce as much salt as possible from this limited area of land. The salt produced, however, must be sold to the company from which the saline has been leased. The company should be able to pay the farmer at a fixed price (50 cents per picul for 1938-1939), immediately on receiving the salt. On the average, ================================================================================ 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-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d FAN LAU AND ITS FORT 87 Using the Ching dynasty maps from the District Gazetteers and the Provincial Gazetteer, I identify the places on the Chu Kong estuary section on the Mo Pei Chi charts as follows: (see map 4)— Po Toi Shan 蒲胎山 an island south of Hongkong. Now written 蒲台 Tung Keung Shan 東姜山 Yung Hai Shan 翁鞋山 Fat Tong Mun 佛堂門 Pak Tsim 北尖 Lang Tin Shan 小溪山 + ++ Tam Kon islands 檐桿 Yung Hai 湧鞋 or Hai Chau 鞋洲 retains the same name, Fat Tong Mun 佛堂門 retains the same name, Pak Tsim 北尖 as the "outer Lintin", Ngoi Ling Tin 外伶仃 as the "inner Lintin”, Ting Lin 伶仃 "Lantau", Tai Yu Shan 大嶼山 "Fan Lau", Kai Yik Kok 雞翼角 Nam Tin Shan 南停山 Tai Kai Shan 大溪山 Siu Kai Shan 小溪山 Kwun Fu Chai 宮富寨 + present day "Kowloon City", Kau Lung Shing 九龍城 Tung Kwun Sor 東莞所 District of Tung Kwun, Tung Kwun Yuen 東莞縣 Heung Shan Sor 香山所 District of Heung Shan, Heung Shan Yuen 香山縣 The absence of any mention of the San On district (新安縣) on the charts is significant. It is highly improbable that the compilers of the charts would have deliberately omitted or accidentally overlooked that district. Now, we know that the San On district was detached in 157310 from the Tung Kwun district to form two separate districts, the Tung Kwun and the San On districts, a circumstance which confirms the suggestion that the Mo Pei Chi charts were drawn at least before the creation of the San On district. If this were the case, the Kai Yik Kok fort must also be dated before 1573, which would make it a Ming dynasty fort. Between 1805 and 1810 control of the Chu Kong estuary slipped from the forces of the government. A new pirate leader, Cheung Po-tsai 張保仔 became master of the seas around Tai Yu Shan. ================================================================================ 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 NOTES ON ETHNO-BOTANY IN THE NEW TERRITORIES 129 Glochidion eriocarpum (tsat tai koo ✯✯★★) is a hillside plant. The leaves are first boiled and then applied to sores to relieve irritation. Hydrocotyle asiatica (pang tai woon). A tonic drink is made from this plant as a yuet hei reliever. It is considered especially good for nursing mothers. The leaves and stalks may be eaten as a vegetable with rice, and an excellent soup can be made from it. Hedyotis uncinella (po chau tsai). The plants are dried in the sun and used in making a tonic drink to relieve yuet hei and to offset general debility. These are only ten of many economic simples with reputed curative or medicinal qualities. As already suggested, some of them may have been emergency famine food at one time or another, particularly those that also serve as vegetables or as soup stock. NOTES 1 In 1962-63, most of the nets in small sampans appeared to have been made from commercial natural fibres (abaca, ramie or coconut coir fibers). However, Agave fiber was still used for making twine. Fishermen then were readily accepting synthetic nets. Some fishermen I talked to believed that synthetic nets were too expensive for small craft as snagged nets meant costly losses because it is harder to salvage nets of synthetic fiber than those of natural fiber, so I was told. 2 I haven't seen cochineal insects used for dye myself and the information given me was essentially "before the use of chemical dyes, in olden days, this kind of cactus (Opuntia) harboured yin chi insects that were used for a red dye." Whether the cochineal insect was used or not in the lifetime of the older villagers I talked with, I do not know. Personally I suspect it was used extensively in the past and the dyeing technique diffused through the Philippines to the China coast from Acapulco, Mexico in the days of the Manila Galleon (i.e., Acapulco to Manila to Macau and thence along the South Chinese coast). 3 Kong Nim and Pei Kwan Kong terms for Rhodomyrtus tomentosa berry, are used interchangeably at Fan Lau. Fan Lau as well as most of the other Lantau villages were, I suspect, pirate hideouts and it may well be that Pei Kwan Kong may have been a term derived from the time of the Great Evacuation, 1662-1669. For details of the latter see Lo Hsiang-lin, Hong Kong and its Communications before 1842. (Hong Kong 1963, Chinese version 1960) chapter VI, 4 Tuk yuc tung ("fish poison vine"). Many cultivators buy an insecticide powder called tuk yue fun (fish poison powder). This powder is usually first mixed with sawdust before application. It is the same powder used by gardeners to rid the lawn of white grubs! This powder too is dusted on the heads of children suspected of having lice in their hair. Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ 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-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d NOTES AND QUERIES 161 A PAIR OF POTTERY COVERED JARS FOUND AT SHEK PIK, LANTAU ISLAND The Shek Pik area in the south-western corner of Lantau Island has yielded archaeological finds of more varied interest than any other area in Hong Kong. Before the construction of the reservoir in the valley (1958-62), it was mainly known by the neolithic sites on the raised beach which W. Schofield excavated in the thirties. During and since the building of the reservoir various archaeological finds of comparatively recent periods have been made. The latest of these finds is a pair of earthenware jars with identical blue and white porcelain bowls as covers. They were discovered in February 1968 and February 1969 by James Hayes who had reported all post-war archaeological finds at Shek Pik†. Both pairs of jar and bowl were broken when discovered and the first pair has now been restored by the City Museum and Art Gallery (see Plates 19 and 20). These jars and bowls were located on a sloping hillside west of the former village of Shek Pik Wai (abandoned before the War for sites a few hundred yards lower down the valley). The area had been scoured by bulldozers for 'fill' for the dam and the jars were found in an exposed bank. This was, in fact, the site of the earlier discoveries reported by Hayes. Though located less than a foot away from each other and each about two feet from the surface, the pots were discovered singly as progressive eroding of the bank by rain brought them to light. Mr. WAN On (溫安) of Pui O, South Lantau was with Mr. Hayes on both occasions. The porcelain bowls are the first known pieces of Ming blue and white porcelain reported in Hong Kong, at any rate since the War, although they are a type of trade porcelain which is commonly found in the Philippines and in Indonesia. The bowls have fairly straight slanting sides and high foot-rims. They are decorated on the outside with vertical fern leaves (sometimes identified as plantain leaves) with wavy edges and with a band of floral design round the mouth rim. On the inside they are decorated with a double ring near the mouth and with a lotus flower within a circle in the centre. The lotus flower (Sanskrit padma) is one of the "eight glorious emblems" in Buddhist art † See reference to this article at p. 73 of this issue. Ed. ================================================================================ 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 145 Iron was also used to make arrow heads, fishing hooks, and knives and the finding of moulds for making them points again to the fact that they were made on the spot. Finally we must mention that skeletons have been found in those sites; the horn of a large deer of species unknown; and that near the Lantau site is the pattern carved on a rock. This pattern is used by the aborigines of Hainan Island for tattooing, but it would be unsafe to infer a connection on these grounds alone. It is, however, a proof of aboriginal settlement. This brief summary of the prehistoric population of our region must suffice. In later chapters we shall try to discover what these people were and when they lived. At present, it is necessary to emphasise that they were a seaboard people who practised primitive industries of their own, but who imported a great many of their possessions either from China, Indo-China or the East Indies archipelago; in other words, they were connected up with a trade route, or were even possibly one of the links in the trade routes which in early times were used in the Far East. III. SOUTH CHINA BEFORE THE HANS There is all kinds of evidence as to a prehistoric migration of peoples using stone tools between India, the Far East, Polynesia and even Europe. These migrants, who are called "Austronesians” by the prehistorians, are believed to have navigated the seas and rivers in outrigger boats and to have introduced a very early exchange of objects the prehistoric world valued, such as cowries, tortoise shells and the like. The archaeological finds point to a survival of this culture in South China. How late it survived is not absolutely clear and unfortunately no authoritative opinion on the subject has been given. But from the position of the sites it might be supposed that the inhabitants were pushed onto the seacoast by the pressure of other peoples and their survival may have lasted well into historic times, even possibly as late as the Sung dynasty (A.D. 960), the date, as we shall see, when Chinese peasants first began to migrate into this region. The Tanka might, in theory, be the descendants of these earlier Page 146 is missing Page 150 Page 151 ================================================================================ 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 166 S. F. BALFOUR This site is near Kowloon City where the present Pak Tai temple stands. In