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Guarding the Shoreline: Oyster Farming, Salt Production, and Fishing Along the South China Coast (1667–1978)

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 September 2021

James L. Watson Open the ORCID record for James L. Watson [Opens in a new window]
James L. Watson*
Affiliation:
Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society and Professor of Anthropology, Emeritus, Harvard University, USA
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*Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

This article explores the shoreline industries (oysters, salt, fish, lime) that emerged along the Laufaushan coast in Hong Kong's New Territories, in the period 1667 to 1978. The shoreline in question was controlled by a local security force, staffed by young men from a nearby lineage. The study draws on ethnographic research carried out by the author and local documents (of village and government origin) gathered on site.

Keywords

Pearl River Deltaoysterssaltresource protection
Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Chinese History 中國歷史學刊 , Volume 6 , Issue 1 , January 2022 , pp. 93 - 121
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

The author wishes to thank Teng Tim-sing, Liu Tik-sang, David Faure, and Hsu Cho-yun for assistance in clarifying many of the Chinese technical terms cited in this article. Patrick Hase and Liu Tik-sang helped locate critical documents regarding the delta's oyster industry and commented on key ethnographic details. Denise Ho kindly shared insights from her current research on oyster workers in Guangdong. Rubie Watson added many insights from her fieldwork in Ha Tsuen District. Thanks also to Angela Collins for preparing the maps.

References

1 Robert B. Marks argues that the Pearl River Delta 珠江三角洲 is not a “true or pure delta but rather an embayment,” a unique structure resulting from the actions of three rivers gradually filling a large coastal bay; see his Tigers, Rice, Silk, and Silt: Environment and Economy in Late Imperial South China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 32.

2 流浮山, lit. “Flowing Floating Mountain.”

3 James C. Scott, The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2009).

4 Cynthia Chou, The Orang Suku Laut of Riau, Indonesia (Oxford: Routledge, 2010); “The Water World of the Orang Suku Laut in Southeast Asia,” Trans-Regional and Trans-National Studies of Southeast Asia 4 (2016), 265–82.

5 See, for example, Antony, Robert J., “Peasants, Heroes, and Brigands: The Problems of Social Banditry in Early Nineteenth-Century South China,” Modern China 15 (1989), 123–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Unruly People: Crime, Community, and State in Late Imperial South China (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2016); Paul A. Van Dyke, The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005).

6 Dian H. Murray, Pirates of the South China Coast, 1790–1810 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1987), 14. The term “inner Asian frontier” refers to Owen Lattimore's classic study of north China, Inner Asian Frontiers of China (Boston: Beacon Press, 1940).

7 Patrick H. Hase, The Six-Day War in 1899: Hong Kong in the Age of Imperialism (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008).

8 Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911, Hong Kong Sessional Papers, 1911/17.

9 Watson, James L., “Chattel Slavery in Chinese Peasant Society: A Comparative Analysis,” Ethnology 15 (1976), 361–75CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Maurice Freedman, Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung (London: Athlone Press, 1966), 20–21; Watson, James L., “Chinese Kinship Reconsidered: Anthropological Perspectives on Historical Research,” China Quarterly 92 (1982), 589–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

11 The history of San Tin's reengagement with Man lineage communities across the border following the 1997 “return” is discussed in Watson, James L., “Virtual Kinship, Real Estate, and Diaspora Formation: The Man Lineage Revisited,” Journal of Asian Studies 63 (2004), 893–910CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 Stuart Lockhart, a leading colonial official during the transition to British rule, notes in his 1899 Report on the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong: “There are no roads in the ordinary acceptance of that term in the territory.” Hong Kong Sessional Papers, No 9/99 (177), January 6, 1899, p. 8.

13 While living in San Tin (1969–1970) I never left my house without a heavy walking cane and, like other residents, I had to be constantly on guard against canine challengers.

14 James L. Watson, “Self-Defense Corps, Violence, and the Bachelor Sub-Culture in South China: Two Case Studies,” in Village Life in Hong Kong: Politics, Gender, and Ritual in the New Territories, edited by James L. Watson and Rubie S. Watson (Hong Kong: Chinese University of Hong Kong Press), 251–65; more will be said about this organization below.

15 Cantonese: Sam-dim jung, mouh mahn-tai 三點鐘冇問題, sung in a rhythmic manner (which I can still hear in my mind's ear, more than fifty years later).

16 A handful of outsider shopkeepers and, in Ha Tsuen's case, the household of a resident priest (喃嘸佬), were exceptions to this rule. Rubie Watson and I were granted temporary residence in San Tin (1969–70, 16 months) and Ha Tsuen (1977–78, 12 months), but only after lengthy vetting by lineage leaders, with help from Assistant District Officers (Cantonese), Yuen Long District Office.

17 Hong Kong Government land records dating from 1905, kept at the Yuen Long District Office and reviewed by author in 1970 and 1977.

18 James L. Watson, Emigration and the Chinese Lineage: The Mans in Hong Kong and London (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975).

19 For a detailed ethnography of Ha Tsuen and the Teng lineage see Rubie S. Watson, Inequality Among Brothers: Class and Kinship in South China (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975); for the early history of Ha Tsuen, see Patrick H. Hase, “Notes on the History of Ha Tsuen,” in Village Studies: Settlement, Life and Politics in Traditional New Territories Communities (Hong Kong: City University Press, 2020), 45–143.

20 Author's (rather liberal) translation from a key passage in the stone tablet in Yaugungtong 友恭堂, Ha Tsuen: 尤精地學，見厦村地盤廣濶，漁鹽之利，甲於海邦，故由錦田而遷居厦村. For the full Chinese text, see David Faure 科大衛, Bernard H. K. Luk 陸鴻基, and Alice N. H. Lun Ng 吳倫霓霞, 香港碑銘彙編，第一 (Hong Kong Stone Inscriptions, Volume 1). 香港市政局出版 (Hong Kong: Urban Council, 1976), 33–36. For a detailed English translation, see Hase, Village Studies, 46–52. The history of this hall, and its role in local politics, is discussed in Watson, Rubie S., “The Creation of a Chinese Lineage: The Teng of Ha Tsuen, 1669–1751,” Modern Asian Studies 16 (1982), 69–100CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

21 One of these lineages was the Teng of Kam Tin 錦田, the original home of the Ha Tsuen Teng, and is widely recognized as the wealthiest community in the region. See Baker, Hugh D. R., “The Five Great Clans of the New Territories,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 5 (1966), 25–48Google Scholar, for a survey of lineage-communities in the New Territories.

