[ { "id": 204580, "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-1963", "page_number": 61, "title": "RAS-1963", "content_text": "50\n\nBEK-TO CHIU\n\nBAUHINIA VARIEGATA, LINN * # Family: Caesalpiniaceae #4# 鳳科\n\nCommon names: Camel's Foot Tree\n\nOrchid Tree\n\nMountain Ebony\n\nThis Bauhinia was introduced from India and is cultivated in the different parts of the Colony for its profusion of blooms in early spring from mid-January to the end of April with its \"peak\" often coinciding with Ching Ming Festival. The inflorescences of dense racemes, each shorter but more numerous than those of Bauhinia blakeana, arise from the axils of the leaves. The leaves are usually shed just before blooming time. Thus the bluish-grey bare branches become heavily laden with tufts of blooms, which, at a distance, appear like cherry or apple blossoms, with a magnificent display of colours, ranging from purple-red, rose-pink to white. It is most decorative and colourful to the roadsides and the hillsides on which they grow and a welcome indication that spring is here.\n\nThe flowers are fragrant and resemble those of B. blakeana in structure and general appearance but are smaller in size and softer and daintier in texture, maturing readily into fruits which are flattened legumes (pea pods) about a foot long and 1/2 inch wide, green when young, becoming black on ripening. These legumes are dehiscent, splitting along both sutures explosively, dispersing the seeds to considerable distances. The seeds germinate readily and the young plants bloom in the second year. Many of the hillside trees are most likely self-sown.\n\nWhen the trees are in full foliage in the summer and autumn, they are difficult to distinguish from those of B. blakeana, except by observing the bilobed leaves which are completely glabrous, appearing thin and of a paler green colour. The leaf blades are traversed by eleven palmate main veins. In winter, the leaves start to deteriorate, in preparation for shedding but before the last blooms are over in spring, the new leaves unfold. This deciduous Bauhinia hardly ever has bare branches throughout the year.\n\nIt is said that in India the young leaves and the unopened flower buds are eaten and that nearly every part of the tree is used medicinally. The bark is used in tanning and dyeing.\n\nMore cultivation of Bauhinia variegata should be encouraged to add colour and beauty to the already beautiful Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1963.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/4m90m091v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 204762, "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-1964", "page_number": 65, "title": "RAS-1964", "content_text": "54 \n\nK. M. A. BARNETT \n\npreviously described, no longer carries water, and part of which is still used to supply irrigation water to a village. The ancient grave at Lo-A-Tsai on Lamma Island is made of similar stones; and I am inclined to associate also with these people a number of high standing stones, some of which are still cult objects, of which one stands above Bowen Road, another overlooking Sha Tin115 is known to Europeans by the unnecessarily sneering name of the \"Amah Rock\". A stone of this type, standing above a rock pool which looks as though it had been artificially enlarged and made circular, stands between the deserted village of Pak Koks at the south-western tip of Shek Pik Bay128 and the new village to which the ancient Fung2 clan of Fan Puisi were moved to make room for the Shek Pik Reservoir. Another overlooks Long Harbour, and about this one there is some mystery, since every year at approximately the date of the Mid-Autumn Festival a considerable number of women can be seen flocking up the hill to this stone, but all villages within walking distance flatly deny knowledge of any such celebration. This is at best negative evidence, and may not indicate the persistence of a pre-Chinese tradition; for a similar reticence regarding religious celebrations by women is observed at the great Nu-kwa102 temple on Honam Island154 \n\nopposite Canton, which men are seldom allowed to visit. I am trying to plot the positions of all these stone works and believe that when the list is finished, it will arrange itself into three circuits on Lantao Island, one on Lamma Island, two on Hong Kong Island, two on the Saikung126 Peninsula and three or four in the rest of the New Territories. This work might well be taken in hand by someone younger, but it must be someone who is fond of walking; and walkers have a peculiar blind spot when it comes to the collection of this kind of evidence, for I have often had to draw the attention of my walking companions even to the most obvious systems of stone walls which they have been walking right past, or even over, without noticing. The Lo-A-Tsai grave is situated close by a path and the first time I passed it, in the company of five villagers, I asked them what it was though most of them used that path nearly every day, none had ever before noticed the grave! \n\nA piece which is of vital importance and may indeed be what holds the rest of our jigsaw puzzle together is the correct identification of occupied sites on the seashore. There are many", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1964.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qz20zx09r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208277, "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": 1, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "180\n\nDAVID FAURE\n\nearthgods, and the decennial ta-tsius (festivals to thank the gods and feed the ghosts). Besides these festivals, births, weddings, and deaths, also called for celebration.47\n\nMany of these festivals are still celebrated, but some of the rituals which used to mark them are no longer practised. In the Mid-Autumn Festival, for instance, it used to be common practice for women and young people to sit outside their houses at night and repeat certain lines until one of them went into a trance.48 After mid-night, on the Tsat Tse Festival, villagers gathered water, which could be preserved in a jar and used as medicine throughout the year.49 Temple celebrations were hardly as well endowed before World War II as they are today. In the place of the operas that are presented to the gods nowadays, there used to be puppet shows only except at Sai Kung Market, which alone could afford opera pre-war.50 Feasts were essential to all celebrations. At temple festivals, each worshipping group held its own feast; at grave worship ceremonies, lineage members ate together at the graves, and for all other festivals, each family celebrated on its own. Feasts at weddings and funerals were open to all villagers from all of the villages in the same neighbourhood alliance.51\n\nCelebrations were meant to be colourful. They fulfilled the need for entertainment in village life at a time when other forms of popular entertainment were unknown as well as expressing deeply ingrained religious beliefs.\n\nThe musical culture\n\nSinging was an important ingredient of village life. At weddings, brides sang for \"several days and nights\" to express their sorrow at having been \"forced\" into marriage. At funerals, women relatives keened to express their grief, and to recount their relationship with the deceased. \"Mountain songs\" were sung between young men and young women. In some villages, the singing of these \"mountain songs\" was institutionalized, so that it was understood that Sha Kok Mei, for instance, would sing \"against\" Pak Kong in an annual \"mountain song\" contest. Punti, Hakka, and the boat people, all had their own songs. In addition, there were professionals, who came into the villages to sing for money. Quite a few villagers still remember the little clappers these singers carried.52", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208359, "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": 83, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA\n\n67\n\nthan is brought out by an analysis merely stressing the combination as a metaphorical expression.