The Life Aquatic | Historical past Immediately
In the late Fifties, the colonial authorities of Hong Kong determined to conduct a census for the primary time because the Second World Battle. With a territory of simply over 1,000 sq. miles over land and sea, the Crown Colony was considered one of Britain’s smallest. Its measurement, nonetheless, hid the most important complexities of the duty. The remotest settlements within the rocky, mountainous archipelago might solely be reached on foot or by boat. In the meantime, estimations put the inhabitants at probably thrice its final official rely. The 1961 census can be the primary in 30 years, attributable to warfare, occupation and waves of refugee crises exacerbated by the victory of the communists and the top of the Chinese language Civil Battle in 1949. Hong Kong’s already crowded city areas swelled with squatter villages, populated by refugees talking mutually unintelligible languages.
There have been different issues, nonetheless, that weren’t so novel. The ‘floating inhabitants’, referred to as sui seung yan (‘on-water individuals’) in Cantonese, generally in derogatory phrases the ‘Tanka’, had pissed off official makes an attempt at enumeration because the census started in 1881. Considered by the native Cantonese inhabitants as a separate ethnic group, the sui seung yan had for generations lived offshore on a wide range of small boats and junks. Mainly concerned in fishing, additionally they served as lightermen and provisioners to civilian and army ships in Hong Kong’s busy port. Usually spending their total lives at sea, they had been basically nomadic, however the colony’s pure benefit of deep harbours meant a number of anchorages inside its bounds served as key factors for commerce and shelter from the typhoons that hit the south China coast.
Regardless of their lack of everlasting mooring, the sui seung yan shaped an vital a part of Hong Kong’s society and its maritime-dependent financial system. Moreover, as widespread legislation ensured any youngster born within the dominions of the Crown, land or sea, was a British nationwide, the federal government was compelled to view them as a part of their jurisdiction. Necessity demanded that any rely of the inhabitants embody them, even when this was simpler mentioned than carried out.
This was as a result of the census as carried out in Britain’s imperial domains was not solely helpful for sensible functions (akin to taxation); it was additionally symbolically vital. For Britain to mission the picture of management throughout its international empire, it needed to display complete data of its lands and inhabitants. The urge to know and rely might be seen from the early makes an attempt to seek out an environment friendly technique of counting the elusive sui seung yan.
From 1901, for instance, the colony’s large, pure harbour was blocked off by launches and divided into sections, mirroring the districts for the land census, every enumerated by a workforce of water police, seamen and census officers. As soon as a ship was counted, it was marked with white paint. Officers famous that, whereas the system was thorough, it was arduous and costly as a result of variety of boats and personnel wanted (together with replacements for enumerators taken seasick). It additionally took a number of days, which eliminated the factor of a census being an correct rely of the inhabitants on one mounted date.
Officers additionally complained of the ignorance of the sui seung yan, lots of whom had been illiterate. In 1921, enumerators had been informed to not ask for his or her nationality (as an alternative assigning it relying on birthplace) as, the census report famous, ‘such a query would puzzle extraordinarily the ignorant girls of the floating inhabitants, who would do all of the speaking when the enumerator visited their floating dwelling’. Some reported that boat individuals had been confused when it got here to their ages, most likely attributable to variations between the Gregorian and Lunar calendars. One official claimed some actively interfered by surreptitiously portray white crosses on boats that had not been counted (for a value).
Such had been the problems that the committee for the 1961 census opted to conduct a wholly separate ‘Marine Census’ only for the floating inhabitants. This included a pilot census, which partnered with UN advisers and representatives of the sui seung yan themselves. Aside from the usage of new purple census labels rather than white paint, the officers launched aerial pictures from helicopters or greater floor. With this, boats could possibly be counted, recognized and in contrast towards numbers taken from enumerators on the water. Census Commissioner Ok.M.A. Barnett pronounced it an ‘nearly infallible’ safeguard for census accuracy.
Aerial pictures was used once more within the 1966 by-census and the subsequent decennial census in 1971. Along with the astonishing visible impression of surviving images, the impression of expertise in making the sui seung yan and their boats look contained and manageable is palpable – particularly in comparison with the fears of prewar officers that boats might simply slip away unseen and uncounted.
What’s notable is that officers throughout the a long time all commented on the prepared co-operation of the boat individuals. It’s telling that there are just about no recorded incidents of outright refusal to co-operate, compared to some extra belligerent villages, whose representatives needed to be satisfied by senior officers. Although it’s troublesome to determine stable reasoning for this, we all know that radio broadcasts in 1961 and 1971 typically extolled the significance of the census in serving to the federal government plan social coverage. The revealed report of the 1961 census indicated the boat individuals because the group most in want of provisions for main training. True sufficient, within the following a long time, the Training Division moved to ascertain authorities faculties accessible to boat kids in areas close to hurricane shelters. It additionally funded non-public initiatives, such because the Po Kwong Faculty, itself situated aboard a ship.
However there could also be different, deeper causes behind the sui seung yan’s agreeing to participate within the colonial census. Traditionally a denigrated inhabitants in China, they had been barred from posts within the imperial paperwork and sure gentry features. Historians have highlighted this as a proof for his or her willingness to behave as informers and smugglers for the British in the course of the First Opium Battle. Their small, inconspicuous boats made them an important early ally within the seize of Hong Kong itself.
On the earliest public land auctions held after the institution of the colony, entrepreneurs from the group, akin to Lavatory Aqui, had been a few of the first to speculate their cash within the basis of the town. Within the remaining prewar census of 1931, boat individuals had been considerably extra seemingly (17.2 per cent) than the city land inhabitants (2.3 per cent) to claim that they had been British nationals slightly than Chinese language, second solely to rural landholders within the New Territories (35.4 per cent).
From experiences it’s apparent that the connection between census officers and the sui seung yan can’t merely be characterised as considered one of oppression or collaboration. The tensions across the census as an alternative point out the nuanced nature of energy and autonomy between the colonial state and a semi-nomadic inhabitants. It reminds us of the numerous complexities that existed inside colonialism, particularly within the decisions of indigenous peoples to take part or withdraw.
Phyllis Chan is a PhD scholar based mostly on the College of Bristol researching the historical past of Hong Kong.