22 The English name “Deep Bay,” appears on British colonial maps created during the mid-nineteenth century and appears, for instance, on an 1841 “Chart of the Canton River,” by James Wyld, Geographer to the Queen; see Hal Empson, Mapping Hong Kong: A Historical Atlas (Hong Kong: Government Printer, 1992), 27. Stuart Lockhart notes: “Deep Bay … is extremely shallow and at low tide miles of mud can be seen”; Papers Relating to the Extension of the Colony of Hongkong, Sessional Papers, No. 9/99 [177] (January 6, 1899), 2. According to local villagers, the original Chinese name for this bay, 后灣 or 后海灣 (lit. “Empress Bay” or “Empress Sea Bay”), draws on the popular local deity 天后 (usually translated as “Empress of Heaven”). Patrick Hase notes that 后 is also the simplified form of 後 (behind) and speculates (in a personal communication) that the bay's name originated as a geographical counterpoise to the small estuary 前海灣 that was, literary, “in front” 前 of Nantou 南頭—an important town on the west side of Deep Bay. By this reasoning, the larger body of water beyond 前海灣 would have been known as 後/后海灣—literally the “bay behind.” On Chinese language maps produced in the People's Republic the term used is 深圳湾 (Shenzhen Bay), named for the market town (turned city) nearby. The use of this name is a clear statement of Chinese political suzerainty and a rejection of British imperial ambitions.

23 R. Watson. “Creation of a Chinese Lineage,” 61–72.

24 Duck ports/jetties (yabu 鴨埠) are fenced enclosures that front on a river, a pond, or a bay; the ducks are herded in and out of the enclosure via a wood-plank wharf (Liu Tik-sang, personal communication). In local documents the term for duck port was 鴨埗.

25 Territorial rights to collect grass and brush were strictly maintained and enforced by the Teng lineage. Unauthorized fuel-gathering expeditions were a frequent a source of intercommunity conflict, as discussed in the work of Patrick H. Hase, Custom, Land and Livelihood in Rural South China: The Traditional Land Law of Hong Kong's New Territories, 1750–1950 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2013), 61–64; see also Elizabeth L. Johnson and Graham E. Johnson, A Chinese Melting Pot: Original People and Immigrants in Hong Kong's First ‘New’ City (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2019), 20ff. Dried grass was also an important industrial resource, used in lime smelteries along the Laufaushan coast; see Wong Tak-yan, “Lime-Making in Tsing Yi,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong, 24 (1984), 295.

26 Fees were charged for the privilege of drying nets along the beach; see Liu Tik-sang, “Home on the Water: Livelihood and Society of the Fishing Community in Tai Po,” in Traditions and Heritage in Tai Po, edited by Liu Tik-sang (Hong Kong: Tai Po District Council, 2008), 109, on linen nets, and Ward, Barbara E., “Kau Sai, An Unfinished Manuscript,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 25 (1985), 32–33Google Scholar on ramie nets.

27 In 1947 the Hong Kong fishing industry produced 11,293 long tons of salt/dried fish: see Hong Kong Statistics, 1947–1969 (Hong Kong Government Press: Census and Statistics Department, 1969), 78. A “long ton” equals 2,240 pounds.

28 1978 interview with the hall's financial trustee. The bulk of the ancestral hall's income derived from leases on ancestral estate lands and rent from shops in Ha Tsuen's market.

29 Xiacun xiangyue jiayin nian jiao tekan 厦村鄉約甲寅年建醮特刊 (Ha Tsuen Jiao Celebration Brochure), published locally in Yuen Long, Hong Kong New Territories, p. 28 (copies available from author). The term used in this source for Imperial deed is hongqi (紅契 “red deed”).

30 Hong Kong Administrative Report, New Territories, 1909, 13.

31 See original map as depicted in Richard Irving and Brian Morton, A Geography of the Mai Po Marches (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press. 1988), 22, which draws on H.K.R.S. 58–1-24 (17), C.S.O. no 517/1904, “Oyster Cultivation in Deep Bay,” Land Registry Office, no. 601, Aug. 27, 1908, Public Records Office, London. Similar stretches of oyster and razor clam beds were developed along the Fujian coast; see Michael Szonyi, The Art of Being Governed: Everyday Politics in Late Imperial China (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2018), 115, 120, 244n56. Large-scale scallop harvesting was a major industry in the Taipo estuary, on the eastern coast of the New Territories (Liu, Home on the Water, 104–106).

32 CSO Ext. 586/03, Oyster Bed at Ping Shan, Petition of Pang Wai-leung. Ag. C.S.P. (1903).

33 In 1966, this bed (No. 1 on Map 3) produced 30,582 catties of fresh oyster meat, 9,331 catties of dried oyster meat, and 4,138 catties of oyster sauce (1 catty 斤 = 1.3 English pounds). Source: Yuen Long District Office, 1984 memo, “Background Notes on the Oyster Industry of Deep Bay,” archives of James Hayes, copy courtesy of Patrick Hase (original deposited in the Hong Kong Collection, Hong Kong University Library).

34 The Cantonese term for individual oyster beds is hou-tin 蠔田, literally “oyster field”; the term 塘 (Cantonese Tong) is used in imperial records and covers a larger section of tidal flats, as illustrated in Map 3. There were several individual “fields” (田) in every Tong 塘. Until the late 1980s, local people wrote the character for oyster as 虫+毫, a Cantonese variation of the standard dictionary term 蠔 (see, for example, oyster harvesting pass in Figure 1). Other variations on this character also exist in local documents. The dominant species in the Pearl River Delta is the Pacific cup-oyster, Crassostrea gigas; see Brian Morton and John Morton, The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983), 242.