\n\nMountains are of ritual concern at the autumn festival of Chongyang, when people, among other things, climb mountains, or 'ascend heights', as the Chinese chroniclers put it. In my earlier explorations of the structure of the ritual calendar I have suggested40 that this festival has something in common with Qingming. Both occasions are ritual gatherings of people away from built-up areas in natural surroundings. They differ in that Qingming activities are focused on the ancestral tombs, whereas at Chongyang attention is on mountain tops. Now, indeed, we have found that the difference between the two festivals is less clear in that the tombs are called 'mountains'. One conclusion to be drawn from this circumstance provides support for our earlier hypothesis. There is a positive link between the two occasions. In a way, climbing tombs and climbing mountains were seen as rather similar activities. They were similar, but apparently not identical,\n\nIn this light, it is most interesting to read that in Youxian there is a mountain three li outside of the East Gate of the town, called Lingguifen**. The local population climb its top on the third day of the third moon, and again on the ninth day of the ninth moon.4 The third day of the third moon may, as we have seen, be a projection of the Qingming event on to the lunar calendar.\n\nAgain, graves are containers for the physical remains of dead persons, and thus they are linked to the ancestral tablets which, in a sense, are 'containers' for some more spiritual essence of the same dead.42 The cult of the dead in their graves can, on one hand be juxtaposed mountain worship; and, on the other, the ceremonialism focused on the ancestor tablets in homes and special halls. This triangular set of relationships will be of importance in our search for a system of meaning embedded in the Chinese festival calendar.\n\n4. Sweeping the graves\n\nAt this point we must examine what people did on the graves. One prominent feature was that the latter were cleaned and repaired. This meant presumably that they were cleaned of weeds and, if necessary, resurfaced.\n\nresurfaced.43 In my earlier outline of a hypothesis of the Chinese annual calendar as a system of ancestor worship, I suggested that in this sweeping and mending of the graves we encounter a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208367, "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": 91, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "QINGMING FESTIVAL IN CENTRAL CHINA \n\n75\n\nlinguistic terms and customary conduct. Ta qing may not only have been an expression of periphery, it may also have been a ritual activity of visiting non-agricultural, non-productive land: 'the people tread on the green on the outlying wastelands'.94 It is a visit to the yin ancestors in their graves and the yin ancestors are, by virtue of the location of their graves, part of nature.\n\n11. Worship to the Family Spirits.\n\nOne piece of information tells us that in Yingshan people made gong & offerings to the jiashen, 'the family spirits'.95 This may be an offering in the ancestor hall but jiashen might also mean something like 'household gods'. The latter interpretation is the more likely. However, if jiashen should mean 'dead forefather' it must then be an offering in the ancestor hall. The term shen indicates this, and furthermore, the grave offerings are described after this entry, so the gong and the jiao to the graves must be different. According to my previous preliminary analysis of the Chinese calendar system as a system of ancestor worship, Qingming should definitely not be a day for worship to the tablets in the hall. Curiously enough, it may be that this gong is linked to the willow twigs. The chronicler says:\n\nthis day people collect willow twigs and make offerings to the family spirits. Some insert [willow] in the hair at the temples.\n\nSo it may be that this note should be interpreted in such a way that the use of willow was a gong offering to the jiashen, probably the protective godlings of the household.\n\n12. A Hypothesis.\n\nWhat bearing have these data on my earlier studies in the calendar system of ritual events in traditional Chinese society? Arguing from materials from the middle Yangzi valley I have maintained that the Qingming festival is a symbolic statement on the sowing of rice, and I have pointed to some similarities between the spring practices and the customs of Chongyang in the autumn. In both cases we deal with ritual gatherings of people away from built-up areas in natural surroundings. The main difference is that at Qingming activities were focussed on the ancestral graves, at Chongyang on mountain tops. I proposed that Qingming had affinity with yin ancestors, graves, earth and underground. Chongyang,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "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": 208396, "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": 120, "title": "RAS-1978", "content_text": "104\n\nFREDRIKKE S. SCOLLARD\n\nArchaeological excavations to date have failed to uncover any flambe wares in Yangjiang Xian of the above-described type. In 1955, excavations instead indicated that pottery produced in Yangjiang Xian in the Song period (A.D. 960-1279), belonged to the green celadon tradition. Furthermore, even more recent discoveries in the vicinity of Shiwan town in Nanhai Xian at a location called Ji Shi (†), Northern Song (A.D. 960-1127) “dragon kilns” (i.e. sloping tunnel-like kilns) are found built on top of earlier Tang dynasty (A.D. 618-906) \"mantou kilns” (i.e. round bun-shaped kilns). (Figures 1 & 2.) In association with the Northern Song kilns have been discovered shards with an early type of blue flambe glaze. As the date of these shards is much earlier than the Southern migration of the Honan potters in the Southern Song period, the discoveries raise the possibility that this blue flambe glaze was an indigenous development and not stimulated by influx of Northern potters and techniques. Combined with the earlier excavation in Yangjiang Xian, where no flambe glaze of the Song period was found, archaeologists in Guangdong now seriously question the historical connection of Shiwan village in Yangjiang Xian with the present Shiwan village in Nanhai Xian.\n\nIn addition to the above discoveries, archaeological finds reveal a succession of kilns from the Tang site of Ji Shi (*) to the present day village of Shiwan as, over the centuries, the potters moved down the river closer and closer to Fushan municipality (†) which by the Ming and Qing periods (A.D. 1368-1912) had developed into an important commercial and handicraft centre.\n\nAs it developed, Fushan was no elite or scholastic art centre, but rather an unpretentious city of craftsmen with the pervasive idea that beautiful things could be made from waste materials. The town is said at one time to have had a population of over 300,000 which supported over 240 different types of business. The artists were famed for their skill in turning commonplace and useless materials into godlike creations. Clay and papier mache were moulded to look like old pottery, copper and jade; sesame seeds created figurines; silkworm cocoons made decorative flowers and grass. Every year at the time of the autumn festival, a competition was held in Fushan in which people vied to make the best \"autumn colours\" (i.e. paper handicrafts), not for the purpose of gaining fame or making money, but rather simply for the enjoyment of the people.*\n\nPage 120\n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1978.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8g84t8593", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209436, "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-1982", "page_number": 93, "title": "RAS-1982", "content_text": "71\n\nriot, the Council passed several resolutions. Among them were the following:\n\n(1) That an order be given to the police to bring up the rioters arrested by them, that afternoon if possible, and that the Police Magistrate be requested to deal with them at once,\n\n(2) That the sentences passed on the rioters be placarded\n\nin Taipingshan and the Chinese parts of town, and,\n\n(3) That His Excellency the Major-General Commanding the Forces be requested to send a picket of one hundred men to be available for the assistance of the police, and to remain until the police reported that they were no longer required.2\n\nIt is obvious that the Government felt itself under siege.\n\nIn accordance with the resolutions, twenty-eight rioters were brought before the Magistrate at 4 that afternoon. Of these, eight were immediately found guilty. The sentences were harsh, even by the standards of the day. Six were given 12 months' prison, and two, who were boys of 15, were given six months each. There is little doubt that these sentences were imposed for their deterrent effect.29\n\nThe \"Buffs\" were called out and were given permission by the Committee of the Tung Wah Hospital to be picketed in the Hospital's hall.30\n\nYet, although order was apparently restored, the strike continued, and, indeed, intensified. The cargo boats did not return to work, and rice pounders, coolies, artisans and workmen of all descriptions joined the strike. Rumours that the city would be set on fire at night undermined confidence. Admiral Sir William Dowell even undertook to land a party of men from the Audacious in the event of a fire.31\n\nThe fact that it was the night of the mid-Autumn festival, and that a lantern procession previously planned had to be called off, added to the already tense atmosphere. In the end, a rather low-key procession did take place, without incident.