[ { "id": 205177, "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-1966", "page_number": 133, "title": "RAS-1966", "content_text": "128\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\nanother occasion in the lunar year by Robert Morrison, the celebrated missionary, in his View of China (1817):34\n\n\"The 2nd moon, 2nd day is the general birth-day of these [tutelary spirits] when at all the public offices, and in various of the streets, plays are performed, and Crackers are let off in great numbers; also decorated rockets. The spectators struggle to obtain the fragments of the last, under the idea that he who obtains it will be fortunate\n\nThis was a rough sport and sometimes led to minor fights between men of different dialect groups. As Hardy observes, the proceedings on these occasions were invariably accompanied on the side by such delights as gambling stalls, opium divans and the like, and as such they were not welcomed by the police for whom they made extra work and trouble.35\n\nThese entertainments were paid for by opening subscription books which the managers took round the villages. The occasional deficit was usually met on application to a well-off village elder. Village people did not have to pay to see the show, but those who subscribed received a big lantern called tang lung36 and could take part in the feast customarily held at this time. I am told that it was not uncommon to set out a hundred tables on these occasions.\n\nThe temple organisation for this small group of villages could be found at other places in Old and New Kowloon.37 It is interesting to note that villagers were quite clear about which villages belonged to a particular group and which did not. For instance, when I asked one old person as to whether Kowloon Tong village people attended the entertainment at the Tai Shek Kwu Temple, she said immediately: 'It had nothing to do with them; they lived on the other side of the stream'. This indicates the existence of clearly recognised geographical boundaries for each temple group area; and the division of the peninsula into several groups each with its exclusive interests and responsibilities.\n\nI have mentioned Yau Ma Ti and its shop-keepers several times already.38 Partly because of its proximity and close economic connection with the Tai Shek Kwu group and partly for its own sake a word about the place is opportune, especially as there was a more developed type of local organisation in Kowloon's growing townships.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1966.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/bz60k0811", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205287, "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-1967", "page_number": 49, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "42\n\nEXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN\n\nHAKKA SOCIETY\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER*\n\nIntroduction\n\nThe following pages are devoted to a broad outline of economic and social change in a remote valley in a mountainous part of the New Territories, Hong Kong.1\n\nThe valley has its mouth on the east side of Tide Cove, and stretches about two miles in a southeasterly direction between the Ma On Shan and Turret Hill areas. The valley is fairly well-watered and there is a main stream at the bottom, which has plenty of water even during the dry autumn and winter months. Several small streams run down the steep surrounding mountain sides. This valley was once well-forested but little of this remains. Some groves of old trees can still be seen around the villages, and in the uppermost area, there are still patches of dense forest. The hillsides are now mainly covered with shrubs, and where not, on the upper slopes, there is poor grassland. The former woodlands of the valley were dwelling places for small barking deer and wild boars, but the animals have disappeared with the trees.\n\nThree settlements of Hakka-speaking people are to be found here. Together they consist of some 320 persons. There are no recent immigrants from China. Each settlement is inhabited by a patrilineal kin group with one common surname. One of these localities is a composite village situated at the mouth of the valley, where formerly two big streams jointly had their outlet into Tide Cove. The name of this place, Big Stream Village (Tai Shui Hang), is derived from one of these that comes down the northeastern hillside above the village and separates it into two parts. It is nowadays emptied of its water, which is led away for the use of the mining sites at Ma On Shan. There is a comparatively large area of flat land here, well suited for agriculture. However, during high tide, salt water soaks the lower areas and also runs up the mid-valley stream.\n\n* Dr. Aijmer is Assistant Professor in the Department of Ethnography and Social Anthropology at the University of Stockholm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205289, "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-1967", "page_number": 51, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "44\n\nL. G. Aijmer\n\nimplying the exchange of one picul of unmilled grain for one picul of the inferior quality. It has been estimated that by this procedure farmers can increase the quantity of their food supply by 25%. However, this process has been accompanied by a large-scale abandonment of arable land, and the total rice production has rather decreased in recent years. But before we turn to this phenomenon we shall have another look at the economic conditions prevailing at an earlier stage.\n\nIt is apparent that people in the valley have never been able to gain their livelihood by rice farming alone. From the very beginning of their settlement, they have almost certainly been looking for possibilities of complementary economic activities. There has always been some vegetable cultivation, but intended for local consumption only. Indeed, nowadays people have to buy most of their vegetable supply in the market towns. The plots are small and the technique of the villagers seems inadequate. In comparison with the thriving vegetable fields down in the plains the plots up here make a sad sight. It is agreed that difficult transportation has been the main obstacle for an expansion of gardening. To make a reasonable profit, marketing in the urban areas is necessary. Keen competition from the specialized plainsmen and their co-operatives gives villagers the feeling that rice cultivation gives the only crop that is worthwhile. The social value of rice growing surpasses the value accorded to gardening: the latter occupation is generally connected with the large numbers of recent immigrants from China. Bad means of transportation also limit the production itself. Vegetable growing requires intense fertilizing. The supply of manure is limited. To buy and transport additional fertilizers would heighten the production costs above profitability.\n\nSome fields of sweet potatoes and ground-nuts are also to be found. The yield is for local consumption only. On the hillsides above Big Stream Village traces of terraces can still be seen. I was informed that they were once used for the cultivation of both vegetables and ground-nuts. This might imply that more extensive gardening actually took place here at one time. What this meant as an extra source of income to the villagers is difficult to estimate.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205291, "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-1967", "page_number": 53, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "46 \n\nL. G. AUMER \n\nAnimal husbandry is another traditional feature in the economic life of the villages. In an earlier period, every household used to raise two or three pigs. This was not only for immediate profit but also as a kind of saving economy. The animals were sold off when circumstances required activation of capital. Pork has always been a luxury in the villages and is eaten only on special occasions. Roast pigs for ceremonial display play an important part, and a status-bestowing one, on festive occasions. Stimulated by the increasing market demand for meat in the late 1940s and in the 1950s, villagers increased their stocks to three or four pigs per household. Around 1960, however, the market price was heavily affected by the steadily increasing import of relatively cheap pigs from China. Pig breeders now acutely experienced the chronic disadvantage of poor transport facilities to the markets. The saleable price does not exceed HK$100, and it is calculated that the breeding costs for about six months, together with labour and transport costs, do not make the venture worthwhile.\n\nCows are kept in the villages for a double purpose. Rice farming requires draught animals, and buffaloes are not suitable for mountain areas. A certain profit can also be made on selling. It is calculated that a cow-owner will get a new calf every two years. The feeding is not very expensive since the animals are grazed on the hill sides and on abandoned fields. They are used in agricultural work for about five years, after which period they are sold off. In this case, marketing offers no difficulties as brokers in the butcher trade turn up in the villages whenever they hear of a possible deal. They pay in cash and take the cows with them. Weak animals are sold as soon as possible. Together with pigs, cows fulfil another most important function. The manure is used for fertilizing the fields, and villagers depend greatly on this supply.\n\nSmall-scale chicken breeding has always been carried out in the villages. People from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village now sell their fowls in the new Sha Tin Market, where the presence of wholesale dealers from Kowloon improves the market situation; though there is heavy competition from specialized chicken farms run by immigrant peasants from China. In Grass Field Village, breeders wait for the main festivals to obtain a better price in their traditional market town, Sai Kung.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205292, "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-1967", "page_number": 54, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n47\n\nThe last procedure is likely to have prevailed formerly. In addition, some ducks are found in each village, but they are kept entirely for local consumption.