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.