the past some rare tiles of a dark ochre colour have been found there and apparently at one time a part of the foundations of the building were to be seen behind the temple. A village there was named Two Kings (I Wong) in commemoration of their visit and there is a tradition that they used the low hill covered with boulders just above it as a terrace or royal look-out. They remained there for about five months whilst their agents reported the movements of their enemies round Canton. At the end of this period their position became desperate. Wen T'ien-chiang had organised an army on the Kiangse-Fukienese border and was trying to march on Canton and save the court from being cut off. But in the seventh and eighth moon he lost battles and was unable to make any progress. The Mongols then marched south from Canton against the Kings' army which they engaged in the ninth moon at Ts'ün Wan.19 There seems to be no local tradition about this battle, although it is mentioned in the most authentic texts on the subject. The Sung loyalists were defeated there and the court fled first to Lantao island and then farther west. We now come to the death of the uncle of the two little kings, Yang Liang-chieh. He was the elder brother of the Kings' mother, and history does not mention him after the court had left Foochow. Local tradition is very positive that a marquis Yang (Yeung Hau) who on account of his loyalty to Sung was made a king (Yeung Wong) lived somewhere in the region, and he is worshipped as a god in a principal temple near Kowloon City which bears an inscription calling him Yang and saying that his first name is unknown. The identification with Yang Liang-chieh was made quite recently by a Chinese scholar20 and there is every reason to suppose that it was true that he accompanied the Emperors as far as this region where he died and was perhaps given the title of King after his death. Although the principal temple to him is at Kowloon there are others all over the region and two important ones on Lantau Island. This leads me to guess that he might have died on Lantau during the court's flight after their defeat at Ts'ün Wan. There is in any case mention in a particularly 19 ** 20 In 瓜廬文賸 by 陳伯陶 ================================================================================ 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 167 of Lantau as being the place where many loyal servants of Sung are buried. The same scholar who identified the marquis Yang also states that the elder of the two kings died on Lantau. But this cannot be correct.22 The place of his death is Kong Chow and there is no reason to identify it, as he had done, with Tai Yü Shan or Lantau. After the defeat at Ts'ün Wan the movements of the fugitive court are not very clear and there are contradictions in the various accounts, but it seems that they fled as far as they could westwards from the battlefield. During their journey they met with a storm as a result of which the eldest Emperor, who was afterwards given the title of Tuan Tsung, fell sick. The texts on the subject often state that the storm they encountered was a typhoon, but commentators have been careful to point out that typhoons do not occur in winter and that it happened in the 12th moon. However, this is most unimportant. The Mongol armies were bent on catching the Emperors since their death was to mean the end of all resistance in South China. The chief minister, Ch'en I-chung, who had accompanied the court so far, deserted them and fled to Annam, and many other desertions must have occurred at this time. Their army, which is said to have numbered 200,000, was concentrated mostly in boats and commanded by Chang Shih-chieh, somewhere west of the Canton estuary. A Mongol fleet equipped at Canton was searching for them in the estuary. Tuan Tsung died in the 4th moon of the year 1278. He was then eleven years old. His brother was declared Emperor by the chief minister Lu Hsiu-fu. He was eight years old. The last Emperor Wei Wong or Ti Ping, to give him his posthumous title, still had a slender chance of regaining his kingdom if Wen Tien-chiang, the minister who was organising resistance on the Kiangsi-Fukienese border, had been able to gain a battle. In the 3rd moon, Wen Tien-chiang had advanced as far as Kan-chow and there was a chance of his being able to attack Canton and relieve the pressure on the Emperor's army. The new 21 廣東新語 22 Professor Hsu Ti-shan has, however, just published an article in which he reaffirms this theory. (See X). ================================================================================ 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 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-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 NOTES AND QUERIES 197 took place locally, in the areas just across the Sino-British border at Sha Tau Kok. The villagers of these three places became alarmed for the fate of their cherished Tin Hau image and brought it into British territory for safety. They also brought back two incense burners (†) dated in the 2nd and 3rd years of Kuang Hsü (1876-78) that had been donated by local shops and fishermen in one case and by Lin Ma Hang (A) natives then in Australia (J). The leaders of the three villages then combined to form the Sha Tau Kok Three Villages Tin Hau Temple Building Committee (沙頭角三鄉籌建天后廟委員會) and obtained a temporary building permit from the Tai Po District Office to erect a temple for the image. The temple is situated at map reference KV 140962 at the west end of Kong Ha Village in the Frontier Closed Area. It is under the management of a special trust, the Sam Wo Tong (*) constituting one manager each from Tong To, Tan Shui Hang and Sha Tsui villages. Photographs of this new temple and of the Tin Hau image which inspired such devotion can be seen at Plates 30 and 31. Place names used in this note can be found in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. (H.K. Govt. Printer, n.d. but 1960) pp. 216-218. Hong Kong, 1970. JAMES HAYES PILE HOUSES AT TAI O, LANTAU ISLAND, HONG KONG, 7TH JANUARY 1937 Editor's Note The following details of some of the interesting pile houses or matsheds on stilts that survive in considerable numbers in Tai O Creek to the present day are taken from one of Mr. Walter Schofield's notebooks, under the date given in the heading. Mr. Schofield (1888-1968) served in the Hong Kong Cadet (Administrative) Service between 1911-1938 in various posts, including those of District Officer South, Chief Assistant Secretary for Chinese Affairs and First Police Magistrate. He was also a well- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 198 NOTES AND QUERIES known geologist and archaeologist. A few notes and articles from his pen on Hong Kong subjects appeared in Vols. 8 and 9 (1968 and 1969) of this Journal. These pile houses are the habitation of Tanka,(4) the boat people of South China, and Tai O has long been a considerable fishing port and market town, indeed the principal and only one of any size on Lantau Island. At the 1911 census of the Colony the land population was 2248 persons and was probably outnumbered by the floating population which stood at 5413 for the whole of Lantau. The pile huts were probably there long before the British took over the New Territories in 1899 following the Convention of Peking, 9th June, 1898. One of the early administrative reports of the District Officer, South (1911) mentions taking over responsibility from the Harbour Office for issuing licences to pile dwellers at Tai O Creek, when 221 new matshed permits were issued at $1 p.a., and in 1916 it was stated that there were still as many as 350 matsheds there. Fires were always a hazard to these dwellings of wood and palm leaves. A big fire was noted in the 1916 report and it is no surprise to read in a later report of a really big one in 1926 when 300 matsheds were destroyed. Fortunately there was no loss of life, due, it was related, to it being high tide at the time of the fire. Typhoons, too, were a constant menace to these frail structures and in 1927, the year after the big fire, the District Officer notes that a typhoon caused great damage to the matsheds. The photographs at plates 26 to 29 are by Mr. Schofield, and the plans at Figs. 1 and 2 are re-drawn from his notebook. I am greatly indebted to Mrs. Katherine M. Schofield for permission to reproduce her husband's valuable notes. The italicised sentences are my additions. The aerial view of Tai O Creek at plate 25 is by courtesy of the Hong Kong Government. Mr. Schofield's Text The accompanying plan (Fig. 1) is of a typical shed at Yee Chung (二涌) Second Creek, Tai O. It measures 9′ in width and 29′ 2′′ in depth (32′ 5′′ including the 1 metre deep veranda) and is 7′ high. It is 8′ above the waters of the creek at mid ================================================================================ 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-1972 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gm80qf99h 168 W. SCHOFIELD Editor's Note The manuscript breaks off abruptly at this point, and since it was passed to me after Mr. Schofield's death in December 1968 and I was hitherto unaware of its existence there is now no means of knowing whether it was completed or finished in part only. It is reproduced here for its interest as a contemporary statement of the progress of the archaeology of Hong Kong and South China by about 1938, when it was written, and for the useful account it provides of the part played by Schofield, Shellshear and Heanley in the early period of Hong Kong archaeological studies. PRE-WAR WRITINGS ON HONG KONG ARCHAEOLOGY INCLUDE: (1) J. G. Andersson — "Topography of the Hongkong Sites" in Bulletin No. 11, Topographical and Archaeological Studies in the Far East, of the Museum of Far Eastern Antiquities, Stockholm, 1939. (2) S. F. Balfour Section II, “Archaeological Evidence" at pp. 336-341 of his article "Hong Kong Before The British" between pp. 330-352 and 440-464 of T'ien Hsia Monthly, Shanghai, 1941. [Since reprinted in Vol. 10 (1970) of this Journal -Ed.] (3) Fr. D. J. Finn — various articles in The Hong Kong Naturalist between 1933-36. These are now reprinted in (ed. T. F. Ryan, S.J.) Archaeological Finds On Lamma Island (Ai》) Near Hong Kong, Hong Kong, Ricci publications, Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958. (4) C. M. Heanley and J. L. Shellshear “A Contribution to the Prehistory of Hongkong and the New Territories", Praehistoria Asia Orientalis, I, Premier Congrès des Préhistoriens d'Extrême-Orient, Hanoi, 1932. (5) W. Schofield — "Implements Of Palaeolithic Type In Hong Kong" at pp. 272-275, The Hong Kong Naturalist, December. 