\n\nIt is reasonable to assume that pig rearing and fowl keeping were important, although not vital, in filling the widening gap between production and consumption demands in this valley. However, villagers had always had access to another natural resource. I have mentioned earlier that the steep hill sides, now covered with shrubs, were once densely forested. These woodlands were exploited by the people through extensive firewood cutting.\n\nThe importance of this activity is reflected in the fact that defined areas of interest were recognized by people in the three settlements in this connection. Alleged intrusion seems to have given rise to long-drawn disputes as to accepted rights. At the side of the path leading from Big Stream Village to Plum Grove Village, at a fairly equal distance from both, a small stone has been erected. There is an inscription stating: 'Ng Area-Mountain Border.' Ng is the kin name of all the Plum Grove people. It is said that this border stone was erected sometime around 1900 in order to establish more clearly-defined village regions for firewood cutting. This arrangement should have reduced the amounts of incidents and quarrels considerably. Similar stones seem to have been set up over the whole of this mountain area, thus providing borders of economic interest. The firewood used to be carried to Kowloon and sold there.\n\nIt is interesting to note that these definite borders, indicating an increasing interest in the exploitation of the woodlands, were marked off at a time when decline in the tea and indigo production affected the economic situation. The woods also supplied raw material for a kind of small-scale industry in the valley; charcoal burning. The remains of ovens can still be traced. It is difficult to estimate the extent of this trade, but it is very likely that charcoal burning together with firewood cutting were the most important activities that supplemented the limited agricultural production. People often characterize elderly persons like: 'He has been a farmer and wood-cutter all his life.'\n\nProfessional wood-cutting is not practised nowadays; nor is charcoal burning. The latter industry was revived during the", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205294, "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-1967", "page_number": 56, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n49\n\ntion called for new solutions, implying a widening of the economic horizon.\n\nThere were, however, then and now, some local people operating partly outside the framework of village production. Before the establishment in 1952 of the Sha Tin Market, Tai Po was the natural choice of market town for Big Stream people. Communication was by boat, and the ferry traffic was operated by a few families. One old type of rowing sampan is still in use, but only intermittently. Now people usually go to the Sha Tin Market by two ferry-boats equipped with engines. They leave Big Stream Village around 10 a.m. for Ho Tung Lau across Tide Cove, or at high tide for Sha Tin directly, and return in the early afternoon. These two boats are owned by a family who make their living entirely from this traffic. They not only serve people from this village, but take passengers from Plum Grove Village as well.\n\nOne elderly woman in Big Stream Village has got a small store of sweets, which she sells to village children. This tiny 'shop' has a stable market, and gives the old lady a small profit. However, this is the only instance of anything like shop-keeping or retailing within the valley. None of the three villages seems to have had any permanent stalls or shops in any of the market towns of the New Territories or in Kowloon. However, for a time, one man from Plum Grove Village ran a grocery shop in the Sai Kung Market. It was closed during the Japanese Occupation and never reopened. This shop was not for retailing of local products from his home village.\n\nII\n\nI have so far tried to describe traditional means of livelihood, and their disappearance or persistence up to today. It is now convenient to outline essential changes, relevant to our theme, in the general economic milieu.\n\nBy the year 1876, great plans were entertained for creating a new town at the southern end of the Kowloon Peninsula. Once launched, this project led to rapid urbanization, so that at the end of the first decade of this century, the Kowloon population was estimated to be 27,000. Industrial plants were set up, e.g.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205295, "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-1967", "page_number": 57, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "50\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\na match-factory in Yau Ma Tei in 1880, and dockyards at Sham Shui Po in the same year. A glass manufactory was also situated here. An early account informs us that Yau Ma Tei, \"the principal village\" and the main centre of development,\n\nhas increased in population and bids fair to some day become an important town. There is a considerable Chinese junk trade at this place, and amongst other industries is a preserved ginger factory. The Military and Police Rifle Ranges are at the back and near the village. Gas works were erected here in 1892.7\n\nThe New Territories came under British control in 1898 on a 99-year lease, and subsequently new communications were developed. In 1900 a start was made with the main road from Kowloon to Tai Po, and in 1906 work was commenced on the construction of the Kowloon-Canton Railway by a private company. In the middle of the 19th century the organization of the State of California and the gold rush to the Sacramento Valley created new lines of commerce to connect Hong Kong with the American Continent. This was also the beginning of a steadily increasing emigration traffic between Hong Kong and San Francisco. Much of the coolie traffic to Southeast Asia, South Pacific, the West Indies and other countries was carried out through the port of Hong Kong. Whalers began to be a frequent sight in the harbour and, in a free port, the Hong Kong shipping trade was booming in the latter half of the century.\n\nBy the close of the 19th century the valley people had come to experience a critical situation demanding economic activities beyond the framework of the traditional system. Stimuli in this process were supplied by the change in the general economic milieu, and the impact of Western industrialism was not only experienced as something negative and destructive, but also as something that directly or indirectly offered a wide range of new choices. Many men grasped at the new opportunities, and soon found advantages in their changed situation. Men from Big Stream Village took up jobs in the road and railway construction across Tide Cove. Others could be found seeking all kinds of employment in the new urban area in Kowloon. The men in Grass Field Village early specialized in masonry and worked on construction sites all over the New Territories, and in", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205296, "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-1967", "page_number": 58, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n51\n\nKowloon. They engaged in the construction of small bridges, pig-sties, village houses, and urban structures. On the look-out for chances of work, leaving their families behind them in the village, they began to settle, more or less temporarily, in the market towns of the New Territories, and on the Kowloon Peninsula. They lived a life oscillating between the rural and urban areas.\n\nThis uniform specialization in a skilled labour trade is difficult to explain. However, I venture to suggest a possible explanation. It seems reasonable to assume that specialization in the masonry trade was a gradually developing process. Some men were making use of the slack season in farming to obtain an extra income. This was a period when rapid urbanization in Kowloon, and increased building by New Territories emigrants in their native villages, would have raised the demand for such labour. Some success could have encouraged them to work on a larger scale, and to recruit extra hands by way of their agnatic bonds of kinship. The enterprise ramified, and more relatives became engaged. Through the stimulus supplied by the possibility of earning money in a short time when the traditional village economy was suffering from the strain of foreign industrialism, more Grass Field people sought a new income along lines already established by agnatic kinsmen. For a time, most households in the village had male members in the masonry trade. The fact that very few people chose existing alternatives can be explained in terms of a strongly kinship-orientated society.\n\nA more drastic solution to maintain livelihood was emigration abroad. All three settlements have experienced this type of migration. But here also there are differences. Before the Pacific War, Grass Village had only a few migrants working in South-east Asia, while in Big Stream Village nearly every household had overseas members. In fact, emigration abroad seems to have started one generation earlier in the latter place than in the other two valley settlements; that is around 1890. In this generation, several men left for the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. I was told that mostly they entered the new countries illegally. They made a start as recruited crew members of ocean-going ships, and later deserted in convenient ports, thus avoiding poll-taxes and other obstacles to unwelcome Chinese immigration. The next generation, setting out in about the second decade of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205297, "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-1967", "page_number": 59, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "52 \n\nL. G. Aijmer \n\nthis century, followed in very much the same way as their fathers though many men stayed on as sailors. The old men in this village are well-travelled. They stayed away from the village for twenty to forty years, remitting money home for their families. External income became increasingly important as a complement to agricultural production, then as now largely in the hands of the village women. \n\nIn Plum Grove Village there was no specialised skilled labour trade like masonry in Grass Field Village, nor was there specialisation in going abroad to seek employment. Emigration was an important factor in the economic life of this settlement also, but it started later than in Big Stream