\n\n1", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 210544, "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-1985", "page_number": 151, "title": "RAS-1985", "content_text": "132\n\nJOHN KARL EVANS\n\nwhole family sat down to enjoy what Hsu describes as a sumptuous meal.\"\n\n50\n\nThe Roman counterpart of the Ch'ing Ming is the parentalia. This was a public event occupying a full nine days of the Roman calendar, the thirteenth through the twenty-first of February. As the name itself suggests, it was devoted to the propitiation of one's parents in particular, but Ovid's circumstantial description of the celebration in the Fasti (2.533-570), makes it clear that it extended to the ascendants in general. During this period, when the spirits were again believed to roam freely, the temples were closed, the magistrates laid aside the insignia of their offices, and it was forbidden to marry. On the last day, which was styled the feralia, the entire populace went out to lay offerings before the graves and to banquet with their dead. These meals could be fully as elaborate as the one in which Hsu participated at West Town, but equally, they could be as simple as those which Ahern reports in Ch'i-nan. She remarks that \"foods presented at the graves, though potentially edible, are not soaked, seasoned, or cooked; most of them are dry and unpalatable.\"' At the feralia, Ovid says (Fasti 2.537-539) that \"a tile wreathed with votive garlands, a sprinkling of corn, a few grains of salt, bread soaked in pure wine, and loose violets - these are offerings enough.”\n\n52\n\n——\n\nDespite certain procedural differences, the similarity in intent of the two ghost festivals on the one hand, and the Ch'ing Ming and the parentalia on the other, should be readily apparent. These are not by any means, however, the only ritual occasions on which the living attend to the dead in either community. Grave offerings, for example, are regularly to be observed during the Ch'ung Yang festival in the autumn, while generous offerings are normally set before the ancestral tablets on the death-day anniversaries of those ancestors who are personally remembered by at least one member of the family. Birthdays and death-days were usually commemorated by the Romans with sacrifices at the tomb, which were visited yet again at the rosalia and the violaria, the festivals of roses and violets respectively. These took place not on a fixed day but at any time during May or June, the months when these flowers bloom in the Mediterranean basin. This hints at the antiquity of the belief that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1985.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/gt54s866x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211253, "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-1987", "page_number": 314, "title": "RAS-1987", "content_text": "289\n\nof illegal structures. In time, it became a fixture, and the canopy and office have long carried the markings affixed by the department and its successor from 1971, the Housing Department, that granted them tolerated status.\n\nThe principal celebration at the shrine takes place at the Mid Autumn Festival, on the 14th to the 16th days of the eighth lunar month. Entertainment is provided for both the god and his followers on this occasion, along with protective rituals carried out by Taoist priests. In Elgin Street days, a stage was erected for performance of traditional songs (WA). After the move to Peel Street, a stage was set up in the middle of the “street”, opposite No. 49, built over the steps and with space to let the public pass up and down during the three-day event. Performances of Hoklo Opera were held every year up to 1973, the year before my visit. Permission had been refused in 1972, and there was no opera that year, but in 1973 the managers ignored the prohibition, and held the performance regardless.\n\nFor some reason, the opera that year was performed by a Cantonese troupe, instead of a Hoklo one. Perhaps the 1972 interruption, and uncertainty as to whether it could be held in 1973, were responsible. In 1973 the cost was over 30,000 dollars, with the opera troupe being responsible for erecting and dismantling the mat-shed.\n\nTheir persistence in the face of official disapproval was related to traditional practice at the mother temple in To Tong Market. There, before 1949, Hoklo opera was performed every year. Moreover, the proceedings were on a much larger scale. The religious rites and operatic performances lasted between 20 to 40 days, dependent upon weather, the state of the local economy - whether it had been a good or a bad year - and the amount subscribed towards the event. Curiously, there seems to have been a local tradition that servants and workers were not to be engaged by residents over the festival period, long though it was. This, too, was said to have applied in Hong Kong, over the three days observed here.\n\nIn Hong Kong, the group could not hold opera performances", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1987.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/rx919b522", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211515, "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-1988", "page_number": 232, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "208 \n\nmethod of signalling at night: they believe that Chuko Liang used captive hot air balloons to signal at night, to keep armies on the march at night in broken country together, and to facilitate by casting light on the ground intelligence gathering on night movements of enemy troops. Hot air balloons are, in consequence, known as the \"lanterns of Chuko Liang\". \n\nThe villagers of the New Territories have little interest in Chuko Liang apart from this fathering on him of the hot air balloon. They are, however, very interested in the balloons. Traditionally, and in parts of the New Territories up to the present, making and letting fly a free-flying hot air balloon was a recognised way of celebrating a joyful event. In most of the New Territories villages it was a traditional part of the festivities of the Mid Autumn Festival (usually at the end of September). In Sha Tin and Sha Tau Kok most villages would prepare one, \n\nand large villages might prepare several at this season, and this was the practice also in the Tuen Mun and Yuen Long areas. Presumably, the flying of a hot air balloon at this feast is an extension of the Lantern Feast element of the Mid Autumn Festival. Villagers have stressed that there was no ritual or apotropaic intention in the flying of these hot air balloons, “it was just done for fun because they look good and everyone enjoys them”. It was normally the wealthier village families that could spare the cash needed to prepare such hot air balloons, and it was traditionally expected that such families would pay for a balloon for their villages at this festival, and families willing to take on the burden gained face and stature within the village in consequence. The manufacture and flight of a balloon, however, required the co-operation of a dozen or more of the village youths. No one family could cope unaided. Flying a balloon, therefore, was yet another traditional practice which required co-operative activity from all the village youths, like holding weddings, funerals, building houses, and mounting feasts, and which were all so important in ensuring the village enjoyed a good communal spirit. The only ritual accompanying the setting off of a hot air balloon was the lighting of a few firecrackers to help the balloon on its way. \n\nIn the Tuen Mun area it was normal for a village family holding a feast to celebrate the birth of a son to set off a hot air balloon during the feast. This presumably is connected with the widespread custom of **hanging a lantern** at the birth of sons, because of the propitious sound", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211517, "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-1988", "page_number": 234, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "210\n\nof the ground, so that they can rise up with the balloon in due course: these youths have to light the fuses at just the right moment when the balloon takes off (see plate 6).