1935. (6) W. Schofield "The Proto-Historic Site of the Hong Kong Culture at Shek Pik, Lantau, Hong Kong" at pp. 235-305 of Proceedings of the Third Congress of Pre-historians of the Far East, Singapore, Government Printing House, 1940. J. W. H., Hong Kong, 1972. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 182 BOOK REVIEWS major systems of romanization now in use by English speaking sinologists, viz. Wade-Giles, Gwoyeu Romatzyh, Pinyin, and Yale. This alone might make the book worth the money to those of us who have trouble keeping them all sorted out. I, for one, would like to call for a revised and expanded version, with smaller print and less wasted space and adding the French, German, and Russian systems. In such a form one might predict that it would be a must for every beginning scholar in the field. Cornell University, 1972. JOHN MCCOY ARMANDO DA SILVA. TAI YU SHAN, TRADITIONAL ECOLOGICAL ADAPTION IN A SOUTH CHINESE ISLAND. Taipei, Orient Cultural Service, 1972 pp. 102, U.S.$4.75. This brief work is one in the series 'Asian Folklore and Social Life Monographs' (Vol. XXXII) edited by Professor Lou Tsu-k'uang in collaboration with Professor Wolfram Eberhard. The author was educated in Hong Kong and at the time of publication was on the faculty of the Geography Department in the University of Hawaii. The book is of particular interest to Hong Kong residents because it is written about the Colony's largest island, Lantau or Tai Yu Shan; and because little has been written on the particular aspects of local rural life with which he deals, The book is an abridged version of a master's thesis for the Department of Geography, University of California, Berkeley, for which the field work was done on Lantau in 1962-64. The author states in his preface: "I chose the island of Tai Yu Shan as a place for study as it still possessed many cultural relics of archeological, historical, and ecological interest; old forts, abandoned beach-temples, disused lime kilns, ruins of former settlements, hillside terraces in disuse, and well-constructed hillside trails that led to nowhere. Fast disappearing even then were certain forms of livelihood such as sea-weed collecting, stake-net fishing, and hillside liquor distilling. But most of all, I chose Tai Yu Shan because I just enjoyed being there." His purpose was to describe a traditional coastal way of life that had endured for so long. "I thought it important then, as I still do now, that I had to understand and to interpret, before imminent changes made things difficult, the man-land processes that made for the genre of Tai Yu Shan." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 184 BOOK REVIEWS However, Mr. da Silva has much to offer us, and I hope will go on to develop his earlier work, taking further, among other good things, his interesting study of the terms used in agriculture and land use, extending them into the other dialects of the area in which some at least may have originated, and developing their connection with the cosmology of the peasant universe. I hope, too, that he will return to Hong Kong to trace for us the continued process of erosion of the traditional coastal pattern of life in a South Chinese island.* Hong Kong. March 1974. JAMES HAYES * Interested readers may wish to know that Mr. da Silva wrote on the Fan Lau fort (on Lantau) in the 1968 Journal, and some notes on Ethno-botany in the 1969 issue. VILLAGE AND BUREAUCRACY IN SOUTHERN SUNG CHINA. Brian E. McKnight, University of Chicago Press, 1971, pp. xi, 219. As its title indicates, this book is concerned with local administration in Sung China. Using the Sung Hui Yao Chi Kao, an official repository of imperial documents, and the collected papers of Sung officials, annalistic histories, local gazetteers and other miscellaneous works, Dr. McKnight describes the structure and staffing of village administration in this period. These sources enable him to recreate an otherwise little known aspect of Sung times; government at the village and sub-prefectural (hsien) level. Local administration in the Southern Sung was carried out by employing local residents; at first by obliging members of higher-class families to serve for limited periods and, by the end of the dynasty, by employing persons for long periods. The latter were often professionals paid either by individual families or from the income of endowed estates and chosen from among the clerks in the local government offices. The author provides a useful preface that deals with his sources and their limitations, and an introduction that places the governmental and social aspects of the Southern Sung period in the perspective of earlier practice and later developments. Besides any ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 The Hong Kong Region 135 Chu Ch'ih-shih #, Notes on the History of Canton *** 8 chuan, Chia Ch'ing year, 1806-07. [YCKC] Ho lineage of Pui O, South Lantau, Hong Kong **1*4*££*...✯ Family record: apparently 1930s. In manuscript. Hsu Ch'ien-hsieh, A Comprehensive Geography of the Ch'ing Empire #₺ 356 chuan, first edition, 1743. [TCITC] Jao Tsung-i ✯ ✯ 1 (Compiler), The Ch'ao-chou Gazetteer # # & Swatow, circa 1946-48. [CCC] Jen Yu-wen § 2 x (Compiler), Kwangtung Art and Scholarship ✯✯X» Hong Kong, Committee for the Advancement of Chinese Culture, 3 vols, 1941. [KTWW] Jen Yu-wen § 2x (Compiler), Sung Wong Toi—A Commemorative Volume *££*** Hong Kong, Chiu Clansmen's Association, 1960. Juan Yuan and others ¥, Gazetteer of the Kwangtung Province ★★ . 334 chüan, revised edition, 1823, reprinted 1864 and reissued 1933 in 5 vols. by Commercial Press, Shanghai. [KTTC] Li Chin-wei (Editor) ###, Centenary History of Hong Kong ✯ * 4. Hong Kong, Nan Chung (†) Printing House, c. 1947. [Centenary History] Lo Hsiang-lin 4*, Historical Sources for the Study of the Hakkas #Hong Kong, Institute of Chinese Culture +**, 1965. [LO1965] Mao Hung-pin and Jun Lin, Atlas with Commentary of Kwangtung ★★☆. 92 chuan, Canton, about 1865. [KTTS] Mao Yuan-¡ *, Record of Military Preparations. 240 chüan, Canton, late Ch'ing reprint of Original of 1620. Shu Mou-kuan 4 and Wang Ch'ung-hsi 1, Gazetteer of the Hsin-an District #✯.§. 24 chüan, revised edition, 1819. [HNHC] Tai Chao-chen and others A, Gazetteer of the Canton Prefecture ★★✯✯. 163 chüan, Canton, revised edition, 1880. [KCFC] + ================================================================================ 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 146 W. SCHOFIELD supplementary votes. Some D.O.s seemed to pride themselves on saving as much as possible of this vote, but I always thought it a D.O.'s duty not only to see as much of his district as he could, but to let its inhabitants see him. One of the first questions I had to deal with was a request from the Sheung Tong villagers to make a grant from the small public works fund of $400 at my disposal to enable a footbridge to be built over the deep ravine dividing one side of their valley from the other. This was to be of granite beams, quarried in the Shap Pat Heung, and carried up over 1000 feet to Sheung Tong. I was anxious to get the village to contribute to the cost, as my vote for small public works was only $400 a year, and the cost of the three granite beams, and their transport by coolie up the mountain, would have come to about $160; and a good slice of the vote was usually granted to the Cheung Chau Residents' Association for upkeep and extension of paths there. The villagers could raise no money; they could not furnish coolies for transport; and they would not consider laying anything so ill-omened as an even number of stone beams: so to my regret I felt I could do nothing for people who could or would do nothing to help themselves. In those days the Cheung Chau ferry was a large one-deck launch and passengers paid 3 cents each for a passage, but for 5 cents the Kaifong committee who ran it, largely in the interests of the fish industry, would give you a bamboo chair on the foredeck to sit on and this ferry was what drew missionaries to settle on the island from about 1907 onwards and build themselves bungalows for summer holidays, so saving the high cost of a Hong Kong apartment. Its timetable rarely suited my official arrangements, as by it I could never spend more than an hour ashore unless I got a night's lodging on the island; so I generally used my hired launch. In the thirties a guest house was opened for visitors in a large bungalow not far up the hill from the police station, and after 1934 I went there two or three times with friends while working on archaeological sites on Cheung Chau and the nearby coast of Lantau. This police station was not built till 1913 or 1914: before then the police had used a large house near the Kaifong pier, about 150 yards south of the later concrete pier, as their station. In 1912 a junk came to the pier by night, the crew and passengers landed, and carried the station by a sudden rush, as they were an armed pirate gang. The sergeant in charge and some police escaped and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH 155 crews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. One of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. As I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap * Public Works Department. ================================================================================ 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 198 NOTES AND QUERIES * The evacuation of the South-east coast of China was carried out from the 1st year to the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1662-1668). It was because of the disturbances of pirates and the followers of Koxinga (Cheng Shing-kung) along the coasts of Kwangtung and Fukien. The disturbances were so large that the Ch'ing Army could not stop them. The government evacuated fifty li from the coast. The lands were abandoned in order that the pirates and the followers of Koxinga could not obtain supplies from them. (see my article: "The Chow Wang Yi Kung Chi of Kam Tin", published in the Wah Kiu Man Fa of Wah Kiu Yat Po for 13th September 1976 綿田之周王二公祠,原载1976年9月13日華僑日報文化版) + * In the O Mun Kei Leuk ME 1800 edition, it was recorded, "During the 7th year of Yung Cheng reign, there were forts erected on the two hills. This strengthened the guards of the Tai Yue Shan Shuen”. The Tai Yue Shan Shuen was probably at the place of Tai O today. The forts on the "two hills" are most likely to be the Kai Yik Fort on its south-west and Tung Chung Fort on its east. This shows that the Fan Lau Fort was probably rebuilt and refortified in the 7th year of the Yung Ching reign. 