Village. \n\nIt seems to the present author unreasonable to dismiss the problem by merely referring to accidental choice. Some points call for brief discussion. There is reason to consider the market situation. Grass Field Village had its traditional economic ties with Sai Kung, about one hour's walk away over hill paths. Today it is a market town of some importance with about 1,500 inhabitants. An item of information from 1899 tells us that there were 800 people living there at that time, although the 1911 Census, reckoned as very reliable, gives the figure 512. A very knowledgeable man in Grass Field Village recalls from his childhood in the beginning of this century that Sai Kung was then a small place with only about 300 people, a few shops, and a tea-house. He was also of the opinion that little business was done there, and that villagers went fairly seldom to the market town. Life in the village was self-contained. Nevertheless, Sai Kung would have been important in the economic life of the village as the principal market for its products, at least before the establishment of the urban community at Yau Ma Tei on the Kowloon Peninsula. Tea, dye, charcoal, fire-wood, and pigs will have been sold in Sai Kung in traditional times. \n\nAs mentioned earlier, Big Stream villagers had their traditional connections with the important market at Tai Po. However, the situation in this town was entirely different from that in Sai Kung: \n\nIn the 1880's the Tai Po market was controlled by a localized lineage of the Tang people who, as masters of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205298, "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-1967", "page_number": 60, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "the market, permitted themselves to claim excessive privileges and to harass marketers from other lineages. Tang control of the market was repeatedly challenged by the Man people of another village, and on suffering a decisive setback in their campaign to force a relaxation, the latter organized a league of already existing intervillage units in order jointly to establish, in 1893, a new market in the close vicinity of the old.10\n\n53\n\nAlso, Tai Po was relatively distant, and by rowing-boat the trip there would take a couple of hours in good weather. The conditions prevailing at the Tai Po Old Market will have created economic difficulties that did not exist in the Sai Kung Market, and which placed the Big Stream people in a relatively bad situation.\n\nThe Plum Grove villagers used the market at Sai Kung, and often do so still but its possibly declining importance may have been less decisive in determining the extent of their work outside the old-style village economy. The land under cultivation around this settlement is regarded as the best land in the valley, though a large proportion of the fields here is owned by people from Grass Field Village, and also by people from Yellow Bamboo Mountain Village in another valley. In a small village the agricultural output might still have been sufficient enough to make emigration less attractive. The Plum Grove people also had some bad experience as some 10 men left the village for Southeast Asia around 1910 and were never heard of since.\n\nIII\n\nI wish now to turn aside to provide a background for migration in the context of the social structure of these villages.\n\nThe youngest children in Grass Field Village are of the 25th generation of a patrilineal kin group, all members of which share a common surname, Lau. The early ancestors lived in Mui Yuen (Mei Hsien, M), a Hakka district in the north-eastern corner of Kwangtung Province. A branch of the Mui Yuen people migrated down to what is now the New Territories, where they first settled in the Sai Kung area. A group soon branched off, and left the immediate coastal area, supposedly because of the constant threat\n\nPage 60\n\nPage 61", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205301, "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-1967", "page_number": 63, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "56\n\nHe continues:\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nIt was apparently open to any man of means to tie a portion of the property he left either to the maintenance of an ancestral hall already in existence or to the establishment of a new one in respect of himself or some recently dead forebear. New segments coming into being were physically reflected in the ramification of halls.17\n\nFreedman, arguing in terms of domination processes, isolates the accumulation of wealth, implying power, within certain sections as the seed of lineage proliferation; the transformation from section to segment being manifested by the establishment of a new ancestral hall.\n\nSome features of traditional Hakka society need to be examined in this context. Major lineages tended to have small numbers; for instance, in 1911 Big Stream Village had 173 inhabitants. Plum Grove Village 59, and Grass Field Village 124.18 Surveying the 23 purely Hakka villages in the surrounding mountainous area, we find that at that time Big Stream Village was the most populous place; the number of residents in the 23 villages ranging between 173 and 6, giving an average of 64.19\n\nHere in the mountains there was very small differentiation as to occupation, all people being agriculturalists cultivating small pieces of land, owned and controlled by themselves. Poverty was a characteristic of these settlements. With the exception of a few paddy fields, said to be the lands of the village founder and connected with ancestral ceremonialism and occasionally with schools, no common property was shared by villagers. Some economic differentiation will have arisen from different forms of external income, and perhaps in relation to ownership of ferry boats, charcoal ovens, and hill plantations. The ecological setting, limiting any expansion of local production, provided the framework of an unstable situation, sensitive to any increase in population or decline in economic capacity. The small numbers of inhabitants in the Hakka mountain villages seem to reveal, therefore, that growth within the social and ecological framework was not possible.\n\nThis picture of Hakka society displays localized communities on a major lineage basis, connected only through occasional common ancestor worship expressing the idea of clanship as a con-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205302, "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-1967", "page_number": 64, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n57\n\ntinuum of generations. The Hakka concept of major lineage is intimately connected with a process of fission and resettlement; it seems impossible that one particular, geographically distinct, settlement could contain more than one tsu (M) or major lineage of the same clan. Minor lineages — fang (M), tracing descent to the different sons or grandsons of the first village founder, are always present and tend to live in hamlets separate in space, but close enough to form together a distinct compound settlement. If a fraction wished to manifest itself as a segment within the localized group by way of establishing a new ancestral hall, it remained part of the existing system, and became merely an addendum to a series of lower order segments already in being.\n\nThis kind of segmentation, the result of accumulation of wealth and status, does not appear to have been frequent in Hakka society. In none of the three villages studied has ramification of ancestral halls occurred below the minor lineage level. This might be correlated with the small amount of social and economic differentiation pertaining to the small-sized hill settlements in 'traditional' times.20\n\nAnother factor may be of importance in this connection. As far as my experience allows me to generalize, Hakka ancestor ceremonialism differs from that of the Punti population in the arrangement of the ancestral halls. The Hakka do not have individual tablets symbolizing particular dead persons, but they have one tablet for the collective unit of dead ancestors in the centre of the table for ritual paraphernalia. All ancestral halls in the valley have been rebuilt after the war, and on a smaller scale than before. A look at the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British takeover in 1899, seems to reveal that in Big Stream Village and Plum Grove Village, where segmented ancestral halls on minor lineage basis could be found, the different units were erected side by side, thus probably expressing the unit of higher order.21 Ancestral ceremonialism, expressing unit, thus seems to have been instrumental in a process of fusion, discouraging segmentation within the existing structural framework.\n\nSegmentation implying an expansion beyond the limits of the localized settlement, requires some consideration. Freedman, in scrutinizing social conditions in the provinces of Kwangtung and", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205305, "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-1967", "page_number": 67, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "60\n\nL. G. ALMER\n\nExtension in Hakka society took different forms. Banditry seems to have been one,29 occasional work in the countryside,30 tenant farming in the plains,31 employment in towns or overseas others. These forms imply different depth in the extension, and it seems reasonable to assume that such differences were due mainly to ecological factors, such as the proximity to urban milieu, and facilities of communication. My attempt at interpretation of the difference in depth of extension between Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village, based on the differences in the socio-economic situations prevailing in their respective market towns, will serve as an illustration.