ABSTRACT
Kau Sai is a village situated on the shores of a narrow strait between two small islands in the Port Shelter area of the waters of the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. The single Hakka family was that of the temple caretaker newly employed by the fishermen to take the place of the old man who had died. Three of the Cantonese families were those of ex-fishermen now running small shops and living ashore. Fish has always been Hong Kong's most important primary product. The fishermen, for their part, though hotly contesting these landsmen's views when expressed by landsmen, yet largely shared them— or rather that section of them which described their own general poverty and conservatism. This chapter expresses that the post-peasant fishermen have long been fully enmeshed in a money economy. In the long run, the cumulative effect of all these developments will be to integrate the one-time boat people completely into the rest of the Chinese population.
