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Min Ha Old Village was removed and resited in the 1980s, this hall was also part of the reprovisioning. It was rebuilt on a terrace next to the Ho family's new ancestral hall, as in the old village; and honours are still paid to the benefactor's spirit tablet in the same way as to those of their own ancestors.
Conclusion: Are there Other Interpretations?
In Parts I and II of this article, I have suggested that the problems created for the Hong Kong Government by continued large-scale immigration and the concurrent need to modernize were greatly mitigated by its being able to rely on a remarkably well-behaved and generally cooperative population.
I have presumed that this phenomenon was largely derived from the inherited traditions of the Chinese people of that and earlier generations. However, in making this suggestion, I have borne in mind that public and private life in China had already been subject to change in the first half of this century, and that in practice the Chinese people might at an earlier date have been more resistant to the influences described above. The degree to which peasants and other ordinary folk have shared Confucian values has always been an open question, and has drawn much attention in recent years. In his study of Cantonese ballads, of the kind to be regarded as "folklore written by simple writers, not by scholars, and for simple folk to be read by them or to be listened to", Professor Wolfram Eberhard has shown that "the values which the ballads represent are often not the so-called 'Confucian' values". And a recent survey of twentieth-century Chinese peasant proverbs, which focuses on material from the north and northwest, also gives a somewhat varied impression of the extent of peasant acceptance of traditional Confucian values and shows some variation from them.42
However, I do not see why these should be considered to be mutually exclusive phenomena. The Chinese peasant was quite capable of absorbing and evincing both Confucian and non-Confucian sets of values, and this I think he did. For instance, to take a Hong Kong example, the "Extant Cantonese Children's Songs" recently studied by Helen Kwok and Mimi Chan, besides revealing the "prevailing attitudes" expressed in "the speech of semi-literate peasants, direct and frank, often to the point of being coarse", did also in their opinion
21
Min Ha Old Village was removed and resited in the 1980s, this hall was also part of the reprovisioning. It was rebuilt on a terrace next to the Ho family's new ancestral hall, as in the old village; and honours are still paid to the benefactor's spirit tablet in the same way as to those of their own ancestors.
Conclusion: Are there Other Interpretations?
In Parts I and II of this article, I have suggested that the problems created for the Hong Kong Government by continued large-scale immigration and the concurrent need to modernize were greatly mitigated by its being able to rely on a remarkably well-behaved and generally cooperative population.
I have presumed that this phenomenon was largely derived from the inherited traditions of the Chinese people of that and earlier generations. However, in making this suggestion, I have borne in mind that public and private life in China had already been subject to change in the first half of this century, and that in practice the Chinese people might at an earlier date have been more resistent to the influences described above. The degree to which peasants and other ordinary folk have shared Confucian values has always been an open question, and has drawn much attention in recent years. In his study of Cantonese ballads, of the kind to be regarded as "folklore written by simple writers, not by scholars, and for simple folk to be read by them or to be listened to", Professor Wolfram Eberhard has shown that "the values which the ballads represent are often not the so-called “Confucian" values"." And a recent survey of twentieth century Chinese peasant proverbs, which focusses on material from the north and northwest, also gives a somewhat varied impression of the extent of peasant acceptance of traditional Confucian values and shows some variation from them.42
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However, I do not see why these should be considered to be mutually exclusive phenomena. The Chinese peasant was quite capable of absorbing and evincing both Confucian, and non-Confucian sets of values, and this I think he did. For instance, to take a Hong Kong example, the "Extant Cantonese Children's Songs" recently studied by Helen Kwok and Mimi Chan besides revealing the "prevailing attitudes" expressed in "the speech of semi-literate peasants, direct and frank, often to the point of being coarse", did also in their opinion
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