\n\nThose who take part in the extension process live a life oscillating between their focus of social interest and their focus of economic interest. They spend much time away from home, often the main part of their lives, but they are always planning to return to the place of origin and they seldom feel attached to their place of work. They are sojourners.32\n\nOscillation is well illustrated in the career of an elderly man from Plum Grove Village. His early contact with an urban milieu was when, as a teenager, he carried fire-wood to the market in Yau Ma Tei, on which occasions he spent some four hours in town. His experiences there stimulated him to settle in Kowloon, where for a period he worked as a cook. Next we find him working in Singapore for some time. Returning home he took up a position as a salesman in a grocer's shop in Kowloon. A labour recruitment office in Kowloon offered opportunities of coolie work in the West Indies, and a four-year contract with these people brought him to Jamaica and Trinidad. The contract period over, he went to work in the phosphate mines of Nauru in the Central Pacific. Back in Hong Kong once more he took employment in a grocer's shop, but left soon again, now as a member of a ship-crew. He spent 18 months in jail in Holland, returning to Hong Kong just before the Japanese Occupation in 1940. This difficult period he spent entirely in Plum Grove Village. Immediately after the war he succeeded in going back to Holland, where he entered illegally. Finally we find him in his own village engaged in chicken raising, ginger cultivation, and pineapple planting, all on a small scale and rather unsuccessfully. He is now living entirely on remittances from his son who is working in England. During his wandering life", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205309, "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-1967", "page_number": 71, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "64\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nemigrants who had left the Colony. The masons in Grass Field Village, who had their village within a day's journey, naturally had a word in all village affairs; but the Big Stream men working in Vancouver or on Aruba in the West Indies had a very limited influence on decisions made in the home community.\n\nVI\n\nTraditional leadership in these Hakka villages was gerontocratic in nature. There were no formal isu (M) or fang (M) leaders. An informal council of old men met occasionally in the ancestral hall to discuss current problems. These persons' influence was directly correlated to the distribution of economic control within the community. As long as this differentiation was small, all elders would have had fairly equal status. Age differentiation within the group does not seem to have been of vital importance.\n\nThe process of emigration created new economic groups. In Big Stream Village, where emigration abroad early dominated the scene, the informal council of village elders is made up of four former overseas Chinese. Two of them have worked in the United States, one in Canada, and one on Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. The last-mentioned man has quite a good house and has apparently had some resources, but he is in poor health, struck by rheumatism, a fact he ascribes to excessive use of alcohol in his younger days. His sight is bad and is hardly improved by the smashed pair of spectacles on his nose. This 76-year-old man said that he was 'willing to accept anything, whatever it is and whenever it comes.' He has no children. His influence on village affairs is apparently very limited. It seems as if he is taking part in the village council meetings merely to represent the first minor lineage, even if I was never able to confirm a strict rule that all fang (M) should be represented there.\n\nOf the other three leaders, two are men who have spent much time in New York in the United States, and one who has been working in Vancouver, Canada. One of the New York men is Village Representative and the official spokesman with the British administrative authorities. He is 73 years old and a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205311, "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-1967", "page_number": 73, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "66\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nand Hoklo fishermen operating from Ho Tung Lau across the water. He is mainly dependent on the remittances from his son working in England. It seems likely that his exclusion from the informal council is due to his low economic status. The third, 86 years old, is completely deaf and cannot communicate with people.\n\nOn the basis of the above we may generalize and say that during the transitional period the earlier, fairly non-differentiated, gerontocracy in Big Stream Village was transformed into a system, still gerontocratic in nature, but one marked by unequal distribution of power within the set of old men. Power was directly correlated with the accumulation of wealth which, in communities involved in processes of extension, was dependent on the economic opportunities pertaining to the destinations of the sojourners, and their fortune there.\n\nVII\n\nThe new phase in the extension initiated after the Pacific War took, as we have seen, a more systematic form as emigration was almost entirely concentrated on Great Britain. The difference in the new situation lies in the circumstance that the emigrants from the same village, although scattered over the whole of Britain, are still not too far away from each other to be able to keep in touch. Some of the 33 men from Big Stream Village working overseas, on an occasional visit at home, told me that villagers working in Britain in Chinese-style restaurants stay in London, Liverpool, and other places. They have frequent contacts and meet each other fairly often. Sometimes they even hold meetings.\n\nThe different solidarity groups within the major lineage at home mark off relations also in the overseas settlement. The village at home is now almost entirely dependent on the remittances flowing in from Britain. In this situation those working in Britain, who now constitute a kind of localized sub-group in the community, feel that political influence should go along with the flow of money. They are young and middle-aged men with a latent dissatisfaction with the passive conservatism of the old men still in power at home. The Village Representative is constantly blamed for his lack of interest in village affairs, supposedly reflected in his daily visits to his former place of work, the Ma On Shan Mine, where he spends his days at the mahjong table.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205312, "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-1967", "page_number": 74, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n67\n\nHe is seldom in the village. Opposition is prominent among the men from the first minor lineage who feel dissatisfaction, seeing that power is concentrated in the hands of three old men from the third minor lineage and the single-household second minor lineage, and that their own old man is completely excluded. People from the first minor lineage feel oppressed by the almighty third minor lineage which is strong in numbers, while the first and second were heavily reduced during the war. They are reluctant to cooperate with their remote kinsmen, a fact which is illustrated by the following example.\n\nDrinking-water was earlier a problem in Big Stream Village. The women had to walk up in the valley to the main stream, above the point where the tidal waves cease to have any effect, to collect water every night. A man from the first fang (M) or minor lineage, working in England but on an occasional visit to his home, got the idea that a water tank should be constructed and tap water installed in the houses. The suggestion was approved by the villagers, but the project was, in fact, achieved on a minor lineage basis. This man wrote a letter to the males of the first fang in Britain outlining the plan and asking for financial support. They approved of it and collected a sum which was sent back to the village for this purpose. No financial aid was asked for from the New Territories Administration or any other fund; apparently in order to exclude the Village Representative from this affair, and also in order to expedite the construction work. The originator himself has a good knowledge of this kind of work, and taking the lead he employed two skilled workers and with the assistance of the women of this minor lineage they started on the project. Three months were required, and the costs are estimated to have amounted to nearly HK$1,200.\n\nPeople in the third minor lineage now began to think of having their own water tank, and in a similar way they contacted their overseas members who provided funds for the project. The single-household second fang joined in and the man responsible for the first improvement scheme was once more appointed to lead the construction work. This time, however, he was paid for his participation as the matter was no concern of his primary solidarity group—the first minor lineage. The costs for the new tank were estimated at some HK$3,500, the difference in...", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205313, "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-1967", "page_number": 75, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "68\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ncost, compared with the first scheme, being due to some difficulties in the terrain, and to higher labour costs.\n\nThus the two main groups were not able to co-operate in this affair. The overseas members of the major lineage acted along lines in accordance with their minor lineage solidarity. The example illustrates the position of the overseas sub-community in the home village situation. The first suggestion on this matter came from an overseas employee on a temporary visit to the village. The consent came from the others in Britain, that is the people who had to pay for this investment. The decision was then made by the overseas group supplying the economic resources for the village, on the suggestion of one of its members. The council of old men does not seem to have played a part in this affair — at least not until the second tank project was considered.\n\nOther examples of how vital affairs are handled by the community members residing abroad could readily be found. In Plum Grove Village the construction of a small bridge over a brook was in progress. The District Office had supplied the village with some building material but the remaining cost of about HK$4,000 was paid by members of the community working in Britain. I was told that the decision to build the bridge was made by the overseas villagers at an assembly, when they raised a contribution fund for this purpose. At first the District Office was reluctant to approve the project, and instead suggested a less ambitious scheme to erect some concrete blocks. 