RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 88 J. W. HAYES 36 Disturbances apart, the common people preferred to be left to themselves. They rarely had anything to do with the magistrate and his followers and preferred it that way. The magistrate, in his turn, was glad to leave routine affairs to the local tribunals. The price paid for these attitudes was the prevalence of crime. Poor communications were no help. The magistrate was often rendered powerless by unrest and disturbances of all kinds. Robberies and descents on shore by pirate gangs could take place with impunity since, even if help came, it invariably arrived far too late. Crime might eventually be punished but it was seldom prevented. No one would inform on disturbers of the peace for fear of reprisals or being entangled in the meshes of the law. Commenting on coastal piracy in 1897 Consul Brenan wrote, "The boat people never attempt to effect an arrest; there would probably be bloodshed and they would then be involved in judicial proceedings almost as unpleasant for themselves as for the pirates. They are thankful enough if they can get rid of their dangerous passengers, and persuade them to go off and try their fortune elsewhere"** However, it is only fair to state that the people of the district were also apt to create trouble among themselves, especially when circumstances conspired to make life difficult as in the dry season. This was especially true of the more closely populated agricultural areas, with villages in close proximity to each other, often sharing the same water supply for their fields and personal needs. The volatile Cantonese temperament is not suited to a cautious settlement of complicated personal problems: it is easier by far to fly off the handle and strike an attitude than to sit down and think. Hence difficult situations often were made intolerable by proximity and a quick temper, and clan fights were not uncommon, especially in the Yuen Long area. Hostilities between southern villages were well known at the time.** A tablet in the Tin Hau temple at Miu Kong, Tsuen Wan, refers to the death of seventeen male villagers by armed conflict between this village and Shing Mun Pat Heung in three years of intermit-tent strife which began in 1861. To these disturbances between the Punti villagers can be added a general antipathy between Hakka and Punti which sometimes erupted into violence and was still smouldering after the Hakka rebellion thirty years before."" 38 ================================================================================ 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 91 which it had supplanted eighteen years before. Great hardship was encountered which is hardly surprising, and the people were eternally grateful to their benevolent officials and commemorated them in several temples dedicated in their honour. One of these was burned down in 1955 during the fire which destroyed Shek Wu Hui near Fanling, and others are to be found at Sha Tau Kok and Kam Tin, and Sai Heung in Chinese Territory. In addition a school was named in their honour at Kam Tin, and when it was repaired in 1744 the San On magistrate of the time composed a Confucian discourse which was inscribed on the wall of the restored building, to instruct the pupils and their parents. An interesting survival which still existed in 1898 was the appearance of an old beggar in the Yuen Long villages every Chinese New Year who brought statues of WONG and CHOW for the people to worship, and incidentally to supply him with food and money.'' To these men-become-gods for whom the construction of a temple was necessary to ensure their better worship and resulting favours, there must be added an equal and possibly much older faith in sacred tree spirits and the multitude of earth spirits known as pak kung ih, tai wong ★, and ordinary she taan 4, who look after villages and localities such as passes, bridges, and fords over streams. This insurance with the spirits who ruled this world and would assuredly be encountered in the next was expressed in the continual reconstruction of temples. A great many of the temples in the New Territory to-day owe their present fabric, or a great part of it, to repairs made during the last fifty years of the Ching dynasty. It was evidently a highly necessary part of the proceedings that the god should be informed of the names of the contributors so that his benefits should not pass anyone by, since their names, and often the amounts they gave, were scrupulously inscribed on the commemorative tablet which was always let into the wall to mark the occasion. Sometimes over a thousand names had to be recorded in this way, most of them in respect of trifling amounts, even for a small and out of the way temple, as in the reconstruction of the Tin Hau temple at Cheung Chau in the second year of the last Ch'ing Emperor (1909). The magistrate, too, was expected to play his part in warding off disaster. The District History mentions that CHAN Kuk ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 94 J. W. HAYES land and the clan. The popular religion too, was but an ephemeral thing, something to meet the needs of the moment; something too that was not so respectable as the austere worship which fell within the Confucian canon. In short, the impression left by the brief excursion into the past which forms the basis of this article has left me with the firm impression that Confucianism was the dominant influence over people and government in the New Territory in 1898. I hasten to point out that in itself this is not in any way surprising: but in view of the remoteness of the area and its late settlement by Chinese of different race with their undoubted absorption of earlier inhabitants this impression of its pervasiveness and brooding presence everywhere in the Territory at this time is probably worth restating. NOTES As far as possible the notes are designed to supplement the text and not to be a necessary part of it. I have used local source material which has come to my notice during a tour of duty as District Officer South (1957-60) and Islands (1961-62) when I have been in a favourable position to hear of, find and utilise whatever happened to come my way, besides the authorities cited in these notes. I have scarcely used the District History, the San On Yuen Chi (⛧人元誌, last edition 1820, but reprinted by Kwong Tung Printers, Canton, in 1933) nor Mr. Lo Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its external communications before 1842 which uses the District History extensively. (It is good to know that a translation of the latter is in the Hong Kong University Press and will appear shortly, so making available in English part of the District History). I ought also to say here that this is my first excursion in the field of Oriental Studies, with all that this implies. I wish to thank Mr. Lo Chi Chung of the District Office for his valuable help. A Cantonese form of romanization has been used throughout. 1 James Haldane Stewart Lockhart (1858-1937) became a Hong Kong Cadet in 1878. He was appointed Colonial Secretary in 1895, the post he held at the time of his Report (8th October 1898) for which he received the thanks of the Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was created C.M.G. in 1898 and K.C.M.G. in 1908. In 1902 he became first Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei, a territory of 285 square miles on the coast of Shantung with an estimated 330 villages and a population of 124,000 which had been leased to Britain in 1898. He remained in this quiet backwater for the next twenty years. Lockhart was a sinologue of some note in his day and wrote a Manual of Chinese Quotations (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903), The Currency of the Far East, 3 vols (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., 1895, 1898) and a monograph, The Stewart Lockhart collection of Chinese copper coins, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh, 1915). Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ 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 95 2 Extracts from the Report are given between pages 181-209 of Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1899, (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1900). For this quotation see p. 198. Lockhart was referring specifically to development which was noticeably lacking. The same cannot be said of the population during this period. The evacuation of the coastal areas (1662-69) caused a great disruption to the villages at the time. For a brief mention in English, based on Chinese authorities, see S. F. Balfour, "Hong Kong before the British", an article in T'ien Hsia, Vol. XI, No. 4, 1941, p. 334. In any case there has been a continuous inward flow of both Cantonese and Hakka since then, more especially of Hakka in the 19th century, from which time many of the hill villages in the Colony take their origin. It is interesting to compare this report with a book on Wei Hai Wei, Lion and Dragon in North China (London, John Murray, 1910) which was written by a junior colleague from Hong Kong, R. F. Johnston (1874-1938) who went to Wei Hai Wei as Magistrate and Secretary to Government in 1904, probably at Lockhart's request. Johnston, later knighted and Professor of Chinese in the University of London was a man of great application and erudition who became tutor to the deposed boy emperor, P'u Yi, (1919-25) and wrote the well-known book Twilight in the Forbidden City, (London, Gollancz, 1934). He was himself Commissioner of Wei Hai Wei 1927-30. His detailed description of Wei Hai Wei, its people and their customs leaves an impression of the striking similarity of life and thought between that remote part of Shantung and this small corner of Kwangtung. The means of government was of course the same, but so also are the ways of doing and thinking which seem, in my own experience, hardly to differ at all despite the different agricultural background. To anyone interested in the Chinese peasant Johnston's book is a mine of information. The annual reports on Wei Hai Wei presented to both Houses of Parliament are, too, an interesting commentary on life in this northern leased territory. The market towns of the New Territories in 1898 were Tai Po, Yuen Long, Tai O, Cheung Chau, Sai Kung and Tsuen Wan. A despatch of 1905 in connection with the Kowloon-Canton Railway No. 59 dated 11th January 1905 from Governor Sir Matthew Nathan to the then Secretary of State, Mr. Lyttelton gives some figures. Yuen Long had "seventy-four shops of which twenty-five are large and deal in rice, oil, samshu etc. The remainder belong to barbers, doctors, jewellers, vegetable sellers, piece goods dealers etc." Tai Po Market consisted of twenty-three large shops and fifteen smaller ones, Tsuen Wan had a few shops supplying the local needs". No figures are given for Cheung Chau or Tai O with which the railway was not concerned, but an inscription of 1878 inside the grounds of the Fong Pin Hospital at Cheung Chau states that there "used to be over two hundred shops trading here". Lockhart Papers 1899, p. 207 gave Cheung Chau a population of 5,000, whilst Tai O with its fisheries and salt pans was reported to have about 3,000. These were larger towns than Yuen Long (no figure given), Tai Po (280), Sai Kung Market (800) and Tsuen Wan (900). The present New Territories towns were not the largest in the San On district. Pride of place went to Sham Chun, now on the Chinese side of the border, with sixty-one large shops and three hundred and twenty-three medium sized shops, and to Kun Lan Hui, also north of the border which was the cattle centre of the whole district with fifteen large and one hundred and thirty-six medium sized shops. (Enclosure C to No. 59). See Eastern No. 88 Correspondence relating to the Kowloon-Canton Railway (London, Colonial Office, 1907). ================================================================================ 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 101 See paras. 38 These feuds, often of long standing, persist to-day. 77-79 of Mr. K. M. A. Barnett's annual administrative report for 1955-56 as District Commissioner New Territories for a good instance of traditional hostility. For other cases see paras. 97 and 43 of the annual departmental reports for 1957-58 and 1958-59. See Smith Village Life in China p. 286, also p. 222 "The local Magistrates take care not to intervene too soon or too far, lest it be the worse for them. When the fight is over the officers put in an appearance, arrests are made, and the machinery of government recovers from its temporary paralysis", and pp. 282-86 for a northern instance of clan violence. 40 According to Dyer Ball Things Chinese (Hong Kong, Kelly and Walsh, 1903) p. 326 "a dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and the Punteis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties". See also pp. 369-70 of B.C. Henry's Ling Nam (London, Partridge, 1886), 41 From information supplied by elders of Ho Chung village who were at school during or before 1898. 42 See the section on Disasters in the San On Yuen Chi. 43 See stone tablet outside Tin Hau temple, Kat O, Tai Po district. 44 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/4/26 (1777) at Yuen Long Old Market. 45 From a stone tablet dated Chia-ch'ing 7/3/23 (1802) at the Tin Hau temple, Kat O. 46 From a stone tablet dated Ch'ien-lung 42/lucky month, lucky day (1777) at the Hau Wong temple, Tung Chung. 47 From a stone tablet dated Tao-kuang 21/7/19 (1841) at Tin Hau temple, Peng Chau. 48 From a stone tablet whose date is uncertain, at the Tai Wong temple, Yuen Long Market. 49 Variously, as above. 50 Reminiscences of Mr. TANG Kiu Fong of Fui Sha Wai near Yuen Long, in an article in the New Territories Weekly for January 1962. 51 Tree spirits are quite common in the New Territories where many old trees have joss sticks and red paper inscriptions placed under them on a rough altar. There is, in particular, a very large old banyan tree at Long Kang a few miles east of Sai Kung Market which must surely be the oldest tree in the Southern District. This is visited regularly by devotees. From personal experience of every part of the old Southern District I can say with confidence that belief in tree and earth spirits still exists to-day, and might indeed be said positively to flourish. 52 An ancestral temple is not open to the public: it is for the private use of the clan, for whom alone it has any meaning. Most villages of any age and consequence have ancestral temples, and in multi-clan villages ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1962 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9s166f47f 102 J. W. HAYES there are sometimes several. As a general rule they are small buildings, but the major clans have constructed large high spacious buildings with several courtyards and side rooms. Among the largest in the New Territories are the ancestral temples of branches of the TANG clan at Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen near Yuen Long. These are fine and impressive buildings but are not, unfortunately, kept in good repair. Much of the opposition to the British troops in 1898 was planned in the ancestral hall at Ha Tsuen. Beside the Ping Shan hall there is a school/library building, now used as a private residence. 53 The reason is always said to be lack of funds though I suspect a lack of leadership is also a prime factor. The clan usually waits until something is seriously wrong, by which time it is often too late; a storm completes the ruination. There seems to be some truth in this as I have found newly built ancestral halls in several villages, e.g. the CHEUNG ancestral hall at Lo Wai, Pui O which was rebuilt in 1960 on a new site, the old one having been in ruins for twenty years. 54 Clan worship at the graves still goes on, but is much more informal than in 1898. Mr. TANG Kiu-fong of Fui Sha Wai, a retired schoolmaster, previously quoted, who was born in 1894, tells me that when he was a boy the ceremony was taken very seriously. Everyone wore the long robe, elders were carried to the graves in sedan chairs, and male members of the clan were drawn up in ranks by generations and worshipped in strict seniority, under the direction of a master of ceremonies. 55 These ancestral obligations often imposed considerable inconvenience and up to several days' travel for the whole family. Mr. CHEUNG Yau of Tai Ping village, North Lamma, (b. 1883) tells me that his grandfather settled on Lamma Island from his native village of Wai Tau in the Lam Tsuen valley in the present Tai Po district. Ever since he can remember, and until old age interfered with visits a few years ago, he has gone back to his ancestral village at least three times a year, as dictated by custom. For the first twenty-five years there was no railway and his family used to go by junk to Kowloon and walk the rest of the way, children included. Others went further afield. Mr. LAM Shue Chun, Chairman of the Peng Chau Rural Committee, told me that his family went regularly to their ancestral village of Nam Leng Wai in Po On, north of the border, and were interrupted in their journeys first by the Japanese and latterly by the Communists. He has been twice since 1942 and an uncle has been visiting fairly regularly up to last year. The family travelled to Kowloon by junk, then used the railway and had a long walk from Sham Chon Market. Sometimes there was no need to go from home as contact had been lost with the ancestral village which was too far away. 56 They were full at any time. There is an interesting count of travel on the Colony's border roads and the Shum Chun ferries taken 11th and 12th December 1905 in Enclosure E to Despatch No. 59 in Correspondence relating to Kowloon-Canton Railway already quoted. The first was a market day, when the count of persons, with and without goods, roughly doubled the figures for the second, or ordinary day. On the two main ferries, for instance, the count on December 11 was with goods 1126, without goods 1379 and on the Shum Chun-Sha Tau Kok road 521 and 1302. On the day following the figures were 468 and 1124, and 158 and 550 respectively. At New Year and the two grave festivals the number must have been very much increased. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1963 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v CHEUNG CHAU 101 11 "The whole of the island (Cheung Chau) was adjudged to belong to the WONG family and it is let out to various tenants on leases renewable every five years. All these leases were registered in 1906". Administra-tive Report for 1909, District Officer, New Territories. But see also G. N. Orme's unfavourable opinion of the initial survey and Crown rent roll in Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46. 12 For example, before its tax-lord rights were extinguished (along with others') by the Hong Kong Government after 1898 as "not compatible with the principles of British administration" (Orme, Sessional Papers 1912, p. 46), the LI Kau Yuen Tong of Sha Wan appears to have owned a considerable proportion of all the cultivated land on Lantau island under an imperial grant made in the Sung dynasty (see LO Hsiang-lin "The Sung Wang T'ai and the location of the Travelling Courts by the sea-shore in the Last Days of the Sung", Journal of Oriental Studies III No. 2 (July 1956) p. 217, note 29). Nineteenth Century land deeds from the village of Shek Pik show that much of the village land paid tax to the LI family, a burden which was passed on to the purchaser when a "sale" took place. It is not known whether this Tong owned land elsewhere in the present New Territories but its main estates lay elsewhere. It is curious how the WONG Wai Chak Tong maintained its tax-lord position whilst the LI family's was extinguished. It is a pointer to the island's increasing prosperity, as well as to its favoured geographical situation, that when the Chinese Maritime Customs first began to operate in the Hong Kong region in 1887 they set up a post on Cheung Chau. This had previously been operated by the Canton authorities as part of the "blockade" system set up in 1868-71. See Stanley F. Wright, Hart and the Chinese Customs (Belfast, William Mullan & Son, 1950) pp. 385-6, 584-6 and 708, and his earlier Hong Kong and the Chinese Customs (Shanghai 1930) which I have not yet seen. See also note 15. Old villagers on the Lantau coast opposite Cheung Chau can remember having to pass through the customs every time they came to the island to buy daily necessaries and sell their produce in the market. It is not the place to discuss whether Cheung Chau's expansion was due to the rise of Hong Kong, or whether it was already in a flourishing condition by the time Hong Kong's expansion began in the 1840's, but available information points to a community which was already well-established and prosperous by the Hsien-feng period (1851-61), which would be rather early for Cheung Chau to owe its rise mainly to Hong Kong. The preamble to the tablet in the defence bureau mentions that "our forefathers came and lived in Cheung Chau several hundred years ago"; whilst the attention of pirates in the early years of Hsien-feng, also mentioned in the same tablet, seems more conclusive proof of the island's established prosperity than any other. A spate of repairs and expansion seems to have been going on apace in the T'ung-chih period (1862-75) when most of the island's temples were repaired, the CHU family ancestral hall enlarged, many old houses were built or reconstructed, and the public buildings erected which these tablets commemorate. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r HONG KONG BEFORE THE CHINESE 43 as a humble amateur I appeal humbly to the professionals for assistance; and, much less humbly, to other amateurs to take over the gathering of data on Hong Kong before the Chinese.* By Hong Kong, I mean that southern part of the district now known as Po On,1 previously known as San On,122 and still earlier included within Tung Kwun,31 or partly within Tung Kwun and partly within Kwai Shin,60 which today comprises the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong. By Chinese, I mean such of the inhabitants (and ancestors of the inhabitants) of that territory as would not have been described in a contemporary official document by one of the terms used for non-Chinese, i.e. I Ti Jung Man.67 If this definition appears negative it cannot be helped, since Chinese literature itself does not, until modern times, contain any word which corresponds to our word "Chinese", but has always had several terms for what might be called "Non-Chinese". Although one Chinese-type grave, said to date from the Han151 Dynasty, has been found in New Kowloon, and although one small Buddhist temple has behind it the foundation of a previous structure said to date from the Tsin158 Dynasty, there is no evidence of Chinese settlement before the end of the Tang.139 Up to and including the Tang Dynasty all the inhabitants, and up to the Yuan Dynasty most of the inhabitants of what is now the Colony and leased territory of Hong Kong are described, if described at all, as Man.88 The two Chinese clans with the longest records of continuous local residence (the Tang44 of Kam Tin,56 Lung Yeuk Tau7 and Ping Shan; and the Man of San Tin125 and Cha Hang11) go back indisputably to early Sung;132 and their traditions, to which I shall be referring again, speak of two other clans (Mo5 and Chan17) having been before them. The oldest building, except the temple previously mentioned, of which there is evidence, is the fort of Tuen Mun141 built in the Nan Han99 (Canton) Dynasty in A.D. 958. Another document refers to the appointment of a military commander of Tuen Mun in A.D. 954. I cannot be assailed if I say "Anything before A.D. 900 is, for this territory, before the Chinese." The Frame. The natural question to be asked is "Before the Chinese, who?" Before I attempt to answer this question, there *All local place names are given in the Cantonese pronunciation. Notes giving Chinese characters and romanization in the Barnett-Chao system are given at the end of the article.—Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 58 K. M. A. BARNETT from the point of view of my present subject, the event which ushered in the new age is the capture of Canton in +878 by the Huang Chao146 rebels. Between this event and the re-incorporation of Canton's territory into China in +971, by which time the earliest Chinese had already a firm grip on what is now Hong Kong, the Liu76 family gave five emperors to the Nan Han99 Dynasty at Canton. This family was allied by marriage with the Cheng163 and Tuen families which successively at this period ruled the powerful kingdom of Nan Chao;100 with the Ma89 family which ruled the kingdom of Tsu1 and no doubt, if the evidence could be pieced together, with many other peoples. For we are told that the emperor Liu Chang78 had a Persian princess in his harem, and among the many Arab travellers who visited Canton there must be some who left a description of these flamboyant half-Chinese rulers, with their eighty or more palaces, the walls of which were encrusted with pearls, their bloodthirsty exuberance and, what shines even through the disapproving accounts of the Chinese historians, their courage and administrative skill. The name Po On3 revived by the Republic of China as the name for the district of which geographically, Hong Kong is a part, was adopted by the Canton rulers in obvious reference to the pearls for which this district was at that period famous. The statement in the San On Yuen Chi123 that the name comes from the hill called Po Shan north of Nam Tau8 city is the "cart before the horse". The pearls were fished in great numbers somewhere near Tolo Channel, probably in Double Haven where the name Chue Tong Wat162 survives as a bay on Kar O Island." They were then transported overland along the route marked by a chain of forts over the pass northeast of Tai Po Tau34 village, through Kau Lung Hang, over the present golf course and skirting the Pat Heung2 marshes to the present Ping Shan, and across the creek to the fort of Tuen Mun4 which I mentioned earlier in this paper. The route, I would have you observe, almost at every point passes one of the chief settlements of the Tang44 clan who are, I believe, together with all the old Cantonese-speaking clans of this territory, the descendants of the soldiers stationed here in the Nan Han Dynasty and its successors for the express purpose of guarding these precious pearls. They were as I have said encouraged, when too old to serve with their arms, to settle down ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1964 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r 82 J. W. HAYES was committed outside their shop. Fearing further complications, the brothers left their native village of Nam Ling Wai nearby, two of them going to Jamaica and the third to Peng Chau. The reason for his selecting Peng Chau is an interesting one. There had been difficulty in finding a bride with a suitable horoscope and a go-between in Yuen Long Market with contacts on Peng Chau had arranged his marriage with a girl of the LUI family. The family were not poor, and by the end of the century had secured a considerable area of fields on the Lantau coast opposite Peng Chau by giving mortgages to incautious or unlucky farmers. Some light on Peng Chau's development in the nineteenth century is given in the tablet commemorating the repairs made to the temple in 1878. Though the total number of subscribers is less than in the 1798 tablet — 181 instead of 218 — the number of shops is greater, and their locations specified. Fifty Peng Chau undertakings were listed, including one factory, though what manufacture it carried out is unknown. Some of the local shops listed on the tablet were quite large concerns by the end of the century. Among their number the San Tai Li business owned six or seven adjoining shops on the east side of Wing On Street, near the present ferry pier. It is said to have handled several lines of business including ship-chandlering and the production of sails and tackle, fishmongering and general dealings with fishermen, grocery and general goods and Chinese medicine. It also owned several junks for cargo and ferry purposes. A WONG of the third generation was managing its affairs in 1899, the business having been started by his grandfather, who was a Cantonese from Shun Tak district. Besides the shops, and the lime kilns, of which there were almost a dozen by 1904, there were at least two boat building and repair yards, and a business which specialised in beaching boats. The repair tablet lists numerous outside subscribers, which indicates the business and social contacts which the island had with neighbouring areas. Eighteen Hong Kong businesses, including seven fish laans, and another seven shops from Shaukiwan, contributed to the fund, and so did shops from Tai Ping, Shek Wan and Kong Moon in the Pearl River Delta. A ferry boat business from Heung Shan, had ================================================================================ 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 155 ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH List of Members on the 30th April 1964 Patron: His Excellency Sir David Trench, K.C.M.G., M.C. Honorary Members: His Excellency Sir Robert Black, G.C.M.G., O.B.E. J. L. Cranmer-Byng, M.C., M.A. Dept. of History, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, Toronto 5, Canada. Members: ABRAHAM, R. D.* AIDE-DECAMP, The AKERS-JONES, D. ALLEYNE, Mrs. E. L. ANDERSON, H. M. Miss ARMERDING, L. E.* BADAMS, P. W. M. BAHR, Mrs. Kay BAIRD, J. W. BAKER, Mrs. Ann. BAKER, W. E. BARD, Dr. S. M. BARNETT, K. M. A. BARON, D. W. B. BARR, J. S. BARRY, Comdr. R. S. BASHALL, Mrs. C. G. BASTICK, Capt. W. G. BASTO, G. de 41, Island Road, Deep Water Bay, H.K. Government House, Garden Road, H.K. c/o District Office, Yuen Long, N.T. University of Hong Kong, Pokfulum, H.K. 14, Chater Hall, 1 Conduit Road, H.K. 11, Creasy Road, Jardine's Lookout, H.K. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Bank, H.K. (Trustee) Ltd. Shell House, 6th floor, H.K. 4. Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. c/o Jardine, Matheson & Co., Ltd. H.K. 23, Coombe Road, H.K. c/o The H.K. Electric Co., Ltd. P. O. Box 915, H.K. Hong Kong University, Pokfulum, H.K. P. O. Box 248, H.K. 30 Severn Road, H.K. Chung Chi College, Ma Liu Shui, N.T. c/o The Hong Kong Club, H.K. c/o H.M. Prison, Stanley, H.K. Camp Office, Victoria Barracks, H.K. BENANZIO, Dr. M. 604 Fu House, 7 Ice House Street, H.K. c/o Italian Embassy, Djalan Diponegoro 47, Djakarta, Indonesia, * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1965 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s752cj653 127 ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH List of Members on the 31st May, 1965 Patron: His Excellency Sir David Trench, K.C.M.G., M.C. Honorary Members: Sir Robert Black, G.C.M.G., O.B.E.* J. L. Cranmer-Byng, M.C., M.A.* Dept. of History, University of Toronto, Sidney Smith Hall, Toronto 5, Canada. Members: ABRAHAM, R. D.* ADDIS, Mrs. Diana - 41, Island Road, Deep Water Bay, H.K. ADDIS, W. S. - Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp., H.K. AIDE-DE-CAMP, The AKERS-JONES, D. - Government House, Garden Road, H.K. ARMERDING, L. E.* - c/o District Office, Yuen Long, N.T. BADAMS, P. W. M. - 426 La Grande Avenue, Fanwood, New Jersey, U.S.A. BAHR, Mrs. Kay BAKER, Mrs. Ann BAKER, W. E. BARD, Dr. S. M. - c/o H.K. & Shanghai Bank, H.K. (Trustee) Ltd. Shell House, 6th floor, H.K. BARNETT, K. M. A. - 4, Abermor Court, May Road, H.K. BARON, D. W. B. - 23, Coombe Road, H.K. BARR, Miss E. - c/o The H.K. Electric Co., Ltd. BARR, J. S. - P. O. Box 915, H.K. BARRY, Comdr. R. S. - Hong Kong University, Pokfulum, H.K. BASHALL, Mrs. C. G. - P. O. Box 248, H.K. BASTO, G. de - 30 Severn Road, H.K. BASTICK, Capt. W. G. - 78 Robinson Road, H.K. BENANZIO, Dr. M. - Chung Chi College, Ma Liu Shui, N.T. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 OLD BRITISH KOWLOON 133 NOTES The place names are all in Cantonese and can be found in the Hong Kong Government's publication The Place Names of Hong Kong and the New Territories (1960). Where not otherwise stated my authority for information given in the paper comes from the old people mentioned in note 16. The aim of this article is to recover as much of the pre-1899 past of the Hong Kong region as possible, with special reference to the nineteenth century. 1. E. J. Eitel, Europe in China, London: Luzac & Co., 1895, p. 360. 2. The Convention of Peking, 9 June 1898. The text can be found on pp. 198-199 of the Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers, i.e., papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899. 3. Report on the Sanitary Condition of Hong Kong and Kowloon for 1864... presented to both Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty in 1865 to be found in Parliamentary Papers, China, 1861-66, p. 16. 4. C.O.129/85 in the Public Record Office, London. 5. The Commissioners sent an abstract of these documents to London. These were as follows: "No. 1 | List of Red Deeds Owners not belonging to the Teng Family—contains 91 Deeds, comprising an area of 176 acres value computed at $25,865.32 No. 2 List of Deeds belonging to the Two Branches of the Teng Family contains 78 Deeds comprising an area of 276 acres value computed at $40,561.52 No. 3 List of squatters showing the number to be 222—spread over 90 acres value computed at $13,226.16* The "Teng" family mentioned in Nos. 1 and 2 above is the Tang (*) family of Kam Tin, who are Cantonese and are the oldest, richest and best-known of the New Territories landed families. See SUNG Hok-Pang. "Legends and Stories of the New Territories" Parts III-IV, Kam Tin, in The Hong Kong Naturalist, Vols. VI and VII. 6. Hong Kong Government Gazette, Government Notification 41 of 1860, dated 24 March 1860. The population at this time contained a preponderance of men; 3356 to 971 women and 778 children (Hong Kong Government Gazette, 22 February 1862). 7. For instance, the genealogies (##) of the Ng (吳) clan of Nga Tsin Wai and Sha Po and the Lam (林) clan of Chuk Yuen and Po Kong show that their settlement dates back to this period. 8. I base this statement on personal knowledge of the fifty or more Hakka villages in the Sai Kung district of the New Territories. 9. Hong Kong Government Blue Book for 1871 p. 148. 10. See G. N. Orme's "Report on the New Territories 1899-1912" in Sessional Papers 1912 p. 55 and J. H. Stewart Lockhart in Sessional Papers 1899, p. 189. My second statement is based on conversations with families of Hakka stonecutters at Ngau Tau Kok Village, Kowloon. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 134 JAMES HAYES 11 See, for instance, Rev. R. Lechler's article "The Hakka Chinese" in the Chinese Recorder for September-October 1878 in which he writes (p. 355), "Three thousands (sic) of them came to Hong Kong in 1863, having been taken on board by some foreign vessels, which happened to do business with rice etc., in Tai-foo-san. They were kindly taken care of by the English government and the merchants who collected money, and had mat sheds built for the fugitives until they were able to provide for themselves. I was then intrusted with the funds collected and used to buy rice for daily distribution to these wretched people." It is recorded that 189 families — it is not stated how many were Hakkas and how many Cantonese — came to settle in Hong Kong in 1867. (See the Registrar General's Report in the Government Gazette 14 March 1868). Kowloon seems to have attracted Hakka newcomers from Hong Kong. In his Education Report for 1865 Mr. F. Stewart noted with reference to the Tang Lung Chau district of Hong Kong that "nearly all the Hakka families that used to live here have removed to the Kowloon side of the harbour". (See Hong Kong Government Gazette for 24th March 1866). 12 S. Wells Williams The Middle Kingdom, revised edition, London; W. H. Allen & Co., 1883, Vol. 1, p. 486. 13 See D. Maciver in p.v. of the Introduction to his Hakka Dictionary, Shanghai; American Presbyterian Mission Press, 1905. 14 Report of the Proceedings of the Morrison Education Society March 1863 - March 1864, Hong Kong; London Missionary Society Press, 1864, p. 11. I suspect that the 10,000 is an under-estimate of the number of Hakkas living in the San On District at this time. 15 The names may be translated as "Vantage Point" and "Fields of the Ho and Man families". Ho Man Tin was removed to make way for the Kowloon-Canton railway in 1906 (see Sessional Papers 1907, p. 687) and Mong Kok was submerged by urban Kowloon in the 1920s (see Chapter 5 of The Development of Hong Kong and Kowloon as Told in Maps by T. R. Tregear and L. Berry, Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press, 1959). 16 I am indebted to the following persons for information: Mr. NG Kau (b. 1888); Mr. TANG Yuen-li (b. 1897) and Madam SOLI Lin (b. 1888). 17 In 1897 the population of Ho Man Tin was 297 (180 males and 117 females) and of Mong Kok 218 persons (102 males, 116 females). See Hong Kong Government's Sessional Papers for 1897, p. 485. 18 Rev. James Johnston, China & Formosa, The Story of the Mission of the Presbyterian Church of England, London; Hazel, Watson and Viney, 1897, p. 266. 19 In this connection it should be noted that until the census returns of 1897 (see Sessional Papers 1897, p. 485), the population of British Kowloon was given as a whole and not split into individual village populations as was always done for the Hong Kong villages. 20 See Orme, p. 44. 21 "Live stock paid but badly" in 1867. See the Registrar-General's report in Hong Kong Government Gazette, 14 March 1868. 22 Then, as twenty years ago, the same. See The Hong Kong Annual Report 1947, Hong Kong, Ye Olde Printerie Ltd., March 1948, p. 50. 23 S. Wells Williams, Vol. I, p. 172. Twenty years later one of the illustrations in Sir Henry Blake and Mortimer Menpes' China, London; A and C Black, 1909, pp. 119-120 shows the vegetable boats arriving from the Kowloon side. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 172 ROYAL ASIATIC SOCIETY HONG KONG BRANCH List of Members Patron: His Excellency Sir David Trench, K.C.M.G., M.C. Honorary Members: Sir Robert Black, G.C.M.G., O.B.E.* 183 Oakwood Court, London, W.14, London J. L. Cranmer-Byng, M.C., M.A.* 190, Glengrove Avenue, W., Toronto 12, Canada, Members: ABRAHAM, R. D.* ADDIS, Mrs. Diana ADDIS, W. S. AIDE-DE-CAMP, The AKERS-JONES, D. ARMERDING, L. E.* ASERAPPA, Mrs. J. P. BADAMS, P. W. M. BAKER, Mrs. F. H. BAKER, H. D. R. BAKER, W. E. BARD, Dr. S. M. BARNETT, K. M. A. BARR, Miss E. BARR, John S. BARRY, Comdr. R. S. BASHALL, Mrs. C. G. BASTO, G. de L. BENANZIO, Dr. Mario 41, Island Road, Deep Water Bay, H.K. Hong Kong & Shanghai Banking Corp., H.K. As above. Government House, Garden Road, H.K. c/o District Office, Yuen Long, N.T. 426 La Grande Avenue, Fanwood, New Jersey, U.S.A. 7 Peak Pavilions, 12 Mt. Kellett Road, H.K. c/o H.K. & Shanghai Bank, H.K. (Trustee) Ltd. Shell House, 6th floor, H.K. U.S. Consulate General, Garden Road, H.K. "Satis House", 9 Chase Gardens, Westcliff-on-Sea, Essex, England. c/o The H.K. Electric Co., Ltd. P. O. Box 915, H.K. Hong Kong University, Pokfulum, H.K. P. O. Box 248, H.K. 78 Robinson Road, H.K. 11 Queen's Road, Scone by Perth, Scotland. c/o The Hong Kong Club, H.K. c/o H.M. Prison, Stanley, H.K. 5 Middle Gap Road, The Peak, H.K. c/o Luen Cheong Hong Ltd., Room 201 Chartered Bank Building, H.K. * Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1966 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811 181 LINDSAY, T. J.* LIU, D. H. L LIU, Sydney C. LIU. Dr. Tsun-yan LLEWELLYN, J. LO, Dr. Chin-tang LO, Hsiang-lin LO, T. S.* LOCKING, J. R. LOCKS, Miss A. M. LOSEBY, Miss P. LOTHROP, F. B.* LUBMAN, Stanley LUCAS, Col. E. S. S. - LUI, Adam Yuen Chung LUM, Miss Ada LUPTON, G. C, M. LYM, Miss Renee M. - MA, Meng 3, Barcena Avenue, Wahroonga, N.S.W. c/o U.S. Consulate General, 26 Garden Road, H.K. 31 Kin Wah Street, 2nd Floor, North Point, H.K. c/o Faculty of Oriental Studies, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T., Australia. Dept. of Geography & Geology, The University, H.K. 38D, 8th Floor, Bonham Road, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. c/o Lo and Lo. Jardine House, 7/F., Pedder St., H.K. District Office, Yuen Long, New Territories. King's Park House, Gascoigne Road, Kowloon. c/o Russ & Co., Rooms 523/5 Gloucester Building, H.K. c/o Peabody Museum, Salem, Mass, U.S.A. Universities Service Centre, 155 Argyle Street, Kowloon. 94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K. 1. Victory Avenue, 4th Floor, Kowloon, 142, Boundary Street, Kowloon. c/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K. Park Mansions, 4 Mile Taipo Road, 1st floor, Kowloon. Institute of Oriental Studies, The University, H.K. MACCABE, Miss E. M. A. - King's Park House, Gascoigne Road, Kowloon, MACDOUGALL, J. J. MACGREGOR, Miss M. h MACK, A. M. MACKEITH, J. S. MACKENZIE, J. MACKENZIE, Miss S. c/o U.S. Consulate General, Garden Road, H.K. 31-C, Bisney Road, Pokfulum, H.K. 34 Wilton Crescent, London, S.W.1., England. 80 Robinson Road, H.K. Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. 17 Chater Hall, Conduit Road, H.K. • Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY 75 Vaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement. 28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282. A Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui." Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27. 29 "Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long." New Territories Report 1917, p. J2. 30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home." New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55. 31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction: In the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162. 32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest. 33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon, 34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci. 'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g 98 JAMES HAYES of the population of Lantau Island and when the Hakkas in this part of Kwangtung were generally considered to have been under the general domination of Cantonese.12 In passing, I am inclined to think that this point has been over-stressed. Secondly, it is interesting that all three came from villages and not from the market town. One would have expected that its shopkeepers and tradesmen would, in the aggregate, have been better off than most villagers and that a place which had a population anything from ten to twenty times larger than those of the neighbouring villages ought to have provided more pupils and hence a superior type of teacher; resulting in better-educated boys who were more qualified to become local leaders.13 However, and thirdly, their importance must be assessed against the realities of the social and geographic background of Lantau at this time. There were no wealthy, numerous powerful clans on the island to compare with those living in the mainland area of the present New Territories. The Cheungs were very small fry by comparison with the Tangs of Yuen Long district.14 Apart from the shopkeepers in the market town, some of whom were themselves villagers or were of village descent, the rest of the land population of Lantau were peasant small-holders few of whom seem to have owned more than one or two acres of land and were intent upon making a living from the soil.15 Communications were restricted to village tracks over difficult country or to boat travel round the coast, usually by village rowing boat. The terrain hindered social, economic and political intercourse between the penny-packet group of villages and could only be spanned by energetic leadership, motivated by private interest and backed by personal visitation. Another factor which increases the impact these men made on their communities is what I am convinced, from my later experience must have been the ignorance and massive superstition of most village people at this time.16 Easily paralysed by fear and indecision in times of danger, and harassed by doubt and incapacity when there were important issues to decide, the quality of leadership possessed by the few is high-lighted by the condition of the many. It is not surprising, then, that men of the calibre of the three I have mentioned appear to have handled everything in their sphere of influence. Old men living today still remember the Hakka Cheung Kwong-chuen very clearly and state, with great Page 105 Page 106 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1967 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g A NOTICE OF THE SANON DISTRICT J 105 This officer established himself at a place then called Shak-tse-kong, the present Nam-tou, a part of which situated on a hill was surrounded by walls. But it was found that this officer was unable to rule efficiently the whole of the district, and some men of influence, supported by the high mandarins at Canton, demanded that the part of the country which they inhabited should be made a separate district. The Emperor Wan-lik granted this petition in the first year of his reign; the new district was called "Sanon,” new peace; and the walled part of Nam-tou rose to be the district town of Sanon, and accordingly received the name of Sanon Yuen-shing 新安城. The Sanon district included the islands of Lan-tow, Hongkong, and all the small neighbouring islands. The mainland portion of the district was bounded to the North by the districts of Túng-kun 東莞 and Kwei-shin 歸善. The northern boundary is formed by the Pik-tau River, which flows into the estuary of the Canton River, and is navigable for small Chinese sea craft (such as passage-boats) for about 8 miles; and several chains of mountains further to the East. This boundary, however, is very arbitrarily drawn, as sometimes villages in the midst of Sanon belong to Túng-kun. The borders of the three districts join together in the neighbourhood of the mart of Kun-lan, a place notoriously unsafe, as being the abode of thieves and vagabonds, who can with facility escape from the jurisdiction of one mandarin to that of another. To the East, the Sanon District is bounded by the estuary of the Canton River. This estuary is divided by the Chinese into several parts with different names: the part to the south of the Bocca Tigris into which the Pik-tow River falls, is called Hop-lan Hoi; the bay named by the English Lintin is designated by the Chinese Nam-low Bay, after the city of that name; Deep Bay is called Hau-hoi or Back-water Bay*. This bay is generally very shallow, a deep channel however running down the centre; the navigation is rendered more dangerous by the many oyster-beds which exist. The bay terminates in a considerable creek, which is navigable at high-tide for three or four miles, as far as the important mart of Sham-tsuen. & PA. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 84 ARMANDO M, DA SILVA One could reasonably suspect that the edifice was used more for signalling and coast watching than for outright defence, and as a navigational landmark. The stone walls are made from local material, the porphyritic granite. Certain nearby boulders of this granite have drill markings on them, the drill holes 3 or 4 inches apart. The fort appears to be built on an older stone base measuring some 225 by 130 feet, the walls of which are surmounted by superstructure walls of fired gray bricks (plate 8). A red clay found nearby, when mixed with lime, blocked and fired, could have produced this type of Chinese gray brick. The stone blocks and the gray bricks are held in place by lime cement made of lime mortar mixed with fine sand particles.5 The possibility that the bricks were produced from materials close at hand should not be dismissed. Many of the stone blocks and gray bricks have subsequently been removed by villagers for their own use. The Tin Hau temple nearby, for example, may have been partly constructed from bricks looted from the old fort (plate 9). When was the station constructed? The San On Yuen Chi makes no mention of any date but hints that law and order were established after troops were stationed at various outposts on the Chu Kong estuary after the order for the Coastal withdrawal (tsin hoi) had been rescinded in 1669. We have a brief mention in that district gazetteer that the Kai Yik Kok fort, as well as the forts located at Nam Tau and Chik Wan further up the estuary, were garrisoned by troops engaged in the restoration of order in "dangerous" areas not previously altogether under their control. The persistent belief, still current today, that the ruin was of Dutch origin derives from the fact that Dutch ships in the early decades of the 17th century frequently stopped by the offshore islands of the Chu Kong estuary to take potable water. They were denied anchorage in Macau by the Portuguese and prohibited from entering Chinese ports by the Chinese. The myth of Dutch origin has been reinforced by confusion of the name with that of the Dutch fort of Castel Zeelandia built on Taiwan in the 17th century, which is also known as Fan Lau ($), meaning "foreign building". It takes no stretch of the imagination to ascribe to the fort at Kai Yik Kok, a Dutch, or Portuguese, or any other foreign origin. Fan ... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 86 ARMANDO M. DA SILVA defected to the government cause, and that as a reward, their land holdings were recognized officially by the government. This is a very Chinese approach to the problem of pacification. The Cheng 鄭 family of Fan Lau claims to have ancestral connections with Cheng Lin Fuk 鄭連福 and his son, Cheng Yat 鄭一, both notorious pirates from Tai Yu Shan, who terrorized the Chu Kong estuary during the latter half of the 18th century. The Cheng family still owns the land nearest to the old fort, which may suggest that this family had ancestors who were also on the government side (plate 10). The garrison could not have existed for long without food and it is reasonable to suppose that the padi fields of Fan Lau supported the soldiers from the fort (plate 11). There are reasons for believing that the Kai Yik Kok fort may have pre-dated the Coastal Withdrawal of 1662, and that it may have been a Ming rather than a Ch'ing fort. Some confirmation of this is afforded by a series of nautical charts in the Mo Pei Chi (A). The preface to this work is dated 1621, but it was not presented to the throne until 1628. However, it has been shown that the charts almost certainly date from the first half of the fifteenth century. Many of the place-names in that section of the charts pertaining to the Chu Kong estuary are identifiable when checked against similar or equivalent place-names found in the maps of the 19th century editions of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi, San On Yuen Chi, Heung Shan Yuen Chi and O Mun Kei Leuk, but the reader must be warned on two points. First, place-names may differ in both pronunciation and orthography in different sources. Yung Hai is written as 容海 on the Mo Pei Chi charts, but as 雍海 on the maps of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi. A second point to remember is that adjoining districts on one island are not infrequently depicted as separate islands. The Kwong Tung T'ung Chi carries a map of the San On district, for instance, which marks Tai Yu Shan, Tung Chung and Kai Yik Kok fort as separate islands, whereas the last two places are in fact both located on Tai Yu Shan. It is obvious that the place-names on these maps serve not so much to pin-point localities as to mark well-known landmarks and stopping places. Navigation in these waters depended not on nautical instruments, but on the experience of pilots familiar with key channels and navigational landmarks, such as headlands and mountain peaks. *Plates 12 and 13 also relate to this article. ================================================================================ 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-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 90 ARMANDO M. DA SILVA It will suffice here to say that the exterior defence of the Chu Kong estuary consisted of a series of forts, customs-stations and guard-posts in the Lo Man Shan 老萬山, Kai Pong 鷄澎, Sam Chau Mun 三洲門, Ngoi Ling Ting 外伶仃, and the Tam Kon ## groups of the outer off-shore islands. The civil administration ruled from Nam Tau, the district city of the San On district. The military administration was centred at Tai Pang, on the western arm enclosing Tai Pang Hoi (Mirs Bay). The civil administration operated on a north-south axis, as against the east-west axis of the military coastal defence system. This is understandable when one realizes that the military could facilitate their control of the coast-line by establishing easy communications by water running the length of the coast-line from strongpoints on strategic head-lands and the offshore islands. 3 For the Chinese characters of place names of some locales in the vicinity of Tai Yu Shan see map 3. For names of places within the present territory of Hong Kong see A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories (Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960). 4 So far as I know there has been no published study of this fort by Hongkong's local historians, except for a brief mention in one work which states that Kai Yik Kok fort was of Ch'ing dynasty date. Lo Hsiang-lin, Hongkong and its External Communication before 1842, (Hongkong, Institute of Chinese Culture, 1963) p. 172. 5 The principal ingredients of this cement are clam and oyster shells which are crushed and burnt to produce slaked lime. The lime is then mixed with fine sand to produce a holding cement. Shells and fine sand are common to many local beaches and are, apparently for this purpose, used in lime kilns. 6 San On Yuen Chi, kuen 22, under section on Coastal Defence reads: 看復界後海絮籹寧而設險更捻周密雖今之汎地 及設兵皆與舊制不同而大嶼山雞翼角炮臺南頭 炮臺赤濘炮蠱最為餓要 7 Fan Lau is also known as Shek Sun meaning "boulder growths", a reference to the numerous residual boulders at Kai Yik Kok, 8 Luis Gomes, Monografia de Macau (Macau, 1951), a Portuguese translation of the O Mun Kei Leuk p. 70. "No 7° ano de long Tcheng (1730) construiram-se fortalezas nas duas montanhas, distribuiram-se as guarniçoes para a sua defensa e foram reforçadas as tropas que guarneciam Tai-U-San formando assim como que um angulo semelhante ao que e constituido pelos chifres dum boi, para servir de defensa exterior de Macau e o Boca Tigre", 9 J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Sailing directions of Chinese voyages" T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938) pp. 230-237; and "The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century", T'oung Pao, vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412. 10 The district of San On (新安) was formed in the sixth year of Lung Hing (隆慶) ie. 1572-73, Fourteen years later, in 1587, the San On district gazetteer was written by Yan Tai-kon (縣太君), the District Magistrate. Various editions followed. The latest edition was published in 1819. This gazetteer provides the best primary source of information on pre-British Hongkong. Chapters (kuen) XIV and XXII deal with Coastal Defence. These are chapters of special interest to historical geographers. ================================================================================ 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 91 11 A lorcha is a specialized fighting craft from Macau that combined a Western-style hull (for speed and maneuverability) with Chinese batten sails and rigging (for easier sail-handling and disguise). 12 Charles F. Neumann, History of the Pirates (š), who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, (London, John Murray, 1831) P. 58. 13 J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide (Canton, Office of the Chinese Repository, 1848) pp. 70-71. 14 The Last Year in China to the Peace of Nanking as sketched in Letters to his Friends by a Field Officer actively employed in that Country (2nd edition, revised, London, Longman, Brown, Green and Longmans 1843) pp. 51-52. 15 There is, in addition, the possibility that the fort had a temporary garrison in 1834 see the imperial directive given respecting defence and patrolling at Lantau and Macao quoted by J. L. Cranmer-Byng in his brief note "An old fort at Tung Chung on Lantao Island” in J.H.K.B.R.A.S. Vol 3 (1963) pp. 144-145. 16 Hong Kong Government. New Territories Administration. Block Crown Lease Demarcation Districts 322 and 327, Shek Sun village, Lantau Island. BIBLIOGRAPHY CITED J. J. L. Duyvendak, "Sailing directions of Chinese voyages", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 230-237, "The true dates of the Chinese maritime expeditions in the early fifteenth century", T'oung Pao vol. 34 (1938), pp. 341-412. Luis B. Gomes, Monografia de Macau, Macau, 1951. Hongkong Government. A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hongkong, Kowloon, and the New Territories, Hongkong, 1960. Lo Hsing-lin, Hongkong and its External Communications before 1842. Hongkong, 1963. J. R. Morrison, A Chinese Commercial Guide, Canton, 1848. Charles F. Neumann, The History of the Pirates who infested the China Sea from 1807 to 1810, translated from the Chinese original, London, 1831. Ch'ing dynasty work: Chinese Sources Mo Pei Chi (AA) A.D. 1621 The provincial Gazetteer of Kwangtung: Kwong Tung Tung Chi (♬✯ ih sk) 1864 edition The District Gazetteers for the following: San On Yuen Chi (%) 1819 edition Tung Kwun Yuen Chi ✯✯✯) 1797 edition Heung Shan Yuen Chi (3) 1827 edition O Mun Kei Leuk (39 1932) 1800 edition ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d CAPITALISM AND THE CHINESE PEASANT 121 less far than one might suppose from the superficial — though very striking changes in the material standard and style of living. This is especially true of the political and economic spheres. To say, as Potter does in describing the activities of one particularly wealthy individual, that "in the New Territories at present, political power is easily translated into wealth" is to oversimplify a complex symbiotic relationship between economic and political power scarcely a new thing in Chinese society. Further consideration of the ways in which different types of peasant society are integrated would have raised some fascinating questions on the particular case of “depeasantization” in the Chinese context. Just how much difference has the great increase in wealth made? Has it, perhaps, intensified patterns of behaviour that were already present? Potter describes the same, or another, wealthy personage as being constantly attended by three or four close business and political associates, almost all of whose entertainment expenses he pays: what is the nature of the relationship between these men? And how does it differ from the analogous ones described in the Chinese novels comedies of manners which could offer new insights to the anthropologist of traditional China? Unfortunately, Potter lacked time and opportunity thoroughly to investigate the Hop Yick Company, a most interesting organisation in the local market town of Yuen Long. Skinner's work on the integration of whole marketing areas is very relevant to the New Territories, and it would be useful to have more detail on the articulation, past and present, of Yuen Long market with the surrounding villages.* One among many important questions raised, but perhaps insufficiently discussed, by Potter concerns the entry of outside capital into a market which previously derived its livelihood exclusively from its function as a focus for the economic and political activity of the surrounding district: what A small point of fact (p. 170): the Hop Yick Company did not evolve from a market organisation controlled by a Kam Tin lineage group, interesting though such a development would have been. It was formed when the other groups of villages in the Yuen Long marketing area became tired of the domination of the old market by the Tangs of Kam Tin. These groups (yeuk or heung) found themselves with the capital and the political integration necessary to throw off the Tangs' control, and to form a new market on the doorstep of the old. (Cf. Hong Kong Administrative Reports, 1917, J.2: "The new market at Un Long proved its utility and incidentally took much of the life out of the old market, where several bankruptcies had to be registered") Kam Tin was excluded from the foundation of the new market. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 162 ! : ITINERANT HAKKA WEAVERS In the course of general historical enquiries among old village persons in Kowloon and the Southern District of the New Territories, it has been established that in their youth it was a regular practice for itinerant Hakka persons, mostly men it seems, to come yearly to villages in this area some time after the second rice harvest (October-November) to weave locally-grown hemp thread into cloth. The finished product was then dyed and used by local people to make clothes, or sold to others for a like purpose. For example, one man born in 1885 in Nga Tsin Wai, one of the old-established Cantonese villages of Kowloon, said: Most families grew hemp when I was young. It was harvested in the 8th or 9th moons. None grew in the winter as the plants needed water. My mother manipulated it into thread and it could be woven at home or sold to weavers in the Kowloon City shops: sometimes these people came to the village to buy it. We villagers usually relied on strangers to weave our hemp. Every year about the 10th to the 12th moons some Hakka people from Mui Yuen and Hing Ning [districts in North-east Kwangtung] came round the village. They would rent an empty house and stay as long as there was work for them. Then they moved elsewhere. They only wove cloth. It was generally known as tai min po (***) and was very hard-wearing, lasting for several tens of years. The villagers made clothes, quilts, mosquito nets etc., with this cloth, and most clothes were home-made at that time. I went to sea at 18 and the Hakkas came regularly up to then. I didn't come back to settle in the village until I was 45 and by that time they no longer came, no doubt because ready-made clothes were available in the shops. I came across this kind of information by chance, but was pleased to have it corroborated by what Rev. Rudolf Lechler, the celebrated missionary of the Basel Mission [which specialised in evangelical work among the Hakkas from about 1850 onwards], has to say about this subject in an article "The Hakka Chinese" which appeared in The Chinese Recorder in October 1878: 15 In some parts as e.g. in the prefecture of Kia-yin chow, the women spin cotton, and are also able to weave the yarn into ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1968 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d 210 LI, Shi-yi LINDSAY, T. J.* L IU, D. H. LIU, Sydney C. - LIU, Prof. Ts'un-yan LLEWELLYN, J. LO, Prof. Hsiang-lin LO, T. S.* LOBO, Mrs. R. H. LOCKING, J. R. - - LOCKS, Miss A. M. LOFT, Prof. B. + LOSEBY, Miss P. LOTHROP, Francis B.* - LUCAS, Col. E. S. S. LUM, Miss Ada* LUPTON, G. C. M. MA, Meng · MACCABE, Miss Eileen - MACGREGOR, Miss M. MACK, A. M. MACKEITH, J. S. MACKENZIE, J. + + • MACKENZIE, Miss Susan - MADING, Dr. Klaus MAGEE, M. W. P. 72, La Salle Road, 2nd floor, Kowloon. 3, Bareena Avenue, Wahroonga, N.S.W. c/o U.S. Consulate General, 26 Garden Road, H.K. 22 Tai Hang Road, 3rd fl., H.K. Dept. of Chinese, Australian National University, Canberra, A.C.T. 2600, Australia, c/o The Registry, The University, H.K. Dept. of Chinese, The University, H.K. c/o Lo and Lo, Jardine House, 7/F., Pedder St., H.K. Race View Mansions, Apt. 72, 46 Stubbs Road, H.K. c/o District Office, Yuen Long, N.T. Flat 20, 6 Mansfield Road, H.K. Dept. of Zoology, University of Hong Kong, H.K. c/o Russ & Co., Rooms 523/5 Gloucester Building, H.K. 176 Milk Street, Boston, Massachusetts, 02109, U.S.A. 94, Main Street, Stanley, H.K. 142, Boundary Street, Kowloon, c/o Colonial Secretariat, H.K. Institute of Oriental Studies, The University, H.K. King's Park House, Gascoigne Road, Kowloon. 69, Bisney Road, Pokfulum, H.K. P. O. Box 255, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, 80 Robinson Road, H.K. Davie, Boag & Co., Ltd., Jardine House, H.K. Physiotherapy Dept., Queen Mary Hospital, Pokfulum, H.K. c/o German Consulate General, P.O. Box 250, H.K Operations, Cathay Pacific Airways, Kai Tak Airport, Kowloon. E Life Member Please notify the Hon. Secretary of any inaccuracy ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 39 The territory contained a number of markets: Yuen Long in the west, Tai Po old and new markets in the east, Shek Wu Hui in the north, and Sha Tau Kok in the extreme northeast. The markets at Yuen Long and Tai Po may be identified as standard markets. Shek Wu Hui and Sha Tau Kok were much smaller and may have been emerging from the status of minor markets. Sham Chun, to the north of the territory, was both a standard market and the intermediate market for the others. Let us consider the markets in more detail. Yuen Long market had a population of 559 in 1911. It served 22,200 people and a cultivated area of 13,100 acres, chiefly planted to rice and sugar cane. The two Tai Po markets had a combined population of 660, served 6,550 people and a cultivated area of 2,600 acres, principally planted to rice. Shek Wu Hui had a smaller population—43 in all. It was located in the Sheung Shui district, which had a population of 5,600, and a cultivated area of 3,100 acres. Sha Tau Kok had a population of 47. Estimates of the number of people served and acreage cultivated are not available. There are no corresponding figures for Sham Chun, but in 1907 it was described as the largest market in the San On (Hsin-an) district, having 61 large shops and 323 medium-sized shops.42 Each of the markets had its own periodic marketing schedule,43 as shown below: Table I Market Schedule Sham Chun intermediate market 2 5 8 Sham Chun standard market 4 7 Sha Tau Kok 1 7 Shek Wu Hui 1 7 Yuen Long 3 9 Tai Po old and new markets 3 9 It is evident that, although the schedules of the standard markets clash, none conflict with that of the intermediate market. In his discussion of marketing schedules Skinner says: "within inter- Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 41 Most of these cases are summarily dealt with by the village council... But if either of the parties to a case is dissatisfied, he can appeal to a council of a Tung [Tung='cave', translated by Lockhart as division], or to a general council made up of the representatives of the different Tung.... Each council of a Tung contains representatives of the villages which make up the Tung. In addition to a council of a Tung there is a general council for the whole of the Tung Lo or Eastern Section. This general council is styled the Tung P'ing Kuk or Council of Peace for the Eastern Section. It has its chamber at the market town of Sham Chun, which is regarded as the centre of the Eastern Section."47 The organization of the Tung P'ing Kuk may be represented schematically as follows: Tung P'ing Kuk Tung Tung Tung Tung Village Councils Village Councils Village Councils Village Councils Apart from the description above, little is known about the Tung P'ing Kuk. Hayes, setting Stewart Lockhart's description against local material gathered from his own enquiries in the area, accepts that "a form of genuine local self-government existed in 1898"48. Freedman comments: "I have not yet been able to convince myself that I know what tung are."49 It is likely that what Stewart Lockhart described as a system of "local government" was the formal framework of a militia organization. Everything he says is consistent with this interpretation. Militia organizations commonly undertook responsibility for the maintenance of local order. The title of the general council is also suggestive: the character p'ing ('peace') often appeared in the style of militia forces. It is possible to get an idea of the areas of the various tung within the northern district of the New Territory from Appendices III and V of Stewart Lockhart's report. Three of the tung, Sha Tau Kok, Yuen Long, and Sham Chun, seem to have been roughly ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 56 R. G. GROVES Kinship ties played a large part in the organization of the resistance. In the Yuen Long area, leadership and probably manpower were overwhelmingly supplied by the three Tang lineages of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin. In the Shek Wu Hui district, it was a matter of cooperation between a number of lineages of roughly equal status. At Tai Po, the Man lineage of Tai Hang provided leadership, within the Ts'at Yeuk, for a large number of smaller lineages. Ties of clanship enabled the Tangs of Yuen Long to enlist the help of the Tangs of Pan T'in. They, in turn, received support from agnates living in Tung-kuan City. The Tang higher-order lineage of the New Territory did not act as a unified lineage during the resistance movement. The leaders of Ping Shan, Ha Tsuen, and Kam Tin were concerned, first and foremost, to consolidate plans for resistance within the Yuen Long area. Leaders of the Tang lineages of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau only subsequently became formally involved with preparations for resistance, along with other leaders from their respective marketing areas. The leaders of the three Yuen Long lineages carefully coordinated their plans. There is no evidence that representatives of Lung Yeuk Tau and Tai Po Tau were similarly consulted. Moreover, the Lung Yeuk Tau settlement, along with others in the Shek Wu Hui area, was threatened with attack by the Tangs of Yuen Long. There is insufficient evidence to materially advance the discussion concerning the relationship between hsiang and marketing areas. However, the data strongly suggest that, for the purposes of resistance, the highest order of effective inter-lineage cooperation among the Tangs of the New Territory was achieved within the Yuen Long marketing community. There is also the possibility that long- or short-standing disputes between the various local lineages of the Tang higher-order lineage inhibited their cooperation across the boundaries of marketing areas during the resistance movement. But this would not necessarily weaken the argument that the standard marketing community was the optimum unit for inter-lineage cooperation. Wakeman, in his discussion of militia, has stressed the importance of gentry leadership. The documents concerning the resistance name 63 people as active in the movement, in that they: (i) took part in the meetings which organized it; and/or, (ii) acted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d MILITIA, MARKET AND LINEAGE 57 as leaders during the fighting. Ten of the 63 leaders are identi-fiable as members of the gentry, in the sense that they are men-tioned in the documents as having degrees obtained either by purchase or by examination. examination. Most of the remainder could be termed 'local notables'. Some were substantial owners of agricul-tural land and village houses. Other owned shops in their local markets. It is probable that they were often --as was Man Cham-tsun managers of corporately-owned lineage property. The available information about these men is summarized below. — Table II LEADERS IN THE RESISTANCE MOVEMENT (By Marketing area, District & Village, Surname)* Marketing area District, or other Association of sharing gradu-ates Village, or Surnames No. No. of leaders Yuen Long 5+ Ha Tsuen Tang 12 2 Ping Shan Tang 11 1 Kam Tin Tang 10 2 Pat Heung Tang 2 Li 1 Lai 1 Tse 1 1. +3 15 Shap Pat Heung Chu 1 Ng 2 2 15 Tai Po Tun Mun Ts'at Yeuk Tang 1 Lo 1 Tai Hang Man 3 1 71 Pan Chung Chan 1 Mak 1 - * +3 + ++ 7 ** Fan Leng Pang 1 Sha Lo Tung Li 2 " ** * * 2 Cheung Shue Tan Chan 1 7: * H 3. Hang Ha Po Lam 1 Tai Po Tau Tang * Shek Wu Hui Lung Yeuk Tau Tang I ++ +1 Sheung Shui Liu 1 Ping Kong Hau 2 1 ** Sha Tau Kok Sham Chun Wo Hang San Tin Li 4 Man 1 * All romanisations are in Cantonese. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 62 R. G. GROVES 44 Skinner, op. cit., Part 1, p. 27. The markets of the northern district of the New Territory seem to have been dependent primarily upon Sham Chun, rather than upon several intermediate markets. This may be an example of what Skinner terms a marketing system in a "topographic cul-de-sac". Ibid., p. 21. 45 Baker, Hugh D. R. "The Five Great Clans of the New Territories”, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. VI, 1966, p. 31. 46 Freedman, op. cit., pp. 82ff., gives an account of the origins of the Ts'at Yeuk. The character yeuk may be translated as 'covenant', or 'agreement'. The seven covenants' were a confederation of seven groups of villages within the Tai Po marketing area. 47 Papers Extracts, op. cit., p. 192. 48 Hayes, "The Pattern of Life.", op. cit., p. 9. 49 Freedman, op. cit., p. 81. 50 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 201ff. 51 Hong Kong 1963, Hong Kong, 1964, pp. 363ff. 52 Papers Extracts, op. cit., pp. 587-8. 53 The following account has been assembled, somewhat in the manner of a jigsaw puzzle, from two sources: Hong Kong. Correspondence (June 20, 1898 to August 20, 1900) Respecting the Extension of the Boundaries of the Colony, Eastern No. 66, Colonial Office, London, 1900; Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong, 1899. Despatches and Other Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 1900. Specific references will be given only for quotations. 54 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. A brief discussion of the activities of the land syndicate mentioned in the preceding paragraph is to be found in Endacott, G.B., A History of Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, London and Hong Kong, and Paperback Edition, 1964, p. 265, who says: "The main problem of the take-over was not military but administrative. A land syndicate of Chinese among whom it was suspected Ho Kai [Dr. Ho Kai, a Chinese unofficial member of the Legislative Council of Hong Kong] was one, had bought land at a fraction of its value by spreading the rumour that the British would seize all land. Blake threatened to restore this property, but the land problem proved too baffling for him to carry out his threat." 55 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 261. Wakeman, op. cit., Chap. V, discusses similar charges made against the British at Canton almost sixty years earlier. 56 One recipient was Liu Wan-kuk, of Sheung Shui. His support for the resistance appears to have been half-hearted throughout. On at least two occasions he protested: "the villages in our Division have no plans. Moreover, our commissariat and arms being insufficient, how can we offer effective resistance? We request your Division [Yuen Long] to decide on the plan of campaign and we will follow your instruction". The dominance of the Yuen Long Division—and of the Tang lineages within it—was to become increasingly obvious as the resistance movement developed. Papers Despatches, op. cit., p. 72. 57 Translated in Correspondence, op. cit., pp. 138ff. 58 Baker, op. cit., pp. 35ff. 59 Correspondence, op. cit., p. 147. 60 Ibid., p. 148. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM 121 of the two should in fact have proportionately more empty houses than its poorer neighbour22; it is not impossible that the sort of inefficiencies in the descent system that I have described whereby the swelling of a descent line in one generation may leave the next with more house-property than it needs or can redistribute — may account for this anomaly.* H. G. H. NELSON. NOTES 1. Göran Aijmer, "Being Caught by a Fishnet: On Fengshui in South-eastern China", J.H.K.B.R.A.S., Vol. 8, 1968, pp. 74-81. 2. Field data drawn on in this paper are derived from a period of work in Sheung Tsuen, Pat Heung, from June 1967 to October 1968. I was employed as a Research Officer of the London School of Economics, on a project financed by a grant made to Professor Maurice Freedman by the Social Science Research Council. Much of the information from the Hong Kong Government's land records was collected by my wife, whose fare to Hong Kong was provided by the London-Cornell Project for East and South-East Asian Studies, financed jointly by the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Nuffield Foundation. I am very glad to acknowledge their generosity. 3. See for example J. E. Spenser, "The Houses of the Chinese", Geographical Review, Vol. XXXVII, 1947, pp. 254-273. 4. Cf. J. W. Hayes, ‘A Chinese Village on Hong Kong Island Fifty Years Ago Tai Tam Tuk, Village Under the Water', in I.C. Jarvie and Joseph Agassi, eds., Hong Kong: A Society in Transition, London, 1969, p. 33. 5. Block Crown Lease, Demarcation Districts Nos. 112 and 114, 1905; various Memorials in Yuen Long District Office; and ‘A-Roll' volume X.14. I am most grateful to the New Territories Administration for their courtesy in allowing me access to the invaluable information contained in their Land Records. 6. The current records conceal the difference between inhabited structures and "house-lots' (Crown Rent being assessed on the site rather than the structure) - a difference of which the villagers are aware. Many of them, when asked how many houses they own, will say, "so many houses and so many lots "(uk-tel_£)". It seems to me possible that some villagers may, in 1905, have been far-sighted ---or fortunate enough to register both their houses and their ruined lots, thereby avoiding the expense and complication of obtaining a New Grant Lot when they wanted to rebuild on an old site. * Groups of houses, bigger and more durable than usual, have also been built as a form of long-term investment (and prestige expenditure) by particularly wealthy men; but their hopes of producing enough sons and grandsons to justify this deliberate over-production of houses are often sadly unfulfilled. * On the subject of this article see also Mr. Hayes' note at pp. 158-160. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1969 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d 122 H. G. H. NELSON * Records covering 380 houses from 1905 to 1968 reveal 55 sales of houses. This includes sales within (the majority) and between surname groups of which Sheung Tsuen has seven, formerly eight -- but does not include sales to outsiders; these do not in any case become significant until after 1963. The 55 house-sales include 12 houses which were sold twice, which for reasons given below, may be regarded as a significant reduction of the total; and also include sales of empty sites, cowsheds, and latrines. These latter are sometimes, but not invariably, indicated in the Memorial of sale, so it is likely that there were more of this type than the records reveal: I estimate the total at about 10. The number of original sales of habitable houses in this 63 year period is therefore a little above thirty. 9 I occasionally heard the term chinguk EA used to describe such a house; but strictly speaking this refers to the house which contains that version of the ancestral tablet which has been passed down the eldest son line. T T 10 The question of the completeness of the records may be raised: in general, I think it is safe to say that in as important a matter as title to house-property, transactions are almost certain to be registered eventually at the local District Office. The only exception to this is the adjustment of property rights which may involve a sale between brothers after a division: this often occurs before the brothers' succession to their father is registered, so that the sale does not reach the Land Records. In one such case that I know of, however, the sale between the brothers was felt to be important enough for it to be documented and witnessed by "the Village Representative and all the elders". This took place in 1960 or 1961. The Hon. Editor has drawn my attention to non-registration of transactions in the early years of the British administration of the New Territories, citing the District Officer's report for the Southern district (1912) which says:- Eight hundred and sixty-five deeds were registered during the year. This is only slightly above the average for the last seven years during which the Land Ordinance has been in force. There is no doubt that much land changes hands without registration; and it is probable that not more than 10 per cent of mortgages on land in the less accessible parts of the district are registered. The journey from Lantao is an almost insuperable obstacle and a "stamped paper" is generally considered sufficient security. In this case the principal reasons for non-registration were distance and poor communications. At Sheung Tsuen the main land office was at Tai Po until the Yuen Long District Office was established in 1947. (though it appears there was some kind of Land Office-cum-Court at Ping Shan pre-war). If people had to go all the way over Tai Mo Shan to Tai Po there would have been similar disincentives to registration here too. 11 Cf. M. C. Yang, A Chinese Village: Taitou, Shantung Province, Columbia University Press, New York and London, 1965 edition, p. 40: although this instance comes from a very different part of China, and a village where domestic architecture is different from that in Hong Kong. 12 The institution of k'ai-tsai ## often loosely translated as “godson' - is not relevant here. 13 See for example H. D. R. Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village, London, 1969, p. 49. 14 Apart from its obvious restriction to a unilineal descent system, kwoh-kai also differs significantly from Western forms of adoption in that the initiative may come either from the adopter or the adoptee, as indicated below. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1970 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ww72j0241 132 HENRY D. TALBOT Lo cheou-Lo Chau (Beaufort Island) = Mers Bay Mirs Bay Mew Is.-Mo Chau Nako chau-Papai (Nei Kwu Chau or Hei Ling Chau) Nine-pin-Ninepin Group Po-ke-long Point=Lei Yue Mun Point Psang-chau-Kau Yi Chau Ragged Island Steep Island Rat Island or Ling Ting-Ling Ting R. Povado or Iron River-Hebe Haven Sin-can-hien-Hsin-an Hsien (San On Yuen) or, rather, the district city of Hsin-an Singan Islands-Siu Chau and Tai Shan Shu-lap-ko Is.-Chek Lap Kok Island Sui-pak Siu Kau Yi Soko Cheou Is. the Soko Islands Song-kco Sung Kong Ta baco=Chung Chau Tat-hong Moon-Tathong Channel = Tay Pak Peng Chau Tay-pak-hoe Green Island (or perhaps the sea between Hong Kong and Lantao Islands) Tsa-cheou Is. =Sha Chau Tsan-Cheou-Kau Pei Chau (off Cape D'Aguilar) Tysa=Small island 1⁄2 mile south of East Brother Wang Laang-Waglan Island NOTES 1 Cf. The British Museum General Catalogue of Printed Books (London, 1961) Vol. 100, Col. 222. The British Museum Catalogue of Printed Maps. Charts and Plans (London, 1967) Vol. 7, Col. 359, Morse, H. B. The Chronicles of the East India Company Trading to China 1635-1834 (Oxford, 1926-29) Lists of Ships. 2 Cf. Bonacker, W. Kartenmacher Aller Lander und Zeiten (Stuttgart, Hiersemann, 1966) p. 200, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CONTENTS Page 1 1 1 1 PRESIDENT'S REPORT FOR 1970 HON. TREASURER'S REPORT FOR 1970 THE LIBRARY 1970-71 9 13 ARTICLES CONTRIBUTED: The Taipings at Ningpo: The Significance of a Forgotten Event STEPHEN UHALLEY, JNR. 17 33 The Debate on National Salvation: Ho Kai Versus Tseng Chi-tse-CHIU LING-YEONG 52 Letters from China 1835-36-HON. EDITOR Chinese Voluntary Associations in Southeast Asian Cities and the Kaifongs in Hong Kong-ALINE K. WONG 62 The Emergence of a Chinese Elite in Hong Kong-CARL T. Smith The District Watch Committee: "The Chinese Executive Council of Hong Kong'-H. J. LETHBRIDGE A Brief Report on Sung-Type Pottery Finds in Hong Kong-J. C. Y. WATT A Short History of Military Volunteers in Hong Kong-JAMES HAYES 74 116 142 151 Articles Reprinted: The Colony of Hong Kong-Rev. James LEGGE 172 NOTES AND QUERIES Visit to the Tung Lin Kok Yuen, and other places on Hong Kong Island 194 Rope-making and Dyeing/Calendering on Ap Lei Chau, Hong Kong JAMES HAYES 198 Charcoal Burning in Hong Kong 199 What Inspired Sir John Bowring's Hymn?-J. M. BRAGA 203 Ceremonies of Propitiation Carried Out in connection with Road Works in the New Territories in 1960 G. C. W. GROUT & HON. Editor 204 BOOK REVIEWS List of MEMBERS 210 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG 91 as the American Trading Company of Borneo, with the intention of developing the concession the Sultan of Brunei had granted to an American, Charles Lee Moses. The Chinese partners supplied most of the capital. The Company established a settlement, but after a few years of ship-building, experimental planting, and trade the project was abandoned. The company did not have sufficient capital to finance the undertaking properly.24 This drain of capital may have been the primary cause of the bankruptcy of Pang Wah Ping in 1866. He had acquired his original capital from profits of trade in unprepared opium, and during his years of prosperity his name appears on the various documents used as criteria for élite status. The Li family, however, was more firmly established and survived the failure of the American Trading Company of Borneo. Its interests were diversified. It had large real estate holdings in Hong Kong which regularly brought in rental income. It was perhaps the largest broker for coolie labor and charterer of ships for these emigrants. In 1868 gambling was legalized in Hong Kong and the monopoly was bought up by the Li family firm. They also had interests in the opium monopoly. Their financial investment in Hong Kong appears to have led them to identify their interests with the British at the time of the Second Opium War, and a Chinese source states that they "gave contributions to foreigners to the extent of over a lakh of ready money and recruited native braves who went to the front at Tientsin. When peace was declared they shared in the War Indemnity as well as in the Imperial effects and curios of the Yuen-ming-yuen (Summer Palaces)".25 They were accused of supporting France in its efforts to gain control of Annam. The Chinese authorities of their home district tried to derive some benefit from the fortunes of the family, by requesting large contributions for the reclamation of waste land. When the family seemed somewhat hesitant to meet the full demands of the authorities, they sought to provoke generosity by seizing a member of the family who happened to have returned to his home district, imprisoning him, and eventually putting him on trial. This account of the troubles the family encountered in its relations with Chinese officialdom illustrates the predicament the wealthy merchants and compradores found themselves in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1971 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/z029vt43g CHINESE ELITE IN HONG KONG Tiuchau merchant, Ko Mun Wo 93 alias Ko Cho Heung of the Yuen Fat Hong. He was the founder of the firm which established itself in Hong Kong about 1858 and developed an extensive business in the importation of rice from Siam. It soon became one of the wealthiest Chinese firms. In 1881, Ko Mun Wo was the sixteenth highest rate payer, and when he died the year following, the value of his estate was estimated at $163,000. After his death the business was continued by his four sons. Tang Pak Yeung 16 alias Tang Kam Chi was the youngest member of the first Tung Wah Hospital Committee. He was a merchant in the chartering firm of Kwong Lei Yuen. He had received an English language education. He was not a large property owner, nor does his name appear in other lists of the elite. THE COMPRADORES GROUP The compradores were an important new class which arose in the nineteenth century in the port cities of China. A recent study by Yen-p'ing Hao entitled The Comprador in Nineteenth Century China, Bridge between East and West (Cambridge, Mass., 1970) shows how influential this group became in providing capital for the introduction of modern forms of communication, industry, mining, banking and journalism in the late Ch'ing Dynasty. The origin of the compradore system is in the Co-Hong organization through which China channelled all trade with foreigners before the opening of the Treaty ports in 1843. The compradores were recruited from the Canton and Macao area. A large majority of the most influential compradore families were from the Heung Shan District near Macao. When the foreign firms came to Hong Kong they brought with them their compradores. As trade increased on the China coast, the compradores were provided with an opportunity to accumulate considerable capital. This they invested in real estate and in Chinese commercial firms. The late Ch'ing Dynasty was often in financial difficulties. One method of raising income was through the sale of official degrees. The compradores and merchants of the port cities, who formed a newly-created bourgeois nouveau riche group within ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES KAM T'IN 錦田 SUNG HOK-P'ANG Kam T'in is one of the oldest villages in the New Territories. During the dynasty of Hau Chau (後周) A.D. 951-959 most of the villagers belonged to the family of Ch'an (陳) and the place was called Ch'an Tin (陳田) meaning Chan's field. In the 6th year of Hoi Po (開寶) A.D. 973 of Sung (宋) dynasty Tang Hon Fat (鄧漢黻) who is said to be the first Tang (鄧) ancestor to come to Kwangtung (廣東) settled in the village, and built the first house at the bottom of a hill called Kwai Kok Shaan (龜角山) about ¼ of a mile away from the present Kam T'in. It was at first called Sham Lei (岑里), but later on they cultivated the surrounding country and the name was changed to Sham Lei T'in (岑里田) which was soon shortened to Sham T'in (岑田) meaning fields surrounding a small hill. The present name of Kam T'in (錦田) or ornamental fields, was given to the village in the 15th year of Maan Lik (萬曆) A.D. 1587 of Ming dynasty (明朝), and it came about in this way. At that time there was a very bad famine in the San On district (新安縣), and the district magistrate Yau T'ai K’în (游大乾) was obliged to open the government granaries and distribute the rice to relieve the people. But when it was finished they were still in need, and the magistrate then sent his officers to all the rich men in the district asking them for donations to help the poor. Most of them contributed a few piculs of rice, but none of them more than a hundred. Then Tang Yuen Fan (鄧元藩) of Sham T'in was visited. He was the richest man in San On district, and was noted for his generosity. He owned over 10,000 Chinese acres of cultivated *There are six sections to this long article, each printed in different numbers of The Hong Kong Naturalist. In this reissue the separate parts will be indicated by figures within square brackets. The first three sections, given here, appeared in the issues for December 1935 and April and June 1936. The rest will follow in the next issue of this Journal. The romanizations used in the original included figures to indicate tone values. These are now excluded. Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 114 SUNG HOK-P’ANG to Kam T'in he was much taken by it, considering the people were more friendly and honest than those of his own country, and it was said that he came to live there in the 6th year of Hoi Po (HT) A.D. 973 of Sung dynasty. During the 8th year of Shing Fa (APC) A.D. 1472 of Ming dynasty when the Kam T'in people revised their family tree, they added a note which cast doubt on the veracity of this, and instead they were inclined to believe that Tang Foo (#) the great grandson of Tang Hon Fat was really the first to come to Kam Tin, and that he transferred the bones of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather to Kwangtung from Kiangsi. Be that as it may, and although there is no actual proof that one or other was the original Tang to settle in Kwangtung, Tang Hon Fat remains a "first ancestor" as his is the oldest Tang grave near Kam T'in. It can be found at Ah Kai Shaan (Y), Waang Chau (H) village. Six generations after Tang Hon Fat there were two brothers, Kwai (3) and Sui (). Kwai had two sons called Yuen Ying (* ) and Yuen Hei (†), both of whom left Kam T’in and founded branches of the family elsewhere. Sui had three sons, Yuen Ching (元祯), Yuen Leung (元亮) and Yuen Woh (元和). The first and last of these also left for other districts but Yuen Leung remained behind, and the Tangs in Kam T’in to-day are his direct descendants. These five cousins were known as the "Five Yuens", and after their death their descendants who by then were scattered in various parts of China built an Ancestral Hall, common to all the Yuens, called To Hing T'ong (*). It is at the South gate of the district city of Tung Koon (✯✯), on the Kowloon-Canton railway not far from Sheklung (). In the hall Tang Hon Fat has been given premier place, but the "Five Yuens" are venerated in the same way as he and Tang Yue are, as being "first ancestors”. As mentioned before, Tang Foo, the great grandson of Tang Hon Fat is said to have found the sites for the graves of his father, grandfather and great-grandfather, himself. They were all acknowledged as being lucky places by the "fung shui" men, who were, of course, consulted. That of Tang Hon Fat is called Yuk Nui Paai T'ong (£#*) jade girl reverence; and his son's grave which is on Yuen Long Hill (₪), is called Kam Chung Fau Tei () gold bell cover ground. The grave of Tang Foo's father is called Poon Yuet Chiu T'aam (#AM) half moon shine lake, Page 120 Page 121 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 115 and is on a hill named Hau Tei (#) king crab ground, near the village of Ch'ai Waan Kok (A) Ts'uen Waan ( ) district. The tablet has a poem engraved on it written by Paak Yuk Shim (1) a poetical genius of the Sung dynasty. He was also famous for his paintings which were highly admired among Chinese Scholars. Legends have attributed to him magical powers, and he is supposed to have appeared and disappeared in all the famous mountains from Tung Koon, San On and to the east of Kwangtung. He received the title of "Tsz T'sing Chan Yan” (**^^) from the emperor Sung Ning Tsung (#). Biographies of him were recorded in Tung Koon Yuen Chi (£) Ch'iu Chau Foo Chi (M) and many other books. The poem on the grave was remarkable for the curious allusions that were made in it to the future. It runs:- 1. 長伸左手接星羅, 2. 走攬青衣濯碧波, 3. 深夜一潭星斗現, 4. 裏頭容萬船過。 5. 有人下得朝陽穴, 6. 十三年內登科, 7. 若是世人尋不得, 8. 囘頭轉問釣魚哥。 This can be roughly translated as follows: 1. "Put out the left hand as far as Sing Hill, 2. running as far as to Tsing I island wash it in the green waves.” These two lines refer to the position of the grave. 3. "In deep night one harbour all the stars appear.” Alluding to the lights of Hong Kong harbour in the future. 4. "Inside harbour there will be ten thousand ships passing to and fro. The trade that was to come to Hong Kong. 5. "If any one can find the proper site of the grave 6. in thirteen years' time his descendants will pass the highest degree of Government examinations." This came true in so far as the Tang family were very successful in passing examinations and some of them became high officers and men of rank. 7. "If people in the world try to find, and are unable to find it 8. turn your head round and ask the young fisherman." Referring to the grave again. When Tang Foo was finding the place for the grave the local villagers pointed out to him a stone known as the Fishing Stone which helped him to decide on the site. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 116 SUNG HOK-P'ANG Tang Foo's own grave is well known, as it was mentioned in the "To Shue Tsap Shing" (4) a large encyclopaedia of 10,000 volumes written in the 4th year of Yung Ching (£) A.D. 1726 of Tsing dynasty, by order of the Emperor. The volume which refers to the grave is known "Chik Fong Tin” (*) and it says, "Tang Foo's grave is in Ab Kai 鄧符墓在横洲丫髻山 Shaan, Wang Chau". Even if it is accepted that Tang Foo was the pioneer in settling at Kam Tin, or Kwai Kok Shaan as it was then called, there is very conflicting evidence as to when he actually went there. Although his grave-stone records that he passed the Tsun Sz (±) degree, Government civil examination in the 2nd year of Sung Ning (##) A.D. 1103 of Sung dynasty, there is no record of it in the lists of people who passed the Government examinations (Suen Kui Piu ***), in the annals of Canton, Kwong Chau Foo Chi (✯✯), Tung Kwoon, Tung Koon Yuen Chi (4) or San On, San On Yuen Chi (##) which points to the fact that Tang Foo passed his examinations in Kiangsi before coming to Kwang-tung. Each of the three books mentioned above has a biography of Tang Foo. On the other hand, it is known that after Tang Foo had held the office of district magistrate of Yueng Ch'un (1★-) district and had been promoted to "Naam Hung Sui" ( ) he retired to live in Kwai Kok Shaan, and built a famous school there called Lik Ying Tsai () which was mentioned among “The hundred poems of Po On (Po On Paak Wing (*)" by Yung Ping(), where it was stated that during Sung Ling time A.D. 1102-1106 Tang Foo lived in Kwai Kok Shaan and founded a school called Lik Ying Tsaai (A) and kept a lot of books in the library. This book has unfortunately been lost, and only two poems are still in existence, neither of which deal with the school. Yung Ping was a native of Tung Koon. He was "Tak Tsau Ming Tsun Sz” (*★21) in the 8th year of K’in To ($) A‚D, 1172 of Sung dynasty. Another learned scholar, Fok Wai () of Naam Hoi () district, wrote a long article named Lik Ying Tsaai Kei (4) giving an account of the school. During the reign of Shun Hei ( # ) A.D. 1174-1189 the emperor caused Fok Wai to be admitted to the T'aai Hok (*) (Imperial College) as being a "man possessing the eight virtues." Paat Hang Aff. Only one other scholar... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 117 from Kwantung province Wong Chi Tsoi (£*) of Tung Koon district was rewarded with this privilege. The Lik Ying Tsaai had a large library which housed many thousands of books, and outside the North gate of the village Tang Foo built several hostels for the students to live in. He cultivated the surrounding fields, and the income derived from them was used for forming scholarships for poor students. Tang Foo lectured to the scholars himself sometimes, but he also paid learned men to teach regularly. In the 24th year of Ka Hing (✯✯) A.D. 1819 of Ts'ing (†) dynasty when "The History of the San On district" was revised the ruins of the school were still to be seen, but now there is no trace of it left. According to a copy of the family tree belonging to the Ping Shaan (1) branch of the Tang family, the original stone on Tang Foo's grave was replaced in the 45th year of Ka Tsing (†) A.D. 1566 of Ming dynasty, by a man named Tang Shui Faan (†4K) as it was broken and illegible. On the new stone it was said that the date of Tang Foo was not obtainable, but it stated that he lived during the Sung dynasty. In the 33rd year of Hong Hei () A.D. 1694, of Tsing dynasty another stone was erected, and it is this one, that gives the date of Tang Foo passing his Tsun-sz (+) examination to be the 2nd year of Sung Ning ($) of Sung dynasty A.D. 1103, but considering that his great grandson Tang Sin (#) (or Tang Yuen Leung, one of the "five yuens”) is known to have been district officer of Kung Yuen (4) Kiangsi province in the 3rd year of Kin Yim (£ƒ) A.D. 1129 of Sung dynasty, it is probable that Tang Foo lived a good deal earlier. In fact in the 8th year of Shing Fa (1 ) A.D. 1472 of Ming dynasty the Tang family wrote in their family tree the suggestion that perhaps the 2nd year of Sung Ning () was miswritten for 2nd year of Hei Ning ( ) which would put the date of Tang Foo back to A.D. 1069, a far more possible date. The system of district magistrates in the Sung dynasty was quite different to the system in the modern dynasty of Ts'ing (). When the "Five Dynasties” Ng Toi (£†) A.D. 907-959 began China was in a state of rebellion and disunion. Large armies under their separate generals had to be sent to the various localities to keep order, but far from supporting the Emperor the generals turned the country they were sent to control, into feudatory states, Faan Chan ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 121 is called Lo Foo Ts'z T'ong (老虎祠堂), Tiger Hall. The floor of the cave is quite smooth with a lot of small stones almost like a mosaic. Though the actual site of the school is not known, old tiles have been found from time to time on the hillside, and one of these can be seen in a house called Cheung Ch'un Yuen (祥泉園) of Shui Tau (水頭) village. In the same house is a flower vase of interest that was dug up on Hong Kong island about 30 years before the British settled there. As mentioned before, four of the "five Yuens" eventually left Kam Tin and founded branches of the Tang family elsewhere, and it has even been said that Yuen Leung, the ancestor of the Kam Tin branch, moved to Mok Ka Tung (莫家洞) near Shek Lung, but this removal is generally attributed to Yuen Leung's daughter-in-law, a princess of Sung dynasty whose story reads almost like a romance. She was a daughter of the Emperor Ko Tsung (高宗) of Sung Dynasty, who before becoming emperor of China was Prince Hong Wong (康王). The Tartars at that time were attacking the North of China, and in the 2nd year of Tsing Hong (靖康) A.D. 1127 they entered the Sung capital, captured the two emperors Fai Tsung (徽宗) and Yam Tsung (欽宗) together with both the mother and wife of Hong Wong, who was himself away in another part of the kingdom fighting the Tartars as he held the appointment of Tin Ha Ping Ma Tai Yuen Sui (天下兵馬大元帥), the commander-in-chief of all the emperor's forces. Hong Wong's little daughter was only ten years old and she was protected by her women servants who fled with her to the South. In the 3rd year of Kin Yim (建炎) A.D. 1129 they arrived in the Kiangsi province where Yuen Leung was district officer of Kung Yuen (贛縣) district. He was very zealous to help the Emperor and had collected together an army of soldiers, with the intention of marching North. Kiangsi was full of the Tartar forces, and the princess found herself surrounded by enemies. One day she saw the Sung flag over the encampment of Yuen Leung's army and she went to him for protection. She stayed with Yuen Leung, moving about with his soldiers, and eventually when he returned to Kam Tin he brought her back with him. He did not know who she was, as the servants had told him only that she was the daughter of a high official in the North. The princess found happiness and security in Kam Tin. She was like a daughter in Yuen Leung's house, helped with the household duties and was quite content. Eventually she revealed ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 122 SUNG HOK-P'ANG who her father really was, and Yuen Leung was very troubled as to what to do with her. However when she became of marriageable age the elders of the village advised him to marry her to his son Tsz Ming (A) which, as she was quite willing, he did. Meanwhile the fighting between the Tartars and the Sungs had ceased. Peace was made, and Hong Wong had now become the Emperor Ko Tsung, who ordered that enquiries should be made concerning his daughter. All the district officers throughout the Empire were instructed to help and when the official notice was posted up in the vicinity of Kam T’in, Tsz Ming was much frightened at having married the princess without the emperor's permission. But the princess said, “Do not fear. My life was saved by the Tang family and I have willingly become your wife. Go and tell the District officer who I am." When the official heard the news he came at once and did obeisance to the Princess, and then sent a petition to the Emperor. Ko Tsung ordered Tsz Ming and his wife to come to the capital, where they stayed for about a year, but the princess pined for Kam T'in and begged to be allowed to return to the place of her adoption. So the Emperor let her go, but first he bestowed on her many wharves in the district as "powder expenses"; and a large area of hill and forest land as "toilet expenses". On the thirteenth day of the seventh month of the 8th year of Siu Hing (2) A.D. 1138 they started back for Kam T’in. When they got there, the princess gave orders that the hills and woodlands should be thrown open to the public, so that anyone could make graves on her land without paying tax. In the 51st year of Hong Hei (‡) of Tsing dynasty, A.D. 1712, when the princess' grave was repaired, her dowry was still being used by the country people for a free burial ground. In the 5th year of K'in Lung (†) A.D. 1169, the princess gave thirty-six wharves to the Tsz Fok Monastery (*) the oldest monastery in Tung Kwun. Among these wharves was that of Shek Kit (5) near Shek Lung. When the history of Tung Kwoon was revised in the 12th year of Sung Ching (†††) of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1639, only three out of ten of the wharves were mentioned as still being in use, but Shek Kit is still in existence now. In some books the princess is referred to as Sung Tsung Kei (***). Sung being the name of the dynasty, Tsung meaning royal, and Kei high lady. She is known, however, in the Tang family as Wong Kwu (2), the Emperor's Aunt, as her nephew became ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r 126 SUNG HOK-P’ANG The history of the three younger sons is not known, but of Lam, who was born some time during the reign of Shun Hei (FR) A.D. 1174-1189, it is recorded that he held the office of Ts'im P'oon (僉判) and received honour as Tik Kung Long (迪功郎). He was rich and very charitable and he contributed a lot of money towards the building of T’ung Tsai (通濟) and Tak Shaang (得勝) bridges. He also built a pagoda called Ngaan Taap (雁塔) for the public; a house called Ling Yuen Kok (靈隱閣) and gave liberally towards the repairing of a main road which was formerly the haunt of robbers. The Tung Tsai bridge is still in use in Tung Kwun (東莞) and is at Woo Sha (烏沙) in the South-west part of the district. Though the record stone of the Tak Shaang bridge is lost, fortunately there is a copy of it written by Leung Koi (梁楷) the district magistrate of Lai Ling Yuen (東莞縣), a famous scholar and “Tsun Sz” (進士) of the 7th year of Ka Ting (嘉定) A.D. 1214, of Sung dynasty. He knew so much that his nickname was Shue Sz (書廚) "book case"! Tak Shaang bridge was a very old bridge over the stream Foong Shaang K'iu Ho (放生橋河). This stream was originally called Chaak Mut (釋物) “kindness to creatures". It was the custom on the birthday of the Emperor for the magistrate and elders to come to the bridge and there set free birds from cages and put living fish in the stream. This was to show the Emperor's love for living things, and the name of the ceremony was Foong Shaang (放生), "to set free living creatures". The bridge was situated at the South gate of the district city of Tung Kwun, and there were many well-built houses by it. The date of when it was originally built is not known, but it was first repaired by Cheung Fan (張範) the district magistrate of Tung Kwun in the 2nd year of Shui Hei (紹熙) A.D. 1191, of Sung dynasty. This repair was done in wood, but later, in the 2nd year of Shiu Ting (淳祐) A.D. 1229 of Sung dynasty, it was rebuilt in stone. This was carried out by Chiu Yue Hon (趙與諴) the district magistrate, who did his best to meet the expenses incurred with money from his government funds. This he found impossible to do, so he appealed to Tang Lam and another wealthy man named Ng Hak Foon (吳學文) who between them promised to pay all the expenses themselves. It is still the most famous bridge in Tung Kwun district. The Ngaan Taap or “wild goose" pagoda was built on To Ka Shaan (道家山) in FL on the western side of Tung Kwun city. The original Ngaan Taap pagoda was built in A.D. 652, the Wing Fai (永徽)... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1973 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES: KAM TIN 127 ) 3rd year of T'ong (統) dynasty, by a Buddhist priest named Yuen Chong (圓聰) in the Ts'z Yun monastery (慈雲寺) in Ch'eung On (昌安) city, Shensi (陝西) province, near the Great Wall. This monastery had been built about fifty years previously by the Emperor T'ong Ko Tsung (唐玄宗) for his mother. When the pagoda was being built a wild goose flew against it and was killed, and the monks buried the bird underneath the pagoda and in this way it received its name. It became the custom ever since Shan Lung (神龍) years A.D. 705 & 706 of T'ong dynasty for the Emperor to give a banquet in the monastery called the Kuk Kong Yin (曲江宴) “winding river banquet,” to all the new "Tsun Sz” (進士). Their names were carved on a stone tablet in the pagoda, and it became customary to use the expression “Ngaan T'aap T'ai Ming (雁塔題名) when congratulating successful candidates for the highest government examination. In Tang Lam's time the Tung Kwun people wished to have their own Ngaan Taap pagoda, and Tang Lam provided the money for them to do it. It was built some time during the ten years of Shun Yau (淳祐) A.D. 1241-1251 of Sung dynasty, and it was repaired in the 40th year of Shung Ching (崇禎) A.D. 1637 of Ming dynasty by a Tung Kwun "Tsun Sz” named Kwok Kau Ting (郭九錠). Lam's grave is still to be found in Hon Yee Haang (巷義行) in Tung Kwun district. The children of the four sons of Tang Tsz Ming seem to have left Kam T'in, and their descendants founded families in other villages. Those of Lam are to be found in the village of Lung Kwat Tau (龍骨頭) near Fanling (粉嶺); those of Waai still live in Tai Po Tau (大埔頭) near Tai Po market and Lai Tung (黎洞) near Sha Tau Kok (沙頭角), while Kei's descendants settled in Tung Kwun. But the great grandson of Tsz came back to Kam T'in. His name was Shau Tso (秀祖), he held the military rank of Chung Mo Kau Wai (忠武校尉) and in the Yuen (元) dynasty A.D. 1277 he received the honour of Hin Mo Tsueng Kwan (顯武將軍). He had two great-grandsons, brothers, named Hung Yee (鴻義) and Hung Chi (鴻志). The latter was a son-in-law of Hoh Tik (何狄) the younger brother of Hoh Chan (何真) who ruled Kwangtung (廣東) and Kwangsi (廣西) provinces at the end of the Yuen dynasty. When the Ming dynasty started Hoh Chan gave up his territory to the first Emperor, but later on he became involved in the case of General Leung Kwok Kung (梁國公) Laam Yuk (濫獄)... ================================================================================ 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 113 fu. In the long entry on hills and streams, which covers three chuan (6-8), only one local feature is named: the Pui To or Castle Peak hill. There is another single entry, for Tuen Mun—the old name for the settlement at the foot of Castle Peak—in the chüan (10) dealing with customs and check points. Only one monastery, the Hai-kuang Ssu of Hsin-an city, is included in the chüan (14) dealing with Buddhist and Taoist temples: by comparison, 37 columns are given to those of Kuang-chou, Nan-hai and P’an-yu, and no doubt with good cause. Only when we come to the chüan dealing with residences (13) and tombs and graves (15) does Hsin-an attract a little more attention from the compilers. The entries in chüan 13 and 15 identify those items that most interested scholars attracted to local history and show how Hsin-an has been notable for two widely different topics. It had been one of the areas that had sheltered the last two boy emperors of the Sung in their flight and final struggles against the victorious Mongol invaders of their empire: and it was a coastal district that had forever been plagued by pirates and bandits. These entries are typical items of Chinese historiography and relevant to the scholar official view of Hsin-an. One item, in chuan 13, relates to the temporary stay of the Sung court and army in Kowloon in the winter months of 1278. A watchtower had been constructed as one of the measures taken to deal with the near-starvation conditions that afflicted the fugitive army. The tower was used as a vantage point from which to look over the encampment. Relief visits were made to any dwelling from which no kitchen smoke was seen to rise in the early morning. This is a graphic and unusual way of conveying an impression of impermanence and suffering. The second entry on the Sung is in chüan 15 which deals with noted graves and tombs. It relates to the grave of Lady Chin-fa, also in Kowloon. The brief statement is that the empress Chi-yuan lost her daughter by drowning, and that she ‘filled the body with gold' for burial at Kwun Fu Mountain.2 1KTKKCY 13/5. Two Sung 'travelling courts' are also recorded for the Hsin-an district in this section. See also Lo 1956. 2KTKKCY 15/2. Lo (1963) renders this as 'made a gilt statue', p. 67. The Government of Hong Kong established a Sung Wong Toi memorial park in Kowloon in 1960, and to mark the occasion the Chiu Clansmen's Association published a memorial volume edited by Jen Yu-wen entitled Sung Wang T'ai Chi-nien Chih which usefully brings together many old writings on this subject. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 120 JAMES HAYES the order rescinded:1 and it was remembered centuries later by the manufacture and sale by pedlars of images of the two men, as recorded for the Yuen Long district of the New Territories at the end of the 19th century.2 Wherever it touched the lives of men the Evacuation is recorded in the histories of the districts, prefectures and provinces to which they belong. And as in the Hsin-an district, it appears that persons of other parts of the Kwangtung province erected temples to Governor Wong Lai-yam, and in some cases jointly to him and one or other of the viceroys of the time.4 I have already explained the effect of the Evacuation upon the pattern of settlement. Had there been none, it is conceivable that the number of Hakkas in the region would have been much less than the 44,375 recorded at the 1911 Hong Kong census, amounting to almost half the then rural population. However, it is also possible that the Hakka influx might have come in any case, leading to pressure on the land and to the 'wars' that occurred elsewhere in the province between the two groups. The useful summary of Hakka origins and history given by Lo Hsiang-lin in Thirty Years of Tsing Tsin Association encourages this view. Under the title K'o-chia Yuan-liu K'ao, it details Hakka migration to the south and their distribution in Kwangtung. Without the Evacuation, however, Hakka immigration into this area might not have been assisted by the government as it was after the order was rescinded.7 6 1 HNHC 7/17 lists three, styled "Wang Hsun-fu Tz'u", two of them in our region, at Sha Tau Hui and Shek Wu Hui; besides the "Chou Wang Erb-kung Shu-yuan" at Kam Tin (not listed but see Sung, HKN, VIII, Nos. 3-4:207, and Sung 1939). 2 Hayes, 1962, p. 91 and note 50. 3 See e.g. the statements included in the gazetteers for the Kuang-chou and Ch'ao-chou prefectures of Kwangtung: KCFC 80/20-29, and CCC, chüan 2 of the Ta Shih-chih/12-15. 4 Besides the Hsin-an temples already mentioned, see e.g. the eight in Shun-te county noted in the prefectural gazetteer, KCFC 67/23. 5 pp. 1-106. 6 See especially the maps opposite pp. 34 and 56. Also Lo 1965, with its records of the movements of forty lineages. 7 See HNHC 9/1, Lo, 1963 p. 104 and the reference to the rehabilitation work in Hummel, p. 777. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 128 JAMES HAYES be feared, but internecine wars are almost always raging between some or other of the villages: and these wars, although often arising from trivial causes, are not mere temporary quarrels, but are often long-continued and sanguinary'.1 He gives a description of these feuds, and relates one example in which the District Magistrate, even with a force of 1,000 men, was unable to restore peace, and could not even save his face without the mediation of a neighbouring village. The device that secured this, Krone comments, had no influence at all upon the dispute, fighting being carried on afterwards just as before".2 There are several documented examples of intervillage and clan wars from the mainland New Territories at this time which indicate that Krone was not exaggerating the situation in mid century. Halls to 'martyrs' killed in these struggles were provided in at least four local temples, each containing memorials to slain heroes. These are to be found in the temples at Shek Kong (Pat Heung), Miu Kong (Tsuen Wan), Lam Tsuen, and Yuen Long (Shap-pat Heung). The Tsuen Wan memorial tells of a three year feud between the Tsuen Wan villagers and Shing Mun Pat Heung, beginning in the first year of the Tung Chih reign (1862-1863) and ended only after eventually successful mediation by elders of neighbouring villages. During this time, the Tsuen Wan villages—their men being outnumbered according to the tablet—were invaded and left in ruins, and 17 local men were killed in the prolonged struggle.3 Baker gives other local and contemporary examples of these clan wars taken from genealogies and village tradition in the northern New Territories. He also draws attention to the feuds that occurred within local lineages, including frequent fights between the Ping Shan and Ha Tsuen branches of the Tang lineage. These persisted into the British period. In 1921, in his administrative report for that year, the District Officer North mentions trouble that 'assumed very serious proportions' over water rights between 1 Krone, p. 114. 2 Krone, pp. 125-126. 3 The hall at Miu Kong is entitled the I-yung Tz'u (義勇祠) and that at Yuen Long the Ying-yung Tz'u (英勇祠). In the Pat Heung temple the tablet is in the Ching-chung Tz'u (清忠祠). At Lam Tsuen there is no named hall, but a side room contains a tablet bearing the characters jang hsiang ch'ang sheng lu wei (...). 4 Baker, 1968, pp. 167, 183 and 187. 5 Baker, 1968, p. 188 and Baker 1965, pp. 39-41. ================================================================================ 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 129 the Kam Tin and Ping Shan branches of the Tang lineage, mediated by the Tai Po and Yuen Long branches of the same clan.1 The chronic warfare inside Hsin-an and other districts of Kwangtung was perhaps not too well known to the Hong Kong authorities, but was all too plain to the mandarins. The Viceroy of Liang-kuang, commenting on representations from the British about the alleged help given by the provincial military forces to the village bands that were opposing the occupation of the New Territories, wrote: The Governor of Hong Kong suspected that they were regular troops from the fact that they had guns, cannon and uniforms. He was not aware that the villagers of Kwangtung, in their constant fights with each other, are always erecting forts, and use guns and cannon, and wear uniforms. This is a matter of common notoriety.2 The less populated parts of the district do not seem to have experienced trouble on this scale, probably because pressure on the land was less great and there were no large lineages competing for power and struggling to retain or improve their position. However, disputes did occur and are remembered by older villagers. On Lantau, fighting between Shek Pik people and villagers from Sha Lo Wan over a grave has been mentioned to me; relations between Tong Fuk and its neighbour Shui Hau were never very good; and a fight between Pui O villagers from San Tsuen and adjoining Lo Wai took place pre-war over the mining of kaolin in a spot behind the two villages that the Lo Wai people held was disturbing the local feng shui3 It appears that in days when communications were poor and the officials at a distance, such disputes would not always come to the attention of the authorities, even if deaths occurred. This must often have been the case in the 19th century. It was thus not without good reason that the Hsin-an magistrate of 1847, quoted at the beginning of this article, considered that his difficulties were many and real, and that they were not always appreciated as such by his colleagues and superiors. 1 ARDONT, 1921, J2; with some background at J2 of his 1920 Report. 2 Quoted by Groves, p. 63, note 65. Balfour shows 23 Punti villages with outer walls at Plate 16 in JHKBRAS, 10, 1970. Many other villages, including Hakka ones, had lesser defences, as at Pui O (Lo Wai), Lantau, pp. 14-15 above. * Information secured from local elders. Page 130 is missing, directly followed by Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES. KAM T'IN 4 (continued). SUNG HOK-P'ANG [4] All the members of the Tang family living in Kam T'in now are the direct descendants of Hung Yee, so besides Hon Fat, whom they venerate as the first ancestor to settle in Kam T'in and Yuen Leung as the first ancestor for the new generations that dated back to the "five Yuens”, they also venerate Hung Yee as their Hoi Tsuk Tso (*) “the ancestor who started the present clan"; but no new series of generations was made dating from him and on his gravestone Hung Yee is named as the 15th generation ancestor after Hon Fat. As Tang T'ing-Ching (***) a grandson of Hung Yee passed the Kui Yan (A) degree in the 7th year of Shing Fa (✯Ł) A.D. 1471, and was appointed the district officer of T'ang Yuen (B) Kwangsi province, Hung Yee, according to Chinese custom, received the honour of Man Lam Long (p). Both the graves of Hung Yee and his second wife Wong are to be found at Tung Haang Leng (*) about a mile away to the East of Kam T'in. According to Wong's gravestone she is supposed to have gone with Hung Yee to the place of his banishment, but this is different to the story in the Kam T'in family-tree book where it is stated that Hung Yee married Wong in Nanking after he was set free from his banishment. Hung Yee's original house was situated outside the North Gate of Kam T'in Market, but it no longer exists and the place where it stood is now called Naam Wai Tun () “South surround mound". The ancestral hall in Kam T'in Market which is to be found there now, is the one that was built for Hung Yee by his descendants. The three sections printed herein conclude the reissue of this article which first appeared in The Hong Kong Naturalist between December 1935-March 1938. The first three sections appeared between pp. 110-132 of the 1974 Journal, together with a memoir of the author. The photographs illustrating all six sections are printed in this issue. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 164 SUNG HOK-PANG On picking up the coins it was found that one large one, bigger than the rest, had two characters on it (*) Shing Kwong. The villagers accounted for this by believing that the coins must have belonged to a man named Shing Kwong who in some time of trouble had buried them. After many years the spirit of the silver had caused it to fly away to be bestowed on some lucky man who deserved good fortune. Thus the money was collected together and handed over to the house. When the baby, who played such an important part in this story, was a month old, he received his first name which was Tang Naan. Later on, when he was old enough to go to school he was sent by his grandmother to a country school. It is a Chinese custom for a new pupil to ask his teacher to give him a new name "shue meng” ✯ % (=a name for a pupil-book name) Tang Naam's teacher, who was not a Kam T'in man, and knew nothing about the story of "Ngan t'au Laam” in Kam T’in, strangely enough gave him the name “Shing Kwong,” exactly the same as the two characters on the largest coin. When evening came and school lessons were finished, the boy went back to his house with his books and much surprised the village elders by showing them his new name written on all his books. After that they were quite convinced that the money was meant for him. When he grew up Tang became a merchant and because of his wealth he was able to subscribe liberally to public funds which resulted in his receiving the honour of being made Chau T'ung (#) assistant officer of Chau, which meant that he was higher than a district officer. His official name of Tang Sz Taan was recorded in the History of Sun On. He built himself a very big house called Naam Teng, the remains of which can still be seen on the south side of Kat Hing Wai. The round outside wall and the stone doorway with the three characters on it (1) Lin Hing Lei, "Continuous Blessing Place" are still there. Two stories of this merchant have been handed down. One of his children married into a very prosperous family named To living at Ts'eng Chuen Wai, † near Castle Peak, and between Tang and the head of this family who was a farmer, owning several hundred acres, there existed a friendly rivalry. One day they were having a meal together in old Yuen Long market and both of them, heated with wine, contested that he was the richer. To declared ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 169 South and North of this country; later, when the number of descendants became very many, we lived apart in the two waais T'aai Hong and Kat Hing; round both of these waais were built tall walls and deep ditches were dug round them. We think that the idea of doing this by our ancestors, was to protect our houses and guard them against robbers only. When during the 25th year of Kwong Sui of Ts'ing dynasty, on Kei Hoi year, i.e. A.D. 1899, the Government of Ts'ing leased the South part of Sham Chan to the British Government, in that time, the Ts'ing Government did not inform the people of this beforehand, so when the British army arrived, the ignorant people of the country were inflamed by some persons and arose to resist them, the people of our waais being afraid to be disturbed, in order to avoid them they shut the iron gates firmly. The British army suspecting that bad characters were hiding inside, then assaulted and made the gates open. After they went into the Waai, they understood that the people inside were all good men and women, so did not give them any bad treatment, but just had the iron gates taken away. Now, the 26th descendant, Paak Kau, represented the people of these waais to petition the Hong Kong Government, asking the Government to bring the matter before London, and have the iron gates returned, and re-hung as before. All the expenses were paid by the Hong Kong Government. We also thank H.E. the Governor, Sir Edward Stubbs for his presence at the ceremony; from this can be seen the deep kindness and great virtue of the British Government, and shows that our people are pleased and sincerely submitted, therefore we specially carve the above on the tablet, in order to remember and never forget this kindness. Great Britain, May, 26th, 1925 Chinese Republic 14th year, on Yuet Hoi year the "yuen" 4th month, 5th, the lucky day. we carved.' Another ancient wall in the South district is Naam T'eng (†4) where the silver came to and where Tang Naam had his house. It is to be found to the South of Kat Hing Wai, but no houses are left inside. The North district, Pak Wai, has two villages, Shui T'au ("The head of the stream") and Shui Mei ( ) “the end of the stream," Tang K'ei Fong ( ) and Tang K'ei Wah ( ) both from T'aai Hong Tsuen were the first persons who lived in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 170 SUNG HOK-PANG Shui T'au village in the Shing Fa years of Ming dynasty, and at the same time, Tang Wan Kuk #Tang Shuk Lun and Tang Kwai Yin started the village of Shui Mei, while Tang Chung, Tang Shue and eight others formed the village Ying Lung Waai near Yuen Long Market. When these villages were built on the advice of “fung shui" men a pagoda was also erected to the west of them, called Man Ch'eung Kok. In the 30th year of To Kwong, A.D. 1850, of Ts'ing dynasty the Tang family seemed to have reached the height of their prosperity. Many of them had passed the highest government examination and a census taken in that year shewed that there were more than eighteen hundred males living, belonging to the family. Not content, the elders consulted with ignorant "fung shui" men as to how to increase their numbers even more. They were advised to pull down the pagoda, to alter the course of the river, making three ponds, and to build a school that would hide part of the river from the view of the village. From that time the family decreased considerably, and many of them regretted having taken the advice of the "fung shui" men. In 1930, however, they repaired the banks of the river and built houses called Ch'eung Ch'un Lei near where the pagoda had stood, and since then the Kam T'in people declare that more male children have been born and family is once again on the increase. [5] During and since the Ming dynasty Kam T'in has been able to boast of many scholarly and notable sons. Tang T'ing Ching who passed the Kui-yan degree in the 7th year of Shing Fat of Ming dynasty, A.D. 1471, of Maan On was appointed to the office of Kau Yue district in Kiangsi province, promoted later to District Magistrate of T'ang Yuen Kwangsi. He was a great friend of Hau Kui, a well-known poet of the New Territories. His poems are included in an anthology named "Ling Naam Chue Yuk" and also in the Record book of San On and among them is a poem written as a farewell to Tang T'ing Ching when he left to take up his new official post. The oldest family tree book of the Tang family of Kam T'in in existence now was compiled by Tang T'ing Ching. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 172 SUNG HOK-PANG He then returned to the capital, and stayed in General Ngai's house where he was able to make friends with many famous scholars. He wrote a book named "Yin t’oi san ngai” which had a preface written by Ts'oi Shing Yuen ## Noi Kok Hok Sz a political minister of high rank. Three years later Tang passed his Tsun sz degree, and was appointed district magistrate of Lung Yau Yuen in Chekiang province. Tang Man Wai was of a kind-hearted disposition and some say that through this the wall of T'aai Hong Wai was built. The story goes that when Tang passed his Sau Tsoi degree he was sent to Kwai Shin district, now Wai Yeung, to collect the rent due on cultivated lands, belonging to his family property. While there he came across a young man named Lei Maan Wing * hanging upside down as a punishment. On asking the reason why, Tang learnt that Lei had contracted gambling debts and was unable to pay them. Tang was sorry for the young man, paid all his debts and was able to use his influence in obtaining a military post for him. This happened during the end of the Ming Dynasty. Later on when the Manchus drove out the Mings in the North and the Ming Emperor Wing Lik✯✯ had retreated to Kwangtung, Lei was a colonel under Cheung Ka Yuk ✯ who was fighting against the Manchus. When Cheung was defeated in battle in the 4th year of Shun Chi A.D., 1647 of Ts'ing dynasty, and drowned himself, Lei, who was with him, fled with about a hundred soldiers. Gradually many of Cheung's soldiers were able to rejoin him, and with a strong army he attacked both Tung Kwun ✯✯ and San On ✯* districts. He drove out the Manchus, and made his headquarters in what is now known as the New Territories. One of Lei's camps was situated in the district round K'ei Lun Wai LP'ing Shan A and T'sing Leung Fat Yuen ****. Before the latter, which is a nunnery, was built, the locality had been known as Ying P'oon Tei, "The ground of the camp," and while the building was in progress the workmen dug up many old coffins which were supposed to be those of Lei's soldiers. Among them was found a general's sword, broken in many pieces. Anyone going to Kwun Yam Shaan to visit the Ling Wan monastery would notice half way up Taai Mo Shaan, far above the cultivated land, a stretch of hillside that has been terraced and flattened out in some former time. This is supposed to have been another of Lei's encampments. Lei burned and pillaged, and most of the + ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 173 inhabitants of the New Territories fled. It was said that for three years the country presented the appearance of a battle-field, “The ground was covered with bones, in the day time nothing could be heard but the hum of flies, and at night the voice of weeping." Kam T'in might have shared the same fate as the other villages but for Tang Man Wai. Lei, remembering his former kindness, forbade his soldiers to go near the place, and seeking out Tang he taught him how to build strong walls to protect his village from other marauders. This story is still told by old people in the New Territories now, and, if true, what was stated in H.K.N. Vol. VII, page 255.... “during the civil wars of the Hong Hei years A.D. 1662-1721 of Ts'ing dynasty these three villages were walled is not correct.