19 See my article: "A Short History of the Pirates of Hong Kong before 1842", published in Volume 8, No. 4 of the Kwong Tung Man Hin 廣東文献(1979). 11 see Chapter 13 of San On Yuen Chi Chapter 81 of Kwong Chow Fu Chi A **** 1819 edition and 1879 edition. 12 Chapter 12 of San On Yuen Chi (1819) stated, "During the K'ang Hsi reign, it was because of robbery and piracy along the south-east coast that the Ch'ing government evacuated the coastal regions. Later, with the surrender of the pirates, the Ch'ing government extended the coastal boundary. More forts and guard-stations were set up. Those of outstanding importance were the Kai Yik Fort on Lantau Island, the Nam Tau Fort, and the Chik Wan Fort." The book was written in 1819, and the famous pirate Cheung Po-tsai had surrendered in 1810. This shows that the fort was again under the control of the Ch'ing government after 1810. 14 1a Chapter 130 of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi 4 1822 edition recorded, "Tai U Shan, an island which lay in the midst of the sea, was a place where foreign ships anchored. There were only two inlets for the anchoring of these ships: they were at Tai O and Tung Chung. At that time, Tai O was guarded by a garrison of thirteen men. There was already the Kai Yik Fort under a Tsin Tsung (lieutenant) of the Tai Pang Battalion." The book was published in 1822. This proves that before 1822, there was the Kai Yik Fort guarding the south-west tip of Lantau Island. 14 see Armando M. De Silva's article, op. cit. 15 also called Tung Chung Hau in the past. 10 To the south-east of the valley is the Sunset Peak (Tai Tung Shan 大東山); the Lantau Peak (Fung Wang Shan 凤凰山) lies to the south-west. 17 Sheung Ling Pei Village is one of the largest villages in the Tung Chung Valley. It is situated to the east of the Tung Chung Walled City. 18 Ha Ling Pei Village, an adjacent village to Sheung Ling Pei Village, is situated to the west of the Tung Chung Walled City. 19 See my article: "Distribution of Forts and Guard-stations on Lantau Island during the Late Ch'ing period", JHKBRAS vol. 18: 1978. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 136 NOTES AND QUERIES 3 Map of the East Coast of the Kwangtung Province, in the Ch'ing Cho Hoi Keung To Shuet 清初海疆圖說之粵東海圖說篇 The book was prepared in the Reign of Yung Cheng (1723-1735). * Chapter 43 and Chapter 255 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1864 edition 阮元廣東通志卷四十三及卷二百五十五 5 Table 37 of Ch'ing Shi Ko * In the 12th year of the K'ang Hsi Reign (1673), Ng Shaam-kwai led an uprising against the Ch'ing Government. The uprising was suppressed in the 20th year of K'ang Hsi (1681). Some of his followers turned to piracy on the south coast of China. 7 Chapter 255 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1864 edition * As recorded in the Map of the East Coast of the Kwangtung Province, in the Ch'ing Cho Hoi Keung To Shuet, within 16 coastal counties of the Kwangtung Province, a total of 41 forts, 312 cannon places and 618 guard-houses were erected when Yeung Lin was Viceroy of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Province. Of these, 4 forts, 32 cannon places, and 74 guard-houses were erected in the San On county. * He was appointed as Viceroy of Kwangtung Province in the 1st year of the Yung Cheng Reign (1723). The Province of Kwangsi was then under Kung Yuk-sun, as Governor. 10 See my article The Fat Tong Mun Fort (or the Tung Lung Fort) in Volume 18 of the Journal of the Hong Kong Branch Royal Asiatic Society. DISTRIBUTION OF TEMPLES ON LANTAU ISLAND AS RECORDED IN 1979 Lantau Island lies to the west of the Island of Hong Kong. Before the Sung Dynasty, the people living there were mainly of the Yiu tribes. Then came the refugees of the Southern Sung. The population increased during the Ming Dynasty; and many of the temples on the island were first built at this time. During the first year of the K'ang Hsi reign of the Ch'ing Dynasty, the people living in the coastal areas had to move back to the interior, because of the policy called the "Evacuation of the Coast". Seven years later, in the eighth year of the K'ang Hsi reign, they were allowed to come back. However, like many houses, some of the temples decayed during their absence. From then on the population increased rapidly, with people flocking to the area. The local temples were rebuilt and repaired. The temples listed below are in existence in 1979. Though some ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 NOTES AND QUERIES 141 (1810), General Chin Mun-fu ***** suggested that the Fat Tong Mun Fort be abandoned and be rebuilt near the Kowloon guard-station ✯ ✯ A Viceroy Pak Ling T✯ ordered the Magistrate of the San On County 觚 ***◊ to carry out the suggestion. Chapter 175 of Kwangtung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition KKAR £&4-4*+ states, "The Kowloon Fort Aate lies 290 # E west of the Tai Pang Battalion 4. It was guarded by one pa-tsung and one ngai-wai with 48 guards." 5 After the Opium War, the Chinese were defeated, and Hong Kong was ceded to the British. In the 23rd year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1843) Ke Ying was Viceroy of the Kwangtung and Kwangsi Provinces **** and Wong Yan-tung & was Governor of the Liang Kwang-tung ✯✯✯. They proposed building the Kowloon Walled City. The work was completed in the 27th year of the Tao Kuang Reign (1847). * See Chapter 13 of the Kwangtung Tao Shuet, Tung Chih edition ŁATÁRUK+ which records. "The Kowloon Walled City was under the command of a fu-cheung ## or brigadier of the Naval Forces of the Tai Pang Battalion. Under him was an extra ngar-wai who guarded the Walled City with 150 men. There were 75 men under one tsin-tsune for lieutenant guarding the Kowloon Fort; and one ngai-wai-tsin-tsung ††or sub-lieutenant leading 15 men guarding the Kowloon Coastal Guard Station ALDA. * See Chapter 73 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, Kuang Hsü edition ANA££*TE and Kwong Tung Hoi Tao Shuet, Kuang Hsü edition 張之洞廣東海圆說. * See my article 'The Old Cannons found in Hong Kong' in Volume 8, Part 2 of Kwangtung Man Hin REÆ : RKARXUŁ^ËZI * The Old Yamen is now occupied by the CNEC Grace Light School. TUEN MUN FROM CHINESE HISTORICAL RECORDS 2 Tuen Mun1 lies in the western part of the New Territories. The highest mountain in this area is the Tuen Mun Shan ₺F2 which reaches a height of 582.9 metres. To the east of the mountain is the Tuen Mun Bay, also called the Castle Peak Bay lying to its east, and the Lantau with Kau King Shan A Island lying to its south. Tuen Mun Bay is surrounded by mountains on three sides, thus forming a good typhoon shelter from the strong easterlies. It is also the waterway for entering the Chu Kiang i or Pearl River estuary of the Kwangtung Province. The Bay had been an important harbour for the Persians, the Arabs and the people from India, Indo-china and the East Indies. Their trading fleets had to anchor and gather at Tuen Mun before entering the Chu Kiang. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 BOOK LISTS 173 perhaps the case.* A list of Canton and Hong Kong newspapers is included in Roswell S. Britton, The Chinese Periodical Press 1800-1912 (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1933). (n) Subscription books These are not strictly speaking “books,” but subscription lists bound in the same Chinese-style format. They either promote an object like the reconstruction, repair or extension of a temple, school or charitable hospital, the repair of a bridge or road, or in Republican times the financing of a militia or a self-managing local government or commercial or other association. Whatever the cause, a full subscription list was usually printed upon the conclusion of the work or the closing of the lists; or in the case of temples, buildings and public works often placed in the building or nearby, on a stone tablet. The short list which follows is merely a sample. There were many more subscription books in handwritten format: I saw these when District Officer South 1957-62 as they were sometimes brought in for endorsement, and I have collected others. Section B BOOKS PROVIDED FOR AND BY SPECIALISTS I have not attempted to provide any listing of material in this huge field, save for the specialists in family rites and social etiquette, whose stock of knowledge seems mostly to have been derived from the hand-written volumes which researchers in Hong Kong have chosen to style “village hand-books”. If not actually derived from the printed books listed in sub-sections (b), (d), (f) and (g) above, their contents were similar in nature. A detailed comparison has yet to be made, and is an important scholarly task. I wish to thank Mr. Peter Yeung, Curator of the Hung On-To Memorial