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Patrick Hase (continuing the same topic)
This usually follows a strong interest taken by the district officer or by a very senior elderly villager. It is not yet strongly based, although we have it in one or two districts. It has taken many years of effort to convince the villagers that their own history is of value. Also, many of the elderly villagers have spent the last 50 years being told that everything concerned with their own past is worthless. This attitude that the village past has no value sank down a very long way. A lot of elderly villagers with books that they inherited from their teachers have been ashamed of them. “These are just old-fashioned, they belong to the old world, they have nothing to do with modern things, they are superstitious, they really are of no value”. This sort of attitude, this sort of comment we hear from every side, shows that the villagers themselves are ashamed of their past. This is due to a very large extent to what their teachers have been telling them, and what educated people have been saying to them over the last few decades. One or two elderly villagers are beginning to realise that this is wrong, and there are some who are interested in trying to preserve something of their past.
The trouble is that they immediately fall into another equally dangerous trap, that of ‘doctoring' their past. We have got at least two places in the New Territories where books have been produced which have quietly sunk or re-written documents to make their own family, their own village, their own clan look better. There are some very deep-rooted Chinese attitudes strongly at work, so although we have awakened a certain amount of interest, it isn't always one-hundred per cent to the good.
At the moment, the only real interest that has been shown is effectively from Japan, where the Universities there would like to do a great deal more about the area than we are doing in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong it certainly has been my feeling that our job at the moment is to preserve, to put on record, to photostat, even if it is disconnected, while the going is good, to leave it to other generations to produce something from it. This counsel of despair stems purely from the fact that we have not enough resources to do very much, but the sooner we can get beyond this stage to putting something more coherent together, the better. So far, the only
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272
Patrick Hase (continuing the same topic)
This usually follows a strong interest taken by the district offi- cer or by a very senior elderly villager. It is not yet strongly based, although we have it in one or two districts. It has taken many years of effort to convince the villagers that their own history is of value. Also, many of the elderly villagers have spent the last 50 years being told that everything concerned with their own past is worth- less. This attitude that the village past has no value sank down a very long way. A lot of elderly villagers with books that they inher- ited from their teachers have been ashamed of them. “These are just old-fashioned, they belong to the old world, they have nothing to do with modern things, they are superstitious, they really are of no value”. This sort of attitude, this sort of comment we hear from every side, shows that the villagers themselves are ashamed of their past. This is due to a very large extent to what their teachers have been telling them, and what educated people having been saying to them over the last few decades. One or two elderly villag- ers are beginning to realise that this is wrong, and there are some who are interested in trying to preserve something of their past.
The trouble is that they immediately fall into another equally dangerous trap, that of ‘doctoring' their past. We have got at least two places in the New Territories where books have been pro- duced which have quietly sunk or re-written documents to make their own family, their own village, their own clan look better. There are some very deep-rooted Chinese attitudes strongly at work, so although we have awakened a certain amount of interest, it isn't always one-hundred per cent to the good.
At the moment, the only real interest that has been shown is effectively from Japan, where the Universities there would like to do a great deal more about the area than we are doing in Hong Kong. In Hong Kong it certainly has been my feeling that our job at the moment is to preserve, to put on record, to photostat, even if it is disconnected, while the going is good, to leave it to other generations to produce something from it. This counsel of despair stems purely from the fact that we have not enough resources to do very much, but the sooner we can get beyond this stage to putting something more coherent together, the better. So far, the only
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