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traditions were involved in the festival. The priests had some difficulty with the opening ritual. In this, according to their practice, they also send off the third Memorial. In this case the almanac specified that the third Memorial should be submitted at about 3 a.m., and the opening ritual take place at a later time. At first the priests thought that they would follow the almanac specialist's schedule. But later the ritual representatives decided that they had never had the two rituals separately performed in previous celebrations. So it was decided that they would have the third Memorial ritual together with the opening ritual, at the time specified for the latter.
The distribution of ritual knowledge was not even among the villagers. Two elders noticeably active in organizing the rites probably knew much more than the others. I was able to talk with one of them, who attributed his active involvement in the rites to the fact that he had become familiar with the ritual through serving as ritual representative in the last three celebrations, every time in the first five places. He had complaints about mistakes in the jiu ceremonies. He believed that paper clothing had not been burnt in the Small Offering to Ghosts, because, after the ceremony, there was still a box of them with hats and boots. A second mistake was remedied by his complaint. It was the villagers' practice to have 49 lanterns in the Dipper rite. The priests had set up only 28. The elder complained to the older priest, who explained to his colleagues how the number of 49 was arrived at. A third case was Ying-Sing, "Escorting the Holy Ones". The elder was aware of a mistake: this time there was no place for jung-sing (“All the Holy Ones", represented by a san-teng tablet), ancestor Hung-Yi, or Jau and Wong. It had been the practice that four places were dedicated to them, and only one to the Three Pure Ones. The two mistakes were not corrected because he was not there. He had gone home to sleep."
B. The Festival Committee
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A Festival Committee was formed of the ritual representatives and the ordinary leaders of the community. Named as the president and vice-presidents were the head of the lineage, the member of the lineage who had been appointed by the Government as J.P., the chairman of the Rural Committee, a lawyer on the District Board, and elders from each village (who were not necessarily the Village Representatives). It was explained to me that this group of presidents was to represent the villagers in dealing with invited guests and other honourable outsiders. The chairman and