NOTES AND QUERIES
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cropping area of Guangdong, and two crops of rice are still harvested in the mountain villages high above the Sha Tin valley. In the lowlands this has changed and generally only one crop is harvested there. This is planted during the summer months. However, there are still a few stubborn villagers who go in for the two traditional rice crops. Nowadays the grain is for the farmer's own consumption.
In this context I must stress that a basic idea of traditional Chinese rural society is that land is an agnatic source. Rice cultivation in flooded fields is everywhere endowed with a particular meaning. All activities related to the cultivation of rice are vested with social values. The individual management of the fields by a gardener is not meaningful in the same way for the corporation of agnatic relatives, and it is not endowed with prestige, nor can it derive any meaning from the lineage ideology. On the contrary, the farms of market gardening families stand out as anarchistic counterparts to the ideals of the corporate lineage ideology.
The ritualization of the lineage ideology and the ritualization of the rice cultivation are inseparable, in that both are focused on dead forefathers. Giving up the rice production will mean a break-up from a social situation dominated by traditional lineage aspirations and goals. The cultivation of rice has formed the essence and rhythm of life in the villages. The intimate connection between the calendar, the cycle of festivals, and the process of rice cultivation gives a meaning to the rhythm of life which reaches far beyond what could be measured in terms of production and other economic categories. The transplantation of the first crop cannot be done before the Qingming festival. Duanwu precedes the first rice harvest and the sowing of the second crop. Chong-yang precedes the second harvest.
These important festivals are entirely isolated from the context of vegetable gardening which does not in the same way provide a fixed, seasonally repetitive pattern of activities. Through the use of the many different species of vegetables, which can in accordance with their ecological requirements be introduced into a year-round production flow, the truck gardener lives in a uniform and constant progression of acts concerned with his land. There is no peak season and no off season. There is nothing particular to look forward to nor anything to talk about in retrospect on dry and cool winter days with fallow fields. Contrarywise, the cultivation of rice pro-