35 The oyster spat (幼苗) matured for one or two years in breeding beds (繁殖區) until they were relocated to maturing beds (寄肥區) for an additional year—or sometimes two years—prior to harvest; see Morton, Brian and Wong, P. S., “The Pacific Oyster Industry in Hong Kong,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 15 (1975), 139–49Google Scholar.

36 Buddhists in south China believe that oysters grow from “seeds” and, hence, are edible; see Cheung, Sidney, “Floating Mountain in Pearl River: A Study of Oyster Cultivation and Food Heritage in Hong Kong,” Asian Education and Development Studies 8 (2019), 433–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

37 On jiao rites see Choi Chi-cheung, “Reinforcing Ethnicity: The Jiao Festival in Cheung Chau,” in Down to Earth: The Territorial Bond in South China, edited by David Faure and Helen Siu (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1995), 104–22; Liu Tik-sang 廖迪生, Xianggang tianhou congbai, 香港天后崇拜 (Tianhou Worship in Hong Kong) (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing); and James L. Watson, “Standardizing the Gods: The Promotion of T'ien Hou (‘Empress of Heaven’) along the South China Coast, 960–1960,” in Popular Culture in Late Imperial China, edited by David Johnson, Andrew Nathan, and Evelyn Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985), 292–324.

38 Mammal flesh (rou 肉) and seafood (海鮮/海味, general terms for fresh/dried fish, crab, shrimp, lobsters, and other creatures that move or swim) are proscribed during the jiao.

39 Known as “Yu Wo Tong Oyster Products” (裕和塘產品).

40 The mid-1980s death of the principal oyster-sauce specialist (a member of the Teng lineage) also hastened the demise. A Ha Tsuen elder summarized the problem during a 2009 interview: “No one knew all the secret techniques of making good oyster sauce and young people were not interested in learning. They could get better jobs in Yuen Long or Kowloon.”

41 Many Ha Tsuen Teng 鄧 prefer to Romanize their surname as “Tang,” the version used on Hong Kong identification cards. The Cantonese pronunciation, however, is close to the Mandarin surname “Deng,” as in Deng Xiaoping. “Teng” is the Romanized form of this surname that was used by Ha Tsuen villagers until the 1990s.

42 Watson, James L., “From the Common Pot: Feasting with Equals in Chinese Society,” Anthropos 82 (1987), 389–401Google Scholar.

43 This changed in the 1990s when “common pot” chefs became television celebrities and were featured in Hong Kong “repatriation” (回歸) banquets; see James L. Watson, “Feasting and the Pursuit of National Unity: American Thanksgiving and Cantonese Common-Pot Dining,” in Culinary Nationalism in Asia, edited by Michelle T. King (London: Bloomsbury Academic, 1997), 252–63; Chan, Selina, “Food, Memories, and Identities in Hong Kong,” Identities: Global Studies in Culture and Power 17 (2010), 204–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 Irving and Morton, A Geography of Mai Po Marshes, 42–43.

45 Discussed in Rudolf P. Hommel, China at Work: An Illustrated Record of the Primitive Industries of China’s Masses, Whose Life is Toil, and Thus an Account of Chinese Civilization (New York: John Day, 1937), 277–78. Oyster lime was used as a caulking material for wooden boats, see Sung Ying-hsing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century: T'ien-kung K'ai-wu, translated by E-Tu Zen Sun (New York: Dover Publications, 1966), 202. Lime was also the key ingredient for caulking material for wooden boats (Sung, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century, 202). The Cantonese term for lime is 石灰, lit. “stone ash.” Irving and Morton, A Geography of Mai Po Marshes, 42–43, note that there were four lime kilns in Laufaushan, one of which was still operating in the 1980s.

46 Mak Shui-hung, “The Fish Ponds and Oyster Beds in Wang Chau Area, Hong Kong,” in Land Use Problems in Hong Kong, edited by S. G. Davis (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1964), 150.

47 Watson, James L., “Saltwater Margin: A Common Fields System in South China,” Past and Present 224 (2014), 271CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Armando da Silva, Tai Yu Shan: Traditional Ethnological Adaptation in a South Chinese Island (Taibei: Orient Cultural Service, 1972), 51.

48 Zhuangli consists of lime, fine sand, granite pebbles, liquefied sugar, and water mixed together and pounded into layers. A comparable form of lime-based concrete was used along the Fujian coast during the seventeenth century (Sung Ying-hsing, Chinese Technology in the Seventeenth Century, 202).

49 Irving and Morton, A Geography of Mai Po Marshes, 41. Lockhart, Extracts, 543–44, mentions this kiln system in his 1899 report on the New Territories. See also Naquin, Susan, “The Material Manifestations of Regional Culture,” Journal of Chinese History 3 (2019), 369CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on brickmaking in north China. Note that one of the seventeen fishing stations shown in Map 3 is called “Brick Kiln” (磚窰).

50 To cite only one example, in 1912 a gang of twenty bandits from the eastern banks of the Pearl River Delta attacked a shop in Ha Tsuen and made off with goods worth HK$4,000—a very large sum for that era; see London, Public Records Office, CO1290/400, Hong Kong Dispatches 1913, item 14223, 302–7: “Armed Robbery in the New Territories, April 7, 1913”).

51 A wide variety of security forces guarded Hong Kong commercial enterprises in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries; see Sheila E. Hamilton, Watching Over Hong Kong: Private Policing, 1841–1941 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2008). See also Patrick H. Hase, “The Alliance of Ten: Settlement and Politics in the Sha Tau Kok Area,” in Faure and Siu, eds., Down to Earth, 156–57, which discusses the “town watch” that guarded Shataukok Market (in the northeast New Territories) during the nineteenth century.