\n\nOnce the balloon is fully erect, the oil-soaked ball is set alight and fixed to the centre of the wire struts at the rim. The balloon is pulled down to the ground and held down by as many of the village youths as possible, to maximise the heating effect of the very ardent fire produced by the oil-soaked ball (see plate 7).\n\nLighting of the old peanut oil ball was not always easy, and often took some time; the modern diesel soaked balls are much easier to light. In either case, once lit, the balloon soon begins to glow like a huge lantern, and the whole balloon quickly starts to strain upwards. The young men of the village try to restrain the balloon until the whole surface of the oil-ball was well alight, to ensure that the balloon flies upwards quickly and directly, with no dangerous lurches to the side where village buildings and crops stand ready to be set on fire. Usually, the balloon's lift is, however, so great that the young men are unable to restrain it for more than a few seconds. This is the most dangerous time, as the risks of the balloon catching fire at this stage are high: about half, in fact, fail and collapse in flame in this stage. If they don't burn out, the lift is great enough to carry the balloon up to a height of several thousand feet: balloons will cross the mountains of the New Territories with little problem. Ideally, the night for flying a balloon should be still and windless, so that the balloon goes straight up and hangs like a great lantern over the village, only drifting off slowly (see plate 8). A well-made balloon with a peanut oil-ball would burn, the villagers state, throughout the night and into the following day. Certainly, within the last 3 years, the author has seen balloons still hanging two or three hundred feet above the ground well into the morning after the Mid Autumn Festival. Diesel fired balloons burn out quicker, and tend to drift back to earth after an hour or so.\n\nThe villagers are and were aware of the fire-risks inherent in these balloons. The danger was when the balloon came back to earth still burning rather than staying in mid-air until the oil burnt out and the balloon drifted, dead, slowly back to earth. If the balloon was not restrained for the first few seconds after it was lit, or if the paper dome\n\n!\n\n!", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211518, "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-1988", "page_number": 235, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "211\n\nwas ill-constructed so that it broke up, or caught fire, in mid-air, or if the night was very windy so that the paper dome tore, or the balloon was driven down by a squall, then fires were quite likely. Hill fires, and, worse, crop fires and fires burning houses, cattle sheds and other buildings as a result of hot air balloons are known to villagers in Sha Tin, Sha Tau Kok and Tuen Mun.\n\nAt present hot air balloons are still made, particularly by villagers in the North District, and the numbers of balloons is still high - the author saw seven in the sky within one hour during the 1986 Mid Autumn Festival and more than ten within one hour during the 1987 Festival.\n\nThe current generation of village elders, in their late 70s and early 80s, are unanimous that the current balloon construction and flying practices are identical with those they used in their youth (i.e. in the 1920s), and that the elders in their youth said that the practices when they were young (i.e. in the 1870s) were also the same. The elders specifically said that the rim of the balloon was stiffened with thin wire in their youth. The only changes are the switch from hemp cloth rags or kapok to cotton waste, and from peanut oil to diesel. The paper used for the balloon skin has changed a little as the older, coarser paper is not now available, and a shinier paper is now used. The elders all feel the modern paper is better, as the shine allows the paper to \"slip through the air easier\", but they are dubious about the switch to diesel: while easier to light, it does not give so clear a light, nor does it burn for so long. It would seem likely, however, that at some stage the balloons may well have been smaller, and used green bamboo shavings where the modern balloons use thin wire, but this is only a guess. At all events, the memories of the elders make it clear that balloons of the sort described above have been a widespread tradition in the New Territories for at least the last 100 years.\n\n5\n\nNeedham in his Science and Civilization in China refers to setting off hot air balloons as \"an ancient sport\" and a \"pastime\", and refers to cases in Fukien, Cambodia, and Yunnan. The Yunnan case is particularly interesting as it refers to activities by a certain minority tribe in Yunnan during the slack period between the planting and weeding of the rice and the harvest. The Mid Autumn Festival also falls in this same slack period, although, in the New Territories double harvest...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211596, "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-1989", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "23 March\n\nDr. Elizabeth Sinn\n\n\"Management of the Chinese in 19th Century Hong Kong and the Role of the Tung Wah Hospital”\n\nThe following Visits were made:\n\n29 April\n\n6 May\n\n24 June\n\n1 July\n\nAnita Wilson and Dr. James Hayes\n\nVisit to the Pottery Kiln at Tuen Mun, Ha Tsuen Tang Ancestral Hall and Old Market, Ling Wan Monastery (with vegetarian lunch), Lai Family Study Hall and Mansion at Sheung Tsuen, Hakka Mansion at Sham Ka Wai, and Yuen Long Old Market\n\nDr. James Hayes and Ted Brown Visit to Kowloon Walled City, Again! Phillip Bruce\n\nVisit to Old Marine Police Headquarters at Tsim Sha Tsui, Kowloon\n\nPhillip Bruce\n\nRepeat of the Visit of 24 June\n\n14 September Dr. Patrick Hase and Lee Man-yip\n\nVisit to Wo Hang for the Hot Air Balloon release at Mid Autumn Festival\n\n25 November Dr. James Hayes\n\n9 December\n\nVisit to places of interest on Hong Kong Island, including Waterfall Bay, the Aberdeen Country Park Management Centre, Chung Hom Kok, Shek O Village and Lei Yu Mun Barracks and Leisure Centre Rosemary Lee and Richard Gee\n\nRepeat of the N.T. Visit of 29 April\n\n13-14 January Anita Wilson, Dr. Dan Waters, Rev. Carl Smith and\n\nDr. Joseph Ting\n\n22 January\n\n18 February\n\nWeek End Visit to Macao\n\nPhillip Bruce\n\nVisit to some interesting Naval and Military Graves in the Colonial Cemetery\n\nPhillip Bruce and Dr. Anthony Siu\n\nVisit to the Tung Chung Area, the site of Hong Kong's Future Replacement Airport\n\nThis varied and interesting programme has again been due to the Activities Committee, which has worked hard under Dr. Elizabeth Sinn's", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211705, "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-1989", "page_number": 120, "title": "RAS-1989", "content_text": "Weights and Measures \n\nLength \n\n1 fen \n\n1 ts'un (Chinese inch) \n\n1 ch'ih (1 Chinese foot) \n\n1 li (1 Chinese Mile) \n\nWeight \n\n1 chin (1 Chinese catty) \n\n1 tan (100 Chinese catties) \n\nArea \n\n1 mu \n\n \n\nMetric \n\n3.725 mm \n\n3.715 cm \n\n37.15 cm \n\n648-681 m \n\n604.8 g \n\n60.48 kg \n\n1/6 acre \n\n95 \n\nIncense Cultivation \n\nJoss stick manufacture is a branch of the incense industry, which is a traditional activity in Hong Kong dating back at least 400 years. It was first developed as a primary industry concentrating on the cultivation of and trade in incense trees. Then the industry gradually expanded into the manufacturing sector as incense wood was ground into incense powder before being exported. After the exhaustion of the incense trees, the industry expanded completely into the industrial secondary sector, making joss sticks from imported incense powder. \n\nAquilaria sinensis, the fragrant incense tree, was once cultivated in Hong Kong. In the late Ming period, the county of Tung-kuan was renowned for the quality of its incense. Until 1572, Tung-kuan county included the area subsequently forming the county of Hsin-an (including the present day New Territories area). Tung-kuan incense was famous throughout China, but was particularly favoured in the lower Yangtze area around Su-chou. In Kuang-tung hsin-yü, it is noted that many Tung-kuan people made their fortune from Kuan-hsiang (meaning incense from Tung-kuan) which was so popular that the annual sales values amounted to tens of thousands of taels. The business boomed, especially during the mid-autumn festival when people around Su-chou and Sung-chiang burnt incense overnight to \"fumigate the moon\". As a result, the stock of Kuan-hsiang was sold out in as short a period as one night.' \n\nPage 1\n\n \n\n \n\nPage 121", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1989.