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history have been struggling for a long time to get rid of some major preconceptions, but not always successfully. One of these is the theory that the Chinese countryside was controlled by the imperial bureaucracy and the gentry, and that the Confucian values inculcated by their education formed the basis of the most essential organisation in the clan or the lineage, through which social behaviour was directed and moulded.
Well the issue is less apparent if you don't work in the field: but if you do walk about and have to ask your way around, it dawns on you that the chap who guides you through all these things is not just a pawn in the system, oppressed under some rigid rules controlled by some outside force. You get to see him as a free agent in his own right and to know something of his social, religious and economic behaviour. It was a mistake it started round the 1920's especially among Chinese sinologists to have put village religion into the category of superstition, and to conclude that because villagers were superstitious they were not worth studying. Consequently, modern Chinese history has very little to say about village religion, and there is much to learn on this subject, too.
I was rather lucky with the Project because in 1980 two rather unexpected things happened. We had two requests to do some history writing: one from the Sai Kung District Board, and the other one from Sha Tin.
It was known in Sai Kung that the local villagers were involved in the resistance movement during World War II, and I was asked if I would be interested to write it up. The District Board would provide the funds. This seemed too good an opportunity for me to miss. I was very interested in what happened in the Second World War, and it was another chance to get behind the theory. Again, team work was needed. The late Barbara Ward, Bernard Luk and I worked along with our research students.
I must stress that working on a historical project with research students and through interviews is a more demanding task than copying inscriptions, though I must not sound ungrateful because we had some very good student assistants on the project, in particular Lee Lai-mui and Wong Wing-ho. They were extremely fluent
261
history have been struggling for a long time to get rid of some major preconceptions, but not always successfully. One of these is the theory that the Chinese countryside was controlled by the imperial bureaucracy and the gentry, and that the Confucian val- ues inculcated by their education formed the basis of the most essential organisation in the clan or the lineage, through which social behaviour was directed and moulded.
Well the issue is less apparent if you don't work in the field: but if you do walk about and have to ask your way around, it dawns on you that the chap who guides you through all these things is not just a pawn in the system, oppressed under some rigid rules con- trolled by some outside force. You get to see him as a free agent in his own right and to know something of his social, religious and economic behaviour. It was a mistake it started round the 1920's especially among Chinese sinologists to have put village religion into the category of superstition, and to conclude that because villagers were superstitious they were not worth studying. Consequently, modern Chinese history has very little to say about village religion, and there is much to learn on this subject, too.
I was rather lucky with the Project because in 1980 two rather unexpected things happened. We had two requests to do some history writing: one from the Sai Kung District Board, and the other one from Sha Tin.
It was known in Sai Kung that the local villagers were involved in the resistance movement during World War II, and I was asked if I would be interested to write it up. The District Board would provide the funds. This seemed too good an opportunity for me to miss. I was very interested in what happened in the Second World War, and it was another chance to get behind the theory. Again, team work was needed. The late Barbara Ward, Bernard Luk and I worked along with our research students.
I must stress that working on a historical project with research students and through interviews is a more demanding task than copying inscriptions, though I must not sound ungrateful because we had some very good student assistants on the project, in partic- ular Lee Lai-mui and Wong Wing-ho. They were extremely fluent
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