* Lei Maan Wing occupied the New Territories from A.D. 1647 until he surrendered to the Manchus in A.D. 1656 which means that the walls of Taai Hong Wai, at least, were built some time during that period. Tang Man Wai is also remembered for having built the old Yuen Long Market ⇓, in the 8th year of Hong Hei A.D. 1669. The date is inscribed on a tablet in the wall inside Taai Wong temple in the market. Tang also made three fish ponds to the west of the market place which can still be seen by the side of the main road. + + Tang Fong was a notable scholar who passed his Kui Yan degree in the 27th year of Kin Lung of Ts'ing dynasty, A.D. 1762. He studied a great number of books especially the canons of Confucius and Books of Histories, and was considered very skilful in writing both poetry and prose. While he was still a Lam Shang he was employed as a professor of arts in Man Kong Shue Yuen * a high grade school in San On district situated in Naam T'au Shing the capital city. Students were prepared there for the Sau-tsoi examination, and it was said that while Tang Fong was there “learning was at its highest pitch." ♬ Tang Ying Yuen was a military officer and passed his Mo Kui Yan A degree in the 54th year of Kin Lung A.D. 1789 of Ts'ing dynasty. Although of a martial disposition, Tang was fond of books and his penmanship was highly thought of. Some of the characters that he wrote to be carved on stone tablets can still be seen in Ling Wan nunnery on Kwun Yam Shaan 音山 and in So Lau Yuen 泝流園 and Tsoi Shui Yat Fong 在水✈both school buildings in Kam T'in. He was a simple man and * See p. 168. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 174 SUNG HOK-PANG used to help his grandfather in the fields, working like the farm labourers and he was much beloved in Kam Tin. In the 15th year of Ka Hing A.D. 1810 the coast of San On was repeatedly attacked by a large fleet of pirate ships, and the district magistrate asked for sanction from the throne to move the fortress then existing at Fat T'ong Moon near Lyemun to Kau Lung (Kowloon) city. This was granted, but money to do the work was scarce. The magistrate went to Tang in his difficulty: Tang said, "The hill round Kau Lung are full of large stones. Why not explain to the local masons that they should work on such an important matter for their country, for low wages." The magistrate, knowing that Tang had a great gift of persuasion with the country people, begged him to undertake the task. Tang was successful, the stone masons agreed to do what he suggested and when the fort was finished Tang wrote four big characters Chan Hoi Kam Tong. Chan to guard, Hoi the sea, Kam the city was built by strong metal, T'ong hot water; i.e. the water in the city moat is like boiling water that no enemy would dare to cross. These characters were carved on a large stone tablet which was built in the wall of the fort; unfortunately it is no longer to be seen. The public dispensary outside the Kowloon city wall now occupies the original site. Another useful public work that Tang Yin Yuen was responsible for, was the rebuilding of Man Kong Shue Yuen, the high grade school for San On district. This building was originally inside the West gate of the capital city of San On, and owing to the low-lying ground it was most unhealthy for the teachers and students. A desirable site was inside the South gate but objections were raised by a native of the town who declared the land to be his own property. Tang went to law on his own responsibility, and when the district magistrate declared himself unable to give judgment he took the case to a higher court. He won and the new building was completed in the 11th year of Ka Hing A.D. 1806. A new name was given to the school, Fung Kong Shue Yuen, and Tang carved yat ch'an pat yim, "not soiled by a particle of dust” over the top of the main door. Before he died Tang wrote in his will that he hoped one day one of his descendants would teach in the school and help to train good citizens. This wish was granted in 1904 when his great grandson Tang Wai Man went to teach in the school where he stayed seven years. Tang Ying Yuen helped to compile the "History of San On," and his house is still to be Page 180 Page 181 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 175 found in Wing Lung Wai where his portrait in military officer's uniform is to be seen. Tang Ming Luen, the son of Tang Kuen Hin, was another military officer. He was a very powerful man with exceptional strength in his arms. When he was young and before he studied the military arts, he came across, one day, two water buffaloes fighting in a road. The people standing by were unable to pass and yet could do nothing to separate the animals. Tang Ming Luen, seeing this, seized each buffalo by the horn, wrenched them apart, and stopped the fight. It happened that a newly passed Kui Yan named Tang T'in K'ei, who came from Tung Kwun district, was visiting Kam T'in to worship at the ancestral hall, and, according to old Chinese custom, to report the good news of his degree to his ancestors. He witnessed Tang Ming Luen's feat of strength and greatly admiring him, he encouraged him to study for the army, giving him ten taels of pure silver sycee as a reward. Tang Ming Luen passed his Mo Sau Tsoi in the 25th year of Ka Hing, A.D. 1820, and the Mo Kui Yan in the following year. There is another story that Tang Ming Luen dug up some hidden treasure in his orchard, which was near Sui T'au Ts'un. To the North of the garden, there was a large banyan tree and close by it a rock covered with creeping plants. On dark days, it was said that a light used to shine near this rock and at a distance, it appeared like a big white horse. One day, Tang told a labourer to dig a hole for planting a fruit tree in a corner of the garden where a lot of long grass was growing. In doing so, the man dug up a large earthenware jar with a lid on it, which was full of silver sycee. He seized a handful of them and started to carry them home, but at once, his eyes became dim-sighted and he was unable to see his way. Thinking that it must be a punishment for trying to take money that did not belong to him, the man put the coins back in the ground, and his sight recovered at once. When he told Tang of his discovery, Tang had the ground thoroughly dug, and many more jars, each full of silver coins, were found. Tang Kuen Hin was born in the 20th year of Kin Lung, A.D. 1755, and he built a school called So Lau Yuen in Shui Tau Tsuen, one of the Kam T'in villages. This building has a curious carving inside, rather like the face of a clock with Roman lettering on it, the origin of it being unknown. Another building called Ch'eung Tsun Yuen was built by one of his descendants. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 176 SUNG HOK-PANG dants, a picture of this is shown on plate. Tang Kuen Hin was very rich and was very proud of his family. He had four sons and twenty-four grandsons and the number of his family and servants together are said to have totalled two hundred. To the northwest of Yuen Long market are some very fine fish ponds situated in particularly pleasing scenery. This land was Tang Kuen Hin's property, it now forms part of the "Ching Sheung" * entailed property, the proceeds of which are applied to ancestral worship. Notes on Some of the Government Examinations of China. The Sau-ts'oi was the first examination and in many respects could be likened to that which is held for the Bachelor of Arts degree. The Candidates for this examination, which was held in the capital and several other towns of each province, were very numerous, as all with any pretence to education, were anxious to graduate in Sau Ts'oi. In consequence it was necessary for each candidate to be guaranteed by a man specially appointed to the office called "Lam Shang," whose duty it was to stand as surety for the identity of each of his examinees. Another examination, Heung Shi, to be attempted was for the Kui Yan degree which was also held in the capital of each Province. Possessed of this degree a man was eligible to hold the office of District Magistrate, etc. Between Sau Ts'oi and Kui Yan were five different titles of Kung Shaang the holders of which could be appointed as District Magistrates, etc. Wui Shi was a higher examination held in the Capital of China. The degree which was known as Tsun Sz, was instituted in A.D. 606, and could be compared with a Doctorate. Candidates who failed in this examination, and yet had written papers of a high standard could have their names put on a list called Ming T'ung Pong ", which made them eligible for holding the posts of Hok Ching, the Director of studies in a “Chau” or department, or in the Imperial Academy, and Kau Yue, the Director of studies attached to a District. After a man passed Tsun Sz degree he attended an examination in the Imperial Palace. This was called Ch'iu Haau, Court examination. If he passed he then obtained the title of Shue Kat Sz 庶吉士, He then went to the Hon Lam Yuen 翰林院 where he stayed for several years drafting documents for the Emperor and ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 180 Note. SUNG HOK-PANG Sze Taan is the man to whom the silver coins flew through the air (see “Ngan Tau Laan” (✯✯) H.K.N. VII pp. 251, 252 and VIII plate 8).* This is the only record that we can find which proves that Sz Taan was alive in the 47th year of Kin Lung, A.D. 1782. Many of Tang Kwong Yue's descendants are rich men, and fine scholars, having passed the Sau Ts'oi (††) and Kung Shang (†*) degrees. Sz Shing Tong (A) is the ancestral Hall of Tang Ts'ing Lok (***) and is to be found at the western end of Shui T'au. Tsing Lok was the grandson of Tang Hung Yee (*) and the son of Tang Yam (#), (see H.K.N. VII pp. 161 and 251). The Hall was built by Tang Mung Woo (*) and Tang Mung Pik (*), and later repaired by Tang Mung Siu (†), Tang Mung Hung (p), Tang Wun Yat (−) and Tang Kwing Yue ($). A rule was made that on every Ts'un Fan (✯✯), vernal equinox and Ts'au Fan (✯✯), autumnal equinox, the two great days of reverence to ancestors, a certain amount of roast pork was to be presented to the above men or their descendants in recognition of their merit in building and repairing the hall, and this custom is carried on up to the present time. The date of the building of the Hall is not known, but a large tablet which is hung inside with the three characters Sz Shing T'ong is dated the 2nd month of the 59th year of Kin Lung (A.D. 1794). These characters were written by a high government official, Ch'oh P'aang Ling (✯✯✯), a native of Loi Yeung district (*) in Shangtung province. He was a Hon Lam Yuen P'in Sau (✯✯E*) during the Kin Lung period. For a reference to Hon Lam Yuen (see H.K.N. VIII, p. 110). A Pin Sau was a second class Hon Lam compiler. Ch'oh Paang Ling held the office of Yue Sz (#), a member of the "To Ch’aat Yuen” (**) (Court of Censors) at Peking, whose duty it was to keep the Emperor informed on all matters of public importance. He had the good name of Kang Chik Kam Yin (✯✯✯), “one who has the courage of his opinions," and finally he was given the high office of Kung Po Sheung Shue (***), the President of the Board of Works, in Peking. His written characters are not easy to come across now, so the tablet in Sz Shing Tong is very much valued in Kam T'in. *See p. 163-4 above, and Plate 35. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1974 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/x633mp077 LEGENDS & STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES 181 It is an ancient custom in China when a man passes a Government degree examination or is appointed as a Government official, for him to have his new official title carved on a wooden tablet and hung in the Hall of his ancestors. By this means the good news is reported to the ancestors that their descendant has become a man of rank, and at the same time an example is set to future generations to encourage them to do their best to rise to the same honour, as the tablet is left hanging in the hall permanently. There are many of these title-tablets hung in Sz Shing Tong, put there not only by Kam T'in men, but by other descendants of the Tang family who have sent their tablets from places far away, where they have gone to live. The oldest among them is the "Man Fui” or Kui Yan degree put there by Tang Ting Ching who passed it in the 7th year of Shing Fa, A.D. 1471. The most highly honoured title-tablets are the two from Tang Yung Keng from Tung Kwun district. He passed his Kui Yan degree in the 3rd year of Tung Chi, A.D. 1864 and became "Hon Lam Yuen Shue Kat Sz" (H.K.N. VIII, p. 110) in the 10th year of T’ung Chi, A.D. 1871. He held the office of On Ch'aat Sz (Provincial Judge) of Kiangsu province, and in 1900 during the Boxer trouble he was appointed by Lei Hung Cheung, the Prime Minister and then Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi provinces, to be the Superintendent of volunteers in Kwangtung. Tang Ts'ing Lok's eldest son, Tang Wan Kuk was a very rich man, and he owned a lot of cultivated land in San On District. During his time there were twenty-eight Sau Ts'oi (B.A.'s) and nine very rich men all members of his family and living in the same street where his house was situated in Shui Mei village. His house was called Kam Ts'un Tong "ornamental stream hall"; it has long since been destroyed and a vegetable garden is on the site of where it once existed, but the remains of a large stone gateway can still be seen (plate 20). Tang Wan Kuk owned a large library in this house, and a fine stone fish-tank, made of pink coloured stone, 2 Chinese feet high, 14 wide and 24 long. (Plate 19). Two scholars of the Tang Family have written inscriptions about this tank, speaking very highly of it, but it now lies in a destroyed school building in Shui T’au village, and no-one cares about it. The dates of Tang Wan Kuk's birth and death are not recorded, but we know that his grave, which is in Noh Mai Ham about seven li from Kam T'in was made before the 8th year of Ching ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1975 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j0995146d A HONG KONG SPIRIT-MEDIUM TEMPLE 19 premises of a specific temple rather than conducting them in his own or a client's home. The Hong Kong spirit-medium temple may be either a humble structure of makeshift materials, akin to a squatter hut, or an ornate edifice constructed and maintained at considerable expense. Our study concerns a cult whose temple falls into the last-mentioned category. Completed in early 1975 and constructed at a cost of over HK$200,000, the temple is itself a major indicator of the cult's current prosperity. Below we discuss that temple and its cult, with particular attention to spatio-temporal setting, personnel, and ritual. The Spirit-Medium Temple: Spatio-Temporal Setting The temple is situated on a small hill immediately behind several residential blocks of the Tsui Ping Road Resettlement Estate in the urban-industrial district of Kwun Tong. The temple structure itself is, in fact, only a part of a larger complex which includes a small, one-storey office building, a partially enclosed stage, several outdoor shrines, and a paak ka chi “or Hall of One Hundred Sur-names”. The last-mentioned structure was under construction at the time this paper was written. In marked contrast to the crowded conditions that prevail in the adjacent Mark I estate, the temple complex occupies over 4,000 square feet of land. The temple bears the horrific title of its patron deity Tai Wong Ye, which translates into English as "The Great Ancient King". It is a common title bestowed on deified mortals who were seldom in the literal sense "Kings" but were more often officials of various grades in Imperial China. To better understand the origin and present circumstances of the spirit-medium cult, it is necessary that we briefly trace the history of the Tai Wong Ye and his temple. The patron deity of the present-day cult is reported to have been, during his mortal life, an official of the Tang Dynasty surnamed Lei. After his death, he was awarded the honorary title of Man Chung Kung. Temple personnel usually refer to him as "Lei Man Chung Kung". The Old Tang History contains the biography of a stateman bearing the surname Lei and the given name Uen-yuen. After death, he was given the title Man Chung Kung by the emperor in recognition of his outstanding loyalty to the emperor, his filiality towards parents and kinsmen, and frugality ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 162 DAVID FAURE including the New Territories, was part of San On county. The magistrate governed from the county seat at Nam T'au, across what is now Deep Bay. There were also sub-county offices, at Tai P'ang on the northern shore of Mirs Bay, and at Koon Foo, later renamed Kowloon City. These, with Nam T'au, were responsible for the southern part of San On county, that is, the area which includes the present-day Hong Kong, Kowloon, and the New Territories. The officials hardly ever visited the villages. By default, these villages were for the most part left to conduct their own affairs. Taxes were often collected with the co-operation of the rich and influential families in Yuen Long and Sheung Shui. Litigation could be conducted at Nam T'au, but lawsuits were rare. The principal markets on the mainland in this area were Tai Po, Sheung Shui, Yuen Long, and Sham Chun, and understandably, the main trade routes in the eastern New Territories went north-south, linking Kowloon City, Sha Tin, Tai Po, Sheung Shui, and Sham Chun, from where there were ferries to Nam T'au. Cut off from these trade routes by Ma On Shan, the Sai Kung villages were very much in the backwaters of the county. The history of the development of these villages is the story of a backward area slowly pulling itself up by its bootstraps.1 Development came in two stages. From the early eighteenth century to the mid-nineteenth, population increased steadily. In the late seventeenth century, only three villages in the entire district merited entry in the San On Gazetteer, i.e., the Punti-speaking villages of Ho Chung, Pak Kong, and Sha Kok Mei. Not surprisingly, all three were located in well-watered valleys that were close to the footpaths leading to Sha Tin and Kowloon. By 1819, the next edition of the gazetteer recorded, in addition to these three, the Punti villages of Wong Chuk Yeung, Tai Long, Chek Keng, Ko Tong, Pak Tam, and Cheung Sheung, as well as the Hakka villages of Mang Kung Uk, Tseng Lan Shue, Sha Kok Mei (sic), Pan Long Wan, and Lan Nei Wan (later Man Yee Wan). The listing is not complete, but it accords with the general pattern of Hakka immigration into the Hong Kong region throughout the eighteenth century. There must have been a substantial boat population in the eighteenth century. There was, in fact, a larger boat population ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q # THE TEOCHIU: ETHNICITY IN URBAN HONG KONG 35 a reflection of the general mutual animosity between Teochiu and other Chinese. Any further discussion of general patterns becomes less meaningful given the variation within the Teochiu population. The discussion in one of the following sections of the Teochiu population in one resettlement estate considers this variation and the processes discussed above in a particular social setting. The geographical distribution of Teochiu in Hong Kong in 1971 is presented in Table 1. The only area of heavy Teochiu concentration in Hong Kong Island is the West census district, which of course includes Nam Pak Hong, the oldest area of Teochiu concentration. Hung Hom is the only area of substantial Teochiu settlement in the Kowloon census districts. More than one half of the Teochiu recorded in the census reside in the New Kowloon census districts, with one-fourth of all Teochiu in the Kai Tak district and almost one-fourth in Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun districts. The Kai Tak census district includes Kowloon City, an area of heavy Teochiu residential concentration. The Ngau Tau Kok and Lei Yue Mun census districts roughly correspond to the industrial town of Kwun Tong. Thousands of Teochiu squatters were resettled into Kwun Tong's resettlement estates, particularly Ngau Tau Kok Resettlement Estate. Another census district in New Kowloon with significant Teochiu concentration is Shek Kip Mei; many Teochiu in this district reside in the Shek Kip Mei Resettlement Estate. The only areas of significant Teochiu concentration in the New Territories are Tsuen Wan and Yuen Long. Again, many Teochiu in Tsuen Wan reside in resettlement estates, mostly in Kwai Chung. Personal experiences in Tsuen Wan suggest that the actual number of Teochiu in Hong Kong is greater than the 1971 census figures. Table II indicates that more than 39% of Teochiu land domestic households are located in resettlement estates and almost one-half are located in one kind of housing estate or another. I would estimate that at least one half of Teochiu households at one time or another resided in squatter structures. In 1971 over 8,000 Teochiu households resided in "temporary housing" and another 4,700 households in "stone structures". These two categories refer primarily to illegal squatter structures, which suggests that a fairly large number of Teochiu are still squatters. 1 The information in Table 1 and in the other tables was very kindly provided by Mr. M. C. Leong, Statistician, Census and Statistics Department, Hong Kong Government. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 50 DOUGLAS W. SPARKS TABLE I Teochiu Population by Census District (N.T. & Marine in Census Area) — 1971 Census Census district/area No. of persons Central 1,352 Sheung Wan 5,844 West 27,557 Mid-levels & Pokfulam 2,634 Peak 115 Wanchai 4,966 Tai Hang 5,309 North Point 8,359 Shau Kei Wan 13,641 Aberdeen 13,141 South 1,352 HONG KONG ISLAND 84,270 Tsim Sha Tsui 6,744 Yau Ma Tei 6,575 Mong Kok 4,731 Hung Hom 13,132 Ho Man Tin 4,129 KOWLOON 35,311 Cheung Sha Wan 12,048 Shek Kip Mei 21,827 Kowloon Tong 1,170 Kai Tak 100,935 Ngau Tau Kok 46,507 Lei Yue Mun 34,889 NEW KOWLOON 217,376 TSUEN WAN 27,496 YUEN LONG 13,365 TAI PO 6,552 ISLANDS 4,575 SAI KUNG 835 MARINE 1,674 COLONY TOTAL 391,454 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 88 ELIZABETH L. JOHNSON Tai Po. Bands, mounted on hat, predominantly of white cotton, with thick white tassels. One half the length of the band commonly has zigzag pattern. Bands commonly worn on headcloth, also of white cotton. Patterned bands not often worn on apron, which is fastened with a strip of cloth. Apron relatively short and narrow, with coloured trim at the top. Headcloth is long, hanging down the wearer's back. Yuen Long. Band is used to fasten hat under wearer's chin, being drawn under the chin through rings mounted on either side of the hat, and then back to be tied under the chin. Such a band is very long and narrow, with thin tassels. These bands are silk and cotton with small patterns appearing less clear than those from other areas because of the use of a double weft thread, of white cotton and coloured silk. Similar bands, although shorter, are used on aprons, which are narrow like those in Tai Po, but longer. They are trimmed at the top and sometimes have ornamental frogs. Shatin. Shatin bands are mounted on the hat and have long thick tassels like those of Tsuen Wan. The aprons are like those in Tsuen Wan. Sai Kung. Pink and purple predominate in the bands. They appear to be rarely worn on hats, but are worn as apron bands and to hold head cloths. The tassels are less long and thick than those of Tsuen Wan. The bands, and other aspects of dress and adornment, thus served as indicators of regional identity at a time when these differences were socially and politically significant. Topographic conditions in Hong Kong, with its mountains, islands and water, meant that enclaves with distinct identities developed. These were sometimes demonstrated in the form of alliances, as well as in the system of measuring land area. Tsuen Wan, for example, formed a self-conscious enclave of people with a shared identity and an ideal, at least, of cooperative relations. Despite the importance of regional identity, some Tsuen Wan men married women from outside the Tsuen Wan District. The reasons for this may have been to broaden their network of contacts, or perhaps to avoid the problems which sometimes resulted from living in too close proximity to relatives by marriage: or because the go-between arranging the marriage knew of a suitable match in another place. Interestingly, women upon marriage con- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q "PATTERNED BANDS" IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG 91 9 See John A. Brim, "Village Alliance Temples in Hong Kong”, in Religion and Ritual in Chinese Society, Arthur P. Wolf, ed., Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1974, pp. 93-104. 10 J. H. Stewart Lockhart, in his "Report on the New Territory at Hong Kong" (H.M. Stationery Office, 1900, p.6) states that different systems existed in Tai Po, Yuen Long, and "Ts'ün Wan and other areas". 11 In my census sample of Kwan Mun Hau Village, only 15% of the wives of household heads were born in Tsuen Wan. However, 89% of the mothers and 69% of the wives of Village Representatives interviewed by Graham E. Johnson in 1969 were born in Tsuen Wan District. (Graham E. Johnson, Natives, Migrants, and Voluntary Associations in a Colonial Chinese Setting, unpublished doctoral dissertation, Cornell University, 1970.) The reason for the discrepancy between the two samples is not clear; it may reflect differences between leaders and ordinary people, or between Kwan Mun Hau Village and Tsuen Wan in general. 12 Reported by Pat and Roger Howard, Canadians teaching in China. 13 Reported by Graham E. Johnson in 1976. 14 This was stated by Fei Hsiao-tung in an interview with Helga E. Jacobson and Graham E. Johnson in October 1976. 15 There is, for example, no mention of a backstrap loom in the very comprehensive study China at Work, by Rudolf P. Hommel (The M.I.T. Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1969). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 192 MAURICE FREEDMAN and the Nuffield Foundation), and partly by the London School of Economics and Political Science out of a Ford Foundation grant. In addition, for the first three months of my work in the New Territories I was fortunate enough to receive from the Hong Kong Government the services of a guide-interpreter and the use of a motor car. I wish to record my appreciation of this aid. 2. My plans were not to be fully realised. Before the end of the first period of three months I fell ill, had to enter hospital, and was medically advised to leave Hong Kong. The result has been that, while I have been able to carry out most of what I intended to do under the heading of a general survey of New Territories social conditions, I am forced to write this report away from the Colony, cut off from the chance of checking my findings and filling in gaps in my knowledge. 3. My report is based on field observations made from early February to early May and on reading done in the same period in the Colonial Secretariat Library. I travelled extensively in the New Territories but, owing to the fact that I lived for most of the time in Tai Po, I am more familiar with conditions in the District of that name than with those of the other four Districts.* It will be obvious, too, that the short time at my disposal sets a severe limit to the validity of my generalisations. Anthropologists usually spend some months getting used to a new field before embarking upon detailed enquiry, for there is a good deal of groundwork to be done. If I am bold enough now to set out some of my preliminary findings and tentative conclusions it is because I believe that the New Territories Administration ought to be given an idea of the kinds of problem which anthropologists find important and of the possibilities of correlating the interests of social research workers with its own. There will be increasing opportunities for co-operation. To begin with, in the autumn of this year two graduate students at London University are expected to arrive in Hong Kong to undertake intensive field work in the New Territories. My colleagues and I hope that their studies may be of some service to the Administration. Certainly, they will be able to probe more deeply into matters which in this report are treated superficially. * Yuen Long, Tsuen Wan, Sai Kung and Islands. An account of the New Territories at that time is given in the Annual Departmental Report of the District Commissioner, New Territories 1963-64, and of Hong Kong as a whole on the Hong Kong Annual Report 1963, both printed by the Government Printer, Hong Kong - Ed. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 194 MAURICE FREEDMAN summer); Miss Jean Pratt from Cambridge, who studied a Hakka village in the neighbourhood of Tai Po; and, most recently, Mr. Jack Potter, from Berkeley, California, who has just completed a study of one of the major Tang settlements in Yuen Long District. All these may be called community studies, for they attempted to give rounded accounts of the lives of the people they investigated. The results of the three studies, when they are fully published, will provide a useful sample of traditional communities in the New Territories, for they cover both fishing and agriculture and range from relatively unsophisticated Tanka, through a small, and in some respects isolated, Hakka settlement, to one of the old centres of Punti power. In addition to these field studies the work of another anthropologist, Dr. Marjorie Topley, has dealt with the New Territories in a general way in regard to aspects of their economic life. 7. The gaps in knowledge and understanding of New Territories society are in part filled by the results of investigations carried out by other kinds of scholars. I have in mind particularly the work done by geographers and historians. The field studies by Dr. T.R. Tregear and Dr. C.J. Grant are too well known to call for my comment. At the moment further geographical field studies are in train; for example, Mr. Ronald Ng, a graduate student at the University of Hong Kong, is engaged in an investigation of the Tung Chung valley which promises to bring in much new material on the social aspects of agriculture. As for history, I may mention the work of Mr. J.W. Hayes, formerly a District Officer in the New Territories; he has produced two studies, one dealing with the New Territories as they were just before British rule, the other on Cheung Chau, which illustrate very happily how the work of the social historian and that of the anthropologist can complement each other. 8. But when the fruits of all this work are put together they will still leave out of account much that is important. The New Territories can no longer be regarded as simply a rural appendage to urban Hong Kong, an area where traditional Chinese village life has, because of the accident arising out of diplomacy in the nineteenth century, been fostered by British administration, a museum conveniently arranged for the benefit of antiquarians. The population has changed to what extent is demonstrated by the admirably conducted and analysed census of 1961. Modern industry has not ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q 196 MAURICE FREEDMAN time than I could give it; and I am aware that I raise more questions than I can answer. 11. It seems to me, if I may interpret behaviour only intermittently glimpsed, that administrators in the New Territories today are often in the dark about the kind and extent of the influence wielded by the men known in official language as Village Representatives. Are they elders or do they in some sense stand in opposition to elders? Are they mere spokesmen or do they in fact exercise independent power? Are they supported generally by their 'constituencies' or do they represent factions? Are their motives selfish or are they attempting to maintain and improve the general welfare? Do they provide a satisfactory channel for the expression of public opinion or do they represent as a class some sort of New Territories elite cut off from the ideas and aspirations of the ordinary people? Of course, the New Territories do not, even traditionally, form a homogeneous area; leadership in one of the big settlements in the Yuen Long District must differ in its sources and expression from leadership in a small Hakka village in the east. If, in gross terms, villages differ from one another in their clan composition, their riches, their education, and their contacts with the wider world, then we may assume a priori that their leaders will be different kinds of person. Moreover, the situation becomes further complicated by the role of immigrants in supplying a source of support (or not supplying it, as the case may be). There can be no simple rule for determining that the New Territories will have such and such a kind of leader. The question then arises whether we can isolate some typical situations in which particular characteristics of leadership are likely to be found. Again, formal leadership as exemplified by the Village Representative cannot realistically be treated independently of other institutions in which, within local communities and groupings of them, interests are promoted, disputes settled, and political decisions made. 12. Let us consider how the predecessors of present-day administrators saw and tackled the problem of leadership. To deal with the newly leased territory the Administration set up a land system, which was in its day a workable compromise between traditional Chinese land tenure and the requirements of a western bureaucracy, and, after an abortive attempt to systematise (in the Local Communities Ordinance, 1899) what it romantically thought to be the customary mode of local government and law, achieved a practical solution ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 199 deeper inroads into rural society than the undermining of the scholarly elite. The Chinese legal system had assumed (more: it had required and been adapted to ensuring) that people would try to look to the settlement of their own differences and stay away as much as possible from the yamen as a court of law. The system of political control was loose and a large measure of autonomy, by default of efficiency if not by design, was accorded to local communities. The early British Administration was thin on the ground by comparison with what has been seen in very recent years, but by Chinese standards it was intense, and it quickly established for itself a reputation for accessibility and quick justice that attracted to it many of the disputes which had earlier been settled, or had lain unsettled, at the local level. Moreover, by preventing some disputes from being literally fought out in traditional feuds (an institution which the Chinese government often thundered against but hardly ever took steps to suppress), the British increased their burden of dispensing justice. (The feud-fights which in recent times have been witnessed in the Yuen Long District—interestingly enough in the area of the fullest development of deep clan organisation—are but shadows of their former selves). It cannot be said that the new Administration succeeded at once in imposing law and order. There was banditry in the early years; some of the village watchtowers were put up after 1899. But, within the limits of poor communications, the new Administrators made a determined effort to eliminate violence from the countryside. Certainly, they brought to their work a conception of positive government quite alien to the ideas informing the system operated by their Chinese predecessors. 16. I cannot in this report document all my historical statements about China and the early New Territories, but in connexion with the previous paragraphs I should like to quote what seems to me to be an important passage in an administrative report written thirteen years after British rule began: Reference should also be made to the waning influence of the village elders throughout the Territories. It was the intention of Sir Henry Blake that, 'existing village organisations should be maintained and utilised', and that the village tribunals should continue to decide local cases. But it soon became clear that the authority of the village elders was of no account, with the stronger authority of the Magistrates so easily accessible, and the idea of local tribunals had perforce to be dropped. Under ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1976 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 205 greatly in importance in recent times, but it is now, as far as I can see, a large-scale charitable organisation of business men which, while it rests in theory on the representation of villages falling within the area once covered by the old yeuk-complexes, is in fact essentially both city-based and city-run. (At the present eighteen villages appear to be represented in the Lok Sin Tong: one in Sha Tin, one in Tsuen Wan, and eight each in Sai Kung and New Kowloon. But I am not sure that the representatives are members of the villages they represent). 25. Yeuk existed also in the Sha Tau Kok area (note the Nam Yeuk mentioned in the early British records) and in the area of Ho Sheung Heung (Hau Yeuk). It will be seen, therefore, that at the time of the advent of British rule many central, southern, and eastern areas of the mainland part of the New Territories were covered by a network of yeuk which, while certainly not including every village, nevertheless generally affected the political organisation of these areas. The striking omission is the west, that is to say, roughly the modern Yuen Long District. As far as I have been able to discover (my enquiries in this area were cut short by my premature departure from the Colony), the term yeuk has no traditional meaning here. (I stress 'traditional'. The British used the word for their own purposes; demarcation districts for land and the broader administrative districts were called yeuk after the new regime was established; and, as a result, by hearing the word used today one may be misled into thinking that it has a longer local history than it in fact has). Similarly, I know of no evidence that there were yeuk in the islands. Groupings of villages there certainly were in the Yuen Long area, under the names of heung (although I am not sure how old this usage is) kung shoh, just as these groupings sometimes appear in the areas where yeuk also existed; but the absence of yeuk seems to call for comment. 26. If we look again at the evidence on yeuk-complexes, we may perhaps conclude that they were formed to protect the interests of the weak against the strong. The powerful Liu of Sheung Shui were never members of a yeuk. Indeed, on their own they were the enemies of the Luk Yeuk of Ta Kwu Ling. Similarly, the Tang of Lung Yeuk Tau (in which name, incidentally, the character for Yeuk is not the one we are concerned with here) and Tai Po Tau stood aloof from yeuk. It is probably significant that the Man of Tai Hang formed a yeuk on their own when they assumed leader- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n PRESIDENT'S Report TREASURER's Report THE LIBRARY CONTENTS Page 1 6 10 TRANSACTIONS : Brunei: A Historical Relic - LEIGH WRIGHT Behind Japanese Barbed Wire: Stanley Internment Camp, Hong Kong 1942-1945 - G. C. EMERSON A Journey to Yenan 1946 - W. A. REYNOLDS ARTICLES: Two Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-An, Kwangtung - J. T. KAMM Under Altars - K. G. STEVENS Social Organization and Ceremonial Life of Two Multi-Surname Villages in Hoi-p'ing County, South China, 1911-1949 - YUEN-FONG WOON "Little Fujian (Fukien)” Sub-Neighbourhood and Community in North Point, Hong Kong - GREGORY E. GULDIN Reprinted ARTICLES: Cheung Chow - Long Island - W. J. HINTON Memories of the District Office South, Hong Kong - W. SCHOFIELD NOTES AND QUERIES: Notes for the Royal Asiatic Society Visit to Tai Mo Shan, 3rd April 1976 — (I) L. B. and S. L. THROWER (II) JAMES HAYES Notes for the Visit to the Tang Family Graves, 11 December 1976 - DAVID LIU and JAMES HAYES Royal Asiatic Society Visit to Tsuen Wan, 10th December, 1977 - A Village War'. JAMES HAYES The Rural History Project in Yuen Long and Field Notes on the Social History and Fung Shui of Kam Tin - J. T. KAMM Bean Skim, A Product of Blood and Sweat Four Chinese Banks Fail, Partners Blame Head Two Letters From Wartime China A Further Note on Feng Yun-Shan and Gützlaff - Jen Yu-wen Reptiles New to Hong Kong - J. D. ROMER The Public Botanic Garden of Hong Kong Birds of Tai Mo Shan - MICHAEL Webster Occurrence of the Birds - J. D. ROMER 12 30 (55) 85 101 112 130 144 179 (185) 199 216 218 220 228 232 234 236 237 Page 15 Page 16 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 108 YUEN-FONG WOON lineage of T'oh-fuk, the Kwaan of Lung-tsai She, whose ancestors had migrated from T'oh-fuk, came under its protective umbrella. Some of them had even succeeded in evading their head taxes through connections with the official leaders there. Thus, it was not surprising that the Kwaan in Lung-tsai She were eager to keep their separate identity by maintaining residential segregation from the Wong and the Tang while attending the annual Spring and Autumn Rites at the Kwong-ue Ancestral Hall in Che-hom. They only co-operated with the Wong and the Tang in projects of immediate concern such as irrigation and defence, since they were numerically a minority in Ts'ung-long Heung. The study of the centrifugal forces of the headquarters of higher-order and dispersed lineages on multi-surname villages in South China has been largely neglected by scholars in the field. G. W. Skinner, in his article "Marketing and Social Structure in Rural China" Journal of Asian Studies, XXIV (1964-5 pp. 36-40) asserts that once segments of a lineage had moved away from the parent settlement and were attending different standard market towns, they would lose their connections with one another. The case of Lung-tsai She discussed in this paper tends to refute this argument. Despite geographical separation, the Kwaan in this village was economically, administratively and ritually still an integral part of the Kwaan lineage of T'oh-fuk until at least 1949. In Taiwan and other parts of China, where lineages were weaker, members of multi-surname villages not only had more intra-village ties, they also had more contact with and reliance on affinal and maternal kin outside the village. Intra-village quarrels were as likely to be along class lines as along lineage lines. Village temples had much more educational, economic, administrative as well as relief functions than were the case in multi-surname villages in South China. NOTES 1 Hoi-p'ing County is one hundred and four miles (290 li) southwest of Canton. Heung (Mandarin: Hsiang) was an administrative unit above the Ts'uen (: village) but below the District. There were one hundred and three Heung in Hoi-p'ing, each administered by a Heung Office since 1930. All names in this paper are in Cantonese, following the Meyer-Wempe system of transliteration. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 181 He must have come by boat as the record states that "he left his boat at Tuen Mun - the present-day Castle Peak Bay - and rambled through the woods of the New Territories and visited many mountains. He fell in love with the scenery, and found many excellent grave sites for he was an accomplished geomancer." After he finished his official tour of duty in Yeung Chun County, he returned to his native home at Kiangsi and brought down the exhumed remains of his great grandfather TANG Hon-fat (#) and his great grandmother and those of his grandfather TANG Kun () and his grandmother to this area for reburial, presently the New Territories of Hong Kong. He buried his great grandfather and great grandmother in a grave at a site called Yuk Nui Pai Tong (#), meaning "the newly married girl is presented to her in-laws", at a small hill near Wang Chau (#), Yuen Long. He also buried his grandfather TANG Kun and his grandmother in a grave the site of which is called Kam Chung Fook Fo (4ƒƒX), “the golden bell covers the flame”, on a small hill behind the present Pok Oi Hospital on the main road from Kam Tin to Yuen Long. Both sites were considered auspicious. We do not know whether TANG Fu-hip's father TANG Yuk (e) was brought here dead or alive. He and his two wives were buried in a grave on a small hill not far from the Tsuen Wan District Office. The name of the site is called Pun Yuet Chiu Tam (*AR), “a half moon is shining over the water pond”. Owing to the proximity to the urban area and its easy accessibility, the Tang clan led by their elders come here every year on the 19th day of the Tenth Moon (lunar calendar) to pay homage to this ancestor. The record does not tell us how TANG Fu-hip brought the bones of his ancestors from Kiangsi, whether by boat or by the overland route. When TANG Fu-hip died, he was buried in a grave he had chosen himself. The name of the site is called Sin Yan Tai Tso (^) “the grand seat of the fairy", and it is located not very far from where he buried his great grandfather and great grandmother. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES The five graves may be summed up chronologically as follows: (1) TANG Hon-fat (2) TANG Kun (3) TANG Yuk (4) TANG Fu-hip (5) TANG Wai-kap Hong Kong, Nov. 1976 183 (Yuk Nui Pai Tong) near Wang Chau. Yuen Long. (Kam Chung Fook Fo) on a small hill behind Pok Oi Hospital. (Pun Yuet Chiu Tam) Tsuen Wan on Castle Peak Road. (Sin Yan Tai Tso) near Wang Chau, Yuen Long. (Wu Lei Kuo Shui) near Au Tau cross- roads. DAVID LIU ACCOUNT OF THE VISIT On Saturday, 11th December, 1976 some thirty members of the Society visited the five main graves of the Tang family of Kam Tin and other old established villages in the New Territories (see the programme notes above). We first visited grave No. 3 in Tsuen Wan which is located on a small hill that was bought by the family in 1927 to protect the grave in the face of various encroachments. In addition to the grave, there exist two round granite pillars (similar to those at graves 1 and 4 but without their lion-dog tops). These are situated each at a distance of 132 feet and angles of 125 and 217 degrees from the centre of the grave, as measured standing at the main table with the compass pointing north.* Lower down, a little off the main road there is also part of an entrance, built of inscribed rectangular granite pillars, erected in the 4 year which the Tang elders say is, in this case, 1894. Mr. Peplow was Land Bailiff, Southern District at the time the Tangs purchased the land in 1927, and his account,† quoting from a silk scroll given to him by one of the Tangs, is as follows: † S. H. Peplow Hong Kong About and Around (Hong Kong Commercial Press 1930) pp. 148-149. * I have since learned from the Tangs that the two pillars stood further to the front of the grave, nearer the former shore line, and that they were moved to their present location when the first Castle Peak motor road was constructed about 1917-1919. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 184 NOTES AND QUERIES "The burial ground is situated near Chai Wan Kok, Tsun Wan. Some time ago, about ten years after the Territory was leased to Great Britain, some natives of Tsun Wan village applied to the H.K. Govt. for a piece of land near the grave to erect some houses, but the proposed area affected the Fung Shui of the said grave. The village Elders of the various branches of the Tang family assembled, and a joint petition was submitted to the District Officer in the names of the descendants. Thanks to this Official the proposed sale was withdrawn. It was afterwards put on record that the site of the grave was to be preserved for ever. Subsequently new roads were constructed by the P.W.D. and the line of one proposed road was across the grave site. The Elders of the Tang family, fearing that this might affect the "force of the movement of the green dragon,” again assembled and petitioned H.E. the Governor, praying that the line be moved to the foreshore of the site. This was done. In the 6th moon of the 12th year of the Chinese Republic, (1923) a villager of Tsun Wan dug earth on the right side of the ancestral grave, that is, in Chai Wan Kok village, thereby affecting the "force of the movement of the coming dragon." Another petition was sent to the District Officer, who inspected the grave personally. After that earth cutting was prohibited, and the ancestral grave preserved." We then proceeded to Kam Tin itself where, in front of the Kam Tin Rural Committee Office, we were greeted by an impressive body of lineage elders, treated to a dim sum (*) repast and shown a number of interesting relics handed down through the centuries. These included a painting with imperial calligraphy stated to date from Sung times, and a number of other paintings.* Our next stop was at Au Tau cross roads to see grave No. 5, that of TANG Wai-kap, the husband of the Sung refugee princess referred to in the Notes. From Au Tau cross roads we went on to the Pok Oi Hospital near Yuen Long and walked into an area of low hills, across a stream, where we inspected grave No. 2. This is located in what is obviously considered to be a very favourable fung shui area because the adjoining ground is thickly covered with graves. After returning to Pok Oi Hospital, we went by bus to Wang Chau behind Yuen Long where we walked through the village and across the fields to the foothills of an adjacent hill area. We went first to grave No. 1 and from there along a winding path to grave No. 4 which is located some 500 yards to the south. Both graves are in excellent positions, and like No. 3 have granite pillars with lion * These have been reproduced at pp. 112-115 of the Inauguration Publication of the Tang Clansmen Association (Inc. 1965), in Chinese, of which there is a copy in the Chinese Library, University of Hong Kong. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 199 THE RURAL HISTORY PROJECT IN YUEN LONG DISTRICT, NEW TERRITORIES OF HONG KONG, 1973. In 1973 Mr. John Kamm, a candidate for the A.M. at Harvard University's Regional Studies--East Asia Program, conducted field research in the N.T. The letter which follows explains how he cooperated with the District Office Yuen Long in a rural history project, and gives interesting details of how it was accomplished. The "Field Notes on the Social History and Feng-shui of Kam Tin” which follow the letter were one result of the project. The two “Essays on the Ch'ing Economy of Hsin-an, Kwangtung,” printed elsewhere in this issue of the Journal, are another. Hon Ed. Mr. Patrick Williamson, J.P., District Officer, Yuen Long District Office, New Territories Administration. Dear Mr. Williamson, I would like to take this opportunity to provide your office with a preliminary report on the Rural History Project. I also intend to include general thoughts on the advisability of expanding the current pilot project into a more-structured, government-sponsored operation of longer duration. At our first meeting, on 31 May, we discussed the concern in Yuen Long District, shared by both Government and village leadership, over the deterioration of Chinese tradition and custom. One substantial portion of traditional culture, i.e. oral history, seemed threatened with especially rapid extinction. We decided to explore the possibility of setting up a summer project aimed at collecting and preserving the folk tradition of a specific area of Yuen Long District. Since I had been trained in social anthropology (having won University Scholar distinction in the structural analysis of Chinese myth and folk-tale), and since I was eager to begin field work in the New Territories, I readily accepted the offer of an unpaid attachment to your office. Throughout the early weeks of June, the project gradually took shape and became a reality. Government showed interest in the idea, and approved the project. Scholars at both universities pro- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 202 NOTES AND QUERIES in the shuffle. As a consequence, phenomena of this order are hardly understood. In my opinion, as large corporate groups continue to disintegrate in the New Territories, a complex structure of social life will emerge to fill the vacuum. This structure will be composed of 'popular' elements, previously considered 'incongruities' by most theoreticians, which are no less traditional than the Confucian ideal, yet more resilient. It is precisely within the corpus of oral tradition that the historical basis of this structure comes to light. Aside from these reasons, the project would provide useful materials for the study of Hong Kong history in the lower and middle schools, while being of general scholastic worth to advanced research. The initial project would hopefully be attached to the District Office, its scope of research encompassing the villages and townships of a single Administrative District. I estimate that a staff of three or four researchers working for a minimum of two years would complete an adequate history of Yuen Long. At this time, I would like to thank the New Territories Administration, and most especially your office, for the assistance and encouragement offered the pilot project over the last few months. I look forward to a further exchange of opinions on the points touched on above. Yours, [Signed] JOHN THOMAS Kamm FIELD NOTES ON THE SOCIAL HISTORY AND FUNG-SHUI OF KAM TIN* 1. Kam Tin is properly the name of a community; it is a generic term applied to a number of settlements (walled and unwalled villages - respectively wai (圍) and tsuen (村)) clustered together to form a heung (鄉). Until recent times (mid-1930's), with the notable exceptions of servile families (sai-man (世民) and ha-fu (下夫)) and tenants, this heung was inhabited exclusively by members of the large and powerful Tang (鄧) clan. Indeed, Kam Tin, * As such, these notes should be read in conjunction with the various papers to which reference is made in the text. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n 208 NOTES AND QUERIES as that which obtains between the first and fourth fong of Kam Tin, in that the Ngs (4) originated from an adopted Wong (#). 18. The Hakka Tangs of Wang Toi Shan (1) have a tale of origin remarkably similar to the Hung-yi tale. A Ping Shan Tang, they say, while on a business trip to the north, met with hard times and married a Hakka concubine (or mui chai unclear). After siring a number of children, the Tang businessman died. The Hakka woman, carrying his ashes and children, returned to Ping Shan. Unfortunately for her, the Ping Shan Tangs refused to recognize the “legitimate" Punti/Tang status of the boy children; but rather than return to the northern districts, she decided to settle down near Kam Tin, and thereafter founded the Wang Toi Shan settlements. Due to her fortitude, virtue, etc. the Hakka Tangs have prospered. 19. Some debate exists over whether the Hakka Tangs and Punti Tangs "belong" to the same clan [to my knowledge, they share in no common estate]. This debate often takes the form of one of two questions: are the Kam Tin Tangs "really" Hakka? or are the Wang Toi Shan Tangs "really" Punti? One of the predictions to come out of this project is that Kam Tin Tangs will increasingly ally themselves with Hakka local groups, both politically (to the detriment of remaining "higher-order lineage" ties) and culturally (in that they will increasingly attribute to themselves Hakka characteristics). 20. Hypothesis: There has occurred a shift in dominance at the level of superstructure from one founding myth (Wong Ku) to another (Hung-yi Kung). This shift, which has taken place over the last few decades, reflects a shift at the economic/political base of the New Territories (esp. Yuen Long district) between polar structures A and B. 20. a. Structure A. Essentially the "large-clan"/higher-order lineage type. Lineages "collapse" into single, legal and social personalities, and assume great power over the formulas of exchange (women: in terms of marriage alliance, and goods: in terms of markets and tax systems). This structure, which is essentially hierarchical and feudalistic (in that it attempts to usurp power from the local tentacles of central government), is best represented by the Tangs prior to the economic/social revolution begun in 1898, and drawn to a close by the events of the 1930's. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1977 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n NOTES AND QUERIES 209 20. b. Structure B. An organic/alliance model which stresses relationships of an egalitarian, contractual nature. Power is not usurped, but "won" through cooperation/conflict of equals. This structure, represented prior to 1898 by the Tung (董) system [especially the Tai Ping Kuk (太平局) of Sham Chun] has become the dominant polar type of the modern New Territories (examples: The Yuen Long Hop Yick Co. and The Tai Po Yeuk alliances, which dominate local markets to the exclusion of the Tangs; these alliances only become possible with the cooperation of Hakka and Punti, great clan and small clan alike.). 20. c. Both these structures (ideal types) existed as systems of unofficial control in Southern San On prior to British occupation. 21. The period dating from the beginning of Suen Tak (宣德) to the end of Sing Fa (成化) reigns of the Ming Dynasty, roughly from 1426-1487 A.D., was a period of great prosperity and expansion for the Kam Tin Tangs. 21. a. During this period, the Tangs moved out of their "neighborhood" of Sham Tin and took over complete dominance of the settlement. We can think of the settlement at this time as being a multi-lineage settlement, with at least three surnames present, Tangs, Lais (黎) and Shams (沈). The Tangs apparently drove out the Lais (turning them into "sai chuk") and enslaved the Shams (as "sai-man"). How they accomplished this is related in the Lai vs. Tang tale transcribed and appended below.* 21. b. The members of the 2nd fong (descendants of Hung-yi's 2nd son) constructed Ying Lung Wai (應龍圍), and from this wai they controlled the access to the Pat Heung (八鄉) valley and eventually established Yuen Long Old Market. 21. c. The building of Ling Wan Tsz (靈雲寺) at the head of Pat Heung valley can be viewed as part of the general process of expansion by which the Tangs gained control of the entire valley [that area now included in Demarcation Districts nos. 103, 106, 107, 109, 113]. A Tong (堂) was established to finance the upkeep of the temple, to which the Kam Tin Tangs contributed up to the early years of the Republic. The nuns continue to perform important * Not available. † Demarcation Districts are survey districts, the sheets and registers pertaining thereto being kept in the District Land Offices of the New Territories Administration. Page 225 Page 226 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 182 DAVID H. S. CHAU in print making for generations since Late Ming. To Hua Wu is a district in the city of Soochow. Fatshan is a town near Canton, also noted for its many temples, beautiful scenery and many other crafts. Prints made from these centers varied in style and printing technique, but only the prints made from Fatshan retain the ancient traditional forms, as Fatshan has been the supply center of folk prints for the Chinese overseas who have emigrated and settled down in South Asian countries for many generations. The folk prints used by Chinese people in Hong Kong were also supplied from Fatshan. There had been several woodblock printers in Hong Kong producing religious folk prints by using blocks supplied from Fatshan until fifteen years ago. Then, for economic reasons, some local printers closed down their business and the remaining ones turned to modern printing techniques by using machines. In the nineteenth century modern printing techniques were introduced to China from Western countries, and eventually the use of woodblock for printing started to decline and began to vanish. The remaining woodblock printers only engaged in the printing of religious matter. When the Communists took over the government of China in 1949, almost all these printers closed down their trade. Those still in existence are mainly engaged in reproducing paintings of old masters. One is Wing Po Chai in Peking, another in Shanghai is styled To Wan Huen. There is also one left in Hangchow of Chekiang Province. The usages of woodblock printing Woodblock printing had a wide range of usage in Chinese daily life. Besides printed books, calendars, folk prints and religious matter, woodblocks were used for printing stationery, account sheets, letter heads, calligraphic copy books, trade labels, posters, circular notices, playing cards, etc. The government's official documents, orders, legal contracts, etc. were also printed by using woodblocks. Decorated letter sheets had been in fashion in high society in the old days. High-ranking officials, noted families, wealthy merchants and literary scholars and artists had, for their own exclusive use, beautiful specially illustrated and coloured woodblock printed personal letter sheets for writing letters or poems. Card games were also popular in the feast gatherings of scholars, poets or artists. Monochrome, illustrated, woodblock-printed, paper playing cards ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1978 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593 NOTES AND QUERIES 211 Ching period of the Ming Dynasty (1553). From this, we can see that, at that time, there was no fort nor guard-station at Fat Tong Mun. 4 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 早期海盜略，原載廣東文獻第八卷，第四期。. 5 Chapter 4 of the San On Yuen Chi, Ch'ia Ching edition, ★★★✰ recorded, "North Fat Tong is an isolated island, A fort is erected during the K'ang Hsi period, for the protection of the waterway against the pirates." This proves that the fort on Tung Lung Island was erected during the K'ang Hsi reign. 6 See Chapter 13 of the Kwong Tung Hoi Tu Shuet. 1889 edition ★***, and Chapter 73 of the Kwong Chow Fu Chi, 1879 edition 廣州府志。 7 Chapter 125 of the Kwong Tung Tung Chi, Tao Kuang edition £ A records, "In the 15th year of the Ch'ia Ching rule, Viceroy Chin Mun Fu ✰✰ suggested to have the Fat Tong Mun Fort abandoned, and rebuilt near the Kowloon Walled City, Viceroy Pak Ling ordered the Magistrate of the San On District 4 to carry out the suggestion. The Fat Tong Mun Fort was under the command of the officer commanding of the Tai Pang Battalion ***. The fort stood on an isolated island, two hundred li from the Tai Pang Walled City, and forty li from the Kowloon guard-station. There were no villages on the island that could assist in protecting the region. Thus the fort had to be removed to the Kowloon City Region." Chapter 14 of the Kwong Chow Fu Chi, 1879 edition АЯ, and the Genealogy of Tang's of Kam Tin, New Territories of Hong Kong, 香港新界錦田鄧氏族譜 have the same record. 8 See Note 6, Chapter 8 of Professor LO Hsiang-lin's Hong Kong and its External Communications before 1842, Chinese edition, 1959 -AS- 一八四二年以前之香港及其對外交通，羅香林著. FIRST RECORD OF THE PELOBATID FROG LEPTOBRACHIUM PELODYTOIDES BOULENGER IN HONG KONG It is indeed gratifying to find-in an area as small and zoologically well studied as Hong Kong-any amphibian not previously known to be part of our fauna. Not only does the discovery of Leptobrachium pelodytoides add another species, but represents a genus new to the known fauna of Hong Kong. The first specimens found here, and subsequently identified, are nine tadpoles collected by Dr. Frank F. Reitinger and Mr. Jerry K. S. Lee at an altitude of about 853 metres on Tai Mo Shan in the New Territories on 30 November and 7 December 1974. However, it was not until two adult frogs were found by Mr. Phillip J. Bishop ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1979 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938 202 NOTES AND QUERIES sister, now a spirit, had proffered good advice, he built a folk religion shrine in her honour. Her cult thrived, so much so that her image is revered by Ch'aochou emigrants in most areas of South Thailand and, so the story goes, also in Singapore and in Nakorn Sri Thammarat. The Bangkok god carver claims that Miss Lin is the only Chinese deity with a special urn donated by the King of Thailand who is well known for his tolerance towards and encouragement for other religions. He is said to have bowed in her honour before her image which consists of a simple, seated country girl with bare feet and large hands, dressed in working clothes Plate 3. Her festival is celebrated in her temples each year on her birthday, the 15th of the first lunar month. Hong Kong. March, 1980. KEITH STEVENS THE TEMPLE OF THE SUPREME RULER, NEAR SUNG WONG TOI, KOWLOON* In the thirteenth century A.D. the Southern Sung Emperor Tuen Chung was attacked by the Mongol Conquerors of the North. Driven from his provisional capital at Hang Chow, the Emperor retreated southwards through Fukien and on to Kwangtung province, stopping temporarily at more than 30 places on his way. Besides the well known Palace at Ngai Mun in the San Wui district of Kwangtung, that at Sau Shan by the Pearly River has been fully described in the Imperial Records which were published in the Yuen Dynasty. Such buildings provide evidence of the efforts of the Sung Emperor and his ministers to make that stand against their enemies which has long been cherished in the people's minds. In the spring of 1277 during the second year of his reign, the Emperor left Kam Tsz Mun of Wai Chau district in Kwangtung and reached Mui Wai. In the fourth moon he arrived at Kwun Fu Cheung, a district which included present day Kowloon, the New *This heading and the following text are taken from a memorial tablet erected in the Urban Council's Rest Garden at Lomond Road, Kowloon, site of this former old temple. A Chinese tablet is also provided. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 40 JIANN HSIEH or the reorganization of existing ones. However, contrary to this view, in the Waichow case both kinship and locality as abstract concepts are still effective for organizing new associations or reorganizing existing associations. C. A Historical Sketch of the Development of Waichow Associations in Hong Kong* 7 The development of the Waichow associations in Hong Kong did not take place before the Second World War, even though Liao Hsin-chi, a Hakka from Waichow, had joined with others to establish the Tsung Tsin Association in 1920 (CCCHS, 1950: H-16), a headquarters for all the Hakka people. To my knowledge, the first effective Waichow voluntary association in Hong Kong was the Tung Kong Sports Club, established in June 1946. With an increase in the number of its members, a simple sports club could no longer cater for all their demands, so it changed its title to the Waichow Merchants' Mutual Aid Association and its purposes were expanded to include education, and provide assistance for obtaining employment, medical welfare, etc. In March 1948, with still more Waichow Hakka having come to Hong Kong because of the political situation in China, and the Hong Kong Residents of Waichow Ten Districts Countrymen's Association was set up in order to replace the Mutual Aid Association (HTSCT, 1978: 58). In 1956 this Association was registered under a new name as the Waichow Clansmen General Association. This core organization of the Waichow Hakka, nominally representing all Waichow people in Hong Kong, has developed considerably in the past twenty years, and has set up branches in Sheung-shui (1956), Tai-po (1956), Yuen-long (1956), Tsuen-wan (1965), Peng-chau (1966), and Lam-ma (1977), as well as a series of subsidiary organizations: Waichow Music Society (1965), Waichow Lion Dancing Club (1967), Waichow Sports Association (1968), Kindergarten in Tsuen-wan (1965) and two Waichow public schools in Yuen-long (1965) and Kwai-chung (1968). In addition to their headquarters and their subsidiary organizations, the Waichow Hakka have also set up several district level * The romanization used for the names of associations is taken from the form in which they have been registered with the Hong Kong government. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 # PERSISTENCE & PRESERVATION OF HAKKA CULTURE 41 locality associations. These are the Tse-kam (Tsu-chin) District Countrymen's Association (1948), Loong-chuen (Lung-chuan) Native Association (1954), Pok-law (Po-lo) District Association (1954), Ho-yuen (Ho-yuan) Clansmen's Association (1963) and the Wai-yeung (Hwei-yang) Merchants Association. However, the Wai-chow Hoklos from the district of Hai-feng and Lu-feng, due to cultural and language differences, cannot fully participate in the Waichow associations, principally composed of Hakkas. This is why the Waichow Hoklos, besides having their own district-level associations (the Luk-fung District Countrymen's Association in 1967 and the Hoi-fung District Countrymen's Association in 1968), have often attempted to establish relationships with the Hoklos from other areas. In August 1972, several directors of the Waichow Clansmen General Association were discontented with their chairman's leadership, so they organized the Ten Districts of Waichow Association in order to challenge the Waichow Clansmen Association's authority. This resulted in a public split at the pinnacle of the power pyramid and had certain serious effects on the internal structure of the Waichow Hakkas. The most obvious consequence was that each association claimed to be the rightful representative of the Waichow people in Hong Kong and the two therefore competed to seek support from the secondary level Waichow associations, thus forming different association clusters within the same group. In other words, under and within the common locality name of Waichow, there are actually three association clusters in Hong Kong: The Waichow Hakka, as the majority group, have two clusters centering around the Waichow Clansmen General Association and the Ten District of Waichow Association respectively, and the Waichow Hoklos, as the marginal group, constitute another cluster with the Luk-fung District Countrymen's Association and the Hoi-fung District Countrymen's Association as its nucleus (see Fig. 1). ## III. VOLUNTARY ASSOCIATIONS AND CULTURAL PERSISTENCE With regard to the role of voluntary associations in urban situations, most contemporary anthropologists, as already mentioned- ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 42 Fig. 1. J1ANN HSIEH Association Clusters of the Waichows in Hong Kong, 1979, C D E F I T B I. M A. + formal relationship association cluster Walchow Clansmen General Association in Hong Kong B. Ten-Districts of Waichow Association in Hong Kong C. Walchow Union Sheung Shui Branch, Hong Kong D: Walchow Un Long Residents Association Ltd. E: Walchow Union Hong Kong Tai Po Branch, N.T. F: Waichow Main Union Tsuen Wan Branch G. Waichow Clansmen General Association (Hong Kong) Ltd., Peng Chau Branch H: Walchow Clansmen General Association of Hong Kong, Lamma Island Branch I: Ha Foon District Association J: Lu Foon District Association K: Loong Chuen Native Association L: Tze Kam District Countrymen's Association Limited M: Hong Kong Residents of Pok Law District Association N: Ho Yuen Clansmen Association ed, consider these associations as "gangplanks” which help rural immigrants across pitfalls in their transition to new urban ways of life. Nevertheless, emphases are different among various researches. Little (1974:89-90) and Banton (1968: XVI, 360), arguing from urbanization studies in West Africa, stressed the creation of voluntary associations by the natives anxious to learn the life pattern of the Europeans. Fallers (1967:12), however, focused his attention on the awkward position of the new immigrants - sandwiched between the rulers and the autochthonous. In his excellent introduction to Immigrants and Associations, he wrote: Clearly, then, one reason why the immigrant trading community is so productive of associations is that, lacking satisfying and reliable moral ties with the indigenous local community, it must ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 142 NOTES AND QUERIES During the early Tang Dynasty, the importance of Tuen Mun increased. Thus a garrison of two thousand men was posted1, and Tuen Mun became known as the Tuen Mun Military Zone19 5. The garrison was led by a commander known as Sau-Chuk-Si 守捉使 belonging to the Annam Military Zone 安南都護府. Its headquarters were at Nam Tau, later the district city of San On. The area of present day Hong Kong, including the islands, the Kowloon Peninsula and the New Territories, was under the protection of this garrison. In the Sung Dynasty, the Tuen Mun Military Zone was turned into the Tuen Mun Ngam19. However, the number of soldiers and the rank of the officer in charge are not certain. During the early Ming Dynasty, the Tuen Mun Ngam was turned into the Nam Tau Walled City, and the garrison was commanded by a Cham-Cheung or Brigadier. Later, in the 17th year of the Hung Wu Reign (1384), Fa Mau✯✯, Commander of the Nam Tau Walled City, asked the Imperial Court to strengthen the garrison of the coastal area. Tuen Mun lay between the areas protected by the Tung Kwun Battalion and the Tai Pang Battalion. Thus, a watch-post was built, and a guard-station under a Pa-Tsung(4) was established. In the 9th year of the Chia Ching reign (1514), the Portuguese entered the Tuen Mun Bay. They took over the adjacent lands and built forts. They even established a monument. However, in the 16th year of Chia Ching, Wong Wang, Commander-in-chief of the Kwangtung naval forces, defeated the Portuguese at Sai Tso Wan8. After that, no Portuguese was found in the Tuen Mun area.9 At that time, there were villages like Lung Kwu Tsuen, Lang Shui Tsuen✯k††, Tuen Mun Tsuen19#, So Kwun Wat Tsuen 掃桿笏村, and Siu Lam Chung Tsuen 小欖涌村.10 During the early Ch'ing Dynasty, the Coastal Evacuation✯✯ caused the abandonment of the area close to the sea. Tuen Mun thus lay barren until, in the 7th year of the K'ang Hsi reign (1668), people were permitted to return to the coastal strip. The Tuen Mun Watch-post was re-established with a garrison of fifty men under a Tsin-Tsung. In the 21st year of K'ang Hsi (1682), the Tuen Mun Watch-post was turned into the Tuen Mun Walled City19 with a garrison of thirty men under a Tsin-tsung11. During ================================================================================ 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 the Chien Lung period, it was turned into a guard-station 143 Villages rebuilt at that time were Tze Tuen Tsuen, Tuen Mun Tsuen, Siu Hang Tsuen, Po Tong Ha Tsuen, So Kwun Wat Tsuen and San Tsuen Wai.12 In the 16th year of the Chia Ching reign (1811), the Tuen Mun guard-station was strengthened. Besides the original garrison, a Pa-Tsung was posted to be the assistant. Five guard-stations, each under a Ngai-Wai with four men, were erected at Shing Mun, Wang Chau, Kwun Chung, Tsiu Keng and Ma Tseuk Leng. They were all under the command of the Tsin-Tsung of the Tuen Mun Guard Station. At that time, villages in that area were all under the charge of the Kwun-Fu-Shi TO: namely: Tuen Mun Tsuen, Tsing Chuen Wai, Tsz Tuen Wai, Siu Hang Tsuen, Po Tong Ha Tsuen, Sun Fung Wai, Chung Uk Tsuen, Nai Wai Tsz Tsuen, San Tsuen, So Kwun Wat Tsuen, Tai Lam Tsuen, Tin Fu Tsai Tsuen and Un Tan Tau Tsuen.4 During the early years of the Tao Kuang reign, a Pa-Tsung and a Ngai-Wai with sixteen men were posted at the Tuen Mun Guard-station, sixty men were placed in the following six guard-stations which were all under the command of the Tuen Mun Guard Station. These guard stations were at Mong Tseng, Wang Chau (ten men), Kwun Chung (five men), Tai Po Tau (fifteen men), Shing Mun Au (fifteen men) and Tsiu Keng (five men).15 This continued until the 24th year of the Kuang Hsü reign (1898), when the Ch'ing Government leased the New Territories and the adjacent islands to the British, after which these guard-stations were abandoned.16 In 1899, the area was divided into the three sub-districts of Tuen Mun, Tai Lam Chung and Lung Ku Tan belonging to the Un Long District. Villages in these sub-districts were as follows:17 Tuen Mun Sub-district:- Chung Uk Tsun, Shun Fung Wai, Tsing Chun Wai, Tsz Tin Wai, Nai Wai, Tun Tsz Wai, Po Tong Ha, Siu Hang, Lam Ti and San Tsuen. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1980 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207 144 NOTES AND QUERIES Tai Lam Chung Sub-district:- Tai Lam Chung, So Kun Fat, Tai Lam, Tsing Fai Tong, Un Tan and Tin Po Tsai 田箭仔、 Lung Ku Tan Sub-district:- Nim Wan, Tai Shui Hang 大水坑, Pak Long 北朗, Ha Nam Long 下南朗, Sheung Nam Long 上南朗 and Tuk Mi Chung 篤尾涌. 18 At present, Tuen Mun consists of thirty-two villages; namely: Chi Tin Tsuen, Ching Chuen Wai † (mainly surnamed To 陶), Ching Shan Keuk 青山脚, Ching Shan Tsuen 青山村, Chung Uk Tsuen (mainly surnamed Chung), Fu Ti Tsuen 虎地村, Fu Hang Tsuen 福亨村, Ho Tin Tsuen 河田村, Ki Lun Wai 麒麟圍 (mainly surnamed Chan 陳), Kwong Shan Tsuen 礦山村, Lam Tei 藍地 (mainly surnamed To 陶 and Kwan 關), Lam Tei San Tsuen (mainly surnamed To), Leung Tin Tsuen 良田村 (mainly surnamed Ho 何), Lung Ku Taan 龍鼓灘 (mainly surnamed Lau), Nai Wai (mainly surnamed To 陶), Nim Wan 稔灣, Po Tong Ha 寶塘下 (mainly surnamed Tsui 徐), Sam Shing Hui 三聖墟, San Hing Tsuen 新慶村 (mainly surnamed Siu 蕭), San Hui 新墟, San Wai Chei 新圍仔, Shun Fung Wai »§ £, ♬ (mainly surnamed Cheung 張 and Leung 梁), Siu Hang Tsuen 小坑村 (mainly surnamed Tse 謝), So Kwun Wat 掃管笏 (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tai Lam Chung (mainly surnamed Wu 吳 and Wong 黃), Tin Fu Chai (mainly surnamed To and Choi), To Yuen Wai (mainly surnamed Lee 李), Tseng Tau Tsuen 井頭村, Tuen Chi Wai 屯子圍 (mainly surnamed To 陶), Wo Ping San Tsuen 和平新村, Yeung Siu Hang 楊小坑 and Luen On San Tsuen 聯安新村. Tuen Mun has now been developed into a large new satellite town. A major road, the Tuen Mun Highway, has been built, joining it with Tsuen Wan, and a light rail system within the town area will be developed in the near future. NOTES 1 The name 'Tuen Mun' appeared first in Chapter 43 of the New History of T'ang. 2 Tuen Mun Shan was also known as 'Pui To Shan'. Nowadays, it is also called 'Castle Peak'. The Bay was also known as Tuen Mun O. ================================================================================ 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 4 See Chapter 73 of the Tang Hui Yiu. 5 See Chapter 43 of the New History of Tang. 6 145 7 See Chapter 124 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1822 edition. 8 See Chapter 11 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition. 9 See Chapter 1 of Cheung Wai-wah's An Annotation of the Chapters on Ferrangi, Lushons, Hollanders and Italians in the Ming History. 10 See Chapter 14 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition. 11 See Chapter 32 of Yuet Tai Kee, Wan Li edition. 12 See Chapter 11 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition. 13 See Chapter 3 of the Sun On Yuen Chi, 1688 edition. 14 See note 11. 15 See Chapter 2 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition. 16 See Chapter 175 of the Kwangtung Tung Chi, 1822 edition. 17 See Chapter 13 of the Kwangtung To Shuet, Tung Chih edition, and Chapter 73 of the Kwangchow Fu Chi, 1879 edition. 18 See Government Notification No. 287, Hong Kong Government Gazette, 8th July, 1899. 19 See the 1981 "List of Villages and Village Representatives of Tuen Mun District, New Territories," supplied by the Tuen Mun Rural Committee. Hong Kong, 1981. ANTHONY K. K. SIU IS "CHUN FA LOK" THE OLD NAME OF TSING YI? The map of the Kwangtung coast-line in the Ming work Yuet Tai Kei is a long and continuous one which occupies thirty-six pages. It shows the whole of the Kwangtung coast. On page 21 of this long map, located at the middle of the page is Hong Kong Island. To the north of that island, there is another called Chun Fa Lok. ================================================================================ 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 147 2 On the map, the location of Hong Kong Island should be that of Aberdeen today. There is another large island showing the names of Chung Hum春暟, Chik Chu赤柱, Tai Tam大潭 and Wong Nai Chung黄泥涌. * These two islands should be joined as one, since all these places are located on present day Hong Kong Island. It is probably so drawn because the author drew the map while he was standing on the mainland side, facing the water. * Chin Wan is today's Tsuen Wan. Island. The English name for Yeung Shun Chau is Stonecutters. * See, Map 72 of Volume 2 of Hong Kong Streets and Places published by The Lands and Survey Department of the Hong Kong Government. Also p. 154, Zone 30: Tsing Yi and Ma Wan Islands of A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories, 1978 edition. 7 ? See Chapter 13 of the San On Yuen Chi, 1819 edition.✩✩✩✩縣志卷十三、 * See Kwangtung To Shuet✯✯✯x, 1889 edition, and Kwangtung Yu Ti Chuen To (ARж#'), 1909 edition. A TUN FU (£) CEREMONY IN TAI PO DISTRICT, 1981: RITUAL AS A DEMARCATOR OF COMMUNITY I recently had the opportunity to witness a tun fu ceremony in Fung Yuen, a small multilineage village in a coastal valley to the east of Tai Po. Since I found Notes on earlier ceremonies published in this journal by James Hayes to be very valuable as I prepared to observe the Fung Yuen ritual, it occurred to me that other field workers might similarly find my notes on this subject useful. The ceremony aims to protect villagers from the wrath of various spirits that might be disturbed when engineering or construction works affect local fung seui in some way. If indigenous villagers feel that the health and well-being of their community might thus be threatened by government works, they may request such a ceremony. The expenses incurred in the hiring of a specialist to conduct the rituals and the purchase of various items of ritual paraphernalia and sacrificial objects are covered by the district office. Given the pace of development in Hong Kong today, we can expect that such ceremonies will continue to be held frequently. Thus there is considerable value in examining the meanings they hold for the people in whose interests they are performed. ================================================================================ 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 153 tinuing solidarity and sense of community is, I believe, quite noteworthy. The indigenous multilineage alliance feels threatened by the changes imposed on its quiet valley both by the influx of immigrant farmers and by the new government development plans. In the tun fu ceremonies, I would suggest, it fights back symbolically at both foes. The government is committed to keeping, at least symbolically, the promise made by Blake that Chinese "usages and good customs will not in any way be interfered with." Although these villagers are in reality helpless in the face of tumultuous change, they can in the short run pressure the government to give them "face" by providing financial support for the ritual reaffirmation of their exclusive symbolic rights in the lands of their ancestors. The presence of the outsiders in Fung Yuen, ritual statement notwithstanding, is very real, as is the power of the state which is likely to claim more than the domains of the Green Dragon and the White Tiger in the very near future. In the meantime, the tun fu ceremonies, like other rituals, provide us a glimpse of the structure of social as well as religious meaning in a sector of Chinese society that carries on old traditions in a changing world. Berkeley, California, 1982 JUDITH STRAUCH LYCHEES OF TSANG SHING COUNTY, KWANGTUNG. In May 1979 I was invited to inaugurate a new term of office-bearers of the New Territories Tsang Shing Fellow Countrymen's Association*4, and at dinner enquired into special local products. Among other items, a rare type of lychee was mentioned. The lychee is a kind of sub-species, and is supposed to be red with a green stripe. None of the persons at the table had seen it, and in conversation they presumed that it came into the category of folk myth. (1921), 2. The latest edition of the country gazetteer chüan 9/3a has this to say about the lychees of Tsang Shing District: Sei Mong Kong in Sa Pui, Tsang Shing County, produces the prime quality of lychee in Kwangtung because the soil there is rich and sandy. Species ranging from "Kwa Luk" (##) to ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p Chinese University's History Department and editor of our 1981 Journal, spoke on Saikung district during World War II: the district being a regular escape route for prisoners of war from Kowloon. After a summer break we began again in October with Professor Shih Hsio-yen, Head of Department of Fine Arts at Hong Kong University, talking on recent Chinese archeological finds and how the Chinese on the mainland look at their origins. In December Dr. James Hayes led a tour of the New Territories, which included Sam Tung Uk village built in the eighteenth century and scheduled as a museum and cultural centre, and Tsuen Wan, with a vegetarian lunch at the Yuen Yuen Hok Yuen, Tsuen Wan, a temple complex belonging to a Chinese syncretic religious group. Also in December, Professor Rulan Chao Pian, Professor of East Asian Languages and Civilizations and of Music at Harvard, and currently visiting Professor of Music at the Chinese University, spoke on traditional forms of dance narrative in North China. Her talk was illustrated with video tape material. Finally, in January Dr. Graham Johnson, Associate Professor in Sociology at the University of British Columbia, talked on the Chinese in Canada, discussing their history from the early rural migrants who worked in the goldfields and on the railway, to the more sophisticated urban migrants going to Canada after 1967, many from Hong Kong. There was very poor response to the two overseas tours offered through, or by, the Society during the year. The tour to India had to be cancelled through lack of sufficient numbers, and the tour of the Pearl River Delta consisted of six persons only, including the leader, Dr. Michael Lau, to whom I express my thanks. This year about seven members will be joining a tour arranged by Dr. Brian Shaw for late March-early April. The group will witness the annual sacred masked dance festival at Paro in Bhutan and also visit other places in Bhutan, and Darjeeling and Kalimpong. Other tours may be arranged by Dr. Shaw during the coming year, and Mrs. Craig will also be offering tours to members, who will be kept informed. As the year progressed we found it increasingly difficult to obtain bookings at the Volunteer Officers' Mess due to heavy ix ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1982 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p 26 JANET LEE SCOTT NOTES It might be mentioned that the adult population of Hong Kong was, at the time of Mutual Aid Committee formation, already well acquainted with the idea and work of urban organizations. While the Mutual Aid Committees had (and still retain) their own unique design, their structure (and their functions) were not unfamiliar and they were not viewed as mysterious committees having no resemblances to other, more traditional, Chinese organizations. * The other five subdivisions are: Kam Kwok Mansion, Luen Hop Building, Mei Tung Estate, Pui Man Tsuen Cottage Area, and Pok Oi Village (Wong Tai Sin District Report 1982:271). * The exact total, provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate, was 21,221 at the end of February, 1983. • At the end of 1982, the exact figure was 523,927. * The Mark I blocks include Blocks #1-5, #9, #10, and #12, and the Mark II group is made up of Blocks #13-20 and Blocks #22 and #23. The remaining blocks (#6-8, #11, and #21), already rebuilt, are now referred to as Converted Buildings (Wong Tai Sin District Report 1982:272). • This information was provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate. * At the end of February, 1983, there were 26 Mutual Aid Committees in the Lok Fu Area and 286 Mutual Aid Committees for the entire Wong Tai Sin District. * The selection of male members is because all but one of the chairmen of the Lok Fu Estate Mutual Aid Committees interviewed were male. In addition, the opinions of female members towards participation were investigated during the research period of 1976-1978. * Block #23 of Tung Tau Estate is still divided into floors for the purpose of MAC formation. In early 1983, it had five MACs, one for each three floors. 10 In 1982 the old titles of City District Commissioner and City District Officer were changed to District Officer and Assistant District Officer respectively. At the same time the old Home Affairs Department and New Territories Administration were amalgamated into a new department known as the City and New Territories Administration. 11 The official certificates of registration are framed and prominently displayed in the committee's office, or if the committee lacks an office, are kept by an officer, most often the chairman. 19 However, given the apathy of many residents and the low attendance at many MAC meetings, one might wonder if any committee has been dissolved by popular action, the second alternative. 10 This is the schedule as described by the Wong Tai Sin District Office, Tung Tau Sub-office. The office of the Housing Manager, Lok Fu Estate, explained that the conversion has already been completed and that 114 families (the figure as of March, 1983) had already moved in. "These figures have been provided by the office of the Housing Manager of Lok Fu Estate, and are accurate as to the end of March, 1983. 