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8336pm92h", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212064, "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-1990", "page_number": 6, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "CONTENTS\n\nPRESIDENT'S REPORT\n\nOBITUARY: HUGH GIBB\n\nHON. AUDITORS' REPORT\n\nvii\n\nxiv\n\nxvii\n\nHON. LIBRARIAN'S REPORT.\n\nARTICLES:\n\nJ.W. Hayes — The Old Popular Culture of China and Its Contribution to Stability in Tsuen Wan\n\nC.C. Choi Studies on Hong Kong Jiao Festivals\n\nDavid Wilmshurst The 'Syrian Brilliant Teaching' Chinese Local Semi-Divine Deities\n\nKeith G. Stevens\n\nP.H. Munro-Faure China on the Brink of War\n\nFred Dagenais John Fryer's Early Years in China: First Impressions of Hong Kong and the Chinese People..\n\nSau Y. Chan The Offering to the White Tiger in Cantonese Opera\n\nLauren F. Pfister Clues to the Life and Academic Achievements of one of the Most Famous Nineteenth Century European Sinologists James Legge (AD 1815-1897).\n\nDan Waters Hong Kong Hongs with Long Histories and British Connections\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES:\n\nP.H. Hase Ta Kwu Ling, Wong Pui Ling and the Kim Hau Bridges..\n\nP.H. Hase A Village War in Sham Chun\n\nP.H. Hase Sha Tau Kok in 1853\n\nKeith G. Stevens The Buddha, the Heavenly True Warrior ..\n\nKeith G. Stevens Altar Images from Hunan\n\nKeith G. Stevens T'i-shen: A Substitute for a Person.\n\nRiden Sung Chi-Pui – The Making of a Husk-grinder..\n\nH.J.W. Chetwynd-Chatwin – The British Merchantman \"Norna\"\n\nGeoffrey Roper Report on Visit to Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance, Mid Autumn Festival 1992.\n\nDan Waters Sojourners in Xiamen: Notes on the RAS Visit.\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n1\n\n26\n\n44\n\n75\n\n89\n\n146\n\n169\n\n180\n\n2\n\n219\n\n257\n\n265\n\n281\n\n297\n\n298\n\n299\n\n302\n\n303\n\n307\n\n309\n\n314\n\nXX", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212067, "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-1990", "page_number": 9, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "year as your President. Have we coped, you may ask? Well, I believe we have, and for this I need to thank my fellow councillors for the very loyal and hard work they have put into ensuring that the Society's affairs run in a smooth and on the whole organised way. In particular mention must be made of Elizabeth Sinn for arranging a varied programme of activities and lectures, Carl Smith, for his loyal and perceptive encouragement, Patrick Hase, for arranging interesting visits and editing the Journal (perhaps the most arduous duty), Robert Nield for keeping us on the right financial track, for our team of ladies, Evelyn Caldwell our Secretary, a post which really holds the Society together, Anita Wilson for doing the newsletter, and our Assistant Secretary, Sharon Bruce, also our Librarian Y.C. Wan, and all those other Council members and helpers who help to make this Society tick and move forward.\n\nSo what have we done and where do we stand? I will start with the Programme. During the year there were the following talks and visits:\n\nTalks:\n\nChang Tsong Zung\n\nPeter Leeds\n\nMichael Luk\n\nPeter Steyn\n\nJames Hayes\n\nWang Gungwu\n\nMiss May Wong\n\nAnne and Stephen Selby\n\nSister Beatrice Leung\n\nSusanna Hoe\n\nRichard Stott\n\nVisits\n\nHong Kong Art in the 80s\n\nHistory of Transport in Hong Kong\n\nThe Origins of Chinese Bolshevism\n\nMemories of India\n\nThe Libraries of the Royal Asiatic Societies in China\n\nWestern Scholarship, Asian Continuities\n\nChanging Lifestyle of Young Japanese Women\n\nPidgin English on the China Coast\n\nSino-Vatican Relations and the Recent Developments of the Chinese Catholic Church\n\nGin and Bridge All Day: Myths about Western Women in Hong Kong 1841-1941\n\nHong Kong Birds\n\nVisits were to Waglan Island, organized by Geoff Roper and Roger Perry, Wo Hang Mid-Autumn Festival visit organized by Dr. Patrick\n\nviii", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212095, "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-1990", "page_number": 37, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "14\n\nvillage scholar once described to me by Tsuen Wan elders as \"having no degree, but scholarly (man hok ka), liking books and study\"; persons who might themselves be schoolmasters or could otherwise maintain a reputation for being educated men. The influence of such persons in the village was correspondingly great.25\n\n5. Augmented by Other Means of Ethical Education\n\n(a) Story-telling\n\nOne other means of educating children in the standard and expected norms was through story-telling and related pastimes. In response to questions put to elders in the Tsuen Wan villages about books and story-telling in their youth, various titles were mentioned, some of them surviving in hand-copied editions. It had mostly been the elderly villagers of their day who had owned such books and, in their leisure hours, had transmitted their contents to the younger members of their families. Judging from the titles listed, the moral content of many of these stories was high, emphasizing such qualities as loyalty, charity and filial piety, denouncing oppression and injustice, and showing the old principle of retributive justice in operation.26 Though intended mainly for amusement, their contents had the effect of reinforcing the ethical indoctrination received from other sources. These customary extensions to formal education were the more influential because there had been no newspapers or periodicals on sale in the Tsuen Wan shops in their youth, i.e. in the period 1910-1925. Thus the field of information had then been restricted to traditional reading material and its various means of transmission.27\n\n(b) The Man and Puppet Opera Stories\n\nWe can now pass from books and stories to the opera. Even in the 1970s, it was possible to glimpse the hold which the old entertainment still exerted upon the people. In Tsuen Wan, they still flocked to see the traditional opera performances held in the temporary matsheds erected on waste or temporarily vacant ground at festival times, on the temple deities' birthdays, and at important events in the calendar such as the Hungry Ghosts' Festival, Mid-Autumn Festival and the Lunar New Year.\n\nIn describing the staging of plays to celebrate the birthdays of the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212388, "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-1990", "page_number": 330, "title": "RAS-1990", "content_text": "307\n\nrecovering them and their stubborness in this belief undoubtedly saved the lives of 21 British seamen.\n\nH.J.W. CHETWYND-CHATWIN\n\nREPORT ON VISIT TO TAI HANG FIRE DRAGON DANCE, MID AUTUMN FESTIVAL 1992\n\nOn the 11th September, 1992, a party of Society members, family and children visited the Tai Hang Tsuen Fire Dragon Dance at the invitation of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association.*\n\nThe Tai Hang Fire Dragon Dance started in 1880 when Tai Hang was a small Hakka village of farmers and fishermen on the waterfront of Causeway Bay.\n\nAccording to local legend, on a stormy night that year, just prior to the Mid-Autumn Festival, some villagers killed a serpent at a stone house in Sun Chun Street. They placed the body of the serpent in a bamboo cage, intending to hand it over to the local police station the next morning. However, by then the body had disappeared. A few days later a plague broke out in Tai Hang and over ten persons died.\n\nOne night a village elder in his sleep was told by Buddha (one version says that the message came through Kwun Yum, the Goddess of Mercy) to make a grass dragon and burn firecrackers and incense sticks during the Mid-Autumn Festival. This advice was followed and the sulphur in the firecrackers drove away the disease and the villagers were saved.\n\nIt then became customary to hold a fire dragon dance every year during the Mid-Autumn Festival in order to drive away infectious diseases and to bring good fortune. This custom has been followed every year since 1880, with the exception of the Japanese Occupation and during the 1967 disturbances. The arrangements are in the hands of the Tai Hang Residents Welfare Association, and the event is very much a community function which continues a long-standing village tradition in the heart of modern, urban Hong Kong.