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Shui Min Yan: Hong Kong's Indigenous Boat People
| Article
# : |
19205 |
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Section : |
CULTURE
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| Issue
Date : |
7 / 1991 |
2,807 Words |
| Author
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Wilmon Menard
Wilmon Menard is a free-lancer writer who has studied and
written extensively about the people of the Pacific. He is
currently writing a book on the Vahines (women) of Tahiti. |
I first saw the fleet of Chinese junks from the deck of the world-voyaging freighter aboard which I approached the British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. Like an ancient Ming armada, careening high-pooped craft, with huge single lugsails flapping in the variable wind, they suddenly appeared in the early morning around the small rocky islands guarding the entrance to Hong Kong's Victoria Harbor; some trailed the white wake of auxiliary marine-engine propulsions.
The Norwegian captain beside me on the wing of the bridge remarked, with a tone of respect in his voice: "The fine and traditional mariners of the South China Sea, the Shui Min Yan of Hong Kong. You'll find them all the way from Shanghai to Bangkok and in Malaysia and Indonesia--wherever there is a sea commerce--holding steadfast to a life-style of a thousand years ago."
Through my binoculars I saw that there were a few three-master junks, which had sails set well forward of the huge mainsails where one would normally expect to see jibs on any other craft. Some of the sails were so fantastically patched that they resembled quilts rigged in sudden emergency; the accordion-fashioned sails of others were so ravaged by wear or gale that it seemed incredible that they could hold wind.
Once ashore in Hong Kong, I lost no time in acquainting myself with these fisherfolk, spending hours in a small sampan sculled by a lithe, pretty Shui Min Yan girl, her headgear the traditional mushroom-shaped straw hat, long, glistening black braids of hair pendulously swinging as she gracefully plied the single oar. I shortly learned that the origins of these people are shrouded in mystery. According to one popular belief, their ancestory is not pure Chinese: They were barbarians tamed by an ancient emperor. However, I could find no history of the racial stock from which they came, except that they were just the centuries-old "water people."
It did not take long to detect a certain estrangement between these fisherfolk and the Chinese who live on land. In fact, the land Chinese were quite disdainful of the boat people, treating them as lesser beings who had weak moral characters. The boat people are said to be descendants of traitors to the Emperor. One account links them to a general, Lu Tsan (c. 200 B.C.), and another says that they fled life on land to avoid hostilities during the Sung Dynasty. Whatever the case, one junk skipper, who spoke some English, told me: "We sail away from land problems."
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