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In another case a post-graduate Chinese student told the author:
'Before, I thought it was all superstition. But now I realise it makes sense to proceed in harmony with nature. In life, one of the most important things is to maintain harmony. Although Mother is a Catholic she also believes in fung sha.
The author, years ago, personally knew young Hong Kong Chinese teenagers who did not believe in, or were not convinced about the efficaciousness of fung shui. But now, after becoming middle-aged or elderly, they have become firm followers. 'A woman who did not believe nearly died,' the author was informed. 'After recovering, she became convinced.'
As Hong Kong has become more developed and affluent, people have had more money to spend on 'luxuries', such as fung shui. Certainly, modern education alone seems not to deal the final blow (Freedman, 1976:235). Yet it is more likely that a New Territories' villager, who lives close to nature and is a member of a tightly knit group, is more likely to believe in fung shui than his urban cousin. Urban society is divorced from close, everyday contact with mother earth and her cycles. For the urban dweller the modes of thought which underly the practise of fung shui have to be consciously cultivated in order to comprehend them. There are, of course, some New Territories' villagers who do not believe in fung shui in spite of the close web of relationships in rural life.
Eugene Ho (who one assumes is Chinese although he could be Eurasian) wrote in the South China Morning Post letters to the editor columns, on 25 May 1987- 'I find the whole theory of fung shui wholly devoid of cognitive content.' He went on to say that many of the casual 'laws' of fung shui, (if they are really "laws" at all) are no more than half a probability.
Nonetheless, when the British took over the New Territories on a 99-year lease in 1898, they promised to respect the then existing (Qing Dynasty) religious rites, ceremonies and social customs. The Hong Kong Government Gazette of October 7, 1899, published (one year after the New Territories were taken over) as a supplement to the Convention of Peking, said that graves in the leased Territory were never to be removed. Some law lecturers at Hong Kong University feel, however, that, because