History
During the Ming and Qing Dynasties, the shore of Guangdong suffered from pirates. The area of Hong Kong was particular vulnerable to pirates' attacks. Winding shores, hilly lands and islands and far from administrative centres made Hong Kong an excellent hideout for pirates. Villages, both Punti and Hakka, built walls against pirates. Some villages even protected themselves using cannons. In Punti Cantonese, Wai (圍, Walled) and Tsuen (村, Village) were once synonyms.
Read more about this topic: Walled Village
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“The greatest horrors in the history of mankind are not due to the ambition of the Napoleons or the vengeance of the Agamemnons, but to the doctrinaire philosophers. The theories of the sentimentalist Rousseau inspired the integrity of the passionless Robespierre. The cold-blooded calculations of Karl Marx led to the judicial and business-like operations of the Cheka.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)
“... in America ... children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“We have need of history in its entirety, not to fall back into it, but to see if we can escape from it.”
—José Ortega Y Gasset (1883–1955)