16 The C.C.C. number is a code number found on the Hong Kong Identification Card and is written under the Chinese characters of the individual's name. 10 According to the Tung Tau Sub-office of the Wong Tai Sin District Office, there are no instances of the mishandling of MAC funds known in ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v NOTES ON SOME CHINESE CUSTOMS IN THE NEW TERRITORIES B. D. WILSON* CONTENTS 1. Introduction 2. Succession 3. Adoption 4. Ching sheung and sheung tin land 5. Land held by clans 6. Family disputes 7. Marriage by proxy 8. Sam p'o tsai 9. Customary agricultural leases 10. Graves 11. Housing-building 12. Some fung shui problems 13. Oaths 14. Money loan associations 15. Names Introduction I compiled these notes partly in 1949-51 whilst District Officer, Tai Po, and partly in 1953-55 whilst District Officer, Yuen Long. The object of the notes was to provide basic information for myself and other District Officers so as to achieve some uniformity in our approach and in the handling of common problems that arose in our day-to-day work. The notes represent what I found customary in Tai Po and Yuen Long. I made no * Mr. Brian Wilson was an Administrative Officer of the Hong Kong Government 1948-1983. He retired as Director of Urban Services in 1983. Mr. Wilson was District Officer, Tai Po 1949-1951, and District Officer, Yuen Long 1953-1955. He was awarded the CBE in 1977. Mr. Wilson was a Founder Member of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 42 attempt to see if the customs were general throughout the New Territories.1 The Communist army reached Canton in October 1949. Shortly before and after that date, floods of refugees poured into the New Territories, many of them later engaging in agriculture, mostly vegetable farming. Up until then, natives of the New Territories were primarily rice farmers, living in long-established villages with customs and practices that regulated their lives. The only land available for cultivation by refugees tended to be marginal land without water. The refugees dug wells, made new paths, leased land from New Territories natives, and erected shacks all over the place (before October 1949 there were virtually no temporary structures in the Tai Po district). The energy, initiative and desperate attempts by the refugees to earn a living in new communities where neighbours seldom knew each other resulted in their following a way of life without traditional rules of conduct. To some extent, this washed off on the traditional New Territories natives, aggravated by the movement from 1951 onwards of New Territories men to emigrate overseas and to the urban areas of Hong Kong and Kowloon. This movement tended to break down the old indigenous customs. In 1953-55, in Yuen Long, I used to have regular discussions with certain village elders who were locally acknowledged as experts on traditional customs; they proved most co-operative when they appreciated my interest in the subject. I always cross-checked the information with other local informants, but had neither the opportunity nor the need at the time to cross-check further afield so as to ascertain how widespread the custom was or the extent to which it applied to both Punti and Hakka communities. It must be accepted therefore that, in the absence of further proof, these customs may not necessarily have been uniformly observed throughout the New Territories or elsewhere in Kwangtung. From September 1953 to early 1954, in addition to my work as District Officer, I was also Police Court Magistrate (in Ping Shan), Assistant Land Officer (holding Land Courts), and Small Debts Court Magistrate. These had always been the functions of the District Officers at Tai Po and Yuen Long. But, during my ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 43 time at Tai Po (1949-51), a separate District Officer (now Sir Donald Luddington) had undertaken the Court duties. My Court duties in Yuen Long provided yet another insight into local custom. For instance, if it were not for the several cases that arose in the Small Debts Court, I might never have understood the workings of money loan associations. The frequent Land Courts (often two a day in 1955) provided a wealth of information about agricultural leases, inheritance, graves, and fung shui, In 1951, I served for a time in the former Secretariat for Chinese Affairs where my duties required me to spend part of every day attempting to resolve family disputes, mostly matrimonial. This provided much background material on the status of parties. In those more settled days, when communications were difficult and New Territories villages lacked newspapers, radio and television, tradition tended to rule the conduct of villagers, just as rice cultivation ruled the village economy. Traditional customs no longer carry the same weight these days, and in some cases are all but forgotten. Rice cultivation continues in only a few remote corners of the New Territories. Its implements and associated equipment (such as ploughs, harrows, winnowing machines) are hardly recognised by the new generation which may have little idea of how their grandparents lived. Wealth in those days was equated with the number of rice fields owned, and rice depended on a plentiful supply of water. Hence the old Chinese saying "Shui wai choi" (**水為財**), meaning "Water makes riches". The English reply might be that, since then, much water has flowed under the bridge. 2. Succession (a) By Chinese custom there is no such thing as testamentary disposition of property. All a man's "will" can do is permit his widow(s) to remarry, and to moralize for the sons' edification. There may have been some doubt in the past whether by English law a New Territories domiciled person can make a valid will disposing of New Territories property otherwise than as custom would have directed anyhow. But this of course is no ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v In fact it has almost as many people as Lamma, nine times its size and close to Hong Kong. Its average elevation is about 100 feet, and there are three villages. Many other islands lie outside the British boundary. Of them I can say practically nothing, as I have never visited them, and there are no large-scale maps of them. They remain a rich field for enquiry and research in every direction. In conclusion, I can only hope I have not bored you unduly; if I have, I can only say that having known and visited the islands for twenty years, I find them more interesting every year, and if I have interested some of you, I shall feel this afternoon has not been spent in vain. 9th August 1937 I NOTES See J. Dyer-Ball's Things Chinese or Notes Connected with China fifth edition, revised by E.T.C. Werner (1925), re-issued by OUP, Hong Kong, 1983, pp. 297-8. * Yuen Chau Tsai, ("Little Round Island"), where the residence of the District Officer was is now the home of the Secretary for District Administration. The adjacent anchorage was reclaimed a few years ago. * Naikwuchau is now called Hei Ling Chau ("Happy Island"). This followed its early postwar lease to the Leprosy Mission (Hong Kong Auxiliary) which resulted in the change of name, intended to reflect the "healing" nature of the work and the improvement in the patients' lives. * Now the Rural Committee Offices. * Tai Ho at present uses for its name characters meaning "Big Oyster". * The yamen is usually now called the Tung Chung Fort, or Tung Chung Walled City. * At Tei Tong Tsai ("Little Pits"). * Ngong Ping (“High Plain"). * Dedicated to Yeung Hau Wong. * Tsin Yue Wan at present uses for its name characters meaning "Fried Fish Bay". * Now usually called Fan Lau ("Divided Streams”). * This fort is known as Kai Yik Kok Fort (“Chicken's Wing Point"). On it, please see A.M. da Silva Fan Lau and its Fort, an Historical Perspective, in Vol. 8 (1968) of this Journal pages 82-95. * Tai Long Wan ("Big Wave Bay"). ================================================================================ 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 217 was great and must have left them with little time or money to spare for their ruined temple. Finally, and almost certainly the most seriously, the influx of a new population, and immense schemes of redevelopment completely altered the generally rural background of village and market town life that still characterised pre-war East Kowloon. Thus, in the Tung Shan Temple we can see a temple, founded for purely rural reasons slowly growing until it became the predominant community temple of the whole of rural East Kowloon. During this period its management changed from a purely private, clan-based system to a typical community temple structure of committee members and chairman of a type typical not only of the rural community temples in the rest of the New Territories but also of those in urban Hong Kong at this date. Founded in a rural community this temple could, and did, develop both physically and in its management structure to reflect the needs of that community. It could not, however, survive the complete destruction of that community, and its ruination directly reflects the collapse of its founding community in the face of massive urbanisation, and the establishment of the new urban communities created by that urbanisation. The new urban communities have formed their own shrines, and their flourishing condition, alongside the continued ruin of the main temple of the defunct rural community, show more clearly than anything else can the essentially community basis of the temples of this area and their management groups. NOTES In the 1904 Block Crown Lease for Survey District No. 3, New Kowloon, the ownership is recorded in the monk's name Shing Kin (Hsing Star Bridge) and the property is listed under Lot 1101 as temple 0.7 acres, house 0.2 acres, and potato ground 0.33 acres. An entry "Kwun Yam Temple, Ngau Chi Wan" had been crossed out by the Assistant Land Officer who recommended that a lease for the temple buildings and site be given to the Registrar General, 28 April 1904. From south-east Kowloon, Ngau Tau Kok and Cha Kwo Ling; from east Kowloon, Ngau Chi Wan, Ping Shek, Sha Tei Yuen, Upper and Lower Yuen Ling and Chu Shi Liu; from central Kowloon, Tai Hom, Po Kong, Nga Tsin Wai, Upper and Lower Sha Po, Nga Tsin Long and Kak Hang; from Kowloon City, the commercial areas, Sai Tau, Tung Tau and Hoklo Village. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1983 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v 240 trading contacts with Tai Wai. At the same time the temple is currently used by the villagers of Tai Wai for purely village rituals such as the hanging of the lanterns for new-born sons, and the only communal worship is conducted by the village elders, and not by the elders of the Heung. It was probably this conflict between the communal and the purely village interest in Hau Wong and his temple which led to the decision to build an entirely new, and much larger temple, just outside the village. Such a site would certainly make it easier for non-villagers to worship, and that this was aimed at is shown by the specific mention of Lek Yuen (1), the old name for Sha Tin District, in the doorjamb inscriptions. At the same time all the donors named in the door inscriptions were Tai Wai villagers, the most prominent, Wong Yin-Tsun (2), being a villager who had succeeded in securing an official post in Shantung province. The villagers believe that this new temple was only built a few decades before the Block Crown Lease - probably, therefore, the date 1888 on the door is the original foundation date. The foundation was not successful: most villagers wanted the god back in the old temple inside the village, and difficulties which arose were blamed on damage to the Fung Shui of the village as set out by Lai Po-i. After about 30 years, the temple was closed and the god taken back to his old home opposite the village gate: since then his temple, in the village, has been considered basically for Tai Wai villagers only. NOTE 1 Chinese Monasteries, temples, shrines and altars in Hong Kong and Macau, Keith G. Stevens, Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society Vol. 20, 1980, pp. 1–33. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1984 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/5h73wh572 138 JAMES HAYES 37 CO 129/99, Despatch No. 115 of 28 July 1864. 38 Ibid. The report, by Lieutenant Adams, R.N., dated ‘Woodcock’, Hong Kong, 28 June 1864, is at pp. 37-45. 39 Reports on the Past and Present State of Her Majesty's Colonial Possessions (hereafter Blue Book) 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 149. 40 Blue Book for 1847, No. 36 Hong Kong, p. 308. 41 e.g. W.F. Mayers, N.B. Dennys and C. King, The Treaty Ports of China and Japan. (London, Trubner and Co., 1867), p. 108, for two very bad piracies there. 42 Harbour Master's Report for 1887 in Sessional Papers (Papers laid before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong) September 1887-December 1888, p. 258. 43 Blue Book for 1845, No. 38 Hong Kong, p. 151. 44 **科大蘭,陳鴻基,吳倫霓霞, 合品 香港碑銘彙編 p. 98 (D. Faure, B. Luk, A. Ng The Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong (Hong Kong Urban Council 1986) p. 98-101, 75-78. 45 Public Record Office, London: CO129/12/9757, para 12. 46 E.J. Eitel Europe in China op. cit. p. 132. 47 J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. p.62, (and see also p. 27, n. 11). 48 Unpublished Temple Directory, The Temples Unit, Home Affairs Dept. H.K. Government, 1980, p. 17. 49 Mayers, Dennys and King, op cit, p. 2. Sin Ngan (#) variously romanized herein as San-on, Sun-on and Hsin-an was the county to which Hong Kong Island belonged in 1841. Tungkwan ( ) otherwise Tung-Kwun was the older, larger county from which it was created in 1573. For Hsin-an see Peter Y.L. Ng, prepared for press and with additional material by Hugh D.R. Baker, New Peace County, A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong, Hong Kong University Press, 1983). 50 Mayers, Dennys and King, op. cit. p.3 51 52 53 Friend of China, 24 July 1858 (courtesy of Revd. Carl T. Smith), Ibid. See J.W. Hayes The Hong Kong Region op. cit. pp. 46-53. See also J.W. Hayes, The Rural Communities of Hong Kong, Studies and Themes (Hong Kong, Oxford University Press, 1983) pp 9-10. 54 Petition dated 8th day of 4th lunar month, Tao Kuang, 21st year, i.e. 28th May 1841, to the District Magistrate of Hsin-an. This and other quoted papers belong to the Tang family of Kam Tin, New Territories. I am grateful to the District Officer, Yuen Long and Mr. J.T. Kamm for the translations that appear here. They have been checked against the originals by my friend Dr. Anthony K.K. Siu. Kwan Tai Lo was a village near the foot of the present Leighton Hill. 55 Copy of an undated instruction to a presumably subordinate office following the above. 56 Petition dated 28th day of 5th lunar month, Tao Kuang 23rd year i.e. 25th June 1843. 57 Undated reply to the petitioners, presumably from the District Magistrate, following receipt of the foregoing petition. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1985 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x 208 the Forestry Ordinance and Regulations in 1937. Cultivated or imported plants were exempted from control, however. The best wild stock, which sometimes produces twelve bells per flowering bud, grows today on the Ting Wu Mountain (HL) of Siu Hing () District. However, most of the branches for sale in Guangzhou and Hong Kong come from cultivated stock in Ching Yuen (), a mountainous district some 100 kilometres north of Guangzhou. Farmers in that district have developed a special cultivation technique over the years to produce better flowers. In early summer, the branches selected for cutting later that year are "ring-barked" (stripped of the outer bark) at the lower end for a length of about 2 cm. This stops the flow of sap downwards and the nutrients produced by the leaves are then retained at the top. Branches so treated usually produce larger flower buds and thus command a better price in the market when they are cut for sale in the winter. The exemption of imported or cultivated stock from prohibition has sometimes presented difficulties to the local forestry enforcement staff, especially when it has been necessary to prove in Court the origin of seized plants. Although some of the older Forest Guards claimed that they were able to differentiate wild flower buds from cultivated ones, I myself have so far been unable to make any positive identification. It was partly for this reason that protective measures were directed towards preventing illegal cutting in the woods, rather than trying to seize the branches in the hawker stalls. Events in the 1930's sowed the seeds of change of this age-old custom. Firstly, the Japanese Occupation in 1938 of the greater part of Guangdong Province interrupted the supply of Tiu Chung to Hong Kong, and consequently local residents began to look for alternatives. Secondly, some skilled nurserymen in the Guangzhou areas, fleeing the Japanese, sought refuge in Hong Kong, where they introduced the art of growing peach blossoms. The early post-war years saw a brief return of the use of Tiu Chung as the New Year Flower. However, the strict protection against illegal wood-cutting in Hong Kong, coupled with the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 2 served under him for the next nine months until he was replaced by the late (Sir) Ronald Holmes. It was my first posting after language study, and I was inexperienced and ignorant. Ken was formidable by reason of bulk and intellect, and I was instinctively wary of him. He was, too, one of those rather "larger than life" personalities around whom legends and stories had already accumulated. However, he turned out to be both kindly and helpful. More, he was informative; and for a new District Officer anxious to know more about his charges it was fortunate that he had written about local history, something that had attracted insufficient attention from the Civil Service, or anyone else for that matter. I probably saw more of him than the other DOS, because of our joint preoccupation with the Shek Pik Reservoir investigations and the fact that his town office was in the District Office (South) building on Gascoigne Road, Kowloon. He used to come in once a week, on set days, and I remember once being indignant upon hearing his booming voice on another day. “Oh well” I thought resignedly, for I was still very new, “he'll come in shortly”, and dismissed him from my mind. Some time later I heard his voice again, and realized it was a tape recording on which his secretary must have been working, a draft speech or something of the kind. After he left the N.T., our association was mostly personal. Through joint interests, including membership of the Royal Hong Kong Defence Force, we met from time to time. The Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, to which he lectured occasionally, was another shared interest. After he left Hong Kong on retirement we exchanged letters periodically. I also saw him on his visits to his family here, and particularly remember the last occasion (1986) when, together with the then District Officer, Yuen Long, we arranged a visit to the border area including the Mai Po marshes. We began with a picnic lunch at Island House which had been his home when he was District Commissioner, New Territories. This was a particularly happy and relaxed family occasion, with his grandchildren, on which I look back with great pleasure. One always got a lot out of Ken. Our mutual interest in local people and their history led me to send him copies of any draft ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1987 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522 270 Well, I found that this was just not so in Tsuen Wan. Practically all the lineages there had had a genealogy at one time, and about two-thirds of them still have. Moreover, if you consult the 1905 Block Crown Leases for land in Tsuen Wan, and look at the descriptions of house lots in the villages of the sub-district, you will get the impression that there were not any ancestral halls in places like Tsuen Wan. This again turned out to be quite wrong. Going through the villages, old people would say "This is our ancestral hall" or more often "That was the site of our ancestral hall”. Even a small clan with, say, only 5 or 10 houses at the turn of the century had its own ancestral hall. Also, there were old schoolrooms and other institutions which indicated that the infrastructure of local village society was greater than the written records would show. My third point and I am just over my time concerns another clue to the nature of local society. I had done collecting in "Town", i.e. Hong Kong's central areas, at second-hand bookshops, stalls and so on and I had found quite a lot of printed guides to letter writing, social etiquette, and how to carry out a wide range of family, village and business affairs. I thought "Surely these must have existed in the villages too, and it would be interesting to find if they have the printed versions or the manuscript versions of them, or both". To cut a long story short, there were such guides to be found in the Tsuen Wan villages. They were practically all of the hand-written type, copied no doubt from generation to generation. They were often kept by the school teachers, and (I was told) dictated to promising pupils or passed on to them. Some elders also possessed them. So these were the sort of things I found in Tsuen Wan over my seven year stay. The only other thing worth noting in this connection is that we were in the business of trying to preserve a few old villages, and that in fact we managed to preserve two. One of them, Sam Tung Uk, was located in the middle of Tsuen Wan, right next to the new Mass Transit Railway. Another was up in the hills at a place called Yuen Tun where the main block has been preserved. It is inside the Civil Aid Services camp site, and is a magnificent building to go and look at. I say that with enthusiasm. It is a perfectly ordinary village building, but is a fine example of its kind. These initiatives came mainly from a few officials. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 73 At first Maang's father refused to go, but Maang said to the pirate, "My father is old and half mad, do not listen to him", and then turning to his father, he said, “Do not weep for me. Go home and look after our family. My younger brother will serve you in my stead as a good son, and he will grow up and rear more sons for you." So the father was hustled back to the shore and the ship sailed away with Maang on board. Then Maang was filled with grief, and crying, “I will never serve these wicked men”, he jumped overboard and was drowned. His body was subsequently washed up at Taipo and buried near by. In the fourteenth year of Maan Lik A.D. 1586 when the district Magistrate Yau T'ai Kin (游太卿) wrote the "History of the Sun On District' he included the story of Maang in it. Twenty-seven years later the then district magistrate Wong Ting Yuet (黃廷越) petitioned the emperor for leave to put Maang's spirit table in the "Heung Yin Ts'z” (鄉賢祠) Temple for worthy villagers, and later on the descendants of Maang's family Tang (鄧) collected enough money to build a special temple at the place where he was buried. This temple has since been destroyed but the grave still remains and a tablet about 5 feet high and 4 feet wide can be seen with the following inscription on it “[written in large characters] Grave of Tang Sz Maang, devoted son of Ming dynasty [then in smaller characters] repaired in the seventeenth year of Kin Lung (乾隆) 1752, the eighth month, lucky day". In the eleventh year of Hong Hei A.D. 1672, two descendants of the Tang family bought from the government enough land round the temple to make a market there. Shops were built and sub-let and the proceeds went to the upkeep of the temple. Thus old Taipo market was started. During the reign of Ka Hing of Ts'ing dynasty 1796-1820 a man named Man Yuen Chue (文元柱) of Man Uk village (文屋村) (See Note 4) wanted to build some shops for himself in old Taipo market. The Tang family objected and a lawsuit followed. The magistrate who judged the case finally gave leave to the Man family to build dwelling houses only, in the village, not shops. In the twelfth year of Tung Chi (同治) 1873 of Ts'ing dynasty a typhoon destroyed the whole of Man Uk village, and the Man family again wanted to build shops in old Taipo market. Another lawsuit resulted, as the Tang family again objected. On the fourteenth day of the fifth month of the eighteenth year of Kwong Sui (光緒) A.D. 1892 of Ts'ing dynasty it was finally settled that only the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 76 LEGENDS AND STORIES OF THE NEW TERRITORIES [E TS'ING SHAAN UI OR CASTLE PEAK* SUNG HOK-P'ANG The original name of Tsing Shaan was Yeung Haang Shaan (meaning "Sheep or Goat Ditch Hill", and nearby there is still a village called Yeung Siu Haang "Sheep or Goat Little Ditch", but later on the Peak was called simultaneously Shing Shaan “Saint Hill", and T'uen Moon Shaan “Military Colonist Gate Hill". The latter name was given because in olden times the Chinese Emperor sent soldiers there to cultivate the soil, and at the same time protect the countryside from the numerous pirates that infested the coast. In A.D. 428 a certain monk named Pooi To became abbot of the monastery, and then the name of Pooi To Shaan was used. Nearly five and a half centuries later, in the 12th year of Taai Po of Naam Hon dynasty, on the 18th day of the 2nd month (A.D. 969) the Emperor gave the hill the special name of Sui Ying Shaan "Good omen hill", and caused a stone tablet to be erected on which was carved the history of the monastery. This stone recorded that in the 11th year of K'in Woh A.D. 954 a military officer named Ch'an Ts'un had paid a stone mason to carve a figure of Pooi To which he put in a cave near the monastery, and which can still be seen. In the 4th year of Yuen Yau A.D. 1089 of Sung dynasty a general in Canton named Tseung Chi K'ei wrote an account of the hill, and put it on a stone tablet in place of the old one. This second one has now disappeared, but fortunately the account is in the "History of the Sun On District", and from it can be learnt that formerly there was a castle at the north of the hill, and to the west * The Hong Kong Naturalist July 1935. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1988 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q 211 was ill-constructed so that it broke up, or caught fire, in mid-air, or if the night was very windy so that the paper dome tore, or the balloon was driven down by a squall, then fires were quite likely. Hill fires, and, worse, crop fires and fires burning houses, cattle sheds and other buildings as a result of hot air balloons are known to villagers in Sha Tin, Sha Tau Kok and Tuen Mun. At present hot air balloons are still made, particularly by villagers in the North District, and the numbers of balloons is still high - the author saw seven in the sky within one hour during the 1986 Mid Autumn Festival and more than ten within one hour during the 1987 Festival. The current generation of village elders, in their late 70s and early 80s, are unanimous that the current balloon construction and flying practices are identical with those they used in their youth (i.e. in the 1920s), and that the elders in their youth said that the practices when they were young (i.e. in the 1870s) were also the same. The elders specifically said that the rim of the balloon was stiffened with thin wire in their youth. The only changes are the switch from hemp cloth rags or kapok to cotton waste, and from peanut oil to diesel. The paper used for the balloon skin has changed a little as the older, coarser paper is not now available, and a shinier paper is now used. The elders all feel the modern paper is better, as the shine allows the paper to "slip through the air easier", but they are dubious about the switch to diesel: while easier to light, it does not give so clear a light, nor does it burn for so long. It would seem likely, however, that at some stage the balloons may well have been smaller, and used green bamboo shavings where the modern balloons use thin wire, but this is only a guess. At all events, the memories of the elders make it clear that balloons of the sort described above have been a widespread tradition in the New Territories for at least the last 100 years. 5 Needham in his Science and Civilization in China refers to setting off hot air balloons as "an ancient sport" and a "pastime", and refers to cases in Fukien, Cambodia, and Yunnan. The Yunnan case is particularly interesting as it refers to activities by a certain minority tribe in Yunnan during the slack period between the planting and weeding of the rice and the harvest. The Mid Autumn Festival also falls in this same slack period, although, in the New Territories double harvest... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h and a treadmill was in operation for punishment up until the early 1900s. Prisoners were escorted to Court, so it is believed, by a tunnel. Although the author went to Victoria Prison in the 1970s, on Justice of the Peace visits, he is unable to substantiate this. A few colonial-style buildings, such as the Helena May Institute (completed 1916) on Garden Road, and the old Supreme Court building (foundations laid 1903, completed 1912) in Central District, are still in use. The latter is now the Legislative Council Chambers, and has been described as "Lutyens classical revival style adapted for the tropics". In spite of forceful protests by the Heritage Society which was wound up, despondently, in 1983 — and the Conservancy Association, the Repulse Bay Hotel, the previous Hong Kong Club building, and the old Kowloon Railway terminus (except for the tower2) have all succumbed to the wrecker's hammer. The average Hong Kong citizen, it seems, has limited interest in conservation. He or she believes that a building has an economic life span, and, after that, it should go. To be fair, the Government, advised by the Antiquities and Monuments Office and the Antiquities Advisory Board, has declared a number of structures, for instance the Stanley Police Station (1859)13 as Monuments under the Antiquities Ordinance. Other Monuments include the steps and gas lamps in Duddell Street, Central District; rock carvings and inscriptions; old villages, for example Sam Tung Uk in Tsuen Wan; and the District Office, North, building at Tai Po in the New Territories. The Territory also possesses a variety of other old structures, such as the fort and battery at Tung Chung and the fort at Tung Lung. There are also ancestral halls and study halls, like Shut Hing Shue Shan, at Ping Shan, and Chou Wong Yi Kung Shue Yuen, in Kam Tin. Among other declared historical Monuments are Wan Chai Post Office (1915)1* in Queen's Road East, Western Market in Sheung Wan, and the Pathological Institute,1 in Caine Lane. As of 1990, such Monuments totalled 43. One of the most famous of Hong Kong's old buildings was Murray House (circa 1843).1 It was demolished carefully in 1982, and the parts were labelled, numbered and stored. The intention is to re-erect it on another site. In 1935, the then new 66-metre high Hong Kong Bank (the third bank on that site) was fully air-conditioned (the first large building in Hong Kong). ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 114 of a large piece of cheap land for the drying of the joss sticks. Thirty-nine out of the 60 factories interviewed in 1987 explicitly declared that the availability of a drying place was of prime importance as a determinant of factory location. In general, the space needed for drying is twice the size of the workshed. Space is essential for drying as joss sticks have to be spread widely apart to allow an even drying speed. An outstanding example can be provided by a factory which is operated by a single man. The total area consumed is only around 70 m2 and two-thirds of the land has to be devoted for drying purposes. The remaining one-third of the land has to accommodate the use of working place and storage shed as well as the residence of the man. However, for a typical factory employing 1-3 workers, 200-300 m2 of land is the norm. To quote the other extreme, 3 factories which produce a variety of incense products extend to well over 3,000 m2 in area, the largest being approximately 3,782 m2. As a result of this space requirement, the joss stick industry tends to be on the outskirts of the urbanized area, where the rent is lower. As a result of the high land price in Hong Kong, factories of the joss stick industry make use of every possible location in the territory. Joss stick factories can be found in Shaukiwan, Wanchai and Western District. They can also be found in Yaumati, Mongkok, Taikoktsui, Sham Shui Po, Ngau Chi Wan, Diamond Hill and Tsz Wan Shan. But the majority of the factories are located in the New Territories, in Tsuen Wan, Tuen Mun, Yuen Long, Kam Tin, Shek Kong, Sha Tin, Tai Po, Fanling, Sheung Shui and even Ta Kwu Ling. Generally speaking, a pattern can be discerned on the basis of the method of operation. The majority (61.4%) of the factories in the New Territories are devoted to the Lin-hsiang Method and the Winding Method, though a number of them are also engaged in the production by Nuo-hsiang Method or Winding Method at the same time. This is usually the case as the mass production strategy in Lin-hsiang Method produces joss sticks bucket by bucket, so a proportionately larger piece of drying area, available only in the New Territories, is needed. In contrast, most of the Nuo-hsiang and Moulding processes are done within residential districts. In the interview, all the 13 factories specializing in Nuo-hsiang Method are located in residential tenements. They are tolerated in domestic premises as Nuo-hsiang, unlike Lin-hsiang which produces a very dusty atmosphere, is much neater and tidier, and demands a small drying area. However, similar to the marginal situation of the other factories, these Nuo-hsiang factories have tended to move to the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 136 Lei (#) clans were settled in the area then, and the Ho family at least must have been there from the late Yuan." It seems likely, however, that no Ming political groupings survived the chaos of the Coastal Evacuation (1662-1669) in the area - the returning villagers must have had to re-create their society more or less from scratch. Soon after the rescission of the Coastal Evacuation Order Hakka groups moved into the Ta Kwu Ling area. There is no evidence that there was any opposition to this, and the area has been one of marked Punti/Hakka co-operation throughout the last three hundred years." The first, and the most important, Hakka group to enter the area was the Chan (B) clan, of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan. Other Hakka groups arrived mostly during the eighteenth century. These villages began to establish alliances between themselves from early in the eighteenth century. The Chans of Ping Yeung, Nga Yiu Ha, and Wo Keng Shan allied themselves with the Fus and the other tiny clans of Wo Keng Shan to form the Sam Heung (, "Three Villages"), and this alliance in turn allied itself with the Mans of Ping Che to form the Ping Yuen Hap Heung ("Ping Yuen United District'). The Tin Hau temple at Ping Che was founded by this group of villages, probably in the early eighteenth century, and they celebrated the Ta Tsiu festival in front of the temple from the eighteenth century until the 1930s." The groupings of Kan Tau Wai, Tai Po Tin, and Lei Uk; and of Lin Tong, Wang Kong Ha, and Au Ha2 are very probably of the same sort of date. Several villages in the area were genealogically related, and these also tended to form loose groups around their main ancestral graves during this period. However, inter-village alliances in the area in the eighteenth century do not seem to have been particularly strong or socially significant. Each individual village had its own Tai Wong (AE, “Superior Earthgod Shrine"), and the groupings of villages around a single, shared shrine found in many places in the New Territories were unknown here. Thus, when the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz was founded towards the end of the eighteenth century, it was founded within a region with a weak political structure, marked by numbers of villages without alliances with others, or only weakly grouped with others. The strongest grouping, the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, consisted of only four villages, two of them very tiny. It is entirely likely that the area was in this period dominated politically by “major lineages" from outside the area -- particularly the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 137 Cheung (張) lineage of Wong Pui Ling. The area, however, was fertile, rich, and, by the later eighteenth century, becoming relatively densely populated. Growth of stronger and less politically quiescent inter-village groupings could be expected, and the clearest evidence of this comes from the nunnery. The nunnery was founded by the villages of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung on the one hand, and Loi Tung and Man Uk Pin on the other. Loi Tung was a tight lineage alliance of three large villages of the Punti Tang clan (Loi Tung Lo Wai, San Wai, and Tai Tong Wu), and Man Uk Pin was a single, large Hakka village, predominantly of the Chung clan. The nunnery lay in six shares: Ping Che, Ping Yeung, Wo Keng Shan, Loi Tung, Tai Tong Wu, and Man Uk Pin. Of these, the Wo Keng Shan and Tai Tong Wu shares were probably there to reflect the greater size and strength of the Chan and Tang lineages within the grouping. In practice, however, the nunnery was controlled by the four clans of the Mans, Chans, Tangs, and Chungs, and normally probably had one Manager drawn from each lineage.” This group of eight villages, most of them large and wealthy, clearly represents a new generation of inter-village grouping in the Ta Kwu Ling area. The importance of the road through the Miu Keng pass has been discussed above. The position of the nunnery on the road was not only of value to travellers seeking shelter, it was also of major strategic and political significance. The road was the only passage through the hills, and could not be by-passed. Whoever controlled this pass controlled much of the Sha Tau Kok to Sham Tsun road. The foundation of the nunnery was the result of the grouping together of a few villages which were clearly seeking to capitalise on their strategic location, and thus to increase their local political leverage and district significance. The political significance of the foundation should not be downplayed. The religious impetus behind the foundation should not, of course, be ignored, but the strategic significance of the grouping is too strong to be overlooked. The nunnery-founding group of villages seems to be, in fact, an early example of a Yeuk (約) mutual defence and support inter-village alliance. The villages which had founded the nunnery seem to have worshipped there together at the Yu Lan Festival in the summer, when vegetarian food was served to the elders and faithful in front of the nunnery. It is likely that the Ping Yuen Hap Heung people used their alliance with the groups east of the pass to strengthen their position as against ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 144 The Shing Ping She was thus required to maintain the Kim Ho Temple, and at least the Heroes Shrine part of the Ping Yuen Temple, and had to meet the costs of the rituals it conducted there. It also had to maintain the bridges and roads, and to meet the costs of the patrols it sponsored. However, it had no land at the time of the Block Crown Lease (1905). Apart from the temple itself, the Ping Yuen Hap Heung owned no land at that date either. Similarly, none of the individual villages of the area owned any significant amounts of communal land. The Shing Ping She did, however, have enough income to buy a good deal of land within the New Territories later — five and a half acres was bought, together with a house, between 1911 and 1920, at a cost of $1,272.50 for just over three of the five and a half acres. Villagers believe the She also bought land at Wang Kong Ha during this period. 18 The She seems to have imposed a grain tax on all householders and cow owners within the patrol district. At least in the 1930s, as the elders recall, some of this grain was passed to the nuns at the Kim Ho temple and the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz for their sustenance, but most was sold. The villagers claim that the Shing Ping She also bought from the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz all the nunnery's lands within Ping Che and Ping Yeung, at a date somewhen in the 1920s, but without changing the registration of the land in the Land Registry. This is possibly why the She's programme of land purchase in its own name comes to an abrupt end in 1920. This claim may well hide a more complex situation. As mentioned above, neither the Shing Ping She nor the Ping Yuen Hap Heung held any communal land in 1905, although they had significant communal commitments: Loi Tung, equally, seems to have had no communal land to provide income for the needs of the Loi Tung Yeuk. At the same time, the nunnery land does not seem to have been used to meet nunnery needs. After the fire, the abbess repaired the roof by seeking donations, not by selling or mortgaging part of the land, and this was clearly the position also at the time of the 1868 rebuilding, since the inscription in the temple records the donors. In the 1930s, the nuns' rice came from donations from the Shing Ping She, not from rent. It seems very likely that the Ping Yuen Hap Heung and Loi Tung people had placed their communal lands under the name and protection of the Buddha. This is not uncommon in the area; such an arrangement made it more difficult for managers to embezzle the land entrusted to them, and protected it from external... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 148 villages in the neighbourhood. Of the nuns of the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz, the abbess from before 1920 to 1931, Wong Tik-yuen, is believed to have come from Fu Tin (Futian), just west of Sham Tsun. Her successor (1931-1944) was Yip Yuet-kwan. It is not known from which village she came, but she, like Wong Tik-yuen, was definitely Punti. This strongly suggests that there was a tradition in the New Territories area among the long-settled Punti lineages which made it respectable for girls of those lineages to refuse marriage and instead to enter a nunnery. Those lineages or village groups which owned nunneries were proud of them, and proud of the fact that the nuns came from within the lineage or from the village group or a nearby village. Certainly, the Ling Wan nunnery holds a critically important position within the folktales of the Tangs of Kam Tin.43 — For a district to have a nunnery with a few dedicated women living a pure life, eating vegetarian food, and offering shelter and prayer to and for all men, certainly helped protect the district from spiritual disaster, but equally it must have helped reduce social tensions by providing a socially acceptable outlet for girls who did not wish to marry. It is probable that most of these indigenous Buddhist establishments were usually nunneries;14 the Cheung Shan Kwu Tsz is called a nunnery ( ) on the 1789 bell, and in the Hsin An County Gazetteer of 1820* and the folktales of the Tangs about the Ling Wan house clearly presuppose that it was always a nunnery (it is specifically called a nunnery on the bell there, of 1755). The evidence for Ling To and Lung Lai before about 1900 is less clear.¶ However, these nunneries were occasionally handed over to devout men to live in, if such men presented themselves to the villages which owned them when the nunnery would otherwise have been vacant. Villagers remember that, before Wong Tik-yuen became abbess, the nunnery was lived in by a man, who was not a monk (he wore his hair “like a Taoist''), and who terrified the children of the villages.** Lei Pui-yuen may have run the nunnery in the same way. The Ching Shan monastery at Tuen Mun must have been founded for men, and this alone may have remained a house of men in the nineteenth century.