[ { "id": 208371, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1978", "page_number": 95, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n79\n\nand a new transplantation followed in the fourth moon. In Baling we find that grave worship was conducted in the first moon, at Qingming, and on the 3rd day of the third moon. I think it possible to correlate this unusual dispersion with the existence of two periods of sowing.\n\nThis short sketch indicates how much more we must know in order to make anthropological sense out of the Chinese calendar system. I leave the argument at this juncture. When we know more about the autumn rituals and the New Year celebrations we may, in this new knowledge, find clues to a better understanding of the distribution of ceremonies over the calendric span of time. Again, when we know more about the local conditions and variations to be found in this limited area of Central China, we may find some co-variation in ritual events, which would be helpful in our attempts at establishing the overall system.\n\nNOTES\n\n*This paper was written when in 1975 I was privileged by All Souls College, Oxford, with a Visiting Fellowship. I remain most thankful to the Warden and Fellows of All Souls. I owe a further debt of gratitude to the two Swedish Research Councils for the Social Sciences, and for the Humanities. Part of the material which concerns this essay was found in the Harvard-Yenching Institute, Harvard University, in 1970. I am indebted to that Institute for their hospitality, and also to University of Stockholm and the Nathhorst Foundation for generous support. The argument of this paper was presented at a seminar in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London. I am grateful for this occasion. For comments and discussion I remain thankful to Hwang Tsu-yu, Wang Gung-wu, James Watson, Arthur Wolf and the late Maurice Freedman.\n\n1 See, for instance, the papers by Maurice Freedman, ‘A Chinese Phase of Social Anthropology,' British Journal of Sociology 14, 1-19, 1963, and 'Why China', (Presidential Address 1969) Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 1969, 5-13.\n\n2 Gujin Tushu Jicheng. The Complete Collection of Books of All Times, Eds. Chen Menglei & Jiang Tingxi, 1885-1888 reprint of 1726 edition. (Hereafter GJTSJC). References to this work are given according to the system of Lionel Giles, An Alphabetical Index to the Chinese Encyclopaedia. London: British Museum, 1911.\n\n3 Taoyuan Xianzhi. Records of Taoyuan County. Auths. Fang Kun and Pi Zhen. n.d. juan 3:12a.\n\n4 Yiyang Xianzhi. Records of Yiyang County, Auth. Zhao Zhepei 1807-1819. juan 2:66.\n\n5 GJTSJC, VI:1259 lb, 1193 # 3a, 1120 # 4b.\n\n6 GJTSJC VI:1130 # 2a.\n\n7 Baling Xianzhi. Records of Baling County Auth. 1872 juan 11:7b, quoting that is an earlier sub-prefectural gazetteer.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208797, "series_id": 26, "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine", "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊", "series_use_hku_proxy": false, "document_key": "RAS-1979", "page_number": 254, "title": "RAS-1979", "content_text": "BOOK REVIEWS\n\nTHE STUDY OF CHINESE SOCIETY: Essays by Maurice Freedman. Selected and Introduced by G. William Skinner. Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 1979. xxiv, 491 pp. Notes, References Cited, Character List, Index.\n\nThe late Maurice Freedman produced three books on Chinese society and edited a third. As William Skinner points out they have earned him an honoured place in the annals of social anthropology and sinology. Yet \"both fields would be impoverished if the remainder of Freedman's sinological oeuvre came to be neglected. The greater part is contained in this book. The Study of Chinese Society is more than a collection of essays however; it is a tribute to their author's work in the development of studies of Chinese in overseas communities and in the traditional homeland, both through his own research and the inspiration he gave to others.\n\nMaurice Freedman was Director of the Institute of Social Anthropology at Oxford and Fellow of All Souls' College at the time of his death in 1975, but most of his work was undertaken while at the London School of Economics where he taught for many years following his own days as a student at the School. Freedman's work on the Chinese began in 1949 with a just short of two-year period in Singapore where he studied Chinese family and marriage. Instead of settling in a village and conducting the sort of single community study for which anthropologists are perhaps more noted, and particularly at that time, he decided to make his work \"as broadly based as one lone field worker could...\" It was a study which opened up all sorts of questions and problems connected with overseas Chinese society (a topic which was to remain a life-time interest) and with the homeland society from which it derives.\n\nMatters connected with the homeland-traditional Chinese society were to occupy him in the years following his return from Singapore. From some intensive \"armchair\" studies conducted with archival materials, Freedman developed some models of Southern Chinese lineage organization which were to be tested in subsequent field research by a variety of students. While visiting the New Territories in 1955 he began to realise their potential as a base for testing his lineage hypotheses and conducting many other kinds of study of traditional society. In 1963 he returned and wrote a report on those topics he considered of major importance both for anthropology...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1979.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/2801w5938", "rank": 0 } ]