ENG-1961 — Page 37

22

REVIEW

from the chimney, and the counting sorters clacking out their figures as the anonymous punch-cards passed through.

To spread the net so that no person was left out (the technical term is reticulation) required good maps and recent intelligence of new building. One of the difficulties here is the speed and efficiency of Hong Kong builders. Few are the places in the urban area where the hiss and smack of a pile-driver cannot be heard, or where an old building cannot be seen coming down or a new one going up. Many Government departments maintain nearly up- to-date records, no more than six months old, of new domestic construction, but in six months a row of old houses can be demolished and a sixteen-storey block erected in their place. Good maps were available on a scale of fifty or one-hundred feet to the inch of most of the town, two-hundred feet to the inch of outlying parts of the urban area and four-hundred feet to the inch of the country. These were supplemented by aerial photographs supplied by the Royal Air Force, regular reports of new buildings approved, passed for occupation and occupied, and for the squatter areas close liaison between the census administration and the resettlement authorities. But even this might not be enough. Huts can be built very quickly, and every squatter area began with a single hut. So every district census supervisor was given regular helicopter flights over his district as census day approached, to observe in particular any new paths, new hillside cultivation or other evidence of fresh habitation.

Different methods were required for the boat people. Every boat in harbour, or in any of the bays of the Colony or New Territories, when enumeration began at dawn four days before Lunar New Year, was visited and as soon as the census work was done a lucky red label was stuck conspicuously on the mast, and another on the stern. Boats entering harbour were way-laid by census launches at the entrance and either enumerated and labelled there and then or (if they had fish on board) directed to the wholesale fish market where special squads of enumerators were awaiting them. Any boat found moored with some of the crew on shore was dealt with by summoning the missing people (who in practice seldom go far from their boats) or by retaining the boat licence which could be reclaimed by the master calling at the nearest port census office with the missing people. Finally during the enumeration each bay