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Wing, who emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and is now running a Chinese night club there, is going to retire in a few years and return to Fanling Wai. He said that the building of a ding wu was the prerogative of his being an indigenous inhabitant on the one hand, and a way to live and to associate with his fellow villagers after his retirement on the other. In this context, to build a ding wu is alternatively recognised by overseas Pangs as a means of re-identifying with his lineage members in Fanling Wai and of showing that Fanling Wai is his home and that he is not an outsider.
In the above sections, different social and economic meanings and transfer practices of zu wu and ding wu are highlighted. In the following paragraph, the discussion will turn to how the Pangs come up with the different transfer practices of housing property by manipulating the conception of community boundary.
Manipulating Space in the Construction of the Transfer Practice
To reiterate, in Fanling Wai the Pangs hold a common argument that ding wu situated outside the lineage settlement can be sold to non-lineage members. They explain that since the lands for building ding wu are not owned by their ancestors and their locations are outside the lineage settlement, the transfer practice of their ding wu should not follow that of zu wu. Even the sale of their ding wu is also allowed. Why are the transfers of village house built inside and outside the lineage settlement treated in such a very different way? Why is this boundary so important to the Pangs? It should be noted that village territory is by no means defined solely by the location of the village house. Villagers might define village boundary with reference to such markers as paddy fields, hill slopes, groves, shrines, temples, fishing ponds and so on. For example, the elderly villagers defined the village territory within which the village guard in the past should patrol at night to warn off thieves, with referring to the locations of their paddy rice fields; or they defined which groves and hill slopes should be included to demarcate the village boundary, entitling them to collect wood and grass as fuel and to manage streams for irrigating rice fields. These cases reveal the fluidity of village territory which can be re-defined in different contexts. How do the Pangs manipulate the boundary of the walled settlement as a decisive factor to redefine the
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Wing, who emigrated to the United Kingdom in the 1960s and is now running a Chinese night club there, is going to retire in a few years and return to Fanling Wai. He said that the building of a ding wu was the prerogative of his being an indigenous inhabitant on the one hand, and a way to live and to associate with his fellow villagers after his retirement on the other. In this context, to build a ding wu is alternatively recognised by overseas Pangs as a means of re-identifying with his lineage members in Fanling Wai and of showing that Fanling Wai is his home and that he is not an outsider.
In the above sections, different social and economic meanings and transfer practices of zu wu and ding wu are highlighted. In the following paragraph, the discussion will turn to how the Pangs come up with the different transfer practices of housing property by manipulating the conception of community boundary.
Manipulating Space in the Construction of the Transfer Practice
To reiterate, in Fanling Wai the Pangs hold a common argument that ding wu situated outside the lineage settlement can be sold to non- lineage members. They explain that since the lands for building ding wu are not owned by their ancestors and their locations are outside the lineage settlement, the transfer practice of their ding wu should not follow that of zu wu. Even the sale of their ding wu is also allowed. Why are the transfers of village house built inside and outside the lineage settlement treated in such a very different way? Why is this boundary so important to the Pangs? It should be noted that village territory is by no means defined solely by the location of the village house. Villagers might define village boundary with reference to such makers as paddy fields, hill slopes, groves, shrines, temples, fishing ponds and so on. For example, the elderly villagers defined the village territory within which the village guard in the past should patrol at night to warn off thieves, with referring to the locations of their paddy rice fields; or they defined which groves and hill slopes should be included to demarcate the village boundary, entitling them to collect wood and grass as fuel and to manage streams for irrigating rice fields. These cases reveal the fluidity of village territory which can be re- defined in different contexts. How do the Pangs manipulate the boundary of the walled settlement as a decisive factor to redefine the
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