The most radical change in the colony’s fleet, however, has come from within. The Chinese junk, famous throughout the world as the symbol of Hong Kong, has dropped its picturesque sails; more than 4,000 of them now churn along under Diesel power. The Chinese junk is as diverse in its size, shape and function as the infinitely varied Chinese people. There are sixteen different classes of junks in Hong Kong alone, and none of them closely resembles a junk from any other part of China. They are single-, double- and triple-masted; they are little craft 25 feet long or lumbering giants of 100 foot length. To a colony fisheries expert, “junk” is only a loose generic term; he immediately classifies it according to the job it is designed for, as a long-liner (four classes by size), seiner (two main types, depending on the net it uses), trawler (four main types, depending on the kind of trawling it does), gill-netters, fish-collecting junks and several miscellaneous varieties.
Since the British came to Hong Kong, the junks operating in local waters have borrowed design features from European ships. The big fishing junks of Hong Kong, with their high stern, horizontal rails and the large, perforated rudder pivoting in a deep, vertical groove on the stern, resemble no other junks in the world. Like junks from all parts of China, and even the boats of ancient Egypt, they have an oculus, or painted image of the human eye, on their bow. In fishing junks, the center of the eye is directed downward so that it can keep a close watch on the fish; trading junks have the eye aimed higher so that it can scan the distant horizon. The bow eyes of the old-fashioned sailing junks no longer have much to look forward to. The deep-sea trawlers, operating as far as 250 miles out, are all mechanized. The sailing junks operate closer to shore, but the cargo-carrying junks in Victoria harbor are predominantly mechanized. To anyone who has crossed the harbor recently it is obvious that the sails are disappearing at an alarming rate.
The fishermen who live and work on junks instead of viewing them abstractly from a distance have not yet formed a Committee for the Preservation of the Romantic Junk. After approaching mechanization with reluctance and suspicion in 1948, they became convinced that the big sailing junk is through. Motorized junks can reach the distant fishing grounds much faster, they catch a lion’s share of the fish, and they return to market far ahead of sail competition. Because of their greater speed and stability, they can venture out in the typhoon season when sail craft are obliged to stick closer to shore. Within ten years, fishing authorities say, the sailing junk will have become virtually extinct.
It has been proposed that the Hong Kong Tourist Association hire a couple of junks to sail up and down the harbor for the sole delectation of tourists, but no official action has been taken. Tourists can travel 40 miles west to Macao where the harbor is still crowded with sailing junks. Here the sails persist only because the Macao fishing industry lacks the low-interest loans available to Hong Kong fishermen through the Fish Marketing Organization and the fishing co-ops. Without such credit, very few fishermen could afford Diesel engines or other motor-driven equipment. In Hong Kong, even the little 4-horsepower engines of sampans are bought on credit.
Now that progress has reached the fishing fleet, it will not be satisfied until it changes everything. Under the direction of such knowledgeable men as Jack Cater, co-op and fisheries commissioner, Lieutenant Commander K. Stather, fishing master, and Wing-Hong Cheung, craft technician on modern junk design, the whole junk-building industry is being turned upside down.
For centuries, the junk has been built without plans or templates, with the designers proceeding entirely by habit and skill. This is relatively easy in building a 15-foot sampan, but when it is extended to 100-ton vessels of 90-foot length it becomes both art and architecture. The size of the investment, by local standards, is staggering: $40,000 for a large trawler and its mechanized equipment, and around $7,000 for a mechanized 40-footer.
There are nearly 100 junk-building yards in the colony, but no more than ten of these are capable of building a junk from blueprints. The fisheries department is conducting boat-design classes in three major fishing centers, Aberdeen, Shau Kei Wan and Cheung Chau, and training builders to read plans. The classes are held at night to avoid conflict with working hours, and the courses are for three months.
The junk-building yards present a vivid picture of a civilization in transition. At one yard, a workman is laboriously breaming the hull of a sampan—killing marine borers by passing bundles of burning hay beside and beneath it—and a workman or two in an adjoining yard are covering the hull of another boat with anti-fouling paint. The object of the two operations is identical, but the anti-fouling paint protects the wood about four times as long as breaming and takes no longer to apply. On the port side of an 86-foot trawler, a Chinese carpenter is using a half-inch electric power drill; on the starboard, another man is drilling holes with a steel bit spun by a leather thong with its ends fixed to a wooden bow.
Lu Pan, the Celestial master builder who transmitted the secrets of carpentry and shipbuilding to mankind, is honored with a tiny shrine in an obscure corner of every yard. Joss sticks are lighted before a statuette of this practical divinity, and his birthday observance on the 13th day of the Sixth Moon is a holiday in the shipyards. Lu Pan has not yet betrayed any overt sign of annoyance at the invasion of his domain by power tools and Diesel engines.
The timber that is cut for these all-wooden ships is tough and durable—China fir, teak, and various hardwoods chiefly from Borneo, like billian, kapor and yacal. The planks are hewn at mills near the yards, and bent to fit the curvature of the hull. The curving is accomplished by heating the center of the plank with a small fire and weighting its ends with heavy stones to set the curve. The 3-inch-thick planks are secured to the upright framing members with 14-inch steel spikes, and the main stringer, just below deck level, is fastened with threaded bolts. Despite the general disarray of the open yards and the lack of precise plans, the junk almost invariably turns out to be a nicely dovetailed, exactly balanced boat, good for twenty or thirty years of service in the rough weather of the China Sea.