BOOK REVIEWS
317
area stretches back only to the seventeenth century were originally Hakka, even when the unanimous tradition of themselves and their neighbours is that they were not, is surely a rather cavalier approach to the need for historical caution.
On the Chaochiu/Hoklo/Hai-Lufeng residents it is surely unhelpful to downplay the very real and massive cultural, linguistic and socio-economic divisions between these groups and to force them all into a straitjacket of "Hokkien": rich business-men immigrants from Chiu Chow or Swatow or the fertile villages nearby have really nothing in common (not even a mutually intelligible language) with penniless coolie immigrants from the thin, infertile sand flats of Hai-Lufeng, or with the boat people descendants of the trading junk families from south Fukien. And “Waichow Hokkien" is a highly inaccurate title for Hai-Lufeng people! Blake writes his work with an obvious Hakka bias - he lived in a Hakka household and saw other ethnic groups to a large extent through Hakka eyes. This on occasion colours his work, and nowhere more clearly than in this attitude to the "Hokkien".
Finally, Blake occasionally drafts into a rather turgid prose over-full of sociological jargon "ethnic groups are variegated amalgams of both the symbolic motivational dimension and the social organisational dimension of human existence" and "the continuum of ethnic group consistency may be analysed in terms of the following variables: (1) categorization (2) interpersonal affiliation (3) occupation (4) incorporation, and (5) government regulation" for instance which can be heavy on the reader who prefers his books written in English.
P. H. HASE
Chinese-English Glossary of Common Terms in Traditional Chinese Medicine (XRD), compilers Ou Ming, Lu Xian, Li Yanwen, Lai Shilong, Chen Xianging, Huang Yuezhong, Chen Jifan, Shen Chao, and Zhen Weiwen, executive editor Ou Ming, Joint Publishing Co. (Hong Kong), 1982 xi + 322 pp.
BOOK REVIEWS
317
area stretches back only to the seventeenth century were originally Hakka, even when the unanimous tradition of themselves and their neighbours is that they were not, is surely a rather cavalier approach to the need for historical caution.
On the Chaochiu/Hoklo/Hai-Lufeng residents it is surely unhelpful to downplay the very real and massive cultural, linguistic and socio-economic divisions between these groups and to force them all into a straitjacket of "Hokkien": rich business- men immigrants from Chiu Chow or Swatow or the fertile villages nearby have really nothing in common (not even a mutually intelligible language) with penniless coolie immigrants from the thin, infertile sand flats of Hai-Lufeng, or with the boat people descendents of the trading junk families from south Fukien. And “Waichow Hokkien" is a highly inaccurate title for Hai- Lufeng people! Blake writes his work with an obvious Hakka bias he lived in a Hakka household and saw other ethnic groups to a large extent through Hakka eyes. This on occasion colours his work, and nowhere more clearly than in this attitude to the "Hokkien".
T
Finally, Blake occasionally drafts into a rather turgid prose over-full of sociological jargon "ethnic groups are variegated amalgams of both the symbolic motivational dimension and the social organisational dimension of human existence" and "the continuum of ethnic group consistency may be analysed in terms of the following variables: (1) categorization (2) interpersonal affiliation (3) occupation (4) incorporation, and (5) government regulation" for instance which can be heavy on the reader who prefers his books written in English.
P. II. HASE
Chinese-English Glossary of Common Terms in Traditional Chinese Medicine (XRD), compilers Ou Ming, Lu Xian, Li Yanwen, Lai Shilong, Chen Xianging, Huang Yuezhong, Chen Jifan, Shen Chao, and Zhen Weiwen, executive editor Ou Ming, Joint Publishing Co. (Hong Kong), 1982 xi + 322 PP.
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