In addition to her work on the Kau Sai fishing people, Barbara's writings during the 1950s and 1960s touched on a number of other aspects of Chinese society, including the structure and operations of Chinese small factories in Hong Kong and the organization of Hakka guilds in Borneo. Moreover, Barbara's data on Kau Sai were incorporated into her comparative study of the role of credit and loan facilities in peasant commercial production and also informed her essay on sex roles in southeast Asia—a valuable and perhaps underestimated introductory essay to the book, which she edited, on the impact of the changing public status of women upon the private domestic lives of both sexes in the various countries of southeast Asia. Barbara's writings on "conscious models" explored the problems of the manner in which the actual behaviour of the Kau Sai fishing people had been influenced by the traditional pattern of the classical Chinese family, the role of ideological models in promoting "the uniquely long continuity and wide similarity of the Chinese socio-cultural system" and, more generally, the relevance of Levi-Strauss' notion of conscious models to the analysis of the relationship between various local sub-cultures within Chinese society and the wider Chinese socio-cultural system. 8
During the 1970s, Barbara became increasingly concerned with the social and cultural dimensions of opera in south China. Undoubtedly, Barbara's work on conscious models was an important factor in the development of this interest, for her first essay in this new area dealt with the role of opera as a disseminator of Chinese culture among the local communities of south China, such as that of Kau Sai. Sadly, Barbara died just at the time when her thoroughly-researched and well-written articles on popular Chinese drama were beginning to appear in print. Perhaps our greatest loss as a community of China scholars is that the potential of Barbara's endeavours in this area of Chinese social life can no longer be realised. Perhaps, too, the loss will be felt just as keenly by others whose concerns lie outside the China field. When Barbara chose Chinese opera as her topic for the Jane Ellen Harrison Memorial Lecture, which she gave at Newnham College in 1978, her lively presentation and thoughtful analysis of the symbolism of traditional Chinese theatre won the interest of a large non-specialist audience. It is hoped
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