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Besides showing the diversity of the constituent communities of the city diversities of population, settlement, shrine and temple under leaders arising from the community
this paper seeks to indicate the variety of leadership practices adopted therein. Although my information comes from recent times and it is practically impossible to obtain earlier documentary proof, it is clear from the accounts given for only five small bodies that a number of different techniques had long been employed. Even within the boundaries of a small place like Shau Kei Wan the methods used in the selection process differed from one end of the township to the other. This divergence is explained by the fact that the two organizations studied operated quite independently of each other in different sections of the community. Even in the 1960s I had to make separate arrangements to consult each body, and to assemble its elders. I had at first tried to do this through one that was much better known to me than the other, but this was a failure, despite the close association of their senior members in the Shau Kei Wan Kaifong Association, a very active and well-knit body. This, to my mind, underlines the strong separatism so characteristic of this type of local organization. It was probably even more marked in the 19th century, when communities were much more cut off from each other than they are today.
The various studies are based on material collected mainly by visits and interviews to the local leaders concerned in the communities described above in the late 1960s. At this period the worshipping arrangements connected with annually recurring local festivals were still proceeding, as, indeed, they still are in some of the cases discussed. The communities themselves had changed since they had first become established in the middle nineteenth century with more expansion and less continuity in these areas than in the long-settled traditional villages of the type to be found elsewhere in the region but it was still possible to obtain from groups of community leaders information that provided a reliable guide to past organization and practice. This was sufficient to establish modes which dated back well into the nineteenth century, to most probably at, or near, the foundation dates of the communities served by the shrines studied.