52 C. K. Yang, A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology Press, 1959), 110.

53 During my 1978 interviews with Teng elders, several noted that the term “water patrol” (水巡), and the institution it represented, was not unique to Ha Tsuen. They cited other examples in the oyster beds of Shajing 沙井 District, Guangdong Province.

54 “Elder” (Cantonese fu lo 父老 or, in formal documents, 耆老) is a local term of address for lineage males aged 61 or older (it was not used for women). Elders, many of whom were illiterate, carried stone seals (圖章) with their names carved in ornate characters.

55 According to Ha Tsuen elders, author's interviews 1978.

56 This is often referred to as the dual-ownership system, which was common throughout the Pearl River Delta; see Kamm, John T., “Two Essays on the Ch'ing Economy in Hsin-An, Kwangtung (Perpetual Tenancy),” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 17 (1977), 59–60Google Scholar; Palmer, Michael J., “The Surface-Subsoil Form of Divided Ownership in Late Imperial China: Some Examples from the New Territories of Hong Kong,” Modern Asian Studies 21 (1987), 1–119CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wickberg, Edgar, “Another Look at Land and Lineage in the New Territories, ca. 1900,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 21 (1981), 25–42Google Scholar.

57 The term 巡丁 literally means “patrol men,” (in village discourse 丁 refers to able-bodied males in their physical prime).

58 By the mid-1970s there were eighteen restaurants and tea houses at Laufaushan, employing nearly 100 people; see Yuen Long District Office Files, 1984 memo, “Background Notes on the Oyster Industry of Deep Bay,” 7.

59 Oyster harvesting permits (採蠔證) were printed in the nearby town of Yuen Long and issued by the manager of the water patrol, a post that required a relatively high level of literacy. Patrolmen referred to these permits as 出紙, “ticket” or “pass.”

60 This man had to be literate and trained in basic accounting; his primary task was to keep records, issue harvesting permits (see Figure 1), and deal with local businessmen.

61 Producing too many sons was considered a problem even among the wealthy elite in premodern China; see Patricia B. Ebrey, Family and Property in Sung China: Yüan Ts'ai's Precepts for Social Life (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 106–7. On the social problems caused by bachelors in Chinese society, see Quanbao, Jiang and Sanchez-Barricarte, Jesús, “Bare Branches and Social Stability: A Historical Perspective on China,” Frontiers of History in China 6 (2011): 538–56Google Scholar; David Ownby, “Approximations of Chinese Bandits: Perverse Rebels, Romantic Heroes, or Frustrated Bachelors,” in Chinese Femininities/Chinese Masculinities, edited by Susan Brownell and Jeffrey Wasserstrom (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002).

62 Bride-wealth (禮金) is cash paid by the family of the groom to the family of the bride. In Ha Tsuen during the mid-twentieth century these payments constituted (approximately) two years average income for an ordinary farm family—necessitating years of savings (see R. Watson, Inequality Among Brothers, 120–22).

63 The role of bachelors in Chinese society is discussed in Antony, Robert J., “Peasants, Heroes, and Brigands: The Problems of Social Banditry in Early Nineteenth-Century South China,” Modern China 15 (1989): 123–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Hudson, Valerie and Boer, Andrea, “A Surplus of Men, A Deficit of Peace,” International Security 26.4 (2001), 5–38CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

64 This view is confirmed by Morton, Brian and Wong, P. S., “The Pacific Oyster Industry in Hong Kong,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Hong Kong 15 (1975), 146Google Scholar.

65 The Hong Kong Government gave formal permission for indigenous security forces to carry arms in 1946 (Annual Report of the District Office, New Territories, 1946–47, 2). Ha Tsuen's water patrol was formally registered under the Hong Kong government's “Watchmen's Ordinance, Chap. 299, issued by authority of the Commissioner of Police for Yau Kung Tong Oyster Beds,” dated September 30, 1977. This signed document was kept in a locked safe at the Laufaushan water patrol headquarters (author's personal observation).

66 Several San Tin men, acting for their local security force (巡丁), purchased Enfield rifles in the market town of Shenzhen 1930s (author's 1969 interviews). In 1913 Hong Kong's Governor Francis Henry May gave personal permission for a shopkeeper in Ha Tsuen to purchase “modern rifles” (including a bolt-action Mauser) for protection following a bandit raid cited in note 50 above.

67 See “Laufaushan Police Post,” HKRS 478–2-12, Hong Kong Public Records Office. A much larger, fortress-like police station was built on a hill overlooking the Laufaushan coast in 1962—a date that corresponds to an upsurge of illegal migration from China.

68 1904 Hong Kong Government regulations required that oyster beds be clearly marked with bamboo poles, two feet above high-water mark, to protect shipping (Hong Kong Government Gazette, Notification no. 544, “Regulation of Oyster Fisheries at Deep Bay,” July 27, 1904).

69 These Teng patrilines owned no land of any consequence and relied on specialized services to survive in Ha Tsuen. Men from these lines also became “minders” and bodyguards for wealthy Teng landlords; see J. Watson, “Saltwater Margin,” 273–74).

70 This method differed in interesting ways from that employed in Maine lobster fisheries to demarcate territory. Concepts of territoriality in Maine lobster grounds are discussed by James M. Acheson, The Lobster Gangs in Maine (Hanover, NH: University Press of New England, 1988), 71–83); New Zealand crayfish systems were also governed by indigenous notions of territoriality; see Levine, H. B., “Controlling Access: Forms of ‘Territoriality’ in Three New Zealand Crayfishing Villages,” Ethnology 32/2 (1984), 89–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Cantonese oyster production was distinct from sea fishing, which implies catching prey in open waters. Laufaushan oyster production is best treated as a form of farming, which implies unambiguous notions of property ownership and leasing.

71 This system was still operative during my 1977–78 field research, although many local people felt that it was time to introduce scientific survey procedures.

