LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES
93
The graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring 清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow1. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau.
At New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able-bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties.
550
The whole ethos and action of the clan was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads, who were educated to the Confucian tenets, were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture, and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness, and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the
LIFE IN THE NEW TERRITORIES
93
The graves were visited without fail at the two major grave festivals of Ching Ming and Chung Yeung, in spring
清明 and autumn respectively, and to them all male descendants came who could walk unaided, or on a friendly arm, or be carried, in order to sweep the graves, offer food and drink, and make the obligatory kowtow "P. These ceremonies were carried out near the village on the slopes of the surrounding hills where the clan graves were usually to be found; but sometimes filial piety was tested further since the dictate of a geomancer would place the first ancestor's grave, and others, at some distance from the village. This could mean considerable inconvenience at the grave festivals. This is the case at Pa Mei, a small village in the Tung Chung valley on North Lantau, where the first grave is at Cheung Sha on South Lantau.
At New Year the burden could be much heavier. Not every village had its own ancestral hall. Sometimes the parent village from which the first ancestor had come was near at hand, or within several days' journey by sea and on foot. In these cases it was often felt unnecessary to build an ancestral hall in the new village. Instead, the able bodied members of the clan, male and female of every age, sallied forth at New Year and at the time of the grave festivals on a journey to their relatives in their native village. Frequent examples of this can be found in the New Territories and at the time of the major festivals of the year 1898 the hill tracks and little ports and market towns of the Colony must have been full of persons travelling to and from their homes on ancestral duties."
550
The whole ethos and action of the clan, was practically one hundred per cent Confucian in its workings. In 1898 the clan system appears to have operated in the New Territory in the traditional ways and with all the latent powers and vigour at its command. It regulated what happened within and helped to determine what went on outside itself. Its heads who were educated to the Confucian tenets were part of the mechanism of local government. The government of the province, prefecture and district were also Confucian to the core, at any rate in precept if not always in practice, and both government and people knew how they stood in their traditional relationship one to the other. Disturbances, lawlessness and unrest were mere trivia, annoying but of no real import to the discipline of the
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