\n\n* See Plates 14-15.\n\nPage 330\n\nPage 331", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1990.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/d79206299", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 212702, "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-1992", "page_number": 11, "title": "RAS-1992", "content_text": "'Fire Dragon' Mid-Autumn Festival -\n\nTai Hang\n\nParty for Dr. James Hayes\n\nGeoff Roper\n\nMichael Kirkbride\n\nProf. Tong Kin Woon\n\n—\n\nChinese Music\n\nElizabeth Sinn\n\nVisit to the New Territories\n\n―\n\nKam Tin\n\nPatrick Hase\n\nVisit to Devil's Peak\n\nVisit to Royal Observatory\n\nVisit to Mai Po marshes\n\nVisit to the Exhibition of Painting\n\nby Nancy Wu\n\nJohn Wilson\n\nElizabeth Sinn\n\n& Rosemary Lee\n\nDan Waters\n\n& Rosemary Lee\n\nMichael Lau\n\nThere was, as you see, another expedition to Chek Lap Kok! This really will be the last one until the new airport is completed, after which you will undoubtedly be able to visit it as much as you can afford to.\n\nI would like to thank all those who took the time and effort to organise these visits and expeditions.\n\nThe programme committee is also responsible for organising our lecture programme and those of us who have been able to attend them will, I think, agree that the standard has been well maintained. Without detracting from the other lectures, I would like to highlight the two lectures at the beginning of January 1993, where we were fortunate to have two prominent academics in the form of Professor Hugh Baker, Professor of Chinese at the London School of Oriental and African Studies, and Professor James Watson from Columbia University. The full list of lectures and speakers are as follows:\n\nLecture\n\nSpeaker\n\nAmerican Chinese Film Making\n\nShirley Sum\n\nCentral Highlanders of Vietnam\n\nGrant Evans\n\nCambodia: Is Peace Possible\n\n!\n\nix\n\nPeter Leeds", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1992.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/qf85tx75x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213380, "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-1994", "page_number": 202, "title": "RAS-1994", "content_text": "189\n\ncourt robes and glided along the path only to disappear into the base of a tree once he drew parallel to the watcher. Villagers have also seen fires at the Paak Kung shrines even during rain\n\nThe village with the greatest number of shrines, out of the 20 villages examined in detail in the study, is Sheung Tsuen (Pat Heung). The more important Tai Wong shrine is housed in the 200 year old temple and is the governor of the village. There are also ten other Paak Kung and earth god shrines located around the village. Six of the Paak Kung protect the village at night while four earth gods of a lower rank are located in each of the four directions and are 'on duty' for twenty four hours a day as general security guards and to prevent people from becoming lost. All the shrines are worshiped on the first and fifteenth day of each lunar month and on major festivals\n\nWorship at the shrines varies from village to village, although it is common that worship is carried out on the first and fifteenth days of the lunar new year. Seven of the villages performed rites at their shrines at this time. Offerings may also be made with prayers at the main Chinese festivals, particularly during Lunar New Year and the Mid-Autumn Harvest festival, as well as at weddings, births and the birthdays of elders and ancestors and for general thanksgiving.\n\nSome villages have their own special ceremonies. At Ma Mat Wai, the Paak Kung shrine to the earth god 'Hin Tan' is worshipped on 'farmer's day' on July 14th and at the harvest festival on August 15th. The shrine at Pak Kong is worshipped on the birthday of the popular sea-goddess Tin Hay. The Hei Shą Fuk festival is only carried out at Wo Hop Shek, near Fanling, at the end of the last month of the lunar year and at the end of the first month of the lunar calendar. Each family in the village contributes $30 to buy pork which is cooked with vegetables on stoves built into the Tai Wong shrine. February 13th of the lunar calendar is the god Hung Shing's birthday in Ho Sheung Heung, which is even more important for the village than Lunar New Year. For three days before the god's birthday, an opera is held in front of the Tze Tong while a feast and dragon dance takes place on the day itself. In June a feast day is also held to commemorate two officials, Chou and Wong, sent by the Emperor to save the village from pirates. This may represent those officials who came to rescind the Imperial evacuation order in 1669. The festivals in Ho Sheung Heung are organized by the master of the temple but in other", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1994.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/zk522640g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213583, "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-1995", "page_number": 179, "title": "RAS-1995", "content_text": "149\n\nmentioned that incense trees in fung shui woods were ever harvested. Iu (1983) claims that the misunderstanding may have been caused by the reference to another incense producing species Aquilaria agallocha which was commonly grown in north Vietnam.\n\nAnother resource, long since exhausted, were the forest trees used for charcoal burning, once a flourishing local industry all over the New Territories. The memory of this occupation remains in one of the place names at Shing Mun, known as Tan Chong or \"charcoal factory”, in which some houses were already abandoned by the early years of this century (Hayes, 1983). An account of the charcoal industry, which was carried out by outsiders for trade, is given by Shen (1971).\n\nThe village hill areas were the main suppliers of fuel, usually in the form of grass cut in autumn, but also as pine and brushwood gathered to augment a villager's income. Firewood was taken to market as it was one of the three basic staples, including rice and vegetables, that was required by the rapidly growing urban population. Firewood from Shatin was brought on foot to Kowloon (Sessional Papers 1903, p209) which list 66,521 loads of firewood, each of 90lbs. The Kowloon Lok Sin Tong levied a small weighing charge on each load of firewood sold in Kowloon City market, for charitable works. The annual output of one acre (0.4ha) was 11 piculs (640kg), (Hong Kong Annual Report 1938 p59). Gathering firewood was the main occupation of the village women. A typical headload would be in region of 90-100lbs (45kg) and would be collected twice a week, (Hayes, 1983).\n\nFirewood was used in earthenware stoves, known as \"feng-lu\", for cooking family meals and special food at festival times. Grass gathered from the hill side in autumn and the stalks from the first crop of rice were the universal fuel used for heating water and pigswill. Firewood was still being used up until 1964 in the urban encroached village of So Uk in west Kowloon for cooking at Chinese New Year, as it was better for baking (Hayes, 1983).\n\nWhen a bride came to live in her husband's village, the older women would show her those areas from which fuel could be gathered and those areas, usually the fung shui woods, where it could not be gathered. This information was often learned by means of a 12 line poem or song to name those areas where the young wife should not gather fuel.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1995.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/95941j25g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213663, "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-1996", "page_number": 16, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "21 September \n\n27 September \n\n12 October \n\n2 November \n\n9 November \n\n30 November \n\n7 December \n\n1997 \n\n18 January \n\n21 January \n\n8 March \n\nDinner at Police Training School. \n\nNew Territories Mid-Autumn Festival Fire Lanterns \n\nJoint Seminar with the South China Research Circle and the Antiquities and Monuments Office \n\nThe Future Kam Tin Heritage Trail \n\nThe Defence of Leighton Hill During the 1941 Battle for Hong Kong. \n\nThe 'Da Tsiu' Festival at Nga Tsin Wai Village, Kowloon. \n\nArt Treasures from Shanghai and Hong Kong A Guided Tour, University of Hong Kong Museum and Art Gallery. \n\nViews of the Pearl River Delta · Macau, Canton and Hong Kong, Exhibition held at Museum of Art \n\nVisit to Government House and the Legislative Council Building. \n\nVisit to Hop Yat Church, the Hong Kong Medical Science Museum and the Man Mo Temple. \n\nVisits outside Hong Kong \n\n19-21 October Visit to Guangzhou and Whampoa \n\n14-17 November Temple Tour of Central Taiwan. \n\nWith 17 lectures and 16 visits it is not surprising if the odd person has been heard to say, probably partly tongue in cheek, that we have too many functions. The rubric would appear to be, however, how \n\nXV", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213829, "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-1996", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "154\n\nlimited surplus funds.