ENG-1958 — Page 38

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HONG KONG ANNUAL REPORT

the last ten years. Before the war the Colony was not much affected by the movement in China to popularize Kuoyü. The war, however, took many local residents into China, and many came back afterwards with some knowledge of Kuoyü. Though this language is not normally spoken by Cantonese people in Hong Kong, a far greater number understand it now than before the war.

NEW TERRITORIES

The indigenous inhabitants of the New Territories consist of four principal groups: Cantonese, Hakka, Hoklo and Tanka. Although these groups show differences-in physical appearance, dress, organization and custom, which suggest that they are racially distinct, it is safer to treat them as linguistic rather than racial groups.

The Cantonese occupy the best part of the two principal plains in the north-western sector of the New Territories, and own a good deal of the best valley land in various other areas. The oldest villages, those of the Tang clan in Yuen Long District, have a history of continuous settlement since the late eleventh century, in the Southern Sung dynasty, with whose imperial family the clan was connected by marriage. Villages in the Tung Chung and Shek Pik valleys, on Lantau Island, date back to the early Yuan dynasty, in the late thirteenth century. Subsequent migrations have brought Cantonese from many districts of Kwangtung, and throughout the principal islands they are the majority community. The earliest families in Yuen Long District speak a form of the Namtau dialect, an offshoot of Tungkwun, not very easy for city Cantonese to follow, but city Cantonese (Punyü dialect) is the lingua franca of all the New Territories market towns, regardless of whether the particular area is predominantly Cantonese or Hakka.

The Hakka (this is their own word for themselves, and is explained as meaning strangers) began to enter this region at about the same time as the first Cantonese, or even before. The Cantonese were the more successful settlers, however, and in the areas where both groups live side by side the Hakka are always found upstream, along foothills, and in general on the worse land. At an early stage they seem to have become dependants or serfs