40 bags of concrete were supplied. It is typical that in this situation, an overseas villager who had just returned home took charge of the affair, contacted the Plum Grove men in Britain for money, and at last work on the bridge could start. The formal Village Representative, an old farmer who has spent the whole of his life in the valley and holds the position as the oldest man in the major lineage, was apparently circumvented in this matter.\n\nAs in Big Stream Village, there is an informal council of old men in this village also. It is made up of the Village Representative, and two old, but poor, former emigrants. However, it was openly admitted that most decisions came from Britain.\n\nAt the time of my work in the valley, two villagers, about 50 years old, were on a visit to their families in Plum Grove\n\nPage 75\n\nPage 76", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205315, "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-1967", "page_number": 77, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "70\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\ngration inevitably created a shortage of farm labour, and large areas of arable land were abandoned as time passed. In the first place it was the less accessible terraces that were given up. Of course, rice cultivation is still a major factor in village economy, and it still supplies the people with a basic amount of staple food.\n\nOn the other hand, the rapid economic change in the Colony after the Pacific War has continued to accelerate. There has been an increasing demand for labour in the New Territories and in the absence of men, women have had to fill many of these requirements. For instance when the construction of a small dam was in progress in the valley many women from Big Stream Village were engaged in carrying pipes from the landing place at Tide Cove to the construction site. They were paid HK$8-9 a day for their work. With an economy now fundamentally based on remittances from abroad, cash has come increasingly into demand. Most unmarried girls, from about the age of sixteen and upwards, now leave the home village and take up jobs, preferably in the industrial areas in Kowloon. Textile factories seem to attract them most. Once in town, they are captivated by the urban milieu and its possibilities, and they return to their village only on rare occasions.\n\nIn the process of extension the economic capacity of women has grown in importance; first by taking over agriculture, and gradually by taking part in the extension itself. Male absenteeism has also created a situation where many activities formerly carried out more or less exclusively by men, are now handled by women. For instance, what remains of traditional ceremonialism in the villages is now to a great extent kept up by the women.\n\nIX\n\nThe extension process has also modified the selection of women that enter these communities as wives.\n\nAt an earlier period, on the initiative of the parents, brides were selected through go-betweens. These go-betweens were nearly always non-professionals, and most often agnatic or affinal relatives, who had knowledge of a friend or relative with a daughter of suitable age. With both boys and girls this was about 16 years old. Surname, hsing (M), exogamy was and still is a", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205316, "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-1967", "page_number": 78, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n71\n\ngeneral rule. Unlike the Punti population, among whom it was customarily expected that groom and bride were total strangers to each other,40 the Hakka go-between arranged a meeting on a selected day at a tea house in a market town. The boy and the girl each brought along their 'friends', which presumably meant mainly the age-mates of their respective major lineages. The parents were not present on this occasion. If the couple consented, the boy's parents selected an auspicious day and informed the girl's family at least a month in advance of the date of the wedding.\n\nThe bride's family now started to arrange the dowry, which mainly consisted of clothes, at an amount that was supposed to be sufficient for her entire lifetime, and which was maintained under her control after the marriage. If it could be afforded, the dowry also contained some jewellery.\n\nAt the wedding the bride was transferred from her native village to her future one by means of a sedan chair. This ceremony is supposed to have limited the area in which a marriageable girl was to be found, as in this mountain district it would be difficult for a bridal procession to move too long a distance. Most wives of the valley seem to have been recruited from the surrounding mountain villages and from the Three Fathoms Cove area. Big Stream Village also has had many wives coming from one particular village in the Lam Chuen Valley in the hinterland of the Tai Po Market. It was also pointed out that in 'old times' marriage connections stretched as far as the border town of Sha Tau Kok and Sham Chun Market in Chinese territory.4 Plum Grove Village and Grass Field Village have frequently had marriage connections with the Sai Kung area. Some of the community members working overseas took secondary wives in the country they were working in.42\n\nAdoption of infant or child brides into the household was also very frequent, as this was a more economic solution for poor people who had not then to feed an extra mouth until the girl was of marriageable age and provide a dowry for her. In both cases the woman maintained the surname of the clan of which she was born a member.\n\nAt the present-day go-betweens are not used. The youths make their own contacts during work and recreation. Bonds of", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205317, "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-1967", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "72\n\nL. G. AUMER\n\nmarriage are now cast over wide areas. However, some of the traditional wedding ceremonialism is still kept up. A kind of procession, but without a sedan chair, is arranged. The main rite is still ancestor worship. What might earlier have been secondary marriages in foreign countries have now become the main and only marriage. In Big Stream Village, for instance, there is a man who married a British woman. They are now both residing in Britain, but their small child has been left with the grandparents in the village. On the whole, the marriages seem to be outside the scope of parental control: and the new wife is not always willing to submit herself to the traditional household control exercised by the husband's parents. As a matter of fact, many wives prefer to stay away from the near relatives of her husband, during the periods he is working abroad. Mostly she stays on with her own parents, but her husband may also provide for her so that she and their children reside in a market town, or at least away from the village. In Big Stream Village alone there are six examples of this innovation. During the periods the latter spends at home, the woman joins him whether he chooses to live inside or outside his village. There is no well-established pattern of residence, and apparently there is much improvisation.\n\nThese innovations are very much in contradiction with the rules of traditional Chinese society. The older generation often express bitterness with the present-day situation. They still think in terms of local economy, even if they have been emigrants themselves, and they regret the diminishing supply of female labour that used to be a substitute for absent men.\n\nNOTES\n\nI The material for this essay was collected during a stay in Hong Kong from December 1964 to October 1965. The field work was financed by the following Swedish funds: Magnus Bergvalls stiftelse, Konung Gustaf VI Adolf:s 80-arsfond, Hierta-Retzius' fond, Humanistiska fonden, Helge Ax:son Johnsons stiftelse, and Vegafonden. I wish to express my deep gratitude for their generous support. I am also indebted to Mr. Leung Chee-tung, whose profound knowledge of the New Territories, so well-known among anthropologists working in Hong Kong, was of indispensable help to me. I thank Mr. Robert G. Groves most warmly for his kind assistance in Hong Kong. All romanisation is given in a Cantonese Form, except where an M in brackets indicates Mandarin in the Wade-Giles form. The place-names are as listed in A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong Government Printer, 1960. See especially pp. 180-181.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205318, "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-1967", "page_number": 80, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n73\n\n2 There are indications that this mountain area at one time was inhabited by non-Chinese Yao people; Barnett 1957, p. 261. The present inhabitants, however, are all Hakka- and Cantonese-speaking Chinese, settled here for only about 300 years.\n\n3 The estimated average price for local unmilled rice is (1965) HK$28 per picul for first crop rice. The corresponding figure for second crop rice is HK$36 a picul.\n\n4 Chiu 1964, p. 77.\n\n5 Bot. Report 1906, p. 221.\n\nIt could be added that a fish hawker is touring the area daily. He is from Sai Kung and his route includes Grass Field Village and Plum Grove Village. There are also other occasional peddlers, trading in food and sweets. Some shops can be found at the mining workers' settlement at Ma On Shan. Fishermen call at the pier there every morning. People from Big Stream Village often take advantage of these facilities.\n\n7 S., D. W. 1900, p. 202f. See also Tregear & Berry 1959, p. 12ff, and Hayes 1966, p. 128f.\n\n8 In a village just outside Canton, \"almost all those who went to work on ships were Wongs. This was chiefly due to the functioning of kinship relations in economic life. One who knew of an opportunity in one's own occupation usually recommended it to a kinsman. A Lee already engaged in business in Hong Kong would hire his own relatives as help or recommend them to fellow businessmen who might need help. A Wong in the 'hard labour' business, an activity tightly controlled by secret societies, or in marine work, did the same for his own kinsmen.\" Yang 1959, p. 73.\n\n9 Lockhart Report, p. 557. Census 1911, p. 103.\n\n10 Skinner 1964/65, p. 202. For further details, see Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n11 The Ng people in Plum Grove Village have no connections with the former Grass Field people of the same surname.