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Title

Item Name

Culture

Material

Manufacturing Technique

Place Made

Date Collected

Collector

Date Owned

Owner

Acquisition Date

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Condition

Accession Number

Description

Light brown coloured coiled rope. Rope is made of two pieces of twisted fibre. One end has unraveled and there are small pin-sized holes overall.

Narrative

This object is one of a number of old and no longer used objects collected from relatives of Mrs. Yau Chan, Shek –ying. She understood the purpose of the museum and of developing its collections, and encouraged her relatives to donate them. It is extraordinary that such a fragile and ephemeral an object should have been kept by its owners for so many years. Chik Wai Koon Village was about to be destroyed to make way for the development of Shatin new town, and its residents moved to new housing.

Specific Techniques

To make the rope, women grew hemp and then pulled it out of the ground and dried it. They then removed the outer layer. On the first day of winter women worked in groups of three to make rope. One sat on a chair with a wheel, one passed the hemp fibre over, and the third fed it into the wheel. They made a strand about 20 feet long, and then twisted it in the middle and doubled it over, and did this again.

Cultural Context

domestic; agriculture

History Of Use

Hemp rope was used to bind bundles of grass and bracken that women cut for fuel, to attach the parts of a plough, and for other purposes in the home and in agriculture. After the mid-twentieth century the New Territories of Hong Kong began to undergo fundamental changes. The people who had been settled there before 1898, when the British colonizers claimed the area, began to give up rice agriculture and coastal fishing, turning instead to wage labour and increased employment overseas. By the end of the century, educational opportunities leading to the possibility of white-collar work also increased, together with western influences. These changes meant that objects and clothing once useful and appropriate were no longer needed and generally were discarded. Some were saved by their owners, who sometimes were willing to donate them to museums, sharing, also, their knowledge of how they were made and used.