Library (Hong Kong Collection) of the University of Hong Kong for his great help in preparing these lists. Hong Kong, 1982 JAMES HAYES * A fragment of a Hsuan-tung issue of a Canton newspaper (1909) was given me by a Tai O (Lantau) shopkeeper, and I recall seeing a newspaper that came to light at Pui O (also Lantau), behind the plaster of a decaying temple last repaired in 1914. ================================================================================ 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 97 in the N. E. corner. My pilot not being acquainted with the channel, I got a fisherman's boat to go up with one of the Chinamen I had on board, to see if he could recognise his property. He shortly returned on board, saying his boat was there, and that the other boats were pirates. I immediately stood in under easy steam, when the pirates seeing my intention, made sail, and ran through the channel towards Wanchowchow (Stonecutters). I fired a few shots at them, but they soon got under the cover of the land. Then sending my boats after them, and running round outside the Island. I had the satisfaction of driving them on shore, and destroying five, as well as liberating two market-boats with several passengers who had been in confinement for several days. Three captured men are sworn to by one of the owners of the boats, and I have sent them in irons to Hong Kong. These piratical boats had all the rebel flag flying and fired upon our boats, without however doing any damage. Ma Wan ("Horse Bay"). This island is low-lying, although the geological structure is the same as Tsingyi and Lantau. The east coast has a fine bay, almost unapproachable for rocks. The inhabitants are mostly Hakka. One of the Customs stations built for the so-called "Blockade of Hong Kong" during the 1870s and 1880s still stands on this island; it is now used as a school. The waters around Ma Wan are known as Kapshuimun ("Rushing Water Channel"). The name is apt since Kapshuimun has about the swiftest tiderip of any channel in Hong Kong. It is 25 fathoms deep. It is the track of all steamers from Hong Kong going to and from the Delta. Opposite Ma Wan, on the south shore of Kapshuimun, that is, on the northernmost tip of Lantau, are the only wolframite mines in the islands. Lantau. This is our biggest island, two and a half times the size of Hong Kong Island. Lantau Peak is the highest peak in the Ladrones 3061 feet. The northern end is almost deserted except for a few tiny hamlets round Yam O (“Hidden Haven"), a perfect smugglers' ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 101 The There are two similar settlements nearer the Police Station. boatpeople's huts are designed on the model of a sampan or junk, it would seem. Almost certainly the boatpeople are a sign of a non-Chinese element in the population. Several fires have happened, the last in 1930, since when galvanised iron has become popular as roofing, replacing the older roofing of woven palm leaf matting. Temple funds are often applied to small public works, and in such cases the District Officer gives dollar for dollar from his vote. Works such as repairing tracks, or steps to the water, or paving streets in Tai O often use this source of funding. The District Officer often holds court in the charge room of the Police Station, which is one of the coolest and healthiest in the Territory. A little to the south of Tai O is Yi O (“Second Heaven"), which is a mere village, and a little further south again Tsin Yu Wan ("Arrow Fish Bay") which has a beautiful sandy beach with a temple, but is otherwise deserted. 1.1 0 On the extreme south-west tip of Lantau is Shek Sun (“Stone Bamboo-shoots") on a typical dumb-bell isthmus of sand between two bays. The isthmus connects Lantau proper with the low granite hills forming Fan Lau point which is the end of British territory in this direction. On one hill is an ancient fort, thought to be Dutch; if so, it was probably built and occupied at the time of their attack on Macao in 1622. (The failure of this attack led to the Dutch occupying Taiwan in Formosa, thus drawing Chinese settlers there, who expelled them about fifty years later.) The fort may, however, in fact be Chinese. The name of this village probably comes from the way the boulders stick out of the hills above it, like low pillars. There are some fields on the hill above Shek Sun enclosed by dry-stone walls: evidently these were once used for dry crops, but they are now abandoned. They were not pastures: animals are never enclosed when grazing. Turning to the south coast of Lantau, and moving eastwards from Fan Lau Point, you see in succession three valleys each with a group of villages, all of which are purely agricultural and fishing. ================================================================================ 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 105 with rocks and reefs in addition; the name may mean "Dragnet Isles". The northernmost island is a dumb-bell with quite a good harbour, and a fishing village of huts very different from ordinary Chinese dwellings. This island was another settlement of early man. The southern larger isle has two or three villages on its dumb-bell isthmus. There is a shrimp paste factory here which exports to Europe and America. The names Tai and Sai A Chau mean "Big and Little Forked Island". A small island to the west of the group is also a dumb-bell; the isthmus here is covered at high tide. Patung or Shek Kwu Chau (“Stone Drum Island") is rocky and barren, but with one small valley where cultivation is possible. It was once proposed to lease the island as a rabbit farm, but the proposers never went on with it.20 its English name To the south-east of Lantau are a number of more important islands. Of these the most prosperous is Cheung Chau (“Long Island"). Cheung Chau is the best example of a dumb-bell island in these waters. The northern end contains a small hamlet and cultivation, the southern end contains the "Peak", or European reservation. It started there through missionaries building holiday bungalows on the hills: they began doing so in 1906, attracted by the beaches, the easy marketing and the village ferry to Hong Kong. This was run in the interest of the fish trade, but was taken over some 10 years ago by the Western Ferries Co., a Hong Kong concern, Between the fish trade and the market gardens, Cheung Chau breeds more flies per square yard than any other place in the Colony. It has a street cleaning squad, but of course this cannot touch the masses of filth on private property. There is a fire engine, a Government school, a hospital, and a big temple to Pak Tai, god of the Pole Star, the finances of which were inextricably mixed with those of the market, the ferry, and the electric light station. There are plays annually performed in May for the pleasure of Pak Tai, and incidentally for his worshippers, in a huge decorated matshed put up in front of the temple. It draws big crowds, and stimulates business quite a lot. There are other temples too, and little shrines to local spirits. There is also ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 112 Haven". Pui O at present often uses for its name characters meaning "Shell Harbour". 1* Yi Long Wan ("Second Wave Bay"). 1 These villages used to stand just south of Discovery Bay but have since given way to the major housing project of that name. " Tai Pak Island is now called Tai Lei ("Great Profit"). 19 Shau Chau is now called Sha Chau ("Sand Isle"). "Tongkwu is now called Lung Kwu Chau ("Dragon Drum Island”). "The Society for the Aid and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts (SARDA) has had a treatment centre here since about 1960. 31 * Capital of San On District. ** No villages now survive on Hei Ling Chau, which, after the closure of the leprosarium, is now occupied solely by the Correctional Services Department. The remaining villagers were resited to various places on Lantau in 1952-53. ** Chau Kong is now called Sunshine Island (Chau Kung To), after an agricultural rehabilitation programme for refugee families launched there in the 1950s by Mr. Gus Borgeest (of Hong Kong) and others. "Kau Yi Tsai is now called Siu Kau Yi Chau, with the same meaning. **A prewar periodical magazine containing many items of great interest, including Father D.J. Finn's contributions on local archaeology, 1933-36. These were reprinted, edited by Rev. T.F. Ryan S.J., by Ricci Hall, University of Hong Kong, 1958, entitled Archaeological Finds on Lamma Island (M) near Hong Kong. ** Waglan at present uses for its name characters meaning "Barrier to the Waves". #T Respectively Cheung Shek Pai, Ngan Wu, and Shan Liu. " Also known in English as Junk Island. At present the island is known in Chinese only as Fat Tau Chau ("Buddha's Head Island"). Nam Tong Island is now known as Tung Lung Chau ("Eastern Dragon Island”). * This is the Tin Hau Temple (Tai Miu) on Joss House Bay. After partial excavation, it is now listed as an ancient monument under the care of the Urban Services Department. ** Respectively Pak A, Leung Shuen Wan, and Pak Lap. ** These inlets were drowned in the mid 1970s to form the High Island Reservoir. *Tolo Harbour. Yuen Chau Tsai, see note 2 above. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 208 A CH'ING CANNON FROM WYNDHAM STREET, HONG KONG JAMES HAYES The photographs at Plates 15 to 17 are of a large cannon from the Chia Ching period (1796-1820) of the Ch'ing dynasty. For some time after its discovery in 1965 it was kept in the old Marine Office at Rumsey Street, Connaught Road Central, but is presently located at the entrance to the Marine Department's dockyard beside the Canton Road Government Offices, Kowloon. A plaque on the carriage made for this cannon states that it was discovered during excavations on 4th March 1965 in the forecourt of Nos. 10-12 Wyndham Street near the "South China Morning Post" building. It was, probably, originally positioned at the site of the third Harbour office (1843-1845). On the barrel are markings giving the weight as 1,500 catties and showing that it was made during the tenth month of the 10th year (1805) of the reign of Emperor Chia Ch'ing by Man Tsoi (*) Man Shing (萬盛) Man Ming (萬明) and Man Tat (萬德). It is not known whether this cannon was brought to Hong Kong when it was first made, which is unlikely in my view, or whether it was taken from elsewhere by British forces during the first China War in 1840-42. Other cannons from this period are to be found on the walls of the Tung Chung Fort, at Lantau Island. See this Journal Vol. 4 (1964) pp. 146-150, and Vol. 18 (1978) pp. 207-209 with photographs. For two earlier cannon from Hong Kong see "A Cannon from the end of the Ming period" in JHKBRAS Vol. 7 (1967) pp. 152-157, with plates. ================================================================================ 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-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 164 R.A. BOWLER, D.S.C. YANG AND A.J.E. SMITH to cover the period 1952 to 1977, but from about 1957 those beds closest to the Chinese coast were not re-leased. Since 1977 no leases have been granted and the present claim to "ownership" between China-based farmers and Hong Kong-based farmers divides the bay almost centrally. However, this simplistic division belies the close ties that still exist between oyster farmers. Figure 1 Location Plan Nor Ni 2 Am Scal Pearl Estury Shappe Fuyurg Tungtian Xiaochan PEARL ESTUARY Deep Bay. Nei Ling Ting! People's Republic China (Guangdong Province) South China Sea + Kildmavat A Duchan SHENZHEN CITY Baoan County Xixiang Manion Houhai Shakou DEEP BAY DRUN UDISWM? Black Polo Special Economic Zone Shehe Cucall I'm Shul Wai Law Fau Shan New Territories Lantau Island Legend PRC Oyster beds HONG KONG Oyster beds ================================================================================ 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 270 P.H. HASE, J.W. HAYES AND K.C. IU In the 1970s when District Officer and Town Manager, Tsuen Wan, my contacts with local village people established that there were families in Lo Wai which had tea bushes on the mountain slopes of Tai Mo Shan. The Hui (4) family of Lo Wai village collected tea from wild bushes near the present radar station at the very top of Tai Mo Shan. One old man, born in 1896, used to collect ten catties a week during the season, commenting that the best time for plucking the leaves was in the third lunar month: the leaves become older and coarser thereafter. This type of tea was described as wan mo (雲霧) ("cloud mist"). He began doing this when he was about 10 years old, selling to other villagers and not to shops or teahouses. He also collected medicinal herbs on the mountain. Another favourable location for wild tea trees on this mountain, he said, was Nam Tong To (南塘肚) where the Shing Mun villagers collected leaves from wild tea bushes there of the same type. Such trees could not be replanted and grown elsewhere, he stated. Separately, old Shing Mun villagers living in Kam Tin since their removal there in 1928 for construction of the Jubilee Reservoir, themselves confirmed their taking of leaves from trees in this locality. In the foothills west of Tsuen Wan, villagers of Yau Kam Tau also collected leaves from wild tea bushes.12 Lantau island possessed a rather special type of red "tea", with a brilliant red infusion, known as tsz pooi tin kwai (紫背天葵). Tsz pooi tin kwai was described to me as being “half herb half tea”. It was used as a kind of cooling tea (清熱茶) for “over-heating” from food or drink, sore throats and the like. The leaves came from a plant growing between cracks in rocks and stones in high gulleys where there was much moisture. The people of Tong Fuk village on south Lantau, at the foot of the Fung Wong mountain, used to collect these from upper slopes. It was also collected by the women inmates of the religious houses of Ngong Ping and others living at the Po Lin monastery there. Some of the produce found its way to shops in Tai O market where one of the leading shopkeepers, chairman of the Rural Committee, gave me some at intervals. According to Shiu-ying's Hu's An Enumeration of Chinese Materia Medica (Hong Kong, Chinese University Press, 1980) page 153, it is to be described in English as the Tea Begonia (Begonia fimbristipula) and in Chinese as (紅天葵/紫背天葵).13 ================================================================================ 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-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 310 VILLAGE SHOPS IN THE HONG KONG REGION JAMES HAYES Village shops are seldom written about: in the main, I suppose, because they were of such little consequence. Villagers had to go to market towns or market villages for necessities like oil and salt, and anything else that they did not produce or make themselves. The village shops were seemingly contemptible affairs, selling sweets and an assortment of joss papers, and were run as part-time ventures by village people. Some examples from different places have cropped up in my accounts of discussions with old persons born in the last few decades of the 19th century. At Ma Wan Chung (pop. 51 at the 1911 Census of Hong Kong) a coastal village at Tung Chung on Lantau Island near an anchorage, there were a few little shops which, in addition to the basic stock-in-trade described above sold peanut oil for villagers' lamps. Their status and uncertain existence were graphically described as being "run by villagers who operated them when they had a little money to buy goods and stopped when they had none". Ma Wan Chung had some business with the resident boat population, so there was more incentive than in ordinary places. From my enquiries, it seems that many of the sixteen Tung Chung villages (total pop. 1198 in 1911) had a shop of this kind, because there were always villagers who hoped to make a little money in this way from providing a convenient service for the other residents. There were also visits from itinerant hawkers who brought with them a wider variety of goods including crockery, oil, sweets, cloth etc. Elsewhere on Lantau Island, at the large village of Shek Pik on the south coast of the island, (pop. 363 in 1911), there were three or four little shops when my informants were boys, in the first decade of this century. They were kept by village men "as the women were illiterate and couldn't count or keep simple accounts". They sold groceries, kerosene, joss paper and ritual goods, cakes, sweets, fruit and the like. As at Tung Chung they stopped and started as capital was or ceased to be available, and their operators changed frequently. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 255 on, principally by David Faure (on my left) and his colleagues at the Chinese University, and their students, in researching local history. I came to Hong Kong in 1956 to work for the Hong Kong Government. After a year at the Hong Kong University's language school, where our RAS member Mr. Francis Sham was my teacher (in the audience), I was sent to the New Territories as a District Officer. It was the custom, then and long before, to send new administrative officers to the New Territories, and the unfortunate villagers and local leaders had to put up with them. The only benefit they might have had out of it was that these youngsters had not had time to get set in their ways as civil servants. In many of them, a spark of interest in local life was kindled by what they saw around them. This was certainly the case with me. I immediately became fascinated with the communities of the Southern District, which at that time took in Sai Kung and the Clearwater Bay area in the eastern New Territories and the present Islands District on the west and south. It was a wonderful life. I had a Marine Department launch every now and again, and was able to go out and see places, all as part of the job. Many people before me had also enjoyed it. There was only one snag about the work when I was there. The Government had decided to build the Shek Pik Reservoir on Lantau Island, and I had a good deal of extra toil and trouble on that account. In particular, two villages had to be resettled. However, when you move villagers for development, you are in a position to learn quite a bit about them. I made an effort at the time and collected as much information as I could about these villages, but I simply did not know enough about Chinese rural society to know what more I might have got by different questioning. Anyway, the reservoir was my main preoccupation when I was District Officer South, a post I held for five years, with an overseas leave in between. When I went around this fascinating part of the New Territories, I saw the villages, the market towns and the resident boat people, all very much as they must have been at the end of the Ch'ing Dynasty, up to 1911. I am not exaggerating: that's what they seemed like at that time, owing to the lack of development. ================================================================================ 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 397 the Yuen Ka Walled Village E, Mui Wo, Shek Pik, Tong Fuk 塘福,Shek Mun Kap 石門甲,Shui Hau 水口, Shek Lau Hang 石榴坑, Ngau Au 牛凹, Sha Lo Wan, Shek Tau Po石頭莆,Yi O 二澳 and Yau Ku Long. Also, Hakka villages were found at Tai Ho, Pak Mong, Wang Long and Ling Pei Walled Village at Tung Chung." The population on the island increased, and they depended on fishing and farming. Nowadays, Mui Wo, Pui O, Shui Hau, Tai O and Tung Chung have developed into towns; Shek Pik Village has been removed, and a reservoir built on that site. However, many villages founded in the Ching Dynasty still remain with little development. NOTES ANTHONY SIU KWOK-KIN 1 The inscription of the 42nd year of Chien Lung (1777) on the stone tablet in the Hau Wong Temple of Tung Chung bears the name "Tai Hai Shan". 1 See Chapter 19 of Kwong Yu Kei, Ming edition. 