Farmers who learned that their villages were about to be inundated by the big reservoir were even less happy. They rejected the government’s proposal to move them to another rural area and insisted on moving, if move they must, to the developing industrial town of Tsuen Wan. They received the full market price for their farm property and were resettled in new houses at Tsuen Wan, with shop space they could rent to replace their farming income. A few holdouts threatened to stay in their old homes until the reservoir floated them to glory, but belatedly reversed themselves and walked out on dry land. The Tai Lam Chung relocation was hardly concluded when the government found itself involved in an even knottier problem. Continuing demands for more water forced the construction of still another dam—Shek Pik, on Lantau Island. This was a remote part of the colony, much larger than Hong Kong Island, but completely without roads until 1957. A few government people visited the island regularly, but its isolated villages, with their square stone towers or “cannon houses,” were more likely to regard all visitors as pirates until proved otherwise. Armed and alert, they holed up in the towers to defend themselves against marauders who still stage occasional raids in sparsely settled areas. Two villages in southwestern Lantau, Shek Pik and Fan Pui, would have to be removed to make way for the new dam. Their people, having no knowledge of modern technology and no need for a dam, viewed the project with fear and hostility. The dam was not, in fact, being built for them; its collected water was to be carried by pipeline to Hong Kong Island, Kowloon and Peng Chau. Fan Pui, the smaller village, had to be treated with diplomacy and compensated before its 62 people consented to move to another rural area on the island. Inhabitants of Shek Pik elected to move to Tsuen Wan, settling in new five-story blocks. The oldest inhabitant, an eighty-six-year-old woman, made the transfer with full official ceremony, her sedan chair borne by four policemen. The ancestral tablets and household gods also made the trip on the shoulder-poles of respectful bearers. Anything less than this diplomatic ritual would have made the entire relocation impossible. Preliminary work on the Shek Pik Dam became a trail-blazing venture into unexplored territory. A ten-mile paved road had to be built along the edge of the sea from the sheltered harbor at Silver Mine Bay to the future dam site. Test borings at the foot of Shek Pik Valley where the dam was to cross disclosed that the ground was a porous mixture of gravel, boulders, and rotten granite down to 137 feet below the surface. Since the ground stood only 15 feet above sea level, seawater would be able to seep into the reservoir and the fresh water in the reservoir would escape beneath the dam, undermining it.