72 The colloquial Cantonese terms (1977–78 usage) were: to-yu 拖魚, towing nets behind ocean-going boats; saat-yu 撒魚, casting nets to catch fish; mohng-yu 網魚, trapping fish in long, tubular nets; and jam yu-luhng 浸魚籠, catching fish in trap-baskets. For an outline of terminology used by Cantonese fisherpeople in the 1960s, see Eugene N. Anderson, The Floating World of Castle Peak Bay (Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1970), 42–52.

73 Cantonese aau-yu 拗魚; in other parts of the Pearl River Delta, these stationary dip-nets were called jang-paahng 罾棚. The nets were raised and lowered in tandem with the tides.

74 Several fish weirs were located near the tube-net sites shown in Map 4.

75 1978 interviews with several Teng elders who had participated in tube-net fishing (during the 1930s and early 1940s).

76 To put this sum in perspective, S. G. Davis notes that the average skilled worker (carpenter, bricklayer, plumber) earned from HK$30 to HK$40 per month in 1940. In the same year, rice sold for an average of HK$0.84 per catty see S. G. Davis, Hong Kong in its Geographical Setting (London: Collins, 1949), 155–56.

77 Watson, James L., “Hereditary Tenancy and Corporate Landlordism in Traditional China: A Case Study,” Modern Asian Studies 11 (1977), 161–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

78 During my 1978 interviews, elders in this tenant village cited the incident as a major factor in their decision to withdraw from the Ha Tsuen District Rural Committee (a local government organization) in 1952 and join the committee established by the nearby village of Ping Shan. (It was no coincidence that Ping Shan was Ha Tsuen's chief political rival.)

79 On pond fishing in the New Territories, see Sidney C. H. Cheung, “Fish in the Marsh: A Case Study of Freshwater Pond Fishing in Hong Kong,” in Food and Foodways in Asia, edited by Sidney Cheung and Tan Chee-beng (London: Routledge, 2007), 37–50.

80 Described in J. Watson, “Saltwater Margin.” Helen Liu refers to specialized groups of “boat-dwelling laborers” who worked on major reclamation dikes in the Pearl River Delta; see her essay “Recycling Tradition: Culture, History, and Political Economy in the Chrysanthemum Festivals in South China,” Comparative Studies in Society and History 32 (1990), 770.

81 Given the stereotypes that attached to full-time fishing, it was not surprising that land people in Ha Tsuen District were defensive about their use of boats. Teng patrolmen, for instance, were always careful to emphasize that they used “Western-style” rowboats, which have two oars mounted on opposite sides (until the 1980s full-time fisherpeople used sampans with a single oar mounted at the rear).

82 Anderson, Eugene N., “Prejudice and Ethnic Stereotypes in Rural Hong Kong,” Kroeber Anthropological Society Papers 37 (1967), 90–106Google Scholar, and The Floating World of Castle Peak Bay. See also Ward, Barbara E., “A Hong Kong Fishing Village,” Journal of Oriental Studies 1 (1954), 195–214Google Scholar and “Floating Villages: Chinese Fishermen in Hong Kong,” Man 59 (1959), 44–45. It is also interesting to note that, further north along the Chinese coast in Zhejiang province, fisherpeople did not suffer such a high level of social discrimination—perhaps because they also engaged in farming and other agricultural pursuits; see Micah S. Muscolino, Fishing Wars and Environmental Change in Late Imperial and Modern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 24 ff.

83 During the 1960s, people in San Tin and Ha Tsuen referred to themselves as (Cantonese) tong-yahn 唐人 (people of the Tang [Dynasty]). This term was used to distinguish themselves from “outcomers” (Cantonese, ngoi-loih yahn 外來人), such as the Hakka and Chaozhou farmers who also lived in the New Territories.

84 See Huang Xinmei 黃新美, Zhujiang kou shui shangshui humin 珠江口水上居民（疍家）的研究. 中山大學出版社 (Guangzhou: Zhongshan University Press, 1989). For a survey of speculations regarding the non-Han ethnic origins of south China's fisherpeople, starting as early as the second century CE, see Su-ching, Chen, “The Origin of the Tanka,” Nankai Social and Economic Quarterly 8 (1935), 250–73Google Scholar.

85 Barbara E. Ward, “Varieties of the Conscious Model: The Fishermen of South China,” in The Relevance of Models for Social Anthropology, edited by Michael Banton (London: Tavistock, 1965); see also Liu Tik-sang, Shuishang tange 水上嘆歌 (Hong Kong: South China Research Center, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, 2018) for a discussion of women's subculture among Hong Kong fisherpeople.

86 Helen F. Siu, Agents and Victims in South China: Accomplices in Rural Revolution (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 51–63; see also Helen Siu and Liu Zhiwei, “Lineage, Market, Pirate, and Dan: Ethnicity in the Pearl River Delta of South China,” in Empire at the Margins: Culture, Ethnicity, and Frontier in Early Modern China, edited by Pamela Crossley, Helen Siu, and Donald Sutton (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006), 285–92.

87 This term derives from 沙田 (lit. “sand fields”), the Cantonese term for polder reclamations.

88 David Faure, Emperor and Ancestor: State and Lineage in South China (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2007), 41–44 ff; see also He Xi, “Gods Adrift: Religious Ritual and Local Society in Naozhou Island,” in The Fisherfolk of Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by He Xi and David Faure (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 99–100; and Ho-fung, Hung, “Thousand-Year Opposition and Thousand-Year Resistance: The Tanka Fisherfolks in Tai O Before and After Colonialism,” Chinese Sociology and Anthropology 30.3 (1998), 75–99CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89 The parallels to other marginal groups are striking, as illustrated in ethnographic studies of fishing subcastes in south India (see Ajantha Subramanian, Shorelines: Space and Rights in South India (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2009)); burakumin leatherworkers in Japan (see George DeVos and Hiroshi Wagatsuma, Japan’s Invisible Race (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1966) and Joseph D. Harkins, Working Skin: Making Leather, Making a Multicultural Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014)); and coastal fishing communities in nineteenth century Scotland (see Nadel, Jane H., “Stigma and Separation: Pariah Status and Community Persistence in a Scottish Fishing Village,” Ethnology 23 (1984), 101–15CrossRefGoogle Scholar).

