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festivals in the nineteen eighties. These communities are of different occupational (agricultural, fishery, market town), ethnic (Punti Cantonese, Hakka), territorial (a village, village cluster, local territorial alliance) and descent (single-lineage, dominated, multi-lineage) natures. Diachronic and synchronic comparative studies of Jiao festivals celebrated by communities of different natures in Hong Kong before and after 1997 will show how local traditional values and customs are preserved and modified in changing social and political environments. Moreover, such studies can also pinpoint which elements are essential to the lives of the villagers.
IV. Jiao Festivals after 1997
As Dean suggested, the impact Jiao festivals have on the communist mainland can only be observed through a comparative study of the same Jiao (celebrated by the same community) over different time periods. A different situation exists in Hong Kong where the approach of 1997 threatens the survival of the Jiao. Scholars like Segawa, asked an essential question as to whether or not the festival will continue to be celebrated after 1997 when Hong Kong is officially returned to China." A villager in Fanling told me that they certainly would continue to celebrate the Jiao festival once every ten years even after 1997. “However, he said, "the magnitude of the celebration may be more restrained unless the Chinese government is totally 'open"”. To terminate a religious activity like the Jiao festival is not an easy thing, for no villager would like to bear the sole responsibility. After the 1981 celebration, rumours spread that committee members of Lam Tsuen had decided not to celebrate the Jiao festival any more. On Dec. 1 1990 when I arrived at the Jiao area of Lam Tsuen, I saw rituals and decorations not very much different from the 1981 one. The only notable difference was that the priests were replaced by some younger ones. Mr. Cheung [Zhang] the JP and senior elder of Lam Tsuen told me that in fact not one of the villagers dared to speak out about discontinuation of the festival,
We do not have sufficient evidence to prove that every village in the New Territories celebrated the Jiao festival, as an independent community or as a member of an alliance at one time or another. We know however, that Jiao festivals developed differently from one community to another. Some communities, such as Ping Shan and Pat Heung, have completely abandoned the festival. Others like