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committee's meetings provide details of the preparations for the festival. The minutes of the 1972 Lam Tsuen Jiao festival recorded details of nine meetings from March 11 to December 9 including information on the following: (1) establishment of an organizing committee, (2) choosing representative worshippers, (3) regulations and methods for collecting contributions, (4) methods for registration of members, (5) choice of auspicious dates, (6) contracts with Taoist priests, opera troupes, and for construction and supply of utilities, (7) security measures, food, control of hawkers during the celebration, (8) a list of those who will be invited to participate in the ceremony on the main day, and (9) schedule of daily worship by different member villages. As these documents are either kept by individuals or as common property of the whole community, they are seldom available to outsiders.
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The third type of local documents are special memorial bulletins published for each festival by the organizing committee. Systematic collection of such bulletins is not being done. They are not included in the collection of New Territories Historical Literature mentioned above. However, these bulletins provide important information about the changes in social networks and values of a community. Table 1 is a comparison of three memorial bulletins published respectively for the 1963, 1972 and 1990 Lam Tsuen Jiao festivals. It shows that the role of recreational operas to attract villagers is gradually being replaced by an emphasis on participation and contribution to community affairs. Local leadership is impressed on readers through photos of leaders in the bulletins, and essays on their role in community activities. The 1990 issue also included a record of the Lam Tsuen Fellow Villagers' Association (Lin Cun [Lam Tsuen] Tongxianghui) which was established in Manchester, England in 1983, and details of donations from emigrant fellow villagers. This indicates the importance of the emigrants' contribution to the maintenance of traditional values through donation and participation.
The history of the Jiao festival is recorded in the bulletins. Members of the organizing committee are also listed. However, not one of the three issues provided information on rituals performed at the festival. Rituals, though essential to the Jiao, are formalities that are the sole responsibilities of the priests and those chosen to represent the villages as worshippers. The organizational recreational elements of a Jiao are, at least to the villagers, as important as its ritual and symbolic aspects.
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