116
H. G. H. NELSON
The Building of Village Houses...
New Territories village houses, as we see them today, are the descendants of structures that have been on the same sites since long before the British came and mapped them. No anthropologist, so far as I know, has been able to watch the building of a Chinese village: we have no firsthand information as to what forms of cooperation lie behind the construction of these regular terraces. Single "houses" are however constantly being built and rebuilt, and informants are very clear in their association of building or rebuilding with the renewal of the family in each generation as its sons marry. Fathers are under the clear obligation to provide each of their sons with a house when he marries, and parents generally vacate and restore their own house, and move into a less elegant structure, to make way for their son. There is therefore a necessity, each time a man produces more sons than he has houses, to build new houses to accommodate them all — unless adequate means can be found of redistributing sons among the already existing stock of houses. Possible means include the purchase or renting of houses, and the adoption of sons; but none of these in fact provides an effective solution to the problem of balancing sons and houses in each generation in the community as a whole. Overproduction of sons automatically leads to overproduction of houses. It is hardly necessary to add that there is no strong incentive for a man who has more houses than he needs to transfer one to another, less fortunate, family: he will always be hoping to produce enough sons and grandsons to fill the houses he has.
Their redistribution...
a) Sale
Informants in Sheung Shui agreed that it is very shameful to sell a house: much more so than to sell land. I learned of a few sales, but had the impression that they are extremely rare. Examination of the Land Records has revealed a much larger number than I had expected to find. However, an investigation of the general economic situation of each seller and buyer, as far as it is revealed by the state of their landholdings and their registered mortgages, reveals that as a general rule people sold houses in the course of, or more usually at the very end of, a protracted economic decline; whereas the buyers of houses often
116
H. G. H. NELSON
The Building of Village Houses...
New Territories village houses, as we see them today, are the descendants of structures that have been on the same sites since long before the British came and mapped them. No anthro- pologist, so far as I know, has been able to watch the building of a Chinese village: we have no firsthand information as to what forms of cooperation lie behind the construction of these regular terraces. Single "houses" are however constantly being built and rebuilt, and informants are very clear in their association of building or rebuilding with the renewal of the family in each generation as its sons marry. Fathers are under the clear obliga- tion to provide each of their sons with a house when he marries, and parents generally vacate and restore their own house, and move into a less elegant structure, to make way for their son. There is therefore a necessity, each time a man produces more sons than he has houses, to build new houses to accomodate them all — unless adequate means can be found of redistributing sons among the already existing stock of houses. Possible means include the purchase or renting of houses, and the adoption of sons; but none of these in fact provides an effective solution to the problem of balancing sons and houses in each generation in the community as a whole. Overproduction of sons automatically leads to overproduction of houses. It is hardly necessary to add that that there is no strong incentive for a man who has more houses than he needs to transfer one to another, less fortunate, family: he will always be hoping to produce enough sons and grandsons to fill the houses he has.
their redistribution...
a) Sale
Informants in Sheung Tsuen agreed that it is very shameful to sell a house: much more so than to sell land. I learned of a few sales, but had the impression that they are extremely rare. Examination of the Land Records has revealed a much larger number than I had expected to find. However, an investigation of the general economic situation of each seller and buyer far as it is revealed by the state of their landholdings and their registered mortgages reveals that as a general rule people sold houses in the course of, or more usually at the very end of, a protracted economic decline; whereas the buyers of houses often
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