ENG-1953 — Page 38

POPULATION

and Ping Shan Tsai in the Taipo area, whose inhabitants speak Cantonese and Hakka almost bilingually. Such villages are nicknamed "pun kong cham", the half-filled pitcher.

Certain occupations are exclusively Cantonese or Hakka; for instance, the oyster fisheries are entirely Cantonese, while the manufacture of bean-curd and the quarrying of stone are the exclusive sphere of the Hakka. Farmers of both sections, when they live on or near the sea, combine fishing with agricul- ture, though unlike the boat people their homes remain in their villages even though they may spend nights away on the water. Their women never go fishing.

In the New Territories, sailing and rowing boats, and the people who live in them, fall into three classes: the genuine Cantonese boat people (the Tanka), the genuine Hoklo boat people, and the farmers' boats and ferry boats. The boat people live entirely by fishing. The types of boats are not difficult to distinguish; Hakka boats, for instance. are largely used for ferry work in the eastern waters, being stoutly built, with hulls high out of the water along their whole length, and a single mast. The Hoklo are a small but virile minority, sailing and rowing the fastest boats; the men often speak Cantonese and Hakka in addition to their own language, and they live mostly in the eastern New Territories, in Tide Cove, Tolo Harbour, and Starling Inlet. There is also a winter incursion of Hoklo farmer-fishermen from Hoi Luk Fung, without their families, who fish along the west coast of the mainland, return- ing to Hoi Luk Fung in spring for the first sowing. The biggest fishing port is Cheung Chau, but the only place where the boat people live ashore is at Tai O, where hundreds of huts on piles cover the shores of the creeks.

Industrial expansion into the New Territories, chiefly at Tsun Wan and further along the south-west coast of the main- land, has introduced a new element of Shanghai labourers.

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