\n\n12 The coastal area of Kwangtung was the scene of a dramatic mass deportation, executed by the Ch'ing occupants as a counter-measure in the struggle against raiding Ming loyalists. This course of action was carried out from 1661. Eight years later the coastal strip was declared open for settlement and an active policy by the Viceroy of Kwangtung and Kwangsi, A Ke-min, lured immigrants to the waste lands. The main influx of Hakka to the New Territories was in the following decades. If this is correct it may be that the Lau people appeared in this area during the course of this re-occupation. See Hui 1963, p. 89ff.\n\nSee Hui 1963, p. 89ff. However, Professor Freedman (1967) has quite correctly pointed out that the data are by no means conclusive on the effective evacuation of the area.\n\n13 Skinner 1964/65, p. 37.\n\n14 Freedman 1958, p. 50.\n\n15 In the Hakka village in the Tolo Harbour area, studied by Jean Pratt, at the Chinese New Year 'all the men go to the lineage hall in a village across the valley, where they claim their ancestors lived. Pratt 1960, p. 149. But note supplementary information in Freedman 1966, p. 41; this issue, however, has no bearing on my argument. Similar social ceremonialism seems to have occurred among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population. See Hayes 1962, p. 28.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205320, "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-1967", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n75\n\nVaillant 1920, p. 85. Leaving this discussion open, there is still reason to assume that both the disturbances in Kwangtung and the Hakka expansion to the south were correlated with a search for new areas for resettlement.\n\n28 'A dreadful internecine strife, in which 150,000 at least, perished, took place between the Hakkas and Pún-téis in the south-western districts of the Canton province, from A.D. 1864 to 1866, and arms and even armed steamers, were procured from Hong Kong by both parties. Ball 1925, p. 282.\n\nA Hong Kong resident reports that the Peninsula of Kowloon presented for several days in August, 1862, the novel aspect of an animated battlefield, as the Punti inhabitants of the neighbouring villages were engaged in a bloody warfare with Hakka settlers at Tsimshatsui.\" Eitel 1895, p. 380. See also n. 27.\n\n29 \"Every year is marked unfortunately by an increasing influx of unattached and often undesirable characters from Chinese Territory, most Hakkas from the Wai Chau and Hing Ning District. It is impossible to keep track of the movements of these persons, and many of them are tempted by their opportunity of acquiring unlawful gains by means of robbery, kidnapping, 'White pigeon', and kindred offenses. It is hoped that these undesirable additions to the population will be considerably curtailed before long.\" New Territories Report 1917, p. J2.\n\n30 The quarry-men are nearly all Hakkas from Kweishin, who settle at the quarries until they have made some money and then return home.\" New Territories Report 1899-1912, p. 55.\n\n31 This type of extension might also have served as reconnaissance for a future settlement of a permanent kind. The following note from the New Territories could be interpreted in this direction:\n\nIn the 24th year of the reign of the Emperor Kwong Shu, which was 1897, there came to the Land of the Jumping Dragon a Hakka by the name of Kong Tai Kuen. Up to that time none but Tangs had lived there. Kong rented a house and became a tenant-farmer. He recommended two of his relations to come along also, but they stayed only three years and then returned to the Kong ancestral village at Li Long north of the Shum Chun river, while Kong Tai Kuen gave up farming in the Jumping Dragon Land and moved to Fan Ling, Ingrams 1952, p. 162.\n\n32 I use the word 'sojourner' in a freer sense than Paul Siu, to whom the term implies a stranger 'who spends many years of his lifetime in a foreign country without being assimilated by it;' Siu 1952, p. 34. My term signifies a person who temporarily lives geographically separated from the locality constituting his main focus of social interest.\n\n33 SCPH 1965; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Apart from going abroad, some young men from Plum Grove Village and Big Stream Village work as police constables in Sha Tin and Kowloon. One man from Grass Field Village works in a textile factory in Kwun Tong, New Kowloon,\n\n34 This is confirmed by other sources. For instance, the New Territories Report 1900 remarks upon the fact that 'Hakka women work as hard, if not harder, than their men,' (p. 269). An observant traveller noticed that in Mei Hsien in Kwangtung, the Hakka district where both people in Big Stream Village and Grass Field Village had their clan foci.\n\n'it seems to be mainly the women who do the hard work. They do not bind their feet. The women are strong and erect, though excessive toil begun too early in life may account in part for their tendency to be undersized... the women do all", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205321, "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-1967", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "76\n\nL. G. AIMER\n\nthe carrying and other heavy work, \"The men do not even know how to carry water\" and probably do not demand that the women give them lessons at it.' \n\nFrank 1925, p. 210f. Even among the Cantonese-speaking Punti population in Kwangtung, traditional women's participation in the work in the fields occurred; cf. Yang 1959, p. 21f. The notes above, however, are to be read as contrasts to Punti custom.\n\n35 Investments in house building on a large scale seem to be typical for all Chinese peasant communities with a marked inflow of external income. Generalizing from his experiences with three emigrant communities in Fukien and Kwangtung, Chen Ta writes:\n\n\"The most practical way to gratify their vanity is to build a house. Even when he does not contemplate a return in the immediate future, a Chinese emigrant who has made a fortune in the Nan Yang is quite likely to send a sum of money home for the express purpose of buying a new house\"; Chen 1939, p. 109.\n\nFrom another part of China, Francis Hsu notes that\n\n\"in this Yunnan community people became rich not through South-Seas emigration, but through tin mines and trading. As soon as a family becomes wealthy, it begins to build huge but largely unused houses ...\"; Hsu 1945, p. 48.\n\nBoth authors interpret house building as the symbolic aspect of the move from one social position to another by the sojourner in his home community, the big house being closely associated with gentry status. A comment on increasing house building in the New Territories in the beginning of this century is made in the N. T. Report 1899-1912, p. 56.\n\n36 Although these people have spent many years in English-speaking countries, none of them can converse in the English language. Also, this is largely true for the younger generation now residing in Britain. The Chinese emigrant is often sojourning in a Chinese enclave, the structure of which, in many important respects, is very different from that of his home community; it is still basically Chinese and offers social security in a foreign country. I have the impression that the sojourners have a fairly limited direct contact with the people of the country where they stay, especially if this is in Europe or America. Such contacts are also often highly formalized, of the type client-waiter relations in a restaurant. The surrounding social milieu is, I feel, experienced filtered through the culture of the enclave.\n\n37 In 1963 overseas remittances, in the form of postal and money orders cashed at the New Territories post offices, amounted to the value of HK$20,973,152. The corresponding figure for 1964 was HK$24,076,719; Hong Kong 1963, p. 60; Hong Kong 1964, p. 30. Considerable sums will also have been remitted through banks: these figures are not known. One item of information from the New Territories tells that one farmer annually receives about HK$1,500 from his two sons working in England; Topley 1964, p. 176. Ronald Ng (1965, p. 35) estimates the monthly remittances at £30, or HK$5,760 annually.\n\n38 This means that the daily income for a restaurant worker in Britain would amount to nearly HK$23. This may be compared to the daily wage of a worker in the New Territories which is about HK$10. Ng gives a similar figure for restaurant workers in the U.K.; Ng (1965, p. 35).\n\n39 The situation of the members of the overseas community in Britain could be compared to that of a villager of Big Stream Village working in a grocer's shop on the island of Aruba in the Netherlands West Indies. His salary there is 'over' US$100, i.e., at least HK$130, a month. The daily", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205322, "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-1967", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1967", "content_text": "EXPANSION AND EXTENSION IN HAKKA SOCIETY\n\n77\n\nincome of this man is then at least HK$25. It is also interesting to note that costs in the villages are often estimated in terms of British currency.\n\n40 See e.g. Baker 1965, p. 30.\n\n41 Marriage connections were then cast outside the standard market area of Tai Po. This is in contradiction to an assumption by G. W. Skinner (Skinner 1964/65, p. 36), who suggests that standard marketing communities were endogamous in traditional times.\n\n42 Sometimes children by this mating were brought back to the village. In Big Stream Village there is a man whose mother was a Jamaican woman, and his features are quite distinct. However, I have the impression that he is fairly well integrated in the village. He was, for instance, the only male I saw performing ancestral rites at the graves at the Ch'ing Ming festival. He is working as a policeman in Sha Tin. Otherwise I have not come across any secondary marriages in the valley.\n\nREFERENCES\n\nBAKER, H.\n\n[1965] 'Marriage and the Family', Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, (Hong Kong, Royal Asiatic Society, Hong Kong Branch) n.d.\n\nBALL, J. DYER\n\n1925 Things Chinese, or Notes Connected with China, 5th edn, rev. by E. C. T. Werner, (Shanghai, Kelly and Walsh).\n\nBARNETT, K. A.\n\n1957 'The People of the New Territories', Hong Kong Business Symposium, a Compilation of Authoritative Views on the Administration, Commerce and Resources of Britain's Far Eastern Outpost, J. M. Braga (ed.), (Hong Kong, South China Morning Post).