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Rural Society: Hong Kong's New Territories

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 February 2009

James L. Watson
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Extract

At midnight on 30 June 1997 the 99-year lease on the New Territories expires. Although the Chinese Government has yet to announce final plans for a resumption of control, the most recent indications are that British administration will cease on that date It is commonly agreed that Hong Kong cannot survive as an “independent territory” without the New Territories (technically the island of Hong Kong and parts of Kowloon south of Boundary Street are not involved in the 1898 lease). The purpose of this short article is to acquaint the general reader with some aspects of the history and social structure of the New Territories, and the unique Chinese sub-culture that has emerged.

Type
Hong Kong Briefing
Information
The China Quarterly , Volume 95 , September 1983 , pp. 480 - 490
Copyright
Copyright © The China Quarterly 1983

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References

1. Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 120, No. 18 (5 05 1983), pp. 12–14Google Scholar;

2. The best source on the lease is Wesley-Smith, Peter, Unequal Treaty, 1898–1997: China, Great Britain and Hong Kong's New Territories (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, East Asian Historical Monographs, 1980)Google Scholar;

3. Groves, Robert G., “Militia, market and lineage: Chinese resistance to the occupation of Hong Kong's New Territories in 1899,” Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (hereafter cited as JHKBRAS), Vol. 9 (1969), pp. 31–64Google Scholar;

4. See Wesley-Smith, Unequal Treaty and Groves, “Militia, market and lineage.”.

5. British administration of the rural hinterland surrounding the colonial acquisition of Weihaiwei in Shandong province (also acquired in 1898) followed similar patterns; many of the British officials who established the New Territories Administration also served in Weihaiwei. See Atwell, Pamela, “British Mandarins and Chinese reformers: political, economic and social change in Weihaiwei, 1898–1938,” Ph.D. thesis, School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, 1983Google Scholar;

6. There have been major disorders affecting the New Territories. In 1956 right-wing workers (mostly émigrés from China) rioted in the industrial town of Tsuen Wan but the disturbance did not spread into the rural areas. A more serious set of disorders occurred in 1967 during the Cultural Revolution. Left-wing elements demonstrated and provoked riots in many parts of the New Territories, particularly along the border. For the most part, however, these actions did not involve large numbers of indigenous villagers.

7. See Lethbridge, Henry J., “Hong Kong under Japanese occupation: changes in social structure,” in Jarvie, I. C. and Agassi, J. (eds), Hong Kong: A Society in Transition (New York: Praeger, 1969), pp. 77–127Google Scholar;

8. On the anti-Japanese resistance movement see Blake, C. Fred, Ethnic Groups and Social Change in a Chinese Market Town (Honolulu: University Press of Hawaii. Asian Studies Monograph 27. 1981), pp. 31–35Google Scholar;

9. See Aijmer, Goran, “Migrants into Hong Kong's New Territories: on the background of outsider vegetable farmers,” Ethnos (Stockholm), Vol. 1, No. 4 (1973), pp. 57–70Google Scholar and Strauch, Judith, “Landlord and tenant in rural Hong Kong: traditional land tenure in a rapidly changing world,” paper presented at the American Anthropological Association (1979)Google Scholar.

10. On the voucher system see Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 116 (25 06 1982), pp.72–73Google Scholar;

11. Ha Tsuen village, surveyed in 1978 by Watson, Rubie S.; figures cited in her “Class and marriage in a Chinese lineage,” Ph.D. thesis, London School of Economics, Department of Anthropology (1982)Google Scholar;

12. On the social aspects of marketing see Skinner, G. William, “Marketing and social structure in rural China, part I,” Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 24 (1964), pp. 2–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

13. For census figures see Hong Kong Population and Housing Census: 1971 Main Report (Hong Kong: Government Press, 1972)Google Scholar and Annual Report (Hong Kong: Government Press) for more recent yearsGoogle Scholar.

14. Far Eastern Economic Review, Vol. 117, No. 32 (6 08 1982), pp. 48–51Google Scholar;

15. Baker, Hugh, “The five great clans of the New Territories,” JHKBRAS, Vol. 6 (1966), pp. 25–47Google Scholar;

16. See Cohen, Myron L., “The Hakka, or ‘guest people ‘: dialect as a sociocultural variable in Southeastern China,” Ethnohistory, Vol. 15 (1968), pp. 237–92CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

17. Baker, Hugh, A Chinese Lineage Village: Sheung Shui (London: Frank Cass, 1968), pp. 39–41Google Scholar;

18. Cantonese ancestral halls have dozens of tablets dedicated to individual ancestors while Hakka halls have only one, collective tablet. The lineage in question had two halls, one Hakka-style and the other Cantonese.

19. Ward, Barbara E., “Varieties of the conscious model: thefishermen of South China,” in Banton, M. (ed.), The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology (New York: Praeger, 1965), pp. 113–37Google Scholar;

20. Anderson, , Eugene, N. Jr, Essays on South China's Boat People (Taibei: Orient Cultural Service, 1972)Google Scholar;

21. On the major lineages in the New Territories see Potter, Jack M., Capitalism and the Chinese Peasant (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1968)Google Scholar; Watson, Rubie S., “The creation of a Chinese lineage: the Teng of Ha Tsuen,” Modern Asian Studies, Vol. 16 (1982), pp. 69–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Baker, A Chinese Lineage Village.

22. On the different varieties of kinship organizations in the New Territories see Watson, James L., “Chinese kinship reconsidered,” The China Quarterly, No. 92 (1982), pp. 589–622CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

23. District Commissioner of the New Territories, Annual Departmental Report (Hong Kong: Government Press, 1972), p. 18Google Scholar;

24. See Johnson, Graham E., “In-migration and community expansion in Hong Kong: the case of Tsuen Wan,” Journal of Oriental Studies (Hong Kong), Vol. 11 (1973), pp. 107–14Google Scholar; and Lam-yan, Chau and Siu-kai, Lau, “Development, colonial rule, and intergroup conflict in a Chinese village in Hong Kong,” Human Organization, Vol. 41 (1982), pp. 139–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar;

25. These figures are rough estimates. See Watson, James L., “Hong Kong villagers in the British catering trade,” in Watson, J. L. (ed.), Between Two Cultures: Migrants and Minorities in Britain (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1977), pp. 181–213Google Scholar for a discussion of the Chinese communities in Europe.

26. 85 to 90% of the able-bodied males from this village work abroad; it is Hong Kong's largest “emigrant community.” See Watson, James L., Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975)Google Scholar;