90 For a comparative perspective on the social transformations that occurred just across the New Territories border, see Anita Chan, Richard Madsen, and Jonathan Unger, Chen Village: Revolution to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009).

91 See for example, Chun, Allen, “Policing Society: The ‘Rational’ Practice of British Colonial Land Administration in the New Territories of Hong Kong, c. 1900,” Journal of Historical Sociology 3 (1990), 401–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

92 These small, single-room dwellings were constructed of wooden planks (often floating debris), with tin roofs.

93 Eugene N. Anderson, “Traditional Aquaculture in Hong Kong,” in Mountains and Water: Essays on the Cultural Ecology of South Coastal China, edited by Eugene N. Anderson and Marja Anderson (Taibei: Orient Cultural Service, 1973), 59; see also Brian Morton and John Morton, The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 1983), 243.

94 Local residents refer to the mud-scooter as hua-pan 滑板. The dictionary term is 木橇; see Morton, Brian and Wong, P. S., “The Pacific Oyster Industry in Hong Kong,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 15 (1975), 143Google Scholar (see also their photos F and G for a scooter in use). The mud-scooter allows oyster workers to “glide over the semi-liquid surface [of an oyster bed] with the ease and speed of a cyclist”; see Morton and Morton, The Sea Shore Ecology of Hong Kong, 243).

95 Liu Tik-sang. Becoming Marginal: A Fluid Community and Shamanism in the Pearl River Delta of South China (PhD diss., University of Pittsburgh, 1995), 49–51, 201–3.

96 Denise Ho (personal communication) who discusses Shajing oyster workers during the socialist era in a forthcoming study, Fields from the Sea: Cultivating Oysters in Shajing from Socialism to Postsocialism. On the pre-socialist era, see Jenyns, Soame, “Our Local Oyster,” Hong Kong Naturalist 2 (1931), 164–66Google Scholar.

97 A 1984 report by the Yuen Long District Office notes that oyster workers retired at or before age 40 “due to harsh working conditions, particularly diving for oysters”‘ see Yuen Long District Office, 1984 memo, “Background Notes on the Oyster Industry of Deep Bay,” 8, see note 33 above).

98 The “west” is also the land of the setting sun and the yin 陰 principle, characterized by female concerns; the “east,” by contrast, is the direction of the rising sun and the yang 陽 principle, associated with life, light, and male concerns. Patrick Hase (personal communication) speculates that the term might also refer to those who lived on the western shores of Deep Bay.

99 Eugene Cooper, The Wood Carvers of Hong Kong: Craft Production in the World Capitalist Periphery (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 49–50.

100 Bromhall, J. D., “On the Biology and Culture of the Native Oyster of Deep Bay, Hong Kong,” Hong Kong University Fisheries Journal 2 (1958), 93–108Google Scholar; Jenyns, “Our Local Oyster,” 164, notes that oysters cannot survive in water with a salinity level lower than three percent. The danger month is July, when the Pearl River's discharge is highest; see Xu, Jie, “Long-Term and Seasonal Changes in Deep Bay, Hong Kong,” Estuaries and Coasts 33 (2010), 412, 414CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

101 Jacob Eyferth, Eating Rice from Bamboo Roots: The Social History of a Community of Handicraft Papermakers in Rural Sichuan, 1920–2000 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009), 6–11.

102 Trade networks for salt and related products in the upriver districts of south China are discussed by Steven B. Miles, Upriver Journeys: Diaspora and Empire in Southern China (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2017).

103 These claims are supported by the 1858 account by Rev. Rudolph Krone, who mentions salt pans in the Yuen Long area, which incorporates Ha Tsuen; see Krone, R., “A Notice on the Sanon District” (reprinted from 1858 original), Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society 7 (1976), 119Google Scholar. By 1903, however, a British colonial map notes that these pans were “disused”; see Irving and Morton, A Geography of Mai Po Marshes, 9.

104 The mansion, known as 大夫第 (House of Imperial Title Holder), is now a government-recognized historical monument. It was in a dilapidated state in 1969 but was renovated, at Hong Kong Government expense, in 1988. The building, with its honor boards (功名牌) in Manchu script, has become a major tourist attraction. See P. D. W. Bouton, The Heritage of Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Antiquities and Monuments Office, Government Printer, 1992), 60–61; Victor Kwok and Dominic Lam, Rural Architecture in Hong Kong (Hong Kong: Government Information Service, 1979), 115–17.

105 Fung Chi-ming and Elizabeth Sinn, Yuen Long Historical Relics and Monuments (Hong Kong: Yuen Long District Board, 1996), 119, mention this case in their study of New Territories oral history. There was speculation among Teng elders in the 1970s that the name for their village, Ha Tsuen 厦村, derives from a mansion (厦/廈) built by this ancestor near the Yim Chong salt yard.

106 Interviews with Teng elders, including Mr. Teng Mun-kwong (1977). See also Hase, “Notes on the History of Ha Tsuen,” 85–86, on the history of salt making (brine boiling) in nineteenth-century Ha Tsuen.

107 These reclamations were associated with the original, early twentieth-century development of Tin Shui Wai 天水圍 by a consortium of overseas Chinese—primarily from California—that acquired land rights to the marshland north of Ha Tsuen. Armando da Silva discusses this development in his excellent study of land reclamation in the New Territories, Native Management of Coastal Wetlands in Hong Kong: A Case Study of Wetland Change at Tin Shui Wai Agricultural Lot, New Territories (PhD diss., University of Hawaii, Manoa, 1977). In the 1990s and early 2020s, Tin Shui Wai was transformed into one of Hong Kong's largest “New Towns.”