\n\nThe Local Principal Deity Cult and the Making of Communal Culture\n\nLarge-scale local festival activities can best demonstrate a community's communal culture. Unlike single-clan communities, where ancestral halls serve as the venues for collective functions, Tung Chung's ceremonies of ancestor worship generally occur within individual families. Most villages are multi-surnamed and do not have ancestral halls. Only a few single-lineage villages, such as Mok Ka 家 Wong Ka Wai 黄家圍 Lam Che 藍峰 Nim Yuen 稔園, and Ba Mei te, and some larger lineages such as the Hsiehs, the Hos, and the Chous at the multi-surname village San Tau, have, or used to have, ancestral halls for worship ceremonies in spring and autumn. For villages with ancestral halls, ancestor worship may be conducted on both a family basis and a lineage basis. At the houses of most villagers, spirit tablets of their ancestors are enshrined on the family altars in the main halls. Joss sticks are burnt daily in front of the tablets. During festival days, animal sacrifices, food, wine, and other offerings are prepared. Kowtow and the burning of incense and ritual paper form part of the simple ceremony.\n\nFor a minority of single-surname villages with ancestral halls, collective ancestral worship on a lineage basis is held at the halls during the Ch'ing-ming Festival and the Double Ninth Festival. Among ancestral halls built before World War II at villages such as Mok Ka, Wong Ka Wai, Ba Mei, and San Tau, the Mo-yu-sheng tang at Mok Ka, and the Yung-ho t'ang at Wong Ka Wei are best maintained. Some of these halls also served as village schools to which boys were sent for three to four years, before a modern school was established near the Tung Chung Fort in the 1940s. At these halls, pupils were taught with the traditional primers, i.e., the San-tzu-ching (Trimetrical Classic), Ch'ien-tzu-wen (Thousand Character Classic), the Confucian classics, and the collection of Chinese idioms. After some halls had deteriorated, village offices would sometimes be used to accommodate the schools. As a case in point, the public office of the upper Ling Pei village was turned into a classroom after Ho's Study, the ancestral hall of the Hos and a village school at upper Ling Pei, had fallen into ruin.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 213839, "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-1996", "page_number": 191, "title": "RAS-1996", "content_text": "164\n\nin Tai O, following the practice of the Houwang Temple in Kowloon City, Tung Chung sets the date on the 15th of the eighth lunar month. As explained by local villagers, people in a farming community such as Tung Chung, in contrast to the fishing community of Tai O, are busy with farm work until mid-autumn. Setting the date for festival celebration in the slack season guarantees mass participation and enjoyment to the full,52\n\nDuring this festival of four days and five nights, representatives of Tung Chung's villages present the best sacrificial offerings to their local principal temple. All inhabitants from the area participate in the mass worship of their patron god. It is the climax of religious and social activities of the year as operas, Ch'iang-p'ao (rocket-snatching) contests, and other forms of entertainment are incorporated in the god's birthday observance. For the performance of the opera show, a bamboo stage is built in the open area in front of the main entrance of the Houwang Temple. On two sides of the stage, many stalls are set up in rows selling food, oblations, religious souvenirs, and even toys. Among these booths are some for the \"rocket associations\" which are formed mainly by competing villages and organizations in the names of 'ang, to vie with one another in the capture of lucky rockets. These rockets are considered relics of the temple god, or representations of the deity, which will bring good fortune and glory to the winning units. They must be returned to the temple with a thanksgiving observance on the god's birthday in the following year.\n\nBefore World War II, according to the natives, the \"rocket-snatching\" contest was held on the 18th of the eighth lunar month during which rockets were shot into the air by officers in charge of temple management. Representative members of the rocket associations, usually young men assembled in the square in front of the temple, would then scramble for the numbered wooden tablets inside the rockets just fired. Whoever got hold of the tablets could purchase the rocket numbered accordingly.\n\nAfter the War, owing to population increase, fighting over the possession of the rockets became a serious problem. In 1949, to reduce the chances of violent conflict, some rural areas decided that participants would draw lots for the rockets. In Tung Chung in recent years,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1996.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/3n209j641", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214113, "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-1997", "page_number": 181, "title": "RAS-1997", "content_text": "150\n\neve of the Mid-Autumn Festival. In recent years visits have also been paid to such destinations as Taiwan, Vietnam and various parts of China.\n\nBefore looking in greater detail at what the Hong Kong Branch (RASHKB) does, let us review briefly the history of the Royal Asiatic Society (RAS 1979).\n\nHistory\n\nThe Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland was founded in London in 1823, and it received its Charter of Incorporation as a Royal Society the following year. It is the oldest and most important learned society of its kind in Europe, and it is the doyen of societies promoting the study of Asia. Its membership has included generations of eminent scholars and explorers with a deep understanding of the East.\n\nA large part of the Society's work has, however, always been carried out through its branches and affiliated societies. Branches were formed in such places as Bombay and Madras about 1838, and in Ceylon in 1845. The Hong Kong Branch followed in 1847, the North China Branch at Shanghai in 1857, the Japanese in 1875, the Malayan in 1878 and the Korean in 1900 (RAS1979: 15). Such countries as Japan and Korea were never, of course, part of the British Empire, and, in any case, British territory today is reduced to a few small pink dots on the map; such as Bermuda, the Cayman Islands and Gibraltar. Thus the RAS can now be thought of, very much, as an international organisation rather than as being purely British.\n\nAlthough the Hong Kong Branch was first established in 1847, it ran into difficulties and, consequently, ceased to exist after the end of 1859. It was, nevertheless, resuscitated a century later (Hayes 1997: 129).\n\nAchievements\n\nGoing back to the middle of the last century, although the Branch was comparatively short-lived, it was nonetheless productive. With its emphasis on practical projects one of the most conspicuous notches in its belt must have been the proposal that a piece of land be requested", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1997.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/wp98g7579", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214607, "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-1999", "page_number": 22, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "Appendix Two\n\nActivities - Visits\n\nDate 1999\n\n24 April: Kadoorie Farm, led by Dr Gary Ades, followed by visit to Shui Tau and Kam Tin led by Jason Wordie and Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n29 May: Adornment for the Body and Soul, Ancient Chinese Ornaments from the Mengdiexuan Collection, led by staff of the Hong Kong University Museum and Art Gallery.\n\n15 to 18 June: Zhangjiajie, North-west Hunan Province, Tour, led by Dr Michael Lau.