\n\n1958 'Introduction on Hong Kong Place-names', Hong Kong Gazetteer to the Land Utilization Map of Hong Kong and the New Territories, with Chinese and English Names, T. R. Tregear (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nBot. Report 1906\n\n1907 'Report on the Botanical and Forestry Department for the Year 1906', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1907, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers).\n\nCensus 1911\n\n1911 'Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1911, (Hong Kong, Noronha and Co., Government Printers).\n\nCHEN TA\n\n1939 Emigrant Communities in South China, (New York, Institute of Pacific Relations).\n\nCHIU TZE NANG\n\n1964 'Land Use in the Extreme East of the New Territories', Land Use Problems in Hong Kong, S. G. Davis (ed.), (Hong Kong, University of Hong Kong Press).\n\nEITEL, E. J.\n\n1895 Europe in China, The History of Hong Kong from the Beginning to the Year 1882, (London and Hongkong, Luzac and Co.).", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1967.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/0c488p70g", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205537, "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-1968", "page_number": 79, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "74\n\nBEING CAUGHT BY A FISHNET\n\nON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\nGÖRAN AIJMER\n\nBig Stream Village is situated on the east shore of Tide Cove in Hong Kong's New Territories. It is a Hakka-speaking settlement exclusively inhabited by people of the surname of Zhang (*) all members of one major lineage. In 1964 there were 146 persons in the village and 33 members of the community working elsewhere. Big Stream Village is located at the mouth of a mountain valley. About one mile and a half further up this valley the small Plum Grove Village is picturesquely situated on the lower slopes of a cone-shaped mountain. It is inhabited by a localized major lineage of the surname of Wu (吳). In 1964 their number was 74 but over 20 members were then away.1\n\nI was told a story about these two villages. Formerly, the story has it, the people of Plum Grove Village were living on the spot now occupied by the Zhang; and the Zhang were living where the Wu are now. Because of influences emanating from the natural surroundings the Wu were not too happy about their location at the mouth of the valley. It is said that the Zhang people pointed out to the Wu that the mountain on the other side of the fields in front of the village was a fishnet. This fact, it was pronounced, had a very special effect on the settlers there. The local Hakka pronunciation of Wu, their shared surname, is Ng. But ng in Hakka also means 'fish', and the Zhang assured the settlers at the mouth of the valley that they were, for certain, in the process of being caught by the net. The Wu seem to have agreed with this suggestion, and the result was that both communities exchanged their locations for their present-day situations.\n\nThis story may need some comments. It deals with influences emanating from the natural surroundings, a believed-in order that in Chinese is designated fengshui – ‘wind — water'. It implies an aspect of ecological adjustment in that it is concerned with natural\n\n* Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Dr. Aijmer, whose article \"Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society\" appeared in Vol. VII of the Journal, is Assistant Professor in the University of Stockholm.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205539, "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-1968", "page_number": 81, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "76\n\nGORAN AIJMER\n\n4\n\nIf we return to the story about the two villages we find that it is concerned with two localized groups and their dependence on the natural surroundings. The mountain is a fishnet — a symbol in the set constituting the fêngshui language. The people were in a similar way classified as fishes, and a fishnet is obviously something to be avoided by fish. Now, the grammar of fêngshui is structured on the concepts of the two fundamental systems of wuxing and yinyang. Wuxing implies a correlation and classification into five categories of the features of the universe. Yinyang is a classification of the universe into binary oppositions. In the actual story we may, I think, substitute fish for water and yin — the female, passive and negative cosmic force. Fishnet may be substituted by mountain and yang — the male, active and positive force. In the locality under discussion yang influences dominated, and the people, by virtue of their shared surname affiliated with yin, had better escape a situation that was for them negative and out-of-balance.\n\nWu lineage bad luck\n\nmountain\n\nfish\n\nyin\n\ndestroying\n\nfishnet\n\ndominating ◄ yang\n\nIf we turn to the content of the story, it will be recalled that the essential thing expressed is that the two populations in the villages had exchanged their abodes at one time. Yet if we scrutinize what can be reconstructed of the history of the two settlements we will find no evidence whatsoever that such an exchange has ever taken place. From a historian's point of view the story is a poor document. But the sociologist may still have something to learn by comparing its content with other data of the past.\n\nA glance in the 1911 Census Report reveals that at that time the population of Big Stream Village amounted to 173 persons and that of Plum Grove Village to 59. Already in this period it is known from other sources that the former community had several overseas members while Plum Grove Village had few, if any.5 The population actually present in Big Stream Village in 1911 was 2.9 times as large as that of Plum Grove Village. If we then turn our attention to the District Demarcation Maps, drawn soon after the British take-over in 1899, we will find that the area of arable land available around Big Stream Village was nearly the same as that", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205540, "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-1968", "page_number": 82, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n77\n\navailable in Plum Grove Village. In Big Stream Village rice land occupied 16.8 acres and dry cultivation 8.6 acres. The total was then 25.4 acres. The corresponding figures for Plum Grove Village are 17.9 and 6.5 giving a total of 24.4 acres. The ratio between Plum Grove land and Big Stream land is then 6.9, 1.3, and 1.0 respectively.\n\nThere is yet a complication to be taken into account. Plum Grove villagers were not the sole occupants of land around their own village. Three other settlements further up in the mountains own a considerable amount of paddy fields and dry cultivation land there. A very old lady in one of these other villages thought she had heard that these fields were bought ‘a very long time ago' and that they were then very expensive. The land around Plum Grove Village is generally considered the best in this mountain area. It is not possible to establish how outsiders were vested with rights in this land. My guess is that this small village could not supply labour enough to make full use of what was at least potentially arable land, and outsiders were let in. There may also have been an earlier decrease in population. Out of the 24.4 acres registered soon after 1899 only 15.5 were controlled by local villagers. The outsiders from the other three villages had together 8.6 acres of rice fields and 0.3 acres of dry land. Thus only 64% of the local arable area were in the hands of Plum Grove people at the turn of the century. If we then compare the actual land-holdings of the two villages at this period we still find that the 2.9 times larger population of Big Stream Village had access to arable land that was only 1.5 times as large as that of Plum Grove Village; which means roughly that five persons in the former village had to live on what three persons were dependent on in the latter. As to the more vital rice land the proportions are the same.\n\nTo this basic situation could be added some other factors that were to the advantage of Plum Grove Village. They had a better supply of water for irrigation, they had better-quality soil, and they had better conditions for the formerly important complementary tea plantations. Their situation up in the mountains offered more security than could be obtained on the coast in a pirate-haunted strip of land. Plum Grove people will also have had better marketing conditions in that their traditional market town Xigong (Sai Kung) was situated in a predominantly Hakka-speaking and small-scale lineage area, while Big Stream people were dependent", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205541, "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-1968", "page_number": 83, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "78\n\nGORAN AIJMER\n\non Dabu Jiuxu (Tai Po Old Market), dominated by a single mighty Cantonese lineage, who tried their best to harass market visitors.\n\nThis rather tedious exercise provides us with evidence enough to justify an assumption that the people of Plum Grove Village were better off than their neighbours of Big Stream Village.10\n\nA key factor for the understanding of social change in this area is the rapid urbanization on the Kowloon Peninsula after 1875. For the villages in question this process implied a set of new choices, e.g. the use of a new, comparatively lucrative market developing at Youmadi (Yau Ma Tei). Here they came to sell firewood, and once in town they encountered new possibilities. The demand from overseas for Chinese labour had led to the establishment of labour-recruiting bureaux and agencies. The expanding shipping trade in the Hong Kong harbour offered opportunities for jobs on board transoceanic steamers. At the same time the appearance of new industrial products on the market drastically reduced traditionally complementary incomes from home industries.