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 (see McCoy, 1965; Ward, 1954, 1965, and 1966). In 1952 its total population was about 390, made up of 17 Hakka and 45 Cantonese speaking families. The Hakka all lived in small grey stone houses built parallel to the water front. Most of their men were away from home, earning wages in a variety of employments in the cities of Victoria and Kowloon; the women added to the family income by rearing pigs, for whose fodder they cultivated groundnuts and sweet potatoes on patches Cleared by themselves on the hillsides, and cutting firewood and grass, which they sold to the fishermen for fuel. One Hakka man ran a small shop. All but two of the Cantonese men gained their livelihood from fishing and dwelt with their entire families on board their fishing boats. They owned no house property on land. Their boats (on average about 30 feet long and 10 feet in the beam) were moored in regular lines at permanent moorings, each man’s boat in its accustomed place, which was usually said to have been occupied by his fore-bears for several generations. Two ex-fishing families, lived ashore: one running the main shop (cf. King, 1954), the other, a very old man, paid a small wage to act as caretaker for the village temple.
