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who have been held to have spoilt a fung shui may be asked to pay for a tun fu. Some people suspect that the sums of money handed over in payment cover more than the fees of the ritual expert, but I doubt whether any great fraudulent profits are made. The victory scored over the 'intruders' by the very fact that they have been forced to acknowledge their 'trespass' and make it ritually good is a big enough compensation. A vital claim has been vindicated.
70. Will fung shui last? I suspect that from the very beginning officers of the Administration have detected signs of growing scepticism and confidently awaited the spread of modern enlightenment. Contemporary administrators are probably less tempted to the facile optimism of their predecessors of a generation or so ago, but one can hear it asserted that the young people of the New Territories today no longer believe in fung shui. If this were so the Administration could look forward to an imminent surcease of its anxiety. But I am not convinced that modern education by itself deals fung shui a deadly blow. Metaphysical beliefs supported by social props are not easily wafted away by the book learning of schools. There are unbelievers in the New Territories, but I suspect that scepticism, if it is at all thorough, stems from their having been prised loose from the grip of their society. Urban Chinese can easily stop paying attention to fung shui if they choose because they are free from the social pressures which, in a rural community, they would be forced to take into account. Living in the city they are not so closely dependent on one another that the actions of one can be held to affect the lives of the others, and they can more easily escape the consequences of neighbourly disapproval. In a village which is still a self-contained community people are tied to one another in a complex web of relationships. Conformity is produced as a response to a multitude of obligations and sanctions; it is not the result of a mere mechanical uniformity. One has to live fully within a village or get out. If, therefore, I am accused of harming my neighbour's fung shui and he is supported by others in his contention I must give way. If my village thinks generally that some outsiders have encroached upon its geomantic privileges, I must join in the reaction. And every response of this kind reinforces my neighbours and me in our faith. (I may believe that in my own case I have been hard done by, but this does not undermine my belief in the assumptions from which my neighbours are
SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963
235
who have been held to have spoilt a fung shui may be asked to pay for a tun fu. Some people suspect that the sums of money handed over in payment cover more than the fees of the ritual ex- pert, but I doubt whether any great fraudulent profits are made. The victory scored over the 'intruders' by the very fact that they have been forced to acknowledge their 'trespass' and make it ritually good is a big enough compensation. A vital claim has been vindicated.
70. Will fung shui last? I suspect that from the very beginning officers of the Administration have detected signs of growing scep- ticism and confidently awaited the spread of modern enlighten- ment. Contemporary administrators are probably less tempted to the facile optimism of their predecessors of a generation or so ago, but one can hear it asserted that the young people of the New Territories today no longer believe in fung shui. If this were so the Administration could look forward to an imminent surcease of its anxiety. But I am not convinced that modern education by itself deals fung shui a deadly blow. Metaphysical beliefs supported by social props are not easily wafted away by the book learning of schools. There are unbelievers in the New Territories, but I sus- pect that scepticism, if it is at all thorough, stems from their having been prised loose from the grip of their society. Urban Chinese can easily stop paying attention to fung shui if they choose because they are free from the social pressures which, in a rural community, they would be forced to take into account. Living in the city they are not so closely dependent on one another that the actions of one can be held to affect the lives of the others, and they can more easily escape the consequences of neighbourly disapproval. In a village which is still a self-contained community people are tied to one another in a complex web of relationships. Conformity is produced as a response to a multitude of obligations and sanctions; it is not the result of a mere mechanical uniformity. One has to live fully within a village or get out. If, therefore, I am accused of harming my neighbour's fung shui and he is supported by others in his contention I must give way. If my village thinks generally that some outsiders have encroached upon its geomantic privileges, I must join in the reaction. And every response of this kind rein- forces my neighbours and me in our faith. (I may believe that in my own case I have been hard done by, but this does not under- mine my belief in the assumptions from which my neighbours are
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