1. The term "Punti" is sometimes translated to mean "indigenous" or "native" but does not usually refer to the pre-Chinese (pre-Han) inhabitants. "Punti" is used in several different ways depending on the context and the person using the term. The most common uses are as follows. (1) It is used by Cantonese speakers to refer to the descendants of Cantonese-speaking people who lived in the New Territories before the British. This includes those who successfully "passed'' as Cantonese. (2) It is used to refer to the Chinese people who were in the New Territories before the British, regardless of whether they were Hakka speakers or Cantonese speakers. (3) It is used very broadly to refer to people who are not "recent immigrants" to the New Territories. This generally means people who arrived before the late 1940s. Punti can be juxtaposed to Hakka in some cases, and can include Hakka in others. In most cases, however, the term refers to pre-British Yue-speaking inhabitants.

2. As Faure defines it, the Cantonese term heung (xiang) can be used to describe a cluster of villages so close that they appear to merge together, as a larger community including villages and village clusters, or to describe a "cluster in which each village forms a distinct unit," as in Lung Yeuk Tau, also known as Lung Shan Heung (1986:181).

3. Anthropological research has been conducted among several of the higher-order lineages in the New Territories. See R. Watson (1985, 1982) for information on the Teng of Ha Tsuen; Potter on the Teng of Ping Shan (1968); J. Watson on the Man (1975); Baker on the Liao (1968); and Faure (1986) on Eastern New Territories lineages, especially Teng and Pang.

4. It is interesting to note the early censuses used language as the means of distinguishing between Hakka and Punti (Hong Kong Government 1911). Later censuses (1962, 1966) still distinguished between "usual language," but in this case it was between Hakka and Cantonese (the Punti language, strictly speaking is not the same as Cantonese—the language spoken in Canton—is not often understood by Cantonese speakers, and is sometimes mistaken for Hakka). In the 1971 census, language is given as a factor of place of origin. In the 1981 census there is no category of language, only place of origin defined so broadly as to include all of Guangdong in one category; thus, it is impossible to determine the size of the Hakka population as their "place of origin" is the same as that of the Cantonese. Census data for 1971 and 1981 suggest that there are far more Chaozhou than Hakka. This is misleading as most Hakka have been in Hong Kong far longer than the Chaozhou and therefore their "usual language" is often Cantonese. The bulk of the Chaozhou population live in urban areas, while many Hakka remain in the rural New Territories (see Sparks 1976a, 1976b).

5. The official boundary of Shung Him Tong, used for administrative purposes and for population census information, stretches over a far wider area than the "social" boundary of Shung Him Tong. The fact that there are at least two ideas about what is meant by Shung Him Tong becomes clear with the following example: the official population of Shung Him Tong is thirteen hundred, and this number is used to determine the number of village representatives to which Shung Him Tong is entitled. But church members say that "almost everyone in Shung Him Tong village goes to church" and that "95 percent of the people in Shung Him Tong are Christian and all are Hakka." During the year I attended Shung Him Tong Sunday services, less than two hundred people attended church each week, and many were from outside of Shung Him Tong, even with its boundaries most broadly defined. Shung Him Tong, as it is represented in this study, is the Shung Him Tong of Hakka Christians. The question of who is considered to "belong" to the community is addressed in the following chapter.

6. This is an unpublished address presented by K. M. A. Barnett while serving as District Commissioner of the New Territories, now held at the Colonial Secretariat Library, Hong Kong.

7. See Pasternak (1983:12-26) for an example of the unwelcome reception of Hakka in Taiwan.

8. The manuscript was compiled by Pang Lok Sam in 1934. It was later mimeographed. A photocopy of a mimeographed copy is in the Chinese collection of the Hong Kong University Library. It is handwritten and poorly duplicated so not all parts are legible.

9. It is unclear whether the immigrants were accompanied by their families. Women and children are rarely mentioned in the history of the village or in the family genealogies. Daughters may be listed but their names are rarely recorded, nor are those of their husbands and children.

10. It is not clear whether the tenant farmers Ling and Chan who Ling Kai Lin invited to farm his land are the families of Ling Ban Chung, Ling Ban Sum, Chan Yuk Choi, and Chan Kwai Choi.

11. One informant was quick to tell me that the earlier name of Shung Him Tong meaning "Always Prosper" need not refer to material wealth, but could also mean "spiritual wealth," or an increasing number of believers.

12. See Baker (1968:36-37) for an example of the dislike of Christians in Sheung Shui.

13. The Hong Kong property of the Basel mission had been transferred to the Hong Kong church during World War I, but the Tsung Tsin mission, or the "Hakka church," did not gain its independence until 1928. When the Germans lost the war, Tsung Tsin mission became independent largely for economic reasons. The Basel mission churches in China were not affected by the war as were their churches in Africa, India, and Hong Kong, since the German missionaries who belonged to the Basel mission were allowed to remain (see Pang 1934; also Jenkins 1989).

14. According to W. Lo (1965:95-96, 113), in imperial China the Punti often prevented recent Hakka immigrants from registering with the local government so that they would not be eligible "to participate in the local civil service examination, for which each district had a fixed quota." As early as 1789 a separate quota was set up for the Hakka in certain parts of Guangdong in an attempt to reduce the "conflicts between the minority groups and the rest of the population" (Chang 1955:81). See Lun Ng (1984) concerning village education in the New Territories region during the Qing dynasty.

15. In a government memo (Hong Kong Government 1923), the colonial secretary inquired of the north district officer whether the school was to be a commercial or a philanthropic venture. The north district officer responded:

Mr. Pang has collected subscriptions from the local Hakka community for the purchase of the land and building of a school, after that the school will be dependent on fee and government aid. There will probably be about 40 pupils paying HK$5 or HK$6 per annum. This will scarcely pay the salary of the teacher ... so there is unlikely to be any commercial profit. I believe this to be a genuine case and worthy of assistance.

16. It is difficult to generalize about where Hakka non-Christians sided in these disputes. In some cases Hakka non-Christians turned to the powerful Hakka Christian leaders for support in their own disagreements with Punti villagers. In the case of the dispute with On Lok described in this chapter, local Hakka might well have sided with the people of Shung Him Tong because, like the Lung Yeuk Tau Punti, they could also benefit from the new path through On Lok. In other conflicts that were specifically between Hakka Christians and Punti, such as in the conflict over the new church site described in Chapter 5, most local non-Christian Hakka appear to have attempted to remain neutral rather than risk offending their Punti neighbors.

17. According to the European missionary,

On the night of the sixteenth of this month, as I was studying at Chung Him School, I heard about fifteen shots coming from the direction of On Lok village. All the people in the room were stunned and knew not what to do. Others in the village were so frightened that they closed their doors and dared not go out. On the night of the seventeenth, Mr. Kwong, a detective, visited Pang Lok Sam to investigate the shots fired the previous night. It had been reported to him that some Shung Him Tong villagers had wanted to destroy the barricade set up at the Shung Him bridge, that On Lok villagers had had to fire to warn them, and that Pang Lok Sam and our villagers had fired back. After hearing this, Pang Lok Sam wanted to establish his innocence, so he presented his two rifles and pistol together with the 150 bullets to the Sheung Shui police station for examination. The bullets had been registered before the incident took place and all of them were accounted for; solid evidence that Pang Lok Sam did not fire at 7:30 P.M. on the sixteenth (in Pang 1934:19).