"Every Chinese peasant is three thousand years of China in miniature. He may not peruse the books of history, but he has heard the story-teller night after night relate in detail, and with delightful embellishments, stories of the history of China from the time of the early rulers to the present day. He and his wife and children have attended the theatricals where the stories of romance, of adventure, of loyalty, and of virtue have been realistically visualised in the open-air theatre that adorns the square of every self-respecting market town. Their culture thought-patterns are not chosen from present day movie stars but from great men of old. The common people have absorbed, not read, from the master spirits of forty centuries."
"Most Chinese peasants are anything but stupid. Their knowledge of their own folklore and folk history is extensive, although it is far from being historically accurate. Usually the history the country person knows has been learned at the opera, and he is frequently unable to say whether a certain character is a real person who lived at a definite time, or merely the creation of a dramatist. This confusion is the more frequent because so many of the characters of Chinese drama are patterned after actual people of history."
I do not wish to suggest for a moment that time has ever stood still. Rather, I am using the impressions gained by Joliffe, Winfield and others to emphasise the immense weight and influence of Chinese traditional education and upbringing upon the people until recent times. With reference to Hong Kong, I would say that their powerful, lingering vestiges here lasted until perhaps two decades ago: until the rapid modernisation and the improvements to the educational and socio-economic structure which began in the 1970s soon shifted the whole basis of society onto a more material level, and together with other changes greatly reduced the influence of the past upon behaviour and outlook.
My own realisation of the continuing strength of traditional values and practice and their lingering influence upon the people was obtained before these changes had taken hold, and was mainly acquired at first hand in the course of observing and experiencing the responses of the