ENG-1952 — Page 48

HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT, 1952

The number of Europeans and Americans perma- nently resident in the Colony is about 14,500, including about 9,500 British subjects from the United Kingdom and Commonwealth but excluding Service personnel and their dependants. In addition there are about 2,700 aliens temporarily resident.

The population of the New Territories is composed of Cantonese and Hakka, with a sprinkling of Hoklo. The farmers are the Cantonese, mainly settled, some families for several hundred years, in the comparatively fertile western plains, and the Hakka, whose incursion into the more difficult hilly land on the eastern side of the peninsula is said to have started about two hundred years ago and may not have finished yet. Generally speaking, the Hakka appear to have occu- pied any potentially arable land disregarded by the Cantonese. Thus long fingers of Hakka penetration have been extended from the eastern side of the New Territories down into the south-west of the mainland and out on to the islands. The two sections maintain excellent relations, and although Hakka help Hakka more noticeably than Cantonese help Cantonese it is remarkable that in their penetration the Hakka have been partly guided by existing Cantonese settlement. Thus, for instance, one of the biggest New Territories villages, Wang Toi Shan, to the north-west of Taimo- shan, is populated chiefly by Hakka of the Tang clan, who undoubtedly chose that locality because of the existing predominant influence of the Cantonese Tang.

There are few exceptions to the rule that Cantonese and Hakka in the New Territories do not intermarry. There are a few recent settlements which include both Cantonese and Hakka, but in such cases the families live distinctly, and normally a village is either clearly

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