1 1 See Chapter 2 of Yuet Man Chuen See Kei Leuk, 1684 edition. See Chapter 7 of Lin Tien-wai and the writer's Essays on the History of Hong Kong Prior to British Colonisation, Commercial Press, 1984. It is now known as Lantau Island, and in some newly published maps of Hong Kong, it is also known as Tai Ho Island. + See S. G. Davis and May Tregear's Man Kok Tsui, Archaeological Site 30, Lantau Island, Hong Kong, Hong Kong Univ. Press 1961; and “An Archaeological Site at Shek Pik”, Journal Monograph I, Hong Kong Archaeological Society 1975. 7 See Chapter 29 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi 8 See Chapter 1 of the Tung Kwun Yuen Chi, 1464 edition. 非 See Tsang Yat Man's "Hai Nam Chaak, an old Salt Pan on Lantau Island" 大嶼山鹽田學, No. 284, Cosmorama Pictorial, Hong Kong. 9 As Note 8. See Tsang Yat Man's "A Textual Research on the Ins and Outs of the Rebellion of the Natives of Tai Hsi Shan – Now Tai Yu Shan of Hong Kong - in the third year of Ching Yuan of Emperor Ning Tsung of South Sung Dynasty" 南宋寧宗慶元三年, Chu Hai Journal No. 11, October, 1980. 12 See Chapter 67 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1558 edition. 13 See Tai Hai Shan 大箂山 in Ng Loi 吳榮's Nam Hoi Ku Chik Kei 南海古鏞記, Chapter 61-1 of Su Fu, Shun Chih edition. 14 See Chapter 12 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1697 edition. + 15 As Note 4. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 178 NOTES 1 Said by one of the Tangs of Ha Pa. The father had won a Jockey Club lottery ticket Mrs Wong Chau Yuk-bing, 10 July 1991 I once became concerned with a grave on a hill above Tsuen Wan. There had been a mistake and confusion when exhuming illegal graves and removing the remains to an authorized cemetery. My subsequent enquiry showed that this slope contained a number of graves of Chans of Sam Tung Uk, repaired in 1919, and another old grave belonging to their cousins from Kwan Mun Hau, a recent reburial of another of their graves whose old site had been required for development; the earth grave with stone tablet dated 1954 belonging to another local lineage recently taken up and remains placed in an urn (whose removal caused all the trouble); and a Tsang grave dated 1909 but removed at some time previously. The enquiry showed that the hill was a favoured burial site, that it was mostly monopolized by the Chans of Sam Tung Uk; that they had received objections from Kwan Mun Hau to a new grave and had not used it but found another site. 4 The exercise was prompted by what I personally felt was the misguided notion that all the owners of old graves could, and should, one fine day be asked to exhume them. 4 This was still felt to be the case, even though some leading members of the clan were Christians, with forebears who had also been members of the local protestant Chuen Yuen Church, established in Tsuen Wan about 1905. + Addressed to DOTW but sent to NTA HQ. See Secretary for the NT's NT L/M No.(172) in E/948/78 to TM&DO TW dated 11 December 1980, enclosing Chinese letter dated November 1980. + Chinese letter from Mr. Wong Kit-hung, Village Representative of Shui Pin Village, Yuen Long, dated 14 January 1980. "Wong Cho-yip and 22 other villagers of this place are the owners of the grave of Ancestor Shui-tai at Tsing Lung Tau. Ancestor Shui-tai was buried there in the tenth month of the first year of Tung Chih [1862], so that the grave has a history of 120 years. The villagers have recently learned that the government will resume the land there for development. They fear that great damage will be done to the fung-shui [of the clan] if the grave is destroyed. We entreat you to remedy the situation quickly [by cancelling the notice] or by compensating for this loss, so that they may choose a lucky day for the removal of their ancestral grave (and another auspicious burial ground for). M Chopped DOTW Inward. Serial No. 1861 of 17 August 1963. The District Commissioner gave an account of a ceremonial visit following damage to a grave. See Annual Departmental Report, District Commissioner, New Territories, 1955-56. 4 ADR, DCNT 1955-56, para. 87. Mr Wong Kwai-chi, Land Inspector, Class 1. He and I had been colleagues and friends since we first served together in the District Office South, twenty years before. || DOTW file TW6/WL/71, Chinese letter dated 4 May 1971. 1: See JHKBRAS, Vol. 17 (1977), p.189 for background. File TW130/983/77, for China Light and Power Company's electricity supply sub-station on NE Lantau. 14 This was partly their own fault, as owing to a particularly intense intra-lineage feud, all through the late 1970s and most of the 1980s they could not agree on removal terms, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 200 essential. So my mother had come to the comparative safety of Hong Kong for the birth. I cannot recall the event though by curious coincidence my first memories are of the Matilda. I was four at the time and had developed roaring appendicitis. It had to come out. Now a journey up the Peak by the Peak Tram was no great novelty but to go up by a Peak Car was a great adventure. We went to the hospital and there I went through the traumatic experience of being gassed by ether poured on a mask held down against my protesting hands. No doubt a more modern anesthetic would have been less painful but it would have also been less memorable. The events surrounding this experience allow me to take you to Cheung Chau for it was to Cheung Chau that I was taken for convalescence. Cheung Chau and Summer Holidays Cheung Chau, throughout the thirties, was a rest resort for missionaries from South China. In these days of universal air conditioning it is difficult to appreciate the trials of the summer in Hong Kong, let alone the hotter and more humid conditions in South China. The typical tour for a missionary was five years followed by a furlough in England during which the missionary toured the country speaking about his experiences. During the hot summers missionaries' families would descend on the resorts of Hong Kong. Two were particularly popular — Cheung Chau and Sunset Peak on Lantau On Lantau a number of bungalows had been built and are still there. We slept in our bungalows but had our meals in the common dining room which was also used for meetings and services. As children we spent the whole time out of doors and swimming in pools in the streams. My most vivid memory of Lantau was being there in a typhoon. We must have had some warning of the approach of the typhoon as the shutters were closed, so that the lamps had to be lit there was no electricity of course. We did not have long to wait before the storm hit. The noise was terrific and the wind blew quantities of water under the door into the bungalow It seemed to go on for a long time. The next day the shutters were opened, the lamps put out and we emerged into a battered ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 recorded as having 29 males and 10 females resident. The boat people at Kowloon City and Sham Shui Po may have been included in the Victoria Harbour grouping. But it seems likely that the bulk of the Northern boat-people population was omitted from the statistics in 1911. At Cheung Chau, 4,442 boat-people are recorded in 1911, 2,601 of them male. This probably includes those boat-people usually anchored at Ping Chau and Mui Wo. At Lantau, 5,413 are recorded, 3,159 of them male.** The Lantau figure probably includes, not only the floating population at Tai O, but also the people living in "boat-huts" on stilts there. It also probably covers those boat-people anchored at Tung Chung, and may cover those at Tuen Mun as well. In 1921, 3,552 boat people are enumerated at Cheung Chau, and 3,894 at Tai O (probably not including the “boat-hut” residents). Given the absence of some deep sea fishing boats during the 1921 Census period, it seems that the Southern District floating population statistics are broadly similar in 1911 and 1921. The careful notification of New Territories residents as to the purpose of the 1911 Census, and the use of local men as enumerators, led to a lack of practical problems with villagers, who seem to have responded surprisingly well to the process. The police escorts had "not very much to do,” and “no trouble whatever" occurred. On a more detailed basis, the civilian enumerator teams in the mainland New Territories, and the police on Lamma, in the Sham Shui Po area, and, to a lesser extent, on Lantau, seem to have done a more careful job than the police on Cheung Chau, and in the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas. 598 villages were separately enumerated in the nine mainland civilian enumerator districts," 18 on Lamma, 49 on Lantau, and 23 in the Sham Shui Po district." Very few of the villages or hamlets on Lamma or in the mainland New Territories outside the Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City areas were not separately enumerated. The few that are not are hamlets closely connected with a nearby village and enumerated with it. On Lantau, however, some villages are not separately enumerated. The villages to the south of Tai O (Fan Kwai Tong, Yi O, Fan Lau), those immediately east of Tung Chung and along the upper edges of the Tung Chung valley (Tai Po, Tung Chung Hang, Wong Lung Hang, Lam Che, etc.), most of those in the Chi Ma Wan peninsula (except Shap Long), and most of the very tiny villages in the ================================================================================ 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-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 255 NOTES AND QUERIES FENGSHUI AND ROAD WORKS AT TONG FUK VILLAGE, SOUTH LANTAU, IN 1958 JAMES HAYES In my memoir of government service, Friends and Teachers, Hong Kong and its People 1953-1987 (Hong Kong University Press, 1996), one of the opening chapters was devoted to my duties in connection with the Shek Pik Water Scheme on Lantau Island to the west of Hong Kong in the late 1950s. In it, I recounted the periodic confrontations with the villagers of that then remote place over the drillings and soil excavations needed to