DAVID FAURE'S REJOINDER:
There is much in this review that I dislike how can Chun take me to task, on the one hand, for dabbling in Anthropology, and on the other hand, conclude that I think “local history can be understood simply by looking at events and personages as they take place on the ground”?
However, let me answer the several criticisms that I think touch on some of the major issues. First, Chun thinks I do not have a salient criticism of Freedman's thesis. Let me reiterate that much as we have learnt from Freedman, I found him wanting for not being able to incorporate village religion into his lineage framework, and for being sloppy in his use of terms such as "local lineage", "higher-level lineage" and "clan". I think my argument for the importance of "settlement rights" salvages his concept of the "local lineage".
Second, Chun does not present here accurately my argument concerning the grandiose freestanding ancestral halls built in the official style. I do not argue that there was a "period" of the "Five Great Clans” not even in the eastern portion of the New Territories. I think the linkage of lineage groups across settlement, and the adoption of a code of conduct that included the compilation of written genealogies and that was consistent with officially prescribed standards, took root as a change in style that began in the sixteenth century and gradually worked its way from the richer and more powerful lineages to the poorer ones. This process took fully three centuries, and during this period different territorial groups dominated different parts of the eastern New Territories. In a nutshell, Lung Yeuk Tau (Tang surname) was overlord of all this area, with minor concessions to the Haus of Hung Leng and Ho Sheung Heung, up to the end of the Ming dynasty, The Lius of Sheung Shui sprang into prominence in the early Qing, nibbling into former Tang terrain, while possibly some time in the eighteenth century, the Hung Leng Haus lost their holdings. Of the other two surnames in the “Five”, the Fan Ling P'aangs did not achieve prominence until the nineteenth century, and while the Tai Hang Mans were taken into account by Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui and Ho Sheung Heung when the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance was formed in the early Qing (possibly eighteenth century), its influence declined subsequently until it became a party of the Kau Yeuk, along with the P'aangs, that founded Tai Po new market in the late nineteenth century. This history notwithstanding, my argument is quite simply that the ancestral worship one sees the villagers practise
DAVID FAURE'S REJOINDER:
—
There is much in this review that I dislike how can Chun take me to task, on the one hand, for dabbling in Anthropology, and on the other hand, conclude that I think “local history can be understood simply by looking at events and personages as they take place on the ground”?
However, let me answer the several criticisms that I think touch on some of the major issues. First, Chun thinks I do not have a salient criticism of Freedman's thesis. Let me reiterate that much as we have learnt from Freedman, I found him wanting for not being able to incorporate village religion into his lineage framework, and for being sloppy in his use of terms such as "local lineage", "higher-level lineage" and "clan". I think my argument for the importance of "settlement rights" salvages his concept of the "local lineage".
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Second, Chun does not present here accurately my argument concerning the grandiose freestanding ancestral halls built in the official style. I do not argue that there was a "period" of the "Five Great Clans” not even in the eastern portion of the New Territories. I think the linkage of lineage groups across settlement, and the adoption of a code of conduct that included the compilation of written genealogies and that was consistent with officially prescribed standards, took root as a change in style that began in the sixteenth century and gradually worked its way from the richer and more powerful lineages to the poorer ones. This process took fully three centuries, and during this period different territorial groups dominated different parts of the eastern New Territories. In a nutshell, Lung Yeuk Tau (Tang surname) was overlord of all this area, with minor concessions to the Haus of Hung Leng and Ho Sheung Heung, up to the end of the Ming dynasty, The Lius of Sheung Shui sprang into prominence in the early Qing, nibbling into former Tang terrain, while possibly some time in the eighteenth century, the Hung Leng Haus lost their holdings. Of the other two surnames in the “Five”, the Fan Ling P'aangs did not achieve prominence until the nineteenth century, and while the Tai Hang Mans were taken into account by Lung Yeuk Tau, Sheung Shui and Ho Sheung Heung when the Po Tak Tz Old Alliance was formed in the early Qing (possibly eighteenth century), its influence declined subsequently until it became a party of the Kau Yeuk, along with the P'aangs, that founded Tai Po new market in the late nineteenth century. This history notwithstanding, my argument is quite simply that the ancestral worship one sees the villagers practise
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