¶ What is clearer, however, is that there were no Hakka monasteries or nunneries within the New Territories — presumably the Hakka in this area had no nunnery-based tradition of socially acceptable marriage-refusing women. The question of nunneries and marriage-refusing women in this area requires further study. 48 49 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 13 153 PP. 12 The inscription recording the rebuilding is at Faure, Luk and Ng, op. cit. Vol. I, 128-129, but it is unreadable through weathering, except for the heading and date. (4). Loe An-lim (羅安廉) (42), Qianren Wenxian (千人文献), ÑÍAL. [Collected Writings of Men of Past Ages], unpublished manuscript collection, Vol. 2, ff. 75a. (Copy in library of Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Kowloon Central Library, Hong Kong). Lee An-lim was a villager of Sheung Wo Hang. (3) Lee An-lim, Qianren Wenxian, op. cit. ff 73-78. + As honour board recording the donors to the 1920 repair has recently been found. It lists the donors by village. Every village in Ta Kwu Ling donated (except Ping Che, Chuk Yuen, Nga Yiu Ha, very probably included with their lineage brethren in Tong Fong, Law Fong, Ping Yeung), as did the villages close to the road both in the Sha Tau Kok area (Shan Tsui, Yim Tso Ha, Yim Tin, Wo Hang, Nam Chung, Luk Keng, Wu Shek Kok and Sha Tau Kok Market) and in the Sham Tsun area (Sham Tsun Market, Lo Wu, and Wong Pui Ling). Shek Wu Hui from further away also donated. See Win Wen Wei Pao (SCHEW) of 17 September, 1991. U¿÷ 16 Detail from the tablets commemorating the departed leaders of the monastery, and from information given by the recently deceased resident nun. The tablet of Kuk Shan Kit reads: 羅浮山寶積古寺監裤正宗第上三代主持上谷下山潔老和尚莲座. The tablet Kuk Shan Kit placed to commemorate his deceased predecessors names the "ordained monks" HIBA · MAZA + J # and Ki£*, all of whom were dead by the date of erection + 1 of the tablet, and ✯, at that date still alive, as well as predecessors as rulers of this monastery" ALLKILMINER and "those monks who founded this monastery", A WILDFORIKA BAIMM- L 17 See P.H. Hase, “Notes on Rice Farming in Shatin', in Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, Vol. 21, 1981, pp. 196-206; D. Faure, The Rural Economy of Pre-Liberation China: Trade Increase and Peasant Livelihood in Jiangsu and Guangdong, Oxford University Press, Hong Kong, 1989, pp. 46-57 and 212; and Hong Kong Annual Report: Report by District Commissioner, New Territories for Year Ending 31st March, 1950, Noronha and Co., Hong Kong, 1950, p. 5. TH The Ho clan of Tsung Yuen Ha descends from Ho Chan, the Earl of Tung Kuan in the early Ming, and the Ho family history (CBMGKR — a manuscript volume in the University of Cambridge Library) suggests this area was in Ho Chan's hands before the end of the Ming. It was certainly in Ho family control before 1393 when Ho Chan's family were proscribed. The Tang family has occupied the Lung Yeuk Tau villages, Loi Tung and Tai Tong Wu since the fourteenth century at the latest. A Tang clan also occupies Au Ha (PUF Aoxia) and Wang Kong Ha (Huanggangxia). I have not been able to discover if these two villagers are genealogically connected with the Loi Tung and Lung Yeuk Tau clan, although this is unlikely. The Man family has occupied Ping Che for **18 generations", according to village elders, i.e. probably from the fourteenth century. The same family occupies Tong Fong, Heung Yuen Wai, and Lin Tong, Liantang), and a branch of it was resident at Man Uk Pin (**Man Family Houses") before the present residents, the Chung (鍾) clan moved there in the early eighteenth century. The To clan has been resident at Chau Tin village for **500 years". Local villagers consider that the Lei family has been resident at Lei Uk for as long as the To and Man clans have been at Chau Tin and Ping Che. All these clans are Punti, although sections of the Man clan at Tong Fong, and those at Heung Yuen Wai and Lin Tong, now speak Hakka. Shan Kai Wat (Lam surname, 林), Fung Wong Wu (Yip surname, 葉), and Law Fong (Law surname, 羅), are all included in the list of villages in existence in 1661 included in the 1688 Hsin An County Gazetteer, along with Au Ha, Tsung Yuen Ha, Ping Che (Ping Yuen 平遠), and perhaps Ping Yeung (坪洋) (Gazetteer, Ch. 3, f 12-13). Other Punti clans in the Ta Kwu Ling area (Wong, 黃, Chan, 陳, and Law, 羅, at Kan Tau Wai, and Hau, 侯) ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1989 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h 154 19 , at Law Fong) are believed to have entered the area after 1700. See Map of Ta Kwu Ling. It is interesting to note that, of the 21 villages in the Ta Kwu Ling area, seven are purely Punti, nine are purely Hakka (including two of originally Punti but now Hakka speaking Mans), but five are of mixed Punti and Hakka residents, including the large village of Chau Tin (which has only a tiny handful of Hakka residents), Fung Wong Wu, Kan Tau Wai, and Law Fong, and Tong Fong which consists partly of Punti speaking Mans, and partly of Hakka speaking Mans. + 1 Yeung, and Ng, at Fong Wong Wu; Siu, and Ho, at Chau Tin; Wong, at Kan Tau Wai; Pang, and Au, at Tai Po Tin; Fu Lau, (and others) at Wo Keng Shan; Yiut, at Chuk Yuen; Chan, and Yiu, at Law Fong (Luofang); Chau at Wang Kong Ha; Yeung, and Kwu, at Sai Ling Ha (Xilingxia), and others. 21 The temple bell, of Chien Lung 21 (1756) was donated by "all the faithful people of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung... ...to stand for ever before the altar of the Lady Tin Hau*. Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 670. The only earlier dated item in the temple, a Cloud Gong of 1727, was donated by a single family from Ping Che, Faure, Luk, Ng, op. cit., Vol. 3, p. 661. The temple continued to be owned and controlled by this group of villages. Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Oxford Univ. Press, Hong Kong, 1986, p. 104 is incorrect in saying that the temple was owned by Ping Yeung. In the Block Crown Lease, the Manager of the temple was Man Shan-fung, of Ping Che. The Tong Fong people, although closely related genealogically to the Ping Che people, were not part of the Ping Yuen Hap Heung, and did not take part in the Ta Tsiu.22 Faure, op. cit., p. 103. + + 23 The four managers at the time of the Block Crown Lease were Tang Hung-wai (a houseowner of Loi Tung), Chan Shing-pong, called a houseowner of Ping Yeung in a District Office report of 1979), Man Ying-shau (probably a villager of Ping Che, a relative of the houseowners Man Ying-kei, Man Ying-wai, and Man Ying-fat), and Chung Choi-wah (a houseowner of Man Uk Pin). These died in 1938, 1926, 1925, and 1942 respectively, according to a report made to the District Office in 1979. The abbess, Wong Tik-yuen, was appointed a manager in 1926, but she died in 1931. After the War, the lack of managers caused trouble on a number of occasions. A temporary manager was appointed in 1968. In 1979 the Chairman of the Sha Tau Kok Rural Committee and others were appointed as managers, although he, as a Lin Ma Hang villager, had no connection with the nunnery. This seems to have been with a view to rebuilding the nunnery. This proposal has led to a string of vigorous complaints from the elders of the six villages with shares during the last three years, but the situation remains, at present (1991), unresolved. 24 See Faure, The Structure of Chinese Rural Society, op. cit., pp. 100-127, for a discussion of the Yeuk. 25 The only alternative was a dangerous, difficult, and often impassable waist-deep ford, as the 1896 Kwong Fuk bridge tablet makes clear. See Faure, Luk and Ng, Historical Inscriptions of Hong Kong, op. cit., Vol. 1, p. 298. 26 See Robert G. Groves, "The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories", Aspects of Social Organisation in the New Territories, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, Symposium Report, 1964, pp. 16-20, and Alice Ng Lun Ngai-ha, "Xianggang Xinjie xushi zhi xingqi yu shuailao: Dabuxu yanjiu" [The Foundation and Decay of Market Towns in the New Territories of Hong Kong: A Study of Tai Po], in Chinese Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, 1985, pp. 633-655. The very widespread support for the Tsat Yeuk can be gathered from the list of donors shown on the Kwong Fuk bridge tablet, Faure, Luk and Ng, loc. cit. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 17 with its inculcation of “right thinking", the complete process has been summed up in a few well-chosen words by Dr. Monlin Chiang, one of the most prominent educationalists of the early Republican period: “These moral precepts came from the Confucian classics. Moral ideas were driven into the people by every possible means — temples, theatres, houses, toys, proverbs, schools, history and stories until they became habits in daily life, 233 The effect of both the legacy and the drilling was not lost on competent Western observers. Writing over 150 years ago, in his standard work on China first published in the 1830s, a future governor of Hong Kong, Sir John Davis, then only lately returned to England from many years' membership of the Honourable East India Company's Select Committee at Canton, had this to say: "The Chinese lower classes are better educated or at least better trained than in most other countries”. PART THREE: “Right Thinking" in Action in Tsuen Wan 134 + Tsuen Wan District (like all the rest) provides plenty of evidence for the effectiveness of the indoctrination, as well as occasional examples of emulation and performance. People knew what to think and what to do, and recognized the attainment of the prescribed high standards of conduct and behaviour even if they themselves did not measure up. Men who did so were greatly respected, to the point of veneration. It is the general opinion among Tsuen Wan natives, then and now, that such a one was the late Mr. Chan Wing-on, a former Tsuen Wan Rural Committee leader and also Chairman of the New Territories Heung Yee Kuk. Mr. Chan, who unfortunately died comparatively young, left a fine reputation behind him. He is commemorated by a tablet in a traditional-style pavilion, named for him, which was erected the year after his death near the entrance to the Chuk Lam Sim Yuen, one of the large religious houses located above the town. The memorial tablet records his life and achievements as a teacher and as a public figure; with an emphasis on his virtuous conduct and character and how it had influenced others for good: "Entering the teaching profession, he taught the village ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 no Kankyo [Village Festival in China: Background of Local Theatres] (1989). The Jiao festivals studied by Tanaka are as follows: Communities Year Cheung Chau 1979 1979, 1983 Recorded in 1981:74-99 1985:227-302 Ha Tsuen 1981 1985:199-226 Hung Hom, Kowloon *1 1978-80 1981:771-780 Kam Tin 1985 1989:915-996 Lam Tsuen 1981 1985:359-528 Leung Shuen Wan, Sai Kung 1980 1981:99-113 Lin Fa Tei *2 1967 1985:558-572 Lung Yeuk Tau 1983 1985:609-720 Sha Tin, Kau Yeuk 1985 1989:1041-1112 Sha Tin, Tai Wai 1987 1989:977-1040 Sha Tin, Tin Sam 1986 1989:1040 Tai Po Tau 1985 1985:121.131-138 Tuen Tsz Wai 1986 1989:817-913 Yuen Long 1983 1985:139-198 43 *1: From the context, this festival, held on the 14th of the seventh moon, can be best seen as a ghost festival organized by the Hoklo dialect group. *2: Tanaka did not attend this festival. Analysis of the festival was mostly based on the 1967 account collected by H. Baker. See map for the location of places. JH Tanaka, Ritual Theatres, 5. 班 Tanaka, Lineage and Theatre, 11. 40 fbid., i-ii. 41 Tanaka, Village Festival, i-iij. 42 Faure, David, The Structure of Chinese Society: Lineage and Village in the Eastern New Territories, Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Oxford Univ. Press, 1986), 81. 4.3 Segawa, Masahisa, "Daa Chiu: matsuri ni arawareru Hon Kon no mura no sugao” [Da Jiao: facets of villages in Hong Kong as shown in the festivals] Kikan Minzoku Gaku Ethnography Quarterly 33 (1985): 21-35. 14 Segawa, Masahisa "Ta-tsiu [Da-Jiao], feuds, and village alliances: the case of Pat Heung" (unpublished manuscript, 1991). 45 Choi, Chi-cheung, “Chi o urai ekibyo o harau taihei shinsho" [Jiao festival: to wash: the land and remove illness] Kikan Minzoku Gaku 40 (1987): 90-105. 4 40 Choi, Jiao festival", 1046. 47 Choi, "Kinship", 147-149. 4# Though Tanaka wrote that only a few communities in the New Territories celebrated the festival during his seven and a half years' observation (Tanaka, Lineage and Theatre, 608), we are still unclear as to how many communities continue to celebrate it. For instance, the Cheung Long Wai case was not mentioned by any informants. It was known only by an occasional visit to the village. A likely source is the Police since theoretically every festival celebrated in Hong Kong has to receive permission from the police for security measures. The district offices in the New Territories are another source of information. Certainly there were in the past other celebrations which have now ceased for one reason or another (e.g. at Sha Tau Kok, Shuen Wan and Ta Kwu Leng). 49 Segawa, "Daa Chiu', 35. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 266 about a mile below the Sha Wan River, and finally the Ching Shui River which drains the northern part of the valley from Po Kat (Buji) down, and which enters about half-a-mile below the Sheung Yue River. The main river is navigable for small skiffs as far as Kim Hau, but for junks only as far as the confluence of the main river and the Ching Shui River. However, the river at the mouth of the Ching Shui River is not navigable for junks at low tide. Furthermore, the navigable part of the river is not wide enough for a junk to turn around in easily when under sail. The Ching Shui River, at the junction with the main river, splits into two branches, with a low, marshy island between them and the main river.* Junks could come up the main river, enter the Ching Shui River, pass behind the marshy island, and back into the main river via the second branch of the stream, thus turning round without cutting across the channel, using a "one-way" system. The landing place used by the cargo junks and ferry boats, therefore, was the channel of the Ching Shui River behind the island. Junks would come up the river with the tide, and would load and unload while at rest on the mud at low tide, and would cast off and go down the river with the next high tide. Three significant roads pass through the valley, crossing at Sham Chun: the Yuen Long to Wai Chow (Huichou), Nam Tau (Nantou) to Sha Tau Kok, and Po Kat to Kowloon roads. In the Ming, this valley had a number of markets, of which Sham Chun was only one. There was another at Kim Hau, and others to the west, including one at Lung Tsun Hui (Longjinxu), which was part of the Fuk Tin (Futian) village cluster. By the nineteenth century, however, all these other markets had either become extinct, or else survived only in a very small way as satellites of Sham Chun. Sham Chun had developed until it had become a very large market, with probably 500 and more shops. The market was ringed by large villages of rich clans—the Cheungs at Wong Pui Ling (Huangbeiling) about a mile to the east, the Tsois at Tsoi Uk Wai (Caiwuwei) about half a mile to the south-west, the Wongs at Fuk Tin about a mile to the south-west, the Yuens at Lo Wu (Lohu) about half a mile to the south and the Hos at Sun Kong (Sungang) about half a mile to the north. These rich and ancient clans were almost perennially in dispute, as they jostled for power and position in the district. * See Map. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 269 was more proper. In the document translated below, the first view tends to be assumed; it is worth bearing in mind that there was a different way to view the question of rights to toll. “A VILLAGE WAR IN SHAM CHUN When we travel in either direction between Hong Kong and Lilong, our route usually passes the market of Sham Chun, or, to be more precise, the two markets and cluster of villages which bear this name. This area lies about three hours walk to the south-west of Lilong. It also lies several hours walk from the mouth of a stream which flows into the Pearl River. This stream is not really fully navigable. At the ebb-tide the passenger boats at Sham Chun lie on the mud for a certain time: with the flood-tide, however, they can make their way down to the vast body of water of the main river. In the same way they return back up the stream to Sham Chun. Because of this, Sham Chun is one of the most significant ports in the district of San On. Every three days many boats leave here for Hong Kong. Similarly, there are regular ferry connections with Canton, Fu Mun, and Nam Tau. This lively traffic brings considerable prosperity to the inhabitants of Sham Chun. A major factor in this prosperity is the "Transit Toll". This is a sort of toll taken on goods leaving the port. It is levied on all goods as they are brought to the ships. Particularly important in this respect are the pineapples and pears which, in the harvest season, are carried in hundreds of loads each week from the warehouse area near Sham Chun, where there are rows of godowns, to be shipped out to Hong Kong, Canton, and elsewhere. The right to levy this "Transit Toll” on goods originally belonged, not to the main village of Sham Chun, but to the village of Lo Wu, about half-an-hour's walk away, and to the Yuen clan of that village. The land on which the landing place stands is owned by that clan, who also own ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 whom the whole district trembles. He is certainly a somewhat uneducated man, not only without fine manners, but a man who actually insults with the coarsest expressions when he sits to do justice. Yet it was nonetheless he alone who was ready for these obstinate clans, who broke their year-long overweening clannishness, and who brought the issue to a full and satisfactory solution. May it remain a successful conclusion to this affair in Sham Chun! On his arrival he first of all required that all the weapons and armour of the allied clans be handed over to him. We heard that the Cheung clan had also made a delivery of their weapons, so that they could make an immediate appearance before Tin On-pong's seat of justice. Several houses of the Tsoi clan were burnt as a punishment. The Yuen clan were threatened in a similar way. The latter clan had among its members three graduates of the second rank (counting up from the bottom), and these were called before the Magistrate to defend their clan's claims. This was so far successful that when the final decision was read out, it was that the "Transit Toll" should be divided, with four parts going to the Yuen clan, and six parts to the Sham Chun she hok.” (The she hok is a public building where, when disputes or other matters arise, the elders of the clans, the graduates, and the title-holders of the surrounding district meet together to take council on them.) However, since the Cheung clan is closest to the she hok it is likely that it will get the major share of the she hok's six parts. Furthermore, to conclude peace between the parties, it was decreed that the Yuen clan should sell the site of the landing place, and the rights over it, to the Cheung clan. This decision clearly favours the Cheung clan, since the people of the Yuen clan will lose all their rights to the matter under dispute. The Cheung clan will never again allow them to intrude into what is now to be the Cheungs' portion, whether the time be short or long. Finally, the Yuen clan were required to surrender one Page 273 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 274 man, and the Tsoi clan four, to the authorities as being responsible for the murder of the man who fell in the ditch. This, however, is only a formality. Everyone knows that the District Mandarin will be only too happy to exchange these men for an eloquent sum of money. It is sad to be forced to see in action how the best of these Chinese officials are blind in the face of corruption of this type. The total cost of this village war was more than sixty thousand dollars. This money will have to be found by a stiff payment from every person affected. The parties will be reduced to such extreme poverty that it will be many years before they can recover. It is as well that the bone of contention is removed from the clans. However, as it is said "There can be no peace, where men do not sing of the love of Christ". May that love soon be sung throughout this fruitful valley of Sham Chun! I greet you with the deepest respect and affection, Yours, G. Reusch 8th July, 1875." The 1924 aerial photograph of Sham Chun, and the War Department map drawn up from it, show a broad earth-wall in the position suggested by Reusch, and this is shown on the Map. This probably represents the earth-wall of 1875. If so, the "New Market" of 1871 was not a success. Although the roads from the south (Kowloon and Yuen Long) ran through the centre of the site, the site was not as well sited as was the "Old Market", being further from the nodal point of the road system in the area. It was better located for the river trade, but only so long as the "New Market" and the landing place were in the same hands. Once the landing place had been handed over to the She Hok and to the Tung Ping Kuk which ran the She Hok, and which was dominated by the Cheungs, the "New Market" lost the advantages it gained from proximity to the river. By 1924, there were only a few buildings within the earth-wall — a ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1990 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299 276 the river more or less helpless unless a steam launch either towed them out, or at least assisted in turning them round. The wharf proposed was to be built very close to the Imperial Maritime Customs station: the Customs supported the proposal since it would make their anti-smuggling work in the area far easier. ― A lease (for a smaller area of 850 feet not so obviously blocking the channel) was granted by the Hong Kong Government. The Tung Ping Kuk, however, (represented by two Cheungs and a Wong; by this date the Wongs were normally allies of the Cheungs, being united by their mutual antagonism to the Tsois whose land lay between them) complained to the San On Magistrate, who promptly had the Yuen elders imprisoned for the "fraudulent attempt to divert the toll from the Kuk to themselves". The District Magistrate also made a strong statement of the rights to take toll being a Government right, founded on Government ownership of the wastes of the river bank. The Kuk sent young men to tear the new wharf down. The affair then petered out - the Magistrate was willing to take a far more active role in 1903-1905 than in 1875 or earlier, and the opening of the railway a couple of years later made all discussions of rights to toll somewhat academic, since trade now began to flow in different directions altogether. These documents show three points of interest: the ineffectiveness of the Magistrate in settling affairs of this sort in the mid/late-nineteenth century; the critical importance of control of markets, roads, ferries, bridges and other nodal points of the traffic system in local politics; and the blood-thirsty and implacable nature which inter-village disputes could assume. The disputes over the ownership of the landing place at Sham Chun lasted some seventy years, from the 1830s to 1905. Effective action by the District Magistrate seems to have been limited to the period 1903-1905: the actions of the Magistrate in 1875 were ineffective in the extreme, and there seems to have been no action at all in earlier disputes. In 1875, it was only when the dispute had escalated to such a state that the army was forced to intervene that any effective Government action was seen but it came very late. In other inter-village disputes in the area in this period the same ineffective inaction by the District Magistrate can be seen. There seems to have been no action taken by the District Magistrate in the bloody fighting (about 1850-1860) between Wong Pui Ling and Ta... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x CONTENTS PRESIDENT'S REPORT. ARTICLES: 1 Keith Stevens A Jersey Adventurer in China: Gun Runner, Customs Officer, and Business Entrepreneur and General in the Chinese Imperial Army, 1842-1919 ... Vii P.H. Munro-Faure - Behind the Front Lines in Burma, The Marches of the Salween Border, 1942-1944... 113 Wei Peh Ti A Peek Backwards into the Jewish Community of Shanghai. 149 James Hayes - Old Chinese Graves from the Tsuen Wan District of Hong Kong's New Territories ... 164 David Faure An Exploratory Study of Pingshan, a Hakka Village Cluster to the East of Shenzhen ... 180 NOTES AND QUERIES: David Faure - China Resurgence of Folk Religion in Western ... 193 Denis Bray - Growing up in China: Lecture to the Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch, 14 May, 1993 ... 199 P.H. Hase Bandits in the Siu Lek Yuen Yeuk ... 214 Alvin P. Cohen First Meeting of the Warring States Working Group, University of Massachusetts ... 216 BOOK REVIEWS ... 218 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 168 generation. However, retained on the new tablet were the names of the elder brothers of the deceased who had been responsible for the initial burial at this site and also, it would seem, much of the wording of the original record. The inscription reads: The deceased was the fourth son of Ancestor Kau-yuen. He died early. Afterwards [we] his three elder brothers [only the names of two are given] took up the bones [from a coffin burial] and on an auspicious day in an autumn month in Chien Lung 4th or ping-san year [1736: but in fact the ping-san year is the 1st year of Chien Lung's long reign] buried them above the cross roads at Pak Kung Au on Tai Mo Shan (the geomantic details follow]. During his life, the deceased was polite and ceremonious, he managed his family frugally and industriously, and he was straightforward and upright in his dealings with others. We his brothers and descendants flourish [on account of his exemplary conduct and character]. We had hoped that he would have a long life, but his virtue is ever fragrant and he is deserving of his descendant's offerings for ever. For ten thousand years his memory will not be forgotten. Confucian hyperbole, one might ask? Perhaps it was, though I have not come across too much of the kind in the local grave tablets. Certainly, the memory of this good man must have remained alive in the Chung family for generations after his death and burial in 1738; for it was nearly 150 years after that the repair commemorated by this tablet took place. There was probably another factor at work here, since it was believed that the graves of good people would have a beneficial effect on the fortunes of the family for generations to come. Clearly, it was considered that the good influences from this grave were not yet spent. Ancestral Graves and Lineage Prosperity One cannot stress too strongly this particular aspect of ancestral burial, and the great importance attached to ancestral graves by descendants for this reason. One short letter sent to the District Office in 1975 by two village representatives of the same village and lineage (Yeungs of Yeung Uk, Tsuen Wan) states outright the strong connection traced between ancestral graves in good locations and the continuing flourishing of the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x 170 to the [good] fung-shui of these graves. Members of the clan are upset by your notice. Please be considerate, and do not cause damage to the fung-shui graves of our family. [Followed by 56 names of descendants]* In an equally strong response, a Wong lineage long resident in Yuen Long, was greatly perturbed by an official notice posted in 1988 at their grave at Tsing Lung Tau, Tsuen Wan. This time, the government required them to remove it for development, in connection with a large private residential project being undertaken by a realty company which had acquired the site from the Crown. The clan concerned had this to say in their letter to the District Office: Concerning damage to fung-shui and harm to an ancestral grave: please have regard to our situation and cancel the order, so as to preserve the fung-shui and calm the people's minds. We have lived in Shui Pin Village for several hundred years, engaging in agriculture and always being law-abiding people with nothing untoward in our history. The founding ancestor of our Wong clan was first buried at Tsing Lung Tau in the 3rd year of Chien Lung [1738], and the grave was repaired in the winter season of the first year of Tung Chih [1862]. Several hundred years and seven generations have now passed since the original burial. This site was previously Chinese territory, now loaned to the English under the Sino-British Convention [of 1898]. If the [English] government wishes to use the people's land, the people's agreement is necessary. Through all these years our Wong clan's founding ancestor's grave has produced many descendents. Who would have thought that we would now hear that the government wished to use the site? After hearing this news we were extremely concerned [for our future prosperity]. If you investigate the fung-shui [you will find that it had produced many] persons who attained great age in the past. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1992 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x porcupines and barking deer flourished there. During holiday times, many persons visited the island for shooting excursions. In 1923, a Mr. Chan came to hunt. He noticed that there were human remains on the hills, lying on the surface. Moved by compassion, he contacted our local headman, Mr. Tang Yuen-kwun. It was then established that these bones were the remains of former villagers of this island. However, it seemed either that no one looked after them, or else the persons concerned were miserably poor. Willingly, Mr. Chan raised the necessary funds and entrusted Mr. Tang Yuen-kwun to construct a charitable grave to re-bury the remains, so that local villagers could worship there. This happened over 50 years ago. Women's Graves 177 Females' graves should not be excluded from this survey. From the evidence available from the Tsuen Wan district, there can be no doubt that some women were greatly honoured. This was particularly the case with the wives of founding ancestors. Many old graves containing the remains of such persons have been buried and reburied over the centuries by their descendants. Single burials of married, and often elderly women are also common, again in formal graves and often repaired many years later. Sometimes these women are not first but tin fong wives, married after the death of a first wife. Also when, as sometimes happened, it was decided to erect a clan grave, the remains exhumed and brought from elsewhere included just as many women's as men's. In recent times, when development required the removal of many old graves, those of women as well as men's or married couples' were reprovisioned by descendants. It is difficult to establish why women were so well favoured in this respect. Some women were revered by husbands and family because of their noble character and capabilities at home and in the family, and this is sometimes stated on the inscribed tablet at the grave. Others may have been buried in style because of the general respect shown for age and the high status of a wife and mother who had become head of the family on her husband's death. Some inscriptions would reflect truth, others would be more eulogistic than factual, reflecting the family's desire to gain face from giving the deceased formal burial. Whatever the reasons, the fact remains that the hillsides contain many formal graves where the sole occupant is a female. 18 ================================================================================ 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-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 159 posted in the market by various warlords and factions had an extremely bad reputation. They were not locals (they were mostly Mandarin speakers), indulged in looting the shops in the market, and were generally believed to be behind some at least of the bandit raids. The District Officer, New Territories, specifically accused Chinese irregular soldiers of mounting eight cross-border armed bandit raids in 1924. The Kuomintang forces eventually secured the area in 1925-1926, but the irregulars were only replaced by regular soldiers in 1928, when the irregulars at Sha Tau Kok were punished for some of their misdeeds. The period of post-Revolutionary chaos along the border came to a peak in 1925, when the Kuomintang finally secured Sha Tau Kok, but immediately used it as a base for the General Strike boycott against Hong Kong. The 1925 Boycott caused serious problems for the villagers in the Sha Tau Kok area. If they loathed the Customs for insisting that their daily marketing was dutiable, they were even less enamoured of the view that their every-day shopping constituted "trading with the enemy", which should be stopped by whatever terrorising tactics could be brought to bear. The strikers seem to have taken over the Customs Station in Sha Tau Kok, and it is clear that local trade, and with it the villagers of the area, suffered greatly. 17 A third period of disturbance on the frontier was 1928-1937, in every year of which, except one, smuggling was noted as being a greater problem than in the previous year. During this period, further rebellions (by Communist-inspired guerrillas) in the area east of Yim Tin caused problems, which were then exacerbated with the attacks on the area by the Japanese from 1938. The closure of the Mirs Bay Customs stations in 1938 marks the date when the Kuomintang Government finally took control of the area - the Customs reopened the Sha Yue Chung station in 1939, but only following an "agreement" with the guerrillas, who were by then the only effective government there. 40 Although the western, Yuen Long, area of the frontier was the worst smuggling centre, major battles with smugglers/pirates took place in waters close to Sha Tau Kok in 1928, 1932, 1935, and 1939, and a major battle with smugglers in the Ta Kwu Ling area in 1932. Kai Chung Customs post was sacked by bandits - presumably a smuggler gang - in 1932 as well. From about 1937 smuggling of strategic goods to Sha Yue Chung, for the guerrilla rebels, and later of goods to be slipped through the Japanese lines, became a major business at Sha Tau Kok - this trade was centred on the Sha Yue ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1993 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833t302 185 high standards, and took care to employ good teachers. The school must always have had several teachers - the building is just too big to have been feasible for just one. In 1923 there were five teachers. Three were Shap Yeuk area people. One, Chan Kan-cheung, from Luk Keng, was a returned student from USA - he taught English and Physical Education. Another teacher from Luk Keng was Chan Ping-long, a graduate from Canton. He taught "the new books". The third teacher from the Shap Yeuk area was Lau Woon-kwong, from Keng Hau (Jinghou) in the Chinese part of the Shap Yeuk area. He taught classical Chinese and Music. The other two teachers were outsiders: Lei Wai-lau was a Sau Tsoi from near Yuen Long, a Punti speaker - he taught classical Chinese. The fifth teacher, Wu Fan-ng, was from Shaoguan in the north of Guangdong. He had lived for many years in Sha Tau Kok, and spoke and taught in Hakka. He, like Chan Ping-long, was a graduate from Canton, and taught "the new books". Right down to the 1930s, the desire to keep their school one of the best and most advanced in the region was a major aim of the elders of the Shap Yeuk. In the 1920s, the standard of the school was as advanced as the Government schools which the Hong Kong Government had started to open in the major centres of the New Territories. By having this group of well-educated and cultured men living in the market, the elders of the Shap Yeuk demonstrated that their town and district comprised a full and viable community - not only having artisans and labourers and merchants, but scholars and gentry as well. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 9 By their differences in dwellings and occupations, already observed, these four communities can be grouped into land-dwellers and sea-dwellers, the Cantonese and Hakka being the former and the Tanka and Hoklo the latter. 43 The Cantonese, or Punti as they are sometimes called, had their origins in North China and speak a Chinese dialect of the western section of the Yueh language which evidences their claim to be of pure Chinese stock. There is no record of their arriving in the province of Kwangtung, which they colonised, earlier than the Sung Dynasty (960-1278 A.D.). In the van were a clan surnamed Tang who settled in the Yuen Long district of the New Territories late in the 11th century. This clan became the largest landowners with their main centres at Kam T'in, P'ing Shan, Lung Yeuk Tau and Ha Tsuen. They exercised "a kind of feudal power, and the tradition they had brought with them was so strong that they not only became the founders of the Cantonese settlement but to this day exert a great influence in affairs. The Cantonese occupy most of the two principal plains in the northwest sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty in the late thirteenth century. The livelihood of the Cantonese is dependent mainly on the cultivation of rice. The Hakka migrated originally also from North China and, moving gradually southwards through Fukien and Kiangsi in the 10th century, reached Kwangtung Province during the latter years of the Southern Sung Dynasty. They speak two dialects or sub-dialects of the eastern section of the same Yueh language that the Cantonese speak. Arriving after the Cantonese, the Hakka settled usually upstream of them, that is, on the poorer ground. They have, however, steadily over the centuries encroached on the land first occupied by the Cantonese. For example, after the Manchus in the 17th century had evacuated the entire population of the China Coast inland to guard against the fleet of the Ming Dynasty based on Formosa, the Hakka apparently took the opportunity of resettling in the abandoned coastal area. Again, Hong Kong island is said to have been originally occupied by the Tang clan but the British in the 19th century found it almost entirely inhabited by Hakka. A third example of Hakka encroachment is said to be Lantau Island which in recent times was depopulated by... ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1995 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g 38 + Pung Shan Land Case No. 24 of 1954. TANG LAP LEUNG »» TO SHU KAN (unreported) against which the appeal was similarly dismissed by Reynolds J-Civil Appeal No 24 of 1954 (unreported) Wilson's Notes (1950) 34 HKLR 297 Vide Tenancy Tribunal Appeal No 40 of 1950, NG CHOW HING & OTHERS vs KAM WING CHAN & OTHERS, (1950) 34 HKLR 201 Tls Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, para 97 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1912 p. 58) General accounts of "fung shui" may also be found in Burkhardt, Chinese Creeds and Customs Hong Kong Vol I p 129 and Vol II p. 137 Report DCNT 1959-60, para, 120 120 Memorandum of District Officer, South, to DCNT, dated 22nd December 1959 121 Report on the New Territories 1899-1912, paras 21(2) and 98 (Hong Kong Sessional Papers. 1912, pp 47 and 58), and Report, DCNT, 1959-60, paras 120 and 135 12 Literally notification of the gods ceremony. Report DCNT, 1959-60 para. 125 and memorandum of District Officer, Yuen Long, to DCNT dated 30th October. 1959 Report on the New Territories 1899-1912 para 98 (Hong Kong Sessional papers. 1912 p 58) DO Yuen Long, loc cit The District Commissioner's Report for the year 1951-52 contains an amusing account of how one village geomancer was confounded (at para, 19). 25 Wilson Notes 125 ibid 127 Cap 97 viz ss. 27, 29, 30 part II, ss. 14 and 57, vide Committee Report, 1953. Chap II, para. 13 at p 7 and the preliminary point decided in the case of TANG CHU YI HONG vs TANG SHING MO and OTHERS (1949) 33 HKLR 58 128 For which see Chinese Marriages in Hong Kong, Government Printer, 1960, Greenfield. op cit, and Committee Report, 1953 19 vide intra 10 Things Chinese, 4th Edn 1903, p 424 cf MH Van der Valk. An Outline of Modern Chinese Family Law Peking, 1939, pp 82-83, regarding the position under the Nationalist ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 built all over the Territory: a taste has sprung up for many foreign luxuries, and aerated waters, cigarettes, clothes, caps, towels and kerosene oil are now common objects of sale in the small market towns". The district officer also noted the villagers' openness to new ideas: "Contact with foreign ways has rendered the average villager less superstitious than of yore”: as an example of this openness to new ideas, he stressed the "suddenness and unanimity” with which the New Territories villagers accepted the 1911 Revolution: "all showed ... that they had long been ready to join the party of progress." If, however, in the generation before 1911, there was already some openness to foreign ideas in the New Territories, the efforts by the Hong Kong Government to inculcate these new ideas formally through the schools were initially less successful. In 1902, the Brewin Committee recommended setting up government schools in the New Territories to teach village youths English and a modern curriculum. The first such school, at Yuen Long, was established in 1904, and schools at Tai Po and Cheung Chau followed in 1906 and 1909. However, in their first decade, these schools were unpopular with poor academic standards, and had little influence: in 1911 the three government schools only had 66 pupils between them, out of 3,085 pupils at school in the New Territories generally (2.1%). However, during the next decade the standards and acceptability of the government schools began to rise: in 1920 their combined enrolment reached 133. It was only after that date, however, that the government schools began to have any very marked effect. In 1913 the village schools were brought within the ambit of the Education Ordinance. The Sung Report recommended paying a grant to those village schools of a better quality willing to include some modern teaching within their curricula. Initially 50 schools (out of the 260 existing) were chosen, and the scheme was begun in 1914. By 1916, however, only 11 of the aided schools were as yet able to teach a "modern curriculum". In 1918 a two-level grant scheme was introduced, and in 1919 a three-level scheme: this was designed to increase the number of schools eligible for a grant, and to increase the leverage of the government in introducing more modern subjects into the village schools. By 1921, however, there were still only 85 village schools which the government considered fit to receive any form of grant. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 5 to show signs of change, but these were still limited, except in a few places. After 1921, however, change came fast, and was widespread. The 1911 and 1921 censuses, therefore, are of great interest, as they show us a traditional society on the eve of modernisation. The 1911 Census The 1911 Census of the New Territories was conducted with care. The census date was midnight on Saturday 20th May, 1911. In the New Territories work began two months earlier, but was not finished until a month later. The New Territories residents were notified as to what a census was, what uses the information gathered would be put to, and how the census would be conducted. This was probably done by briefing the village elders, and posting up notices at suitable places. The New Territories was, in 1911, divided into two administrative districts: Northern District (the present day Tsuen Wan, Kwai Tsing, Tuen Mun, Yuen Long, North, Tai Po, Sha Tin, and Sai Kung Districts), and Southern District (the present day Islands District plus New Kowloon). Many of the tables in the 1911 Census Report are divided into these two administrative districts, although occasionally New Kowloon is combined with Old Kowloon. The floating population (the boat-people) was enumerated separately, but few details were taken in this census. Nine enumerator teams were established to conduct the census over an area covering most of the mainland New Territories - the whole of the Northern District except for the present day Tsuen Wan and Kwai Tsing Districts. Each team consisted of a specially employed New Territories man as enumerator, plus a uniformed Chinese police constable with New Territories experience. Each team was given a geographical area to enumerate: these areas were probably related to police sub-districts. Enumeration in the New Territories began on 6th March, 1911, and continued for as long as was necessary - the most complicated districts were not completed until early June. The enumerator team, on entering a village, would announce its presence, and then conduct a house-to-house visit to every building, enumerating those residing there, and entering the details on the spot into books of schedules of 25 pages each. ================================================================================ 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 10 - extreme north of the island, are omitted. It seems likely that the populations of these villages most of which are rather small were combined with the populations of the nearest market, port, or major village. In most cases the market, port, or major village was where the police post was from which the census was being conducted. Thus, the populations of the missing villages are probably buried in the figures recorded for Tai O, Sheung Ling Pei, Shap Long, Cheung Chau, and Ma Wan. This is certainly what happened at Tsuen Wan and Kowloon City. In Tsuen Wan, populations are recorded only for Tsing Yi, Tsuen Wan, Ma Wan, Chai Wan Kok, and Kwai Chung.1 Clearly, all the Tsing Yi villages are lumped together, as are all the Kwai Chung villages. Equally clearly, the Tsuen Wan villages - with the odd exception of Chai Wan Kok - are combined in a single entry with Tsuen Wan Market. In Kowloon City district, none of the central Kowloon villages (i.e. the very important villages of Nga Tsin Wai and Po Kong and the smaller villages such as Chuk Yuen) are entered separately - their populations are, clearly, subsumed under the entry for Kowloon City.1 In part, the lack of detail in the Kowloon City census may be due to the heavy rain which interfered with the first attempt to hold it. Thus, when conducting detailed analyses of the tables of statistics in the 1911 Census, it is necessary to bear in mind that the populations recorded for the towns and major villages in the south of the New Territories are inflated to some degree, and their social characteristics are likely to be obscured, at least in part. The villages still existing on Hong Kong Island and Old Kowloon in 1911 are separately recorded. Po Toi Island is included under the Hong Kong villages.1 The process of holding the house-to-house enumerator visits lasted “a few days” on Lamma, and three months in the bigger districts.3 Assuming Lamma was completed in five days, and the largest districts (Au Tau, Sha Tau Kok, Ping Shan, and Sai Kung) required 50-60 working days, the average population enumerated each day varied between 143 and 181, with between one and four villages being dealt with each day.1 This is clearly not excessive, and, again, suggests that the statistics produced should be treated as reasonably accurate. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 Tables 7 and 8 assume that mortality rates in 1911 and 1921 were basically the same, or at least that any changes were too small to be discerned in statistics as approximate as those in Tables 7 and 8. In fact, major improvements in the health of the New Territories only began to be seen in the 1930s. The government had begun to provide for the health of the New Territories immediately after the take-over. A dispensary with a resident doctor was established at Tai Po in 1900, and a programme of vaccination was initiated. However, most of this clinic's time was taken up with treating the police and other government servants in the New Territories; few local villagers were affected. The annual number of vaccinations (including re-vaccinations) was under 100 before 1909, when the Tung Wah Hospital began to assist every summer. Between 1910 and 1920 the annual vaccination rate in the New Territories rose to several hundred. Nonetheless, the area affected by this vaccination campaign seems to have been limited to the market towns of Tai Po, Sheung Shui and Tsuen Wan. The doctor posted to the New Territories in 1900 was withdrawn in 1909, after which the only trained medical staff resident in the area was a “dresser”, who was supervised by intermittent visits by a doctor from Kowloon. The very high rates of neo-natal casualties in the New Territories began to be addressed by the government from 1914, when a government midwife was stationed at Yuen Long. Midwives were posted to Tai Po, Tsuen Wan, and Cheung Chau in 1915, 1916, and 1917 respectively. The Pok Oi Hospital at Yuen Long was reorganised in 1920, and was backed by a government dispensary from 1925. However, the critical decision to post midwives to cover the villages in addition to the market towns was only taken in the 1930s. From the 1930s, the district midwives disinfected all drinking water wells, and vaccinated against smallpox, as well as attending births. Oral evidence suggests that the results on infant mortality were massive. By 1921, however, these great improvements had only begun to affect the market towns, and the overall mortality rates for the New Territories as a whole must have been much as they had been in 1911 and earlier. Between 1911 and 1921, changes in mortality rates were probably, therefore, marginal, and averaging the two sets of statistics, as in Tables 7 and 8, is not unreasonable. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 60 Census does enumerate as being in full-time employment must be treated as being in actual fact working independently, except for those enumerated as agricultural labourers. The 404 women so enumerated in Northern District represent 2.5% of the total of 16,271 women aged between 15 and 45 in Northern District in 1911. Clearly, there were a substantial minority of women who were in full-time independent employment outside the home in 1911. From the 1911 statistics, many were working at the lower end of the employment market, as coolies and general labourers, or hawkers, but there were enough women operating shops (possibly in many cases as widows taking over the family shop after their husband's death) to make it clear that shops operated by women were by no means rare, as, indeed, oral evidence would lead us to expect. The 1911 female masons, carpenters, general shopkeepers, doctors, basketry dealers, joss-stick dealers, and restaurant keepers are all in this category. The 1911 statistics do note, but clearly under-represent, the specifically female occupations (embroiderers, seamstresses, nuns, and prostitutes), plus the fuel sellers which oral evidence strongly suggests was another more or less exclusively female occupation. The 1911 statistics also suggest that beancurd selling, in 1911 as now, was essentially a female occupation. The presence of prostitutes only in Southern District confirms the oral evidence that, while there were no prostitutes in Tai Po or Yuen Long, there were in Kowloon City and Cheung Chau. Midwives and marriage brokers were also purely women's work, but mostly were part-time jobs undertaken ad hoc by housewives, and so only two strays out of the many dozens who worked in these areas appear in the statistics. The 1911 statistics, however, seriously under-record women working in these trades. In 1921, in Northern District, far more women are recorded as working in them than in 1911 (thus, 61 female foodstuff sellers are recorded in 1921 as against 21 in 1911; 1669 seamstresses as against 36; 48 weavers as against 0; 118 coolies/hawkers as against 50; 107 nuns, fortune tellers, temple keepers etc as against 18, and so on). The 1921 Northern District statistics for female occupations, therefore, are much fuller, and so probably closer to the actual position, even if under-recording is still likely. The 1911 statistics draw a distinction which is probably real, between "Tailors" or "Dress" (male: Northern and Southern Districts ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 Table 28 Urban Population: New Territories. 1911 63 Northern District: Town Males Females Total Yuen Long 458 81.9% 101 18.1% 559 Sai Kung 320 62.5% 192 37.5% 512 Hang Hau 262 67.7% 125 32.3% 387 Ha Tsuen Sh 120 67.4% 58 32.6% 178 Shek Wu Hui 29 67.4% 14 32.6% 43 Tuen Mun San Hu 72 67.3% 35 32.7% 107 Tai Wo Shi 377 79.9% 95 20.1% 472 Tai Po Old Market 104 53.3% 84 44.7% 253 Tap Mun 168 66.4% 85 33.6% 253 Sha Tau Kok 43 70.5% 18 29.5% 61 North District Total. 1910 70.8% 789 29.2% 2699 Southern District: Town Tai O land population 1159 51.6% 1089 48.4% 2248 .boat population 3159 58.4% 2254 41.6% 5413 Total 4318 56.4% 3343 43.6% 7661 Cheung Chau land population 1918 59.1% 1326 40.9% 3244 :boat population 2601 58.6% 1841 41.4% 4442 Total 4519 58.8% 3167 41.2% 7686 Ping Chau 434 67.6% 208 32.4% 642 Mui Wo Kau Chun 11 61.1% 7 38.9% 18 Southern District Total 9282 58.0% 6725 42.0% 16007 New Territories Total. 11192 60.0% 7514 40% 18706 * Most of Sha Tau Kok was in China this is the New Territories part of the town Tsuen wan is not included as the census includes a large rural population with the town. Some of the Cheung Chau boat population was probably at Ping Chau, and some of the Tai O boat population was probably at other anchorages on Lantau, but only a small percentage in each case It will be noted that there was no town in the Northern District as large as Ping Chau, and that Cheung Chau was more than 24 times as large as all the Northern District towns put together. There were rural populations included within the total for, especially, Tai O, but, nonetheless, the differences are very real. The 1921 Census includes population figures for only one town, Sai Kung the figure it gives (an overall figure of 606) is in line with the 1911 figure. It is noticeable that the population engaged in “urban” occupations can be comfortably fitted into the recorded populations of the Southern District towns, with a substantial excess over to cover the fishermen and ocean-going seamen living in the towns In Northern ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 65 burners, who oral evidence suggests were common, are noted in the 1921 Census16 in Northern and 183 in Southern District, as also are the brick and tile makers, with 83 male and five female workers noted in Northern District in that year. The other traditional trades noted by the 1921 Census as present in numbers (vegetable oil pressers, shipbuilders, blacksmiths, carpenters) were mostly working within the market towns. In some places the “industrial” villages can be traced in the 1911 Census, even though the residents in them do not appear specifically in the "Occupations" Table. Thus, there was an area where incense wood was pounded into dust for manufacture into joss-sticks at Pak Kiu Tsuen outside Tai Po Market, and another at Tso Kung Tam outside Tsuen Wan. At the first, the census records the village of Wong Ka Uk, with 10 males but no females, and, at the second, the villages of Tso Kung Tam and Pak Shek Kiu, with 36 males and only nine females between them. These imbalanced populations strongly suggest that the villages in question were essentially industrial. Shek Tsai Po, outside Tai O - a centre for the drying of fish and the manufacture of shrimp paste - had a similarly imbalanced population of 71 males to 47 females. Villages next to important ferries - Liu Pok, Lo Wu, Yuen Chau Kok, Sha Kong, Ha Mei, Mui Wo - also tend to have recorded populations with more males than females, reflecting the boatmen and similar traders living at the ferry pier. Suburban industrial trades are probably the reason also why many of the villages on Hong Kong Island and the rural parts of Kowloon (especially Ma Kong, Chung Hom Kok, Lan Nai Wan, To Tei Wan, Tai Tam Tuk, Tong Po, Deep Water Bay, and the Quarry Bay villages on Hong Kong Island, and Ma Tau Kok, San Shan, Shek Shan, Lo Lung Hang, Wong Nai Yue, Fo Pang, Tai Shek Kwu, and Ho Man Tin in Kowloon)* show a significant excess of males over females. Suburban villages with significant excesses of males are also to be seen immediately outside most of the New Territories market towns in 1911. These villages had commercial market-gardens, industrial premises which required large areas (dyers, joss-stick makers, sawyers, etc.), and offensive trades (tanners, lime-burners, brick and tile works, etc.), and should be considered as part of the market town complex. The ring of villages with high male-female ratios around the city in 1911 should be seen in the same way, as subordinate to the commercial life of the City. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 69 males, while their families remained behind. In other words, those villages with an excess of females are the inevitable reverse side of the coin, off-setting the towns and cities of the area, with their excess of males. Not surprisingly, given the more urban character of Southern District, most of the villages with excess females were in Northern District, as this temporary male emigration was a feature of rural villages, just as temporary male immigration was a feature of the industrial villages, towns, and cities. Appendix I lists the villages with significantly low ratios of males to females (less than 47.0% of total population male, excluding villages with total populations of less than 35, except where the imbalance is extreme) Table 31 maps these villages It will be seen at once from the map at Table 31 that the villages with low percentages of males are concentrated in the mountainous east of the New Territories, and on Lamma. Because of this, more Hakka than Punti villages are low in males. This is, however, a factor of social and geographical conditions, rather than racial or cultural ones: large Punti villages within the eastern New Territories (such as Siu Lek Yuen, Ho Chung, Sha Kok Mei, Wu Kai Sha, Tai Hang etc) share a shortage of males with their smaller Hakka neighbours. Indeed, in Ta Kwu Leng, it is the Punti villages (Ping Che, Lo Shue Ling, Lei Uk Tsuen, Tai Po Tin) which are short of males, the Hakka villages having either a balanced population, or even a surplus of males (eg Heung Yuen with 53.4% of males, and Ping Yuen with 55.9%). Within the richer western parts of the New Territories, villages with shortages of males are less common, but a few clusters can be seen, such as around Ha Tsuen and Yuen Long Markets. These clusters are probably mostly of villages with significant numbers of males working in the markets (the shortage of males in all the Yuen Long villages with shortages was in total 242: the number of excess males working in the markets at Yuen Long and Ha Tsuen was 197) Similarly, it is likely that at least some of the absent males from Lam Tsuen were working in the market at Tai Po The shortage of males in the eastern New Territories is to be explained by emigration. The missionaries of the Basel Mission, who were active in the north-east New Territories from 1849 onwards, remarked on the high levels of emigration from villages in this area from 1851 onwards. By 1880, the missionaries were speaking of "emigration fever" in their reports on the area, by 1894 of "deserted ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 72 Of course, in some cases the emigration was over a short distance, to the nearest market town. It is likely, as noted above, that the absent males of the Yuen Long plain villages were working in the Yuen Long markets, and possible that some at least of the Lam Tsuen males were in the Tai Po Market. Some Lamma villagers were probably working in Aberdeen, and from all over the New Territories there were villagers working in the city - so many that their return to the villages for the Ching Ming Festival in 1921 could bias the census in that year, as noted above. But much of the emigration, as the Basel missionaries, the temple donation tablets at Shan Tsui and Tsuen Wan, and oral evidence, all make clear, was to overseas. The implications of villages with surplus males are less easy to identify (see Appendix II and Table 32; these identify villages with more than 56% recorded males in their populations: villages with fewer than 35 total population are excluded, except where the surplus of males is extreme). In many cases, just as the villages with low male female ratios identify villages with significant temporary male emigration, so villages with high male: female ratios identify places with temporary male immigration. One group already discussed which stands out is the market towns, almost all of which have high male: female ratios. Nearly 82% of the recorded population of Yuen Long market was male, and almost 80% of that of Tai Po new market (Tai Wo Shi). Even Shek Wu Hui, Ha Tsuen and Tuen Mun San Hui had over two-thirds of their tiny populations male (Table 28). These figures need to be put into perspective. In 1911, within the City of Victoria (i.e., omitting the Peak and the Hong Kong Island villages) there were 151,303 males out of a total Chinese population of 217,668. Males represented, therefore, 69.5% of the total Chinese population.1 Thus, the male domination of the larger New Territories market towns was significantly more substantial in 1911 than that of the city, and even the smaller New Territories markets had at least as high a level of male domination. The only exceptions to this are Cheung Chau, and Tai O, in Southern District. While these towns have more males than females, the imbalance is less than in the Northern District towns or the city: however, it seems likely that small rural populations are included with those towns, and that this causes distortion in these cases. Most of the New Territories towns also, as noted above, had suburban villages which shared the male domination of the town itself. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 77 Appendix I Villages with Low Male: Female (Less than 47%) Population Ratios, 1911 District Village No. of males Total population Age of males N San Tong Po 15 47 31.9** N Ngau Ha 6 16 N Sam Tam Lo 1 6 33.3** N Mo To Hang 2 6 33.3** N Ko Tan 8 21 38.1** N Tsiu Keng 15 43 34.9** N Wo Hop Shek 21 48 43.8 N Sheung Tan Chuk Hang 43 102 42.2 N Ping Che Yuen Ha 27 61 44.3 N Tai Po Tin 25 56 44.6 N Fung Wong Wit 39 84 46.4 N Lo Shue Ling 98 209 46.9 N Lei Uk Tsuen 41 94 43.6 N Chuk Yuen 18 44 40.9* N Tsung Yuen Ha 39 85 45.9 N Muk Wu 81 174 46.6 N Luk Keng 182 484 37.6** N Yim Tso Ha 18 47 38.3** N Shek Kiu Tau 37 98 37.8** N Ma Tseuk Ling Tai Long N 47 125 37.6** N Ha Wo Hang 20 46 43.5 N Sheung Wo Hang 66 160 41.3 N Nam Chung 175 443 39.5* N Wu Kay Tang 152 348 43.7 N Lin Ma Hang 165 423 39.0** N Ha Wang Shan Keuk 199 516 38.2** N Ha That Muk Kiu 16 43 37.2** N Kau Tam Tso 27 76 35.5** N Kai Keuk Shue Ha 13 42 31.0** N Fung Hang 47 108 43.5 N Kuk Po San Wai 61 143 42.6* N Tong To 56 126 44.4 N Shan Tsui 47 104 45.2 N Kong Ha 162 367 44.1 N Pok Wai 63 135 46.7 N Tai Che 100 225 44.4 ST Ngau Kok Wo 7 18 38.9** ST Tsung Tau Ha 3 8 37.5* ST 3 9 33.3** The table has been reconstructed for better readability while maintaining the original content and order. The column headers have been inferred as "District", "Village", "No. of males", "Total population", and "Age of males" based on the content. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1996 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641 Appendix II Villages with High Male: Female (More than 56% Male) Population Ratios 1911 81 Village District No. of males Total population Age of males Liu Pok Shek Wu Hui 136 237 57.4 Lo Wu 37 56 66.1** Tai Tau Tong 8 18 44.4* 100*1 5! 91 56.0 Tsung Pak Leng N 105 184 57.0 Yin Kong N 21 35 60.0+ Tiu Keng Wan N 38 56 67.6 Sau Hang N 25 42 59.5* Ma Wat Wan N 28 49 57.3 Wan Shan Ha N 38 66 57.6 Loi Tung N 107 191 56.0 Kuk Po Lo Wai N 140 247 56.7 Hung Shek Mun N 49 87 56.3 Wu Chau Tong N 28 48 58.3 Sha Tau Kok N 14 14 100** Yim Liu Ha N 29 47 61.7+ Ngong Ping ST 7 9 77.8** San Tun ST 77 109 70.0** Pak Tin ST 2 3 66.7** Wang Pok ST 8 9 88.9** Sheung Wo Che ST 70 100 70.0** Chek Mei Ping ST 70 122 57.2 Shek Wu Wai YL 37 56 66.1++ Tung Tau Yuen YL 26 38 68.4** Kak Hang Yuen YL 16 25 64.0** Lei Uk YL 32 48 66.7** Sha Kong Miu YL 5 6 77.4** Yuen Long Market YL 458 559 81.9** Tong Fong 83 148 56.1 Sha Kong YL 5 6 83.3** Kong Tau YL 26 46 56.5 Ha Tsuen Shi YL 120 178 67.4** Wang Che SK 4 5 80.0** Wu Lei Tau SK 6 9 66.7** Yau Ma Po SK 24 31 77.4** Uk Cheung SK 4 6 66.7** Hang Hau SK 262 387 67.8** Mau Fa Tsuen SK 28 47 59.6* ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 to his daughter, Mrs R. Woodcock, for donating these to our Society. Our Branch is always looking for donations and if anybody wishes to find a good home for some interesting and valuable items or artifacts we should be grateful if you would consider donating them to the RASHKB. The Public Records Office Although the RASHKB is apolitical and has no wish to be seen as a pressure group, it does make its views known when it has a case. You may remember that our Branch objected when the Hong Kong Government decided to move the Public Records Office from Central District into an industrial building in Tuen Mun. Besides writing letters and taking other action two Branch deputations appeared before the Legislative Council Panel on Information Policy in 1993. The outcome of our efforts was that a new, purpose-built Public Records Office was opened in Kwun Tong, in June 1997, shortly before the Handover. Our Branch played a major role in this achievement. The Council Several of the 14 posts which comprise our Council require a special expertise. These include the Treasurer, the Librarian and our Editors. But, in addition to these 14 posts, other persons are co-opted on to the Council. They include the Reverend Carl Smith, our Honorary Vice President, and our Assistant Secretary, Mrs Sarah Parnell. Each Council Member is expected to pull at his or her respective oar and to row in unison. It is a working council. In addition to the two co-opted persons named above, namely Carl Smith and Sarah Parnell, as well as the President, the following have sat on the Council during the past year: Doctors Elizabeth Sinn, Michael Lau, Patrick Hase, Joseph Ting, Peter Barker, Choi Chi-cheung and Anthony Siu, together with Robert Nield, Geoffrey Roper, Peter Halliday, Valery Garrett, Julia Chan, and Peter Rull. Also, although Anita Wilson stepped down from the Council at the last AGM, she was co-opted back on until she left the Territory last July. All those xvii ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 In the developed areas the working party had its own preferences, but diplomatically decided to let higher authority decide on detail. The general intention was to set up what would be known in the conurbations as Municipal Councils or (minor) Urban District Councils (UDC), and elsewhere as District (or Local) Councils. This might, as the Governor-in-Council chose to decide, produce a Municipal Council for Hong Kong Island and a District Council for the non-urban area, with Aberdeen joining either or becoming a separate UDC; one or two Municipal Councils for Kowloon and New Kowloon; a UDC for Tsuen Wan; and no other change for the NT (but possibly three District Councils one day, where currently the DOS Tai Po, Yuen Long and South held sway.) All would be elected from geographical wards, and not from area-wide rating or electoral rolls; and by preference from single-member wards, with one-third retiring by annual rotation. All these Councils could form Joint Committees with each other, and perhaps have a Joint Consultative Council to co-ordinate their relations with Central Government. It was all deliberately tentative: junior officers must not seem to be handing up tablets of stone. The possibility of public apathy (already much noticed in relation to the existing Urban Council), and the dangers of encouraging the involvement of external party politics, led to cautious suggestions that in the first instance whatever overseeing body the Government would assign to this field (doubtless a new branch of the secretariat, if not an amalgamation of the SCA and the NTA) might nominate members to leaven the elected majority; a proportion of 1:3, or in the last resort 2:3, was proposed. For the franchise, while considering adult suffrage as a distinct possibility, the prudent recommendation was for all men and women and their spouses over 21 to enjoy the vote who owned, occupied or tenanted property on which rates were paid or of which the rent might be deemed to include a rating element; provided that they had three years' residence, and therefore a stake in the colony, British citizenship would not be required. Councillors should not be paid, to avoid the growth of a profession of politicians, but should be entitled to attendance allowances within a statutory limit to compensate for any loss of earnings; and they should appoint their own chairmen from any quarter. The new Councils' potential powers and functions received close examination. From the start it was accepted that Hong Kong's central Page 45 Page 46 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1997 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579 the Social Welfare Department), co-ordinated by regional generalist officers comparable with NT DOs, leading to advisory Regional Councils which might eventually become the main report's Local Authorities. They pointed up more outspokenly than the emollient main report the shortcomings of an out-of-touch government administering a non-English-speaking population that was only too open to misunderstandings and misconceptions (such as that taxes levied were drained off to the UK Treasury.) Interim steps should concentrate strongly on building up public confidence in the unaccustomed principles and practice of popular elected representation (the ‘political education' mentioned above.) The provisional system of regional advisory councils, coupled with departmental decentralisation and administrative co-ordination, should then lead to full local authorities in about six years. Meanwhile Tsuen Wan was indeed a unique opportunity for immediate action (the new towns to come of Tuen Mun, Sha Tin, Tai Po et al had yet to be envisaged.) These three semi-dissenters did not co-ordinate their Note with the other. Dickinson has been described by one of his working party as “the least understood and worst treated member of the Cadet Service" (the original title of Hong Kong's Administrative Branch of the HMOCS, which survived in common parlance long after the absorption into the Colonial Service of the pre-war Eastern Cadetships.) He chose to retire early for personal reasons. It is ironic that in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution overspill, when special duties officers in the defence branch of the secretariat, the SCA and the Information Services Department became so active in devising new ways to win hearts and minds, to keep in touch with the people and to encourage the use of Chinese language, so much of what had been adumbrated in the Working Party Report re-appeared; but because the new ideas now came from well-established senior sources, they became respectable and it was to be long before they offered electoral participation in executive decisions. The SCA became the Secretariat for Home Affairs; City District Officers were created in ten urban districts, and found much to do that had not been done before; City District Committees were established in 1972; a Tsuen Wan District Advisory Board was at last set up in 1977, followed by others; in 1980 a new pattern for district administration was at last suggested, with direct elections to District Boards. But in all these and still later developments that affect present history, there was no official backward recognition that the ground ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 24 eighteenth century. The Fungs () came there much later, at the end of the nineteenth century: they had fled from the Tai Ping rebels to Shek Lung Tsai in Sha Tin, and from there moved to Ngau Chi Wan. Very little is known of the Six Villages Alliance, and it is likely that it was more loosely structured than the League of Seven. It will be noted that Tai Hom, of the League of Seven, is completely surrounded by land that formed part of the Six Villages Alliance. Tai Hom, which is a single-surname village of the Chu (*) clan, is the only village of the League of Seven with no genealogical connections with Nga Tsin Wai. That it formed part of the League of Seven, rather than the Po Kong Six Villages Alliance is probably due to the circumstances of Tai Hom's foundation. The Founding Ancestor of the Chus, Chu kui-yuen, was a Hakka from Ng Wah District far to the northeast of Hong Kong22. He was a stone-cutter. He came to Hong Kong in 1762, to look for work in the quarries which were at that date starting up in the eastern part of what is today Victoria Harbour. He prospered, and established a quarry at Shek Tong Tsui in 1771. Later, he found Shek Tong Tsui rather remote, and exposed to pirate attack, and moved to Sha Po near Kowloon City. Later still, he bought quarry-land at the tip of Cape d'Aguilar Peninsula, and founded nearby the village of Hok Tsui. He had eight sons. His eldest son died unmarried, and Hok Tsui is today lived in by the descendants of his second, third and fourth sons. The fifth and sixth sons died unmarried or disappeared later. Chu kui-yuen bought more land, at Tai Hom, for his seventh son, Yan-fung, leaving his youngest son, Cheung-fung, , the land at Sha Po. After Kui-yuen's death, his widow lived at Tai Hom with her seventh son, who acquired a minor official post at Kowloon City, presumably after the re-establishment of the yamen there in 1841. Yan-fung was born in 1781, and died in 1857. Tai Hom was, therefore, a late settlement. It is unlikely to have been founded earlier than 1800. The land at Tai Hom was not fertile, and was steep and rocky (the Chus ran a quarry there, which supplied poor quality stone used for laying foundations in the Kowloon City area). Until 1992 a few remnants of Tai Hom, including the Chu clan Ancestral Hall, remained, buried within the Diamond Hill Squatter Area. It is likely that Po Kong refused to guarantee the good behaviour of these incoming Hakka (some already settled family was always required to guarantee incomers under the Pao-chia rules), while Nga Tsin Wai was willing, and that it was this which brought Tai Hom into the League of Page 60 Page 61 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 25 Seven, rather than into any relationship with Po Kong. Tai Hom was the only Hakka village in the League of Seven. It was probably this Hakka ethnicity, their rejection by Po Kong, and their relative isolation from Nga Tsin Wai that led the Tai Hom villagers to establish a temple of their own outside their village, somewhere in the period 1821-1850, probably late in the period: it was greatly expanded in 1904. This temple, the Tung Shan Temple (it was dedicated to Kwun Yam) became, for a short period during the 1920s and 1930s, the main religious focus of the "thirteen villages of Kowloon", that is, the villages of both the League of Seven and of the Six Villages Alliance, but it was left ruined in the War. The land south of Ma Tau Kok formed part of the Alliance of Three (三聯盟) of Hung Hom (Hung Hom including Tai Wan, Hok Yuen including Shek Shan, and To Kwa Wan, probably including Ma Tau Kok). The land east of Ngau Chi Wan and Pak Uk Tsai formed the inter-village alliance called "The Four Stone Hills" (四石嶺). This was a sworn alliance of the quarry-villages of this mountainous and infertile area (Ngau Tau Kok, Sai Cho Wan, Cha Kwo Ling, and Lei Yue Mun). Inter-village alliances normally centre on joint worship by the elders, either at the higher earth god of the area, or at the local temple. Nothing is now remembered in Nga Tsin Wai of any inter-village worship by the elders of the League of Seven as a group at any higher earth god shrine, nor of any She, * , Feast of the elders in front of the shrine. However, the Nga Tsin Wai villagers do not now even remember where their earth gods used to stand - they were all removed by the Japanese, except for the earth god of the Village Gate - so too much should not be made of this. The elders of the villages of the League of Seven did and do worship the Nga Tsin Wai Tin Hau, however, on her Birthday each year (the Tai Hom elders consider the villages of the League of Seven as "belonging to the Tin Hau of Nga Tsin Wai"): it is likely that this was the ritual focus of the League, and that the meetings of the elders of the district took place after the worship. The elders hold a feast today after the worship of Tin Hau, and this is probably a very ancient tradition. The Temple, however, was the property of Nga Tsin Wai alone (it is owned by all three of the Nga Tsin Wai clans, and the Manager of the Temple, chosen by the elders of the three clans, is the Village Headman): it was probably for this reason that, on her Birthday, the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 28 of Cheung Yuk-tong (E) arrived (presumably this relieving force came from the garrison at the County City of Nam Tau), and retook the Walled City after a day of very heavy fighting, in which two of the Government soldiers died, and "over 30" bandits. Presumably, the successful defence of Nga Tsin Wai took place during this same seven-day period, in September - October 1854. There were probably other occasions when bandits were forced away. For instance, the villagers of the Siu Lek Yuen inter-village alliance in Sha Tin have a story of a heroic fight by their combined manpower against a gang of bandits in the 1860s or 1870s. The Siu Lek Yuen villagers, having killed a number of the bandits, forced the rest to flee over the mountains to Nga Tsin Wai, where the Siu Lek Yuen villagers left them to the further attentions of the men of the League of Seven27. The Nga Tsin Wai villagers also remember an attempt by the Tang clan (probably of Kam Tin) to impose Tang clan political control on this area. They relate that the elders of the League of Seven met the Tangs, and showed them the bags in which the silver which had been gathered by the League as a defence fund was kept, and the guns and gunpowder at their gate. "Every tsin of silver, and every grain of gunpowder will be spent to fight you off", the elders said, and the Tangs eventually left, with their tails between their legs2. The last time the Nga Tsin Wai villagers closed and barred their gates against attack was in 1967, during the Riots. When the Riots broke out in San Po Kong, the villagers closed their gate, and put themselves into a position of defence, although their valour was not then put to the test. Nga Tsin Wai's position at the head of the League of Seven put it into a very important position in the traditional politics of the Kowloon area. The Chief Elder of the League of Seven - usually the Chief Elder of Nga Tsin Wai - was one of the two or three most important figures in the district. The Sub-Magistrate would certainly have included him whenever he needed to consult the gentry of the district. As noted further below, Nga Tsin Wai village trusts were the subsoil land-owners of a good deal of the land in the area, especially in the Market, and at Sha Po, thus reinforcing their predominant local political position. ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x 97 in tun fu and other religious ceremonies. 'It is not really worth making a fuss about and upsetting the system', seemed to sum it all up. But by comparison, even if western women would probably not accept a 'second-class citizen' situation in a similar way, nevertheless it should be remembered that only men are allowed, still, to become Catholic priests. Women have however been accepted, in a number of cases not so long ago, as clerics into the Anglican (Episcopalian) Church. Again showing leanings towards men, even in the West, the Author recalls his 90-year old English mother saying, in the 1980s, "It's a pity Mrs Thatcher (the then Prime Minister of Britain) isn't a man. People would respect her more.” Will tun fu die out? With the population of Hong Kong expected to reach somewhere in the region of eight-and-a-half million by the year 2010, this can only mean additional new towns and greater urbanisation in the New Territories. Such growth must bring drastic changes in lifestyles as has happened in the past. Western style bars, karaoke and other hostess services are now not uncommon in the Yuen Long and Kam Tin area, signifying the move towards globalisation (Chu; 1999)(Yu; 1999). In addition, what sociological changes will Route Three Highway, the West Rail Link and a possible new town close by bring to the district (Shum; 1996, 41)? But in spite of inevitable changes, Sheung Tsuen, where the main Pat Heung tun fu ceremony that the Author attended was held, is still a pleasant, peaceful village. In spite of paddy fields having long disappeared and derelict cars being dumped together with other eyesores, there is still a country atmosphere. The Koel and other birds call from atop camphor and banyan trees. To an observant person, the number of tun fu ceremonies held in the New Territories still does not appear to be exceedingly small. But with the continuing rapid increase in population and concomitant developments, they are likely to become endangered, although the custom is likely to be around, in smaller numbers, for some time to come. Conclusions Tun fu ceremonies are held because a previously quiet area of the countryside and its feng shui are threatened. Perhaps a hill in which the ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-1999 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x "in the mind.' Nevertheless, the money and effort needed to stage tun fu ceremonies does demonstrate resolve. The ritual also appears to have a therapeutic effect on believers taking part who are contented in that they have done their duty towards their ancestors and the community. Frequently in Hong Kong, villagers find themselves in the path of tumultuous upheaval. Until the New Territories has been almost entirely transformed by urban development, tun fu ceremonies will probably continue, albeit on a gradually reducing scale. The custom is more firmly rooted among the older generations among whom local festivals and ceremonies like tun fu are an important part of village life. Nevertheless, because a person does not believe when he or she is young does not necessarily mean that they will not believe when they become older. Sentimentalists probably agree that it will be sad if ceremonies, such as tun fu, disappear altogether and, with globalisation, these are replaced largely by western-style entertainment such as karaoke and bars with hostesses similar to those which have sprung up, in recent years, in the Yuen Long-Kam Tin district. Acknowledgements The Author is especially grateful to the Hong Kong Government Antiquities and Monuments Office whose members have provided considerable help, in a variety of ways (including supplying six of the seven photographs which are gratefully acknowledged). Likewise, sincere thanks are due to the staff of the Lands Department, Railway Development Section, and to the village elders and committee members of Pat Heung and elsewhere who invited the Author to observe and take part in their tun fu ceremonies. Grateful thanks are also due to authors listed in the bibliography, to whom this paper refers. Without the help of all concerned, this study would not be as detailed as it is. NOTES E.g. Ma Wan villagers held a tun fu ceremony when they felt 'threatened' when the Tsing Ma Bridge, leading to the new Chek Lap Kok Airport, was being constructed. Many objects serve in Chinese culture as talismans or charms. These range from couplets, or even a single Chinese character, for example meaning 'blessings' or Page 135 Page 136 ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 71 the fact that this could, and certainly did, happen! Invitation cards Invitation cards were the very bedrock of formality. The event, place and time, would of course be stated, together with the names of the principal officiating guests (government officials, prominent persons and local dignitaries); and if an association was the host, the cards might list the names of members of the organizing or current committees. Let me describe one of these productions, the invitation card received for the Ta Chiu held at Kam Tin in the Yuen Long District of the New Territories in 1975. Typical of the genre, the card consists of a double sheet of glossy red paper, printed in gold characters on all four sides, but with the recipient's name and office on Sheet 1, the front face, brushed in black ink. Sheet 1 also provided the sender's details, and the address of the invitee, since invitations were usually sent by post. Sheet 2 was the formal notification of the event, Sheet 3 contained the details of the opening ceremony, and Sheet 4, the back face, gave details of the organizing committee and elders. The wording followed the polite literary phraseology long in use for such occasions. The separate items of the opening ceremony, which would all be announced in sequence by a 'master of ceremonies' on the day, ran as follows: 1. Congregate (at the ceremonial site) 2. Invited guests to take their seats 3. Ribbon cutting by the presiding official guest 4. Chairman's speech 5. Speech by presiding official 6. Presentation of commemorative banners etc. 7. Speech of thanks (to individuals and organizations) 8. Photographs 9. Ceremony declared over 10. Lion and unicorn dances 11. Vegetarian repast [no meat was to be eaten over the ritual period] Though not stated on this invitation card, it was usual in events of this sort, in which the deities were being asked to protect and bless the local community, for the managers and principal guests to pay their combined respects through placing incense sticks at one of the temporary ================================================================================ RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊 | RAS-2002 https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mp4901278 146 "I'm really the end, the last generation of people who can reach through because the elders are still there, but they are getting very rare now. They are getting fewer." Dealing with the elders is difficult in many ways. There are areas that cannot be addressed, such as women's issues, and often the older generation will fall into their own native dialects, such as Wai Do, Yuen Long Wah or Hakka. Hase started telling me a joke about the differences in the dialects and how a sentence in Cantonese can be made to sound completely different, and not very pleasant, in another dialect. I didn't get it, but I enjoyed listening to the historian tell it. Hase worked for many years in Shatin as district officer, which made getting interviews with the elders a lot easier. When Hase retired from the civil service, he was deputy director of the Urban Services Department. He is currently running his own consultancy firm and most recently testified in the capacity of Fung Shui specialist in the Spur Line case, the controversy over the building of a railway through Long Valley, a bird haven that supports more than 200 species. Hase took over the RAS presidency in March and has agreed to serve for three to four years. "We are a middle-aged gweilo society, but I'd like to see us a little bit less," said Hase. "We're always going to be a middle-aged gweilo society but I'd like to have a lot, a much higher percentage of young Chinese members even if it was always to remain a minority. But how to do this? We've been thinking for 20 years and not been able to come up with any solution." Membership as of March 12, 2001 stood at 477, which includes 391 local and 86 overseas members. A hundred new members had been recruited between the end of January 2000 to March 13, 2001. Instead of trying to recruit from the public, the society hopes to get new members with the potential to best serve the society. These include graduate students in anthropology, archaeology, history and sociology. ================================================================================