326
as the author makes clear. All of the families discussed had absolutely no males who were not either old, sick and ill, or frauds, scoundrels, and crooks, or weak and ineffective. This is too thin a foundation to build a major edifice on, and the statistics and other documents lightly touched on in the remaining third of the book do not justify any assumption that the families described in depth were typical of families with Mui-tsai. The author has thrown a strong ray of light on what life was like for some Mui-tsai, for those at the blacker, although not the blackest end, of the continuum of possibilities. It would be unwise to assume that all girls known as Mui-tsai had lives and hardships of this sort.
The publishers of the book are a specialist publishing house dealing in Women's Studies, and using the sign for "female" as their corporate logo. The study, perhaps not unexpectedly in these circumstances, treats Mui-tsai as just one type of female exploitation, specifically the exploitation of poor females by wealthy men and their women-folk. It was, but it was other things as well, and it would be desirable for these other aspects of the institution to be given more space. Charity to the poor on the part of wealthy families was not always merely a cover for getting domestic help on the cheap, neither was the rule that Mui-tsai ought to be decently married when they reached the appropriate age quite so uniformly broken as suggested. By no means all Mui-tsai ended as prostitutes or concubines.
Further work on Mui-tsai is desirable, so that a broadly based and detailed view of the whole spectrum of Mui-tsai and their lives can be had. This book is a far better than merely worthy first step towards this end. It is indeed, as Prof. James Watson calls it, “an important addition to the ethnographical literature on South China”. No-one who has any interest in the society of the area can afford to ignore it. But it is not the whole picture.
P.H. HASE
Phillip Bruce, Second to None: The Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers, Hong Kong, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 317 pp illus. Abbreviations, Sources Index.
In the early 1800's the expansionist power of the British and
326
as the author makes clear. All of the families discussed had absolutely no males who were not either old, sick and ill, or frauds, scoundrels, and crooks, or weak and ineffective. This is too thin a foundation to build a major edifice on, and the statistics and other documents lightly touched on in the remaining third of the book do not justify any assumption that the families described in depth were typical of families with Mui-tsai. The author has thrown a strong ray of light on what life was like for some Mui-tsai, for those at the blacker. although not the blackest end, of the continuum of possibilities. It would be unwise to assume that all girls known as Mui-tsai had lives and hardships of this sort.
The publishers of the book are a specialist publishing house dealing in Women's Studies, and using the sign for "female" as their corporate logo. The study, perhaps not unexpectedly in these circumstances. treats Mui-tsai as just one type of female exploitation, specifically the exploitation of poor females by wealthy men and their women-folk. It was, but it was other things as well, and it would be desirable for these other aspects of the institution to be given more space. Charity to the poor on the part of wealthy families was not always merely a cover for getting domestic help on the cheap, neither was the rule that Mui-tsai ought to be decently married when they reached the appropriate age quite so uniformly broken as suggested. By no means all Mui-tsai ended as prostitutes or concubines.
Further work on Mui-tsai is desirable, so that a broadly based and detailed view of the whole spectrum of Mui-tsai and their lives can be had. This book is a far better than merely worthy first step towards this end. It is indeed, as Prof. James Watson calls it, “an important addition to the ethnographical literature on South China”. No-one who has any interest in the society of the area can afford to ignore it. But it is not the whole picture.
P.H. HASE
Phillip Bruce, Second to None: The Story of the Hong Kong Volunteers, Hong Kong, Oxford, New York: Oxford University Press, 1991. 317 pp illus. Abbreviations, Sources Index.
In the early 1800's the expansionist power of the British and
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