108 This area had salt fields dating from the thirteenth century; see Hase, Patrick H., “Eastern Peace: Sha Tau Kok Market in 1925,” Journal of Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 33 (1996), 147–85Google Scholar. Although the Tou village in question did not adjoin the coast, lineage elders claimed that their ancestral hall held Qing Imperial title to the subsoil rights (地骨, lit. “earth bones”) of the salt pans in question.

109 Interviews conducted by the author in Lam Tei San Tsuen, located on the boundary between Ha Tsuen and Tuen Mun Districts, in 1978.

110 According to Hase, “Eastern Peace,” 184, salt workers along the coast in the northeast New Territories were ranked at the “very bottom of the social scale.” The best descriptions of salt making in the Pearl River Delta are found in Armando da Silva, Tai Yu Shan, 30; see also Liu Tik-sang and Cheung Siu-woo 張兆和, Tai O Island 大澳 (Hong Kong: Joint Publishing Company, 2006), 43–48. See also Shu-yen, Lin, “Salt Manufacture in Hong Kong,” Hong Kong Naturalist 10 (1940), 34–38Google Scholar.

111 The Cantonese suffix lo 佬 in this context is derogatory and perhaps best translated as “fellow” or “guy.” See James L. Watson, “Funeral Specialists in Cantonese Society,” in Death Ritual in Late Imperial and Modern China, edited by James L. Watson and Evelyn S. Rawski (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 117–18 on uses of the term lo 佬 in village discourse (to be distinguished from lo 老 used in the term for elder, 父老).

112 Patrick H. Hase, “Land Hunger and Emigration from the New Territories Area in the Late Nineteenth Century,” in Studies in Hong Kong History and Society: Conference Proceedings 香港的歷史與社會研究 (Chinese University of Hong Kong, June 2017), 130–53.

113 Xin'an County (Guangdong) Gazetteer 新安縣志, 1819 edition (Taibei: Ch'eng-wen Reprints), 290–94. (Page numbers in text refer to Ch'eng-wen Publishers modern pagination.) The Deep Bay saltworks were quite small in comparison to the massive enterprises located in Jiangsu Province; see, for example, Ping-ti, Ho, “The Salt Merchants of Yang-Chou: A Study of Commercial Capitalism in Eighteenth Century China,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies 17 (1954), 130–68Google Scholar and Thomas A. Metzger, “The Organization and Capabilities of the Ch'ing State in the Field of Commerce: The Liang-huai Salt Monopoly, 1740–1840,” in Economic Organization in Chinese Society, edited by W. E. Willmott (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1972).

114 Peter Y. L. Ng and Hugh Baker, New Peace County: A Chinese Gazetteer of the Hong Kong Region (Hong Kong: Oxford University Press, 1983), 47.

115 Reed mats were placed on wooden beds (smooth planks suspended on two saw-horse stands) that most village adults slept on until the 1970s—when western-style mattresses became popular. The plank-beds were “firm” in the extreme; necks were supported by cloth pillows filled with unhusked rice.

116 The water resistant Phragmites communis was an excellent material for thatching, rain cloaks, bindings, foot ware, rope, salt bags, and matting; see Irving and Morton, A Geography of Mai Po Marshes, 39. On thatched huts (茅屋) in the Pearl River Delta, see Liu Tik-sang, “Zhujiang sanjiaozhou dongyong diqu ‘weikou’ shenghou bianqian” 珠江三角洲東涌地區“圍口”生活變遷 (Social Change in a Pearl River Delta “Enclosure” System), in Congcanghai shatian dao fengchingshui xiang: zhujiang sanjiaozhou dongbu shehuishang taibianqian yanjiu 從滄海沙田到風情水鄉：珠江三角洲東涌社會生態變遷研究, edited by He Lin 何霖 and Liu Tik-sang (Beijing: Zhongguo xiju chubanshe, 2013), 13–15.

117 See, for example, Hayes, James, “Deep Bay Marshes,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 13 (1973), 168Google Scholar (see plate 15 for a photo of hyacinth gatherers in action).

118 Reed gatherers constituted a recognized social category and existed in many parts of China, including the extensive sandbars at the mouth of the Yangzi River; see Hilary J. Beattie 1979, Land and Lineage in China: A Study of T'ung-Ch'eng County, Anhwei, in the Ming and Ch'ing Dynasties (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), 29, 34. “Grass cutters” who lived along riverbanks in south China were often mentioned in official sources as an occupational category prone to banditry; see Antony, Robert J., “Peasants, Heroes, and Brigands: The Problems of Social Banditry in Early Nineteenth-Century South China,” Modern China 15 (1989), 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

119 This term is also cited in Helen Siu and Liu Zhiwei, “Lineage, Market, Pirate, and Dan: Ethnicity in the Pearl River Delta of South China,” in Empire at the Margins, 290; see also Liu Tik-sang, “Home on the Water: Livelihood and Society of the Fishing Community in Tai Po,” in Traditions and Heritage in Tai Po, edited by Liu Tik-sang (Hong Kong: Tai Po District Council, 2008), 118. Perhaps the best English rendition of 水流柴 is “flotsam and jetsam.” Another San Tin term for delta itinerants was “marsh people” (Cantonese sap-dei yahn 濕地人, lit. “damp-place [marsh] people”), used for shrimp trappers and seaside scavengers.

120 Paul Van Dyke describes large sampans that transported thousands of ducks to rice paddies along the delta “to clear them of frogs and insects”; the herd was disciplined with a long switch (The Canton Trade: Life and Enterprise on the China Coast, 1700–1845 (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2005), 60.

121 This seems to have been true in other parts of China. Speaking of a village in Yunnan, Fei Hsiao-t'ung and Chang Chih-li observe: “[Duck raising] is supposed to be a somewhat discreditable occupation, carried on only by the poor … Only those who do not care about face can engage in this occupation, it is said”; see their classic study, Earthbound China: A Field Study of Rural Economy in Yunnan (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1948), 236. C. K. Yang likewise did not have good things to say about duck herding; see A Chinese Village in Early Communist Transition (Boston: M.I.T. Press, 1959), 65–66.