\n\n27 June: Ohel Leah Synagogue, led by Rabbi Kermayer and Glenn Fromm followed by lunch at Jewish Community Centre.\n\n24 September: Wo Hang Mid-Autumn Festival Fire Lanterns, led by Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n15 to 21 October : Bits of Broken China - Shandong and Dalian, led by Robert Nield, Sarah Parnell and Michael Broom.\n\n27 November: Backstage at the Opera, led by Dr Patrick Hase.\n\n18 December: Railway Museum, Man Mo Temple and Tai Po Tau Study Hall, Tai Po, led by Dr Patrick Hase and Peter Crush.\n\n2000\n\n15 January: Public Records Office, led by Carl Smith.\n\n26 February: Wan Jing Jai Temple and Kan Lung Wai Walled Village, led by Ron and Veronica Clibborn-Dyer and Peter Stuckey.\n\nDan Waters,\n\nPresident\n\nxxi", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214672, "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-1999", "page_number": 87, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "51\n\nLife was not, however, all hard work, sickness, and brawls. The farming year was full of slack periods when there was time for entertainment and pleasure. The ritual year gave the villagers a framework for their leisure activities: each major festival was marked with a feast - even the poorest of families would have fat pork and rich eels on feast days. Nga Tsin Wai was, according to the Sha Tin village elders, famous for making \"Cha Kwo\", the traditional sticky village cakes, and these would usually be in evidence at festivals. The New Year, Tin Hau's Birthday, and the Winter Solstice Festival were the main festivals celebrated in Nga Tsin Wai, together with the Spring (Ching Ming) and Autumn (Chun Yeung) Grave Festivals, where fat pork would be distributed by the Ancestral Trusts to those who attended the worship at the graves.\n\nDuring the summer, and particularly at the Dragon Boat Festival, the village had the habit of inviting strolling singers to come and stay in the village for a few days or a week, to sing through their repertoire of \"Dragon Boat Songs\". These were long sung novels, and the villagers would sit outside the village gate in the evening listening to the singer for hours.\n\nThe villagers of Nga Tsin Wai were famous for singing themselves (the Tai Wai villagers in Sha Tin were jealous of the Nga Tsin Wai skills). The villagers sang Shan Ko, “Mountain Songs\". These were sung man to woman, verse by verse, and often included innuendo and suggestive comment: they were often called \"Teasing Songs\" as a result. Nga Tsin Wai villagers would often hold impromptu contests with youngsters from Tai Wai when they met at the pass which separated the lands of the two villages (the villagers say that is why the songs are called \"Mountain Songs\"). The Sha Tin elders also remember that more formal contests were also held - an annual one at Ma Tau Wai drew contestants from all of East Kowloon and Sha Tin: it was held at the Mid Autumn Festival. Contestants would be drawn, man and woman, and they would sing to each other; the one that ran out of things to say being declared the loser. The audience was mostly youngsters, and a few interested elders - they would sit around the contest area on the ground, vocal in their comments. The village elders say these contests could last for a couple of weeks if enough contestants appeared. The last contest was held just after the War. This was a Punti practice. The elders of the Hakka village of Ngau Chi Wan rather...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 214856, "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-1999", "page_number": 271, "title": "RAS-1999", "content_text": "239\n\nTwo important things happened in October 1971: firstly, men were no longer allowed to take concubines and, secondly, every person had to have at least one full day off work a week. Up until then people in small Chinese firms frequently laboured seven days a week with a few days off at Lunar New Year and odd days off at major Chinese festivals - like Dragon Boat and Mid Autumn Festival.\n\nPeople\n\nEnough about statistics: what about RAS members who made things happen?\n\nI will always remember Dr J R Jones CBE, MC, MA, LL.D, JP, who served as our President from the time our Branch was reconstituted until 1970. I first met J R in early 1955 at a Dante Alighieri (the Italian Society) meeting. Then I learned he had a penchant for things antiquarian as well as languages — although he spoke little Chinese. There are a few short pieces written by him in early RAS Journals.\n\nI remember him in a pinstripe, blue suit and, although fairly tall, he could be described as dapper, polished and a ladies' man. He was gentlemanly, personable and, as such, made a splendid RAS ‘front man.' Much of the work behind the scenes, such as setting up the reconstituted Branch in 1960, was in fact done by Dr Marjorie Topley and Jack Cranmer-Byng, Honorary Editor. Marjorie Topley became our President in 1972.\n\nDr Jones had led an interesting life including serving King, Country and Empire in two world wars, as well as helping to organise the Ukrainian Army soon after the end of World War One. He also went on archaeological expeditions to Italy and Africa. As a lawyer he practised at the High Court in London and later in Shanghai. In Hong Kong he was legal advisor to The Bank, as he always referred to the Hong Kong and Shanghai Bank.\n\nIn fact he advised 'the Bank' to buy a number of paintings by George Chinnery (1774 to 1852). The latter is often said to have been the most accomplished western artist to have worked in the East in the 19th century. These paintings, which the Bank purchased, were a splendid investment. In addition, JR sat on a number of government", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1999.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/s178b887x", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 215075, "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-2000", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-2000", "content_text": "128\n\nChinese lives have long been regulated by two separate calendars, the lunar and the solar. To agrarian peasants the accuracy of the combined calendars is of vital importance having long had a religious as well as a practical function. Chinese geomancers use their skills of prediction melding the religious and practical so that time and what in the west would be regarded as astrology are intermingled. Lunar calendars cannot predict the seasons any more than the solar calendar can predict the full and new moons.\n\nAll Chinese religious festivals follow the lunar calendar which changes from year to year, complicated by whether a particular lunar month has twenty-nine or thirty days. Festivals play a major rôle in people's lives breaking up the monotony of life. There were, and still are, three major annual festivals: San Jie, known colloquially as guo jie literally as 'passing the joint', consisting of guo nian, the festival of seeing the old year out and the new year in; guo duanwu, the Dragon Boat Festival on the Double Fifth; and guo zhongqiu, the Autumn Festival, on the 15th day of the eighth lunar month. The great majority of festivals in China have been and still are determined by the waxing and waning of the moon.\n\nUntil 1911 an annual Imperial Lunar or ‘Dynastic' Calendar, known as the Yellow Calendar, the determination of which was a royal prerogative, was precisely calculated following meticulous observations by Chinese astronomers in order that imperial ritual sacrifices could be carried out and confirmation obtained for political action. This legitimised the emperor's power to rule and his claim to the Mandate of Heaven. The one stationary star of the Heavens was the Pole Star around which all other stars seem to circulate. The Pole Star was recognised as the linchpin of the heavens. Chinese emperors were cosmic figures, the equivalent on Earth of the Pole Star, with their every move regulated in conjunction with astrology. The calendar divided the year into twelve months; the new moon fell predictably on the first of each lunar month and the full moon on the fifteenth. A similar popular Calendar, known as the Farmers' Almanac, costing coppers, was and still is widely circulated amongst the masses. This enabled, and still enables, the population, mainly the peasants and petty merchants, to be informed when specific actions or functions can be performed as well as taboos warning them against carrying out daily activities which would be counter to the feng shui, such as on a certain", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-2000.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/nk328168n", "rank": 0 } ]