192
MAURICE FREEDMAN
and the Nuffield Foundation), and partly by the London School of Economics and Political Science out of a Ford Foundation grant. In addition, for the first three months of my work in the New Territories I was fortunate enough to receive from the Hong Kong Government the services of a guide-interpreter and the use of a motor car. I wish to record my appreciation of this aid.
2. My plans were not to be fully realised. Before the end of the first period of three months I fell ill, had to enter hospital, and was medically advised to leave Hong Kong. The result has been that, while I have been able to carry out most of what I intended to do under the heading of a general survey of New Territories social conditions, I am forced to write this report away from the Colony, cut off from the chance of checking my findings and filling in gaps in my knowledge.
3. My report is based on field observations made from early February to early May and on reading done in the same period in the Colonial Secretariat Library. I travelled extensively in the New Territories but, owing to the fact that I lived for most of the time in Tai Po, I am more familiar with conditions in the District of that name than with those of the other four Districts.* It will be obvious, too, that the short time at my disposal sets a severe limit to the validity of my generalisations. Anthropologists usually spend some months getting used to a new field before embarking upon detailed enquiry, for there is a good deal of groundwork to be done. If I am bold enough now to set out some of my preliminary findings and tentative conclusions it is because I believe that the New Territories Administration ought to be given an idea of the kinds of problem which anthropologists find important and of the possibilities of correlating the interests of social research workers with its own. There will be increasing opportunities for co-operation. To begin with, in the autumn of this year two graduate students at London University are expected to arrive in Hong Kong to undertake intensive field work in the New Territories. My colleagues and I hope that their studies may be of some service to the Administration. Certainly, they will be able to probe more deeply into matters which in this report are treated superficially.
* Yuen Long, Tsuen Wan, Sai Kung and Islands. An account of the New Territories at that time is given in the Annual Departmental Report of the District Commissioner, New Territories 1963-64, and of Hong Kong as a whole on the Hong Kong Annual Report 1963, both printed by the Government Printer, Hong Kong - Ed.
192
MAURICE FREEDMAN
and the Nuffield Foundation), and partly by the London School of Economics and Political Science out of a Ford Foundation grant. In addition, for the first three months of my work in the New Territories I was fortunate enough to receive from the Hong Kong Government the services of a guide-interpreter and the use of a motor car. I wish to record my appreciation of this aid.
2. My plans were not to be fully realised. Before the end of the first period of three months I fell ill, had to enter hospital, and was medically advised to leave Hong Kong. The result has been that, while I have been able to carry out most of what I intended to do under the heading of a general survey of New Territories social conditions, I am forced to write this report away from the Colony, cut off from the chance of checking my findings and filling in gaps in
my knowledge.
3. My report is based on field observations made from early February to early May and on reading done in the same period in the Colonial Secretariat Library. I travelled extensively in the New Territories but, owing to the fact that I lived for most of the time in Tai Po, I am more familiar with conditions in the District of that name than with those of the other four Districts.* It will be obvious, too, that the short time at my disposal sets a severe limit to the validity of my generalisations. Anthropologists usually spend some months getting used to a new field before embarking upon detailed enquiry, for there is a good deal of groundwork to be done. If I am bold enough now to set out some of my prelimi- nary findings and tentative conclusions it is because I believe that the New Territories Administration ought to be given an idea of the kinds of problem which anthropologists find important and of the possibilities of correlating the interests of social research workers with its own. There will be increasing opportunities for co-opera- tion. To begin with, in the autumn of this year two graduate students at London University are expected to arrive in Hong Kong to undertake intensive field work in the New Territories. My colleagues and I hope that their studies may be of some service to the Administration. Certainly, they will be able to probe more deeply into matters which in this report are treated superficially.
* Yuen Long, Tsuen Wan, Sai Kung and Islands. An account of the New Territories at that time is given in the Annual Departmental Report of the District Commissioner, New Territories 1963-64, and of Hong Kong as a whole on the Hong Kong Annual Report 1963, both printed by the Government Printer, Hong Kong - Ed.
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