122 On chicken raising in Cantonese villages, see Liu Tik-sang, “Custom, Taste and Science: Raising Chickens in the Pearl River Delta Region, South China,” Anthropology and Medicine 15 (2008), 7–18.

123 In 1969 duck herders in San Tin District were paid 15 percent of the sale price.

124 A system referred to in the anthropological literature as patrilocal residence; see Watson, Rubie S., “Class Differences and Affinal Relations in South China,” Man 16 (1981), 593–615CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

125 James Hase, “Chinese Customary Law: Family Cases from Shek Pik, Lantau, New Territories of Hong Kong,” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society Hong Kong 57 (2017), 212. In his study of social discrimination in late imperial China, Anders Hansson concludes that “Dan people rarely intermarried with families of land[based] people.” See Anders Hansson, Chinese Outcasts: Discrimination and Emancipation in Late Imperial China (Leiden: Brill, 1996), 122.

126 The following public notice was posted in San Tin's market in 1977: “All residents should watch for new graves in our district. Only those graves authorized by the San Tin Village patrol are permitted in our territory. If you see any strange graves that do not belong to local people please report this to us immediately. Signed, Man—-, Trustee of Founding Ancestor's Estate.” On burial restrictions in New Territories lineage territory, see Chan Kwok-shing, “Hillside Burials: Indigenous Rights in the New Territories of Hong Kong,” Anthropology Today 19.6 (2003): 7–9.

127 Retired village patrolmen (巡丁) in Ha Tsuen reported (during 1978 interviews) that they did not do the actual exhumation work themselves; this was contracted-out to funeral specialists (仵/忤葬佬 or, alternatively, 仵作佬) associated with coffin shops in the nearby market town of Yuen Long (discussed in J. Watson, “Funeral Specialists,” 126). In the late 1970s patrolmen began reporting rogue burials to the Hong Kong Police; henceforth government authorities dealt with disposal (by cremation rather than dumping).

128 Eugene Anderson notes that fisherpeople who resided in Castle Peak Bay (12 miles south of Laufaushan) also buried their dead on delta islands, until the mid-twentieth century when the Hong Kong Government set aside a special cemetery for this purpose; see Anderson, “Floating World,” 195 and personal communication, June 22, 2020. Laufaushan did not have a cemetery of this type, primarily because it was not a harbor (offering protection from typhoons) and thus had no permanent “floating village” of the type studied by Anderson.

129 Based on interviews with Teng water patrolmen, 1978. Most of the Laufaushan oyster workers retired to Shajing in their late forties and fifties; only a handful died in the New Territories.

130 See for example, FC021/1420, file no. FEH 18/1, Part D, 1975, Public Records Office, London, an account of four dead young people found along the Laufaushan coast.

131 The colloquial Cantonese for this phrase is Kuih-deih mouh likh-sih 佢哋冇歷史, literally: “They do not have [any] history.” Teng and Man elders sometimes used it as a term of dismissal during my four decades of active field research. For parallels in European contexts, see the classic study by Eric R. Wolf, Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1982).

132 Oyster workers represent an interesting variation on this theme: They did “have history” in their home district of Shajing, where they contributed to the construction of a major Tianhou 天后 temple and a museum celebrating the trials and tribulations of their trade (photographs and notes on Shajing, courtesy of Denise Ho). The Chan lineage of oyster specialists also maintained a written genealogy in their home district of Shajing (Liu Tik-sang, personal communication). In the New Territories, however, the only visible evidence of oyster workers’ contributions to local institutions is a large wooden model of an oyster boat presented by the local Oyster Union 蠔業聯會 to the local Tianhou temple on the coast near Laufaushan. Members of this organization also participated in annual flower-cannon (花炮會) competition at this temple.

133 This Cantonese phrase (ngoh-deih-ga lihk-si, 我哋嘅歷史) was always pronounced with deliberation and solemnity. Elders who used it in public pronouncements never failed to command attention.

134 The increase of fresh water being discharged into the Pearl River during the 1970s also led to a lowering of salinity in Deep Bay, seriously affecting oyster development; see Silvia Chang, “Saving Hong Kong Oysters from Disaster,” China Daily.com, August 4, 2016.

135 For a description of deep-water oyster production see Lee, Miriam and Cheung, Sidney, “The World is Your Oyster,” Hong Kong Discovery 98 (2017), 14–43Google Scholar. New Territories residents still remember the pollution scares of the 1980s and few will eat oysters raised in Hong Kong waters.

136 “Desakotas [a term derived from the Bahasa Indonesian for ‘village and town’] are transformed areas that are no longer clearly urban or rural … but a blending of the two”; Gregory E. Guldin, “Desakotas and Beyond: Urbanization in Southern China,” Ethnology 35 (1996), 265. On the despoliation of the New Territories, see Malcolm Merry, The Unruly New Territories (Hong Kong: Hong Kong University Press, 2020), 269–70.

137 The container “mountain” (山), as one elder called it, blocked the good geomantic influences (風水) that are said to account for the success of the Teng lineage during the preceding seven centuries.

138 See, for example, Chi-kwong Law, A Study of Tin Shui Wai New Town: Final Report (Hong Kong: Department of Social Work and Social Administration, University of Hong Kong, 2009).

139 Discussed in J. Watson, “Saltwater Margin,” 282.

140 See Jeffrey Twu, “One Country, Two Systems Is Full of Contradictions: Just Look at the Hong Kong China Border,” Quartz, June 27, 2017, qz.com/1012174. (2015 is the last year when immigration figures for Lok Ma Chau station were posted on-line and available to the public.)

141 Watson, James L., “Virtual Kinship, Real Estate, and Diaspora Formation: The Man Lineage Revisited,” Journal of Asian Studies 63 (2004), 893–910CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

142 Starting in 2010, Hong Kong's Grayline Bus Company has offered a “Hong Kong Wetlands Delight Tour,” featuring Laufaushan and the surrounding countryside.