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15 Unless exceptional circumstances make him de facto a property-holder; when, for example, a man's parents die before his marriage.
16 This is an extreme over-simplification of the very complex pattern of property rights between father and son, and between brothers: I hope to use material from Sheung Tsuen in a fuller discussion of this topic elsewhere.
17 The eldest brother, usually, who will have assumed responsibility for the family's ancestral tablet when he took over his father's house on his marriage.
18 The result of this being merely to delay the division of the family property by one generation.
19 Traditionally, in default of a close kinsman, any boy of the same surname might be adopted, though I have heard of very few cases of this. As far as the distribution of property is concerned, however, an adoption from outside the localised lineage is no different from a different surname adoption.
20 J. Goody, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1969, pps. 55-78, has an illuminating comparative survey of adoption in Roman, Greek, Hindu-Indian, Chinese, and West African society; but he is concerned to point out the differences between Eurasian and African practices, and therefore does not discuss the significance of differences within the Eurasian group itself. However, his demonstration of the general primacy in these societies of the inheritance of property over succession to an ancestral cult is most strongly supported by material from Sheung Tsuen. Studies of inheritance and succession in traditional Chinese society which rely exclusively on legal and literary sources (e.g. Klaus Mäding, Chinesisches traditionelles Erbrecht, Berlin, 1966) tend to overlook this vital point.
21 And his abandoned land. There is similarly no mechanism in Chinese customary law by which a non-returning migrant's land can be transferred to his kinsmen or fellow-villagers.
22 And although Plum Grove had practically no migrants; if one adds the migrants from Big Stream Village to the population figure for that village, the average number of houses per family is still further reduced,
CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM
123
15 Unless exceptional circumstances make him de facto a property-holder; when, for example, a man's parents die before his marriage.
16 This is an extreme over-simplification of the very complex pattern of property rights between father and son, and between brothers: I hope to use material from Sheung Tsuen in a fuller discussion of this topic elsewhere.
17 The eldest brother, usually, who will have assumed responsibility for the family's ancestral tablet when he took over his father's house on his marriage.
18 The result of this being merely to delay the division of the family property by one generation.
19 Traditionally, in default of a close kinsman, any boy of the same surname might be adopted, though I have heard of very few cases of this, As far as the distribution of property is concerned, however, an adoption from outside the localised lineage is no different from a different surname adoption.
20 J. Goody, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1969, pps. 55-78, has an illuminating comparative survey of adoption in Roman, Greek, Hindu-Indian, Chinese, and West African society; but he is concerned to point out the differences between Eurasian and African practices, and therefore does not discuss the significance of differences within the Eurasian group itself, How. ever, his demonstration of the general primacy in these societies of the inheritance of property over succession to an ancestral cult is most strongly supported by material from Sheung Tsuen. Studies of inheritance and suc- cession in traditional Chinese society which rely exclusively on legal and literary sources (e.g. Klaus Mäding, Chinesisches traditionelles Erbrecht, Berlin, 1966) tend to overlook this vital point.
21 And his abandoned land. There is similarly no mechanism in Chinese customary law by which a non-returning migrant's land can be transferred to his kinsmen or fellow-villagers.
22 And although Plum Grove had practically no migrants; if one adds the migrants from Big Stream Village to the population figure for that village, the average number of houses per family is still further reduced,
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