establish the viability of the proposed design for the dam, along with the similar difficulties experienced later on, during construction work on the reservoir, its access roads and catch waters. Bringing obstruction and delays, the local people's opposition stemmed from their strongly rooted belief in geomancy (fengshui) and in the adverse effects for man and beast certain in their minds to follow any tampering with the landscape, especially when its orange-red coloured soil was exposed to view. Similar problems were also being encountered in adjoining old villages during the extension of the only recently completed South Lantau Road to the reservoir site. Five miles of new motor road were required, and the line passed through several settlements. There were difficulties with the villagers at each of these places, particularly at Tong Fuk Village, to which at one point I and my land staff had to make frequent visits because of the villagers' continual interference with the contractor's workmen on site, regardless of promises made and assurances given. Needless to say, the appearance of Tong Fuk village today, with its array of smart "Spanish Villa" type houses, restaurants and shops bears no resemblance to its former self. In 1958, every house was old and built in the traditional architectural style, occupied by humans or livestock, or used for storage, and all its inhabitants were engaged in agricultural work, mainly in raising the two annual rice crops on which they depended for a subsistence livelihood. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 256 Getting to Tong Fuk at that time was a slow business. After taking a scheduled ferry from Hong Kong, and travelling along the new South Lantau Road to the road-end at Cheung Sha, half the distance to Shek Pik, we had still to walk along old country paths and ford large and small streams. One of these stream courses was wide and boulder-strewn, and crossing it in full flood after heavy rain, as well as several smaller ones, was guaranteed to give one a thorough soaking. However, being young and active, and in high spirits, we thought nothing of it. In fact, I positively enjoyed it! Nonetheless, when visits were so time-consuming and there was plenty of work to do in the office and elsewhere in the District, the need to go out so frequently in that short space of time was not appreciated. On this occasion, local opposition was centred on one especially sensitive spot, where the villagers insisted that rock and boulders be broken up by hand instead of being removed by blasting with explosives. My reluctant acquiescence made the District Office unpopular with the government engineers from the Roads Office, who thought we were pandering to the villagers. So it might have seemed, but there was otherwise certain to be a conflict with people who were quite numerous, united in their opposition, and always capable of taking the law into their own hands, not omitting sabotage of contractors' equipment and installations. In this respect, I may add, they were no different from the majority of New Territories' villagers of the day. To run such a risk was not advisable in circumstances where both the senior police and civil authorities were based in Kowloon, several hours' journey from the site. Violent confrontations would not have been acceptable to my seniors; and in any case, it was part of my personal responsibility as District Officer to avoid that kind of thing. Moreover, further, and more prolonged delays would be certain to ensue. This was unthinkable. Nonetheless, our experiences on this particular occasion were certainly rather trying. The full story, on two and a half closely typed pages, was contained in a minute to the District Commissioner dated 27th May 1958. I do not know whether it has survived in the Public Records Office of Hong Kong, but fortunately I kept the copy on which this account is based. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 257 As I reported to Mr. (later Sir Ronald) Holmes, the villagers had changed their minds about letting the work proceed "a further three times" in the four days that had elapsed since my first visit to the village to deal with the difficulty. Enquiring into the reason for the renewed stoppage of work, I was told by the village representative and elders that the deities in the two local temples had had to be consulted, and that the propitious day for resuming work would be a day or two later. Frustration and annoyance are writ large in my report on these events: I replied that I certainly hoped that this would be the case since I was not possessed of second sight sufficient to enable me to know what they had not said to me on my first visit [about the need to consult the deities]. Nor could I be expected to understand their frequent changes of mind during the past two weeks when they would say one thing to Mr. Abbas [the land bailiff], quite another to the contractor and the Roads Engineers when they wished to resume work, and yet another to myself; not once but several times all round. Masters indeed in the art of creating confusion and uncertainty! On this visit, it had soon appeared that the villagers had thought up extra reasons for causing us delays. On our way to Tong Fuk, passing by the South Lantau Rural Committee office at Pui O, we had been given letters from the Village Representatives of Tong Fuk and the adjoining village of Shui Hau, making some additional points in the ongoing dialogue with the District Office. These concerned what I described as "an entirely new series of complaints" about the crop compensation to be paid in connection with the engineering works, the villagers professing themselves worried about the compensation schedules and about rates of compensation: ... "All this, mark you," [as I told the Commissioner], “though in their large-scale airing of perplexities on the Monday not one word of these matters had been breathed, saving only their concern about [the date of] payment." ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2001 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zg651950g 257 250 square feet, to be known as the Sung Him Tong Sung Chan Wui Kei Tuk Kau Fan Cheung (#*******) near Tsung Hom [sic] Tong in D.D. [Demarcation District] No.83 of the Northern District of the New Territories of Hong Kong, 142 Another Chinese Christian cemetery was also appointed in 1931. It was known as 'Cheung Chau Chinese Christian Cemetery' and contained about 10,000 square feet. 43 In the same year, the "Tao Fung Shan Christian Cemetery' was also in use. 144 In 1932, both a cemetery and an urn cemetery were approved in the coastal market town at Tai O on Lantau Island, which was called 'The Tai O Cemetery'. The cemetery contained about 250 acres. A tiny cemetery was appointed in Stanley in 1933, which was 'to be known as New Stanley Cemetery, the piece of land containing approximately 2.5 acres, situated to the south of St. Stephen's College at Stanley.' 146 This cemetery was extended to approximately 4.26 acres five years later. 147 A government notice 148 in 1933 ordered that a certain Telegraph Hill Urn Cemetery be closed, however, no other reference examined has anything about this cemetery. In the same year, with the closure of Kowloon Cemetery No.1 (European Protestant) at Fo Pang near Ho Man Tin, a new European Protestant cemetery was authorized in Kap Shek Mi Valley in substitution for the closed cemetery. 149 The new cemetery, containing an area of about 11 acres, was to be known as 'New Kowloon Cemetery No.6'. 150 However, no further information in regard to this cemetery has been found yet, though the boundary of the cemetery is shown in a 1954 map. 151 The next new cemetery, 'Sai Kung Catholic Cemetery,' in Lot No.1697 'in D.D.221 of the Northern District of the New Territories,' was approved in 1934. In 1935 a Chinese permanent cemetery in Tsuen Wan, similar in nature to the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, was set apart for 'Chinese who shall have been permanently resident in the said Colony (of Hong Kong).' 153 Again, as with the Chinese Permanent Cemetery in Aberdeen, the care and management of the new cemetery ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 398 been a famous well in front of the temple, with a reputation for aiding fertility, its water being reputed to guarantee the birth of sons. It was still there, and the soldiers reported that by the 1970s, if not before, many people were again coming to the temple by the bus load from neighbouring counties in the third lunar month. Though the temple had been destroyed and the images of its deities removed, country folk were still believers and they particularly liked to take water back to their homes. During our visit, the soldiers fetched two buckets of water from the well for us to drink. It was very clean and sweet, though the well is neither large nor deep. Finally, and to remind, a more general but detailed overview of the culture of late imperial times, is provided in Richard J. Smith's excellent China's Cultural Heritage: The Qing Dynasty 1644-1912, 2nd revised edition (Boulder, Colorado, Westview Press, 1990). POSTSCRIPT My old friend Mr. Wan On of Pui O, South Lantau, has reminded me of the close analogy between the treatment of present day SARS and of the infectious diseases causing deaths in local village communities of old, which often struck during the late winter and early Spring. The isolation and quarantining of infected persons and their contacts was, in the latter case, extended to whole villages. No one was allowed to come in, and no one was allowed out, usually for around two to three weeks. In addition, a protective ritual (a ta chiu/dajiao) was performed by a Daoist priest, and vegetarian food and sexual abstinence were prescribed. ================================================================================ 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, ================================================================================