\n\nThe men of Big Stream Village soon jumped at the new opportunities that were displayed in Kowloon. Many of them ended up in the United States, Canada, and the West Indies. Through their remittances the home community now had access to an inflow of external incomes. As time passed considerable accumulation of capital brought about changes in the economic status of the village. Before the Pacific War several large and spacious houses were constructed by a handful of very successful emigrés. Conditions had improved, although economic differentiation within the community now was more marked than in the traditional situation. The general location of the village will also have become more favourable as the Kowloon-Canton Railway and a modern road were constructed on the other side of Tide Cove in the opening years of the 20th century.\n\nThe possibilities displayed in Kowloon did not have the same attraction for the people in Plum Grove Village. Land was still sufficient, the yield in normal years will have been reckoned as satisfying, and the firewood cutting, charcoal burning, and other home industries could for a long time bridge the slowly emerging gap between increasing population and static means of production. Part of the land that in 1906 belonged to outsiders seems to have been bought back by local people, but such expansion of produc-", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205542, "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-1968", "page_number": 84, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n79\n\ntion was limited as the population pressure increased in the two other land-owning communities as well. Generally, new land was not available. As time passed people of Plum Grove Village reached the optimum point where they had to look for new alternatives to traditional local production. The men started to emigrate, mostly to Southeast Asia. But the prospects of these areas were very different from those in America. Around 1910 some ten men left for Nanyang. People have never heard from them since. It is supposed that they were killed by the effects of the damp climate. But the movement had to continue. Later emigrants set out for Singapore but they returned as poor as they went, and there was no accumulation of capital at all. Today it is very apparent that Plum Grove Village is a much poorer place than Big Stream Village.\n\nWhat has been exchanged between the two lineages Zhang and Wu is not their respective localization, but the image of their relative prosperity. What is communicated in the myth is that the economic situation of one settlement has improved while that of another has declined. The shift of the respective conditions is referred to as emanating from natural influences.\n\nFengshui is not just a way to communicate, but is a believed-in-order. In Big Stream Village one can still find traces of earlier attempts to minimize negative influences; large stones inscribed with the conventional trigram — yinyang patterns and series of characters have been erected outside some of the houses in order to avert negative forces in the natural surroundings. The four character series are completely meaningless to villagers, who nowadays know nothing about the stones, except that they realize that they have been erected there for fengshui purposes. It is apparent that special knowledge is required to make sense out of a combination of words meaning 'purple', 'minimal', 'first month', and 'illuminate'. These stones, however, are evidence that people in Big Stream Village were really concerned about their bad fengshui position at one time. But this aspect cannot be separated from the aspect of communication. The stones carried a message telling about misfortune. They made the poverty of the locality explicit and understood by others. Nothing comparable to these stones is to be found in Plum Grove Village. In the latter place they now explain their decline, in a less explicit way, by referring to the bad", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205543, "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-1968", "page_number": 85, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "80\n\nGORAN ALMER\n\nposition of their ancestral hall into which the dragon of the hill behind is 'crashing' all the time.\n\nBy way of summing up, we may say that social and economic differentiation is projected on the natural surroundings. The phenomena of nature in their symbolic aspect project back the image of differentiation in the form of rational models concepts of systems of natural influences affecting man and social life. These models can be manipulated by their constructors. They also carry messages that can be communicated between individuals and between groups.\n\nNOTES\n\n1 For a somewhat fuller description of the two villages, see Aijmer 1967. Big Stream Village (Dashuikeng) and Plum Grove Village (Meizilin) are in Hong Kong known under the Cantonese designations 'Tai Shui Hang' and 'Mui Tsz Lam'. Grass Field Village (Maoping) is 'Mau Ping'. They can be located with the help of Gazetteer 1960. Standard Chinese is given in pinyin form. Field work was financed by six Swedish funds; I gratefully acknowledge their support. Thanks are due to Mr. James Hayes, Hong Kong, and my wife for comments.\n\n2 Freedman 1966, 118f; 1967; Baker 1965.\n\n3 An alternative to, or perhaps rather a facet of, manipulating was fleeing. Examples of how people broke away from localities considered having bad fengshui have been given by Hayes (1963; 1967).\n\n4 It may be of interest to point out that nets are instrumental in exorcistic ceremonies, when malevolent spirits may be caught or scared away with fishnets. I have this from a Buddhist monk whom I interviewed in Macau in 1965.\n\n5 Census 1911, 103:27.\n\n6 The sources classify Plum Grove land as third class land whereas Big Stream land is rated as second class. In the former place farming is done on terraced fields only.\n\n7 In Plum Grove Village 35 houses were registered in 1906. If we compare this with the population figure of the Census of 1911, we will find that, if in use, each house unit was inhabited by 1.7 persons. This is an amazingly low figure, as we would have expected something around five or more as an average. Even if we allow for the ten men mentioned below, the figure would increase to just about two. The implication of these facts must be a reduction in population, perhaps by way of a lineage segment breaking away to settle elsewhere. In Big Stream Village 77 houses gave shelter to average families of 2.2 persons. Not even male absenteeism, discussed later, can explain this low figure to satisfaction.\n\n* Information obtained from the District Demarcation Maps and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 188' of 1906 and the 'New Territories Crown Leases of District No. 196' of the same year, to be seen at the Tai Po District Office, New Territories, Hong Kong.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205544, "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-1968", "page_number": 86, "title": "RAS-1968", "content_text": "ON FENGSHUI IN SOUTHEASTERN CHINA\n\n9 See Groves 1965a and 1965b.\n\n81\n\n10 In an attempt to recover an even earlier period we may assume that at one time all house-units were inhabited by one household each and that the land at the same period had the same acreage as in 1906. If we disregard the possibility of outsiders as landowners we will find that one average household in Big Stream Village owned 0.33 acre whereas the corresponding figure for Plum Grove Village is 0.70, which is more than twice as much as in the former place.*\n\nREFERENCES\n\nAijmer, G.\n\n1967 'Expansion and Extension in Hakka Society', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 7.\n\nBaker, H.\n\n1965 'Burial, Geomancy and Ancestor Worship', in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories, Hong Kong. Brochure of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, n.d.\n\nCensus 1911\n\n1911 'Report on the Census of the Colony for 1911', Papers Laid Before the Legislative Council of Hong Kong 1911, Hong Kong.\n\nFreedman, M.\n\n1966 Chinese Lineage and Society: Fukien and Kwangtung, London, The Athlone Press,\n\n1967 'Ancestor Worship: Two Facets of the Chinese Case', in Social Organization, Essays Presented to Raymond Firth, M. Freedman (ed.), London, Frank Cass and Co., Ltd.\n\nGazetteer\n\n1960 A Gazetteer of Place Names in Hong Kong, Kowloon and the New Territories. Hong Kong, Government Printer, n.d.\n\nGroves, R.G.\n\n1965a 'The Origins of Two Market Towns in the New Territories* in Aspects of Social Organization in the New Territories Hong Kong, n.d.\n\n1965b Report of Field Work in Hong Kong, London-Cornell Project, mimeographed.\n\nHayes, J.W.\n\n1963 'Movement of Villages on Lantau Island for Fengshui Reasons', Journal of the Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society, vol. 3.\n\n1967 'Geomancy and the Village' in Some Traditional Chinese Ideas and Conceptions in Hong Kong Social Life Today, M. Topley (ed), Hong Kong, Hong Kong Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society.\n\n* It is hoped to include in the 1969 Journal a note on the occupancy level of village houses in the Hong Kong region in the early 20th Century. Ed.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1968.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/66833948d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205820, "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-1969", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "120\n\nH. G. H. NELSON\n\nkwoh-kai him: so that his line might well be allowed to die out, and his house to stand empty until it fell into ruins.\n\nAdoption seems on the face of it to be the ideal mechanism for balancing the uneven distribution of houses and sons in different branches of a localised descent group, but the above indicates that people neither seek to adopt sons (for themselves or others) unless they have to, nor part with sons in adoption (or transfer themselves to other descent lines) unless strong material advantage is offered\n\n20\n\n...and their abandonment.\n\nI have not touched on the problem of out-migration, which, as Aijmer recognises, may be a major cause of the abandonment of village houses. It is worth pointing out, however, that it is very rare for Chinese deliberately to leave their ancestral home for good; their sojourn abroad may be extended, but there is always the hope of an eventual return. For this reason, houses are not transferred when migrants leave. The annual Crown Rent payments may be made by close kin, but they would not feel justified in presuming on a migrant's probable failure to return by actually moving into his house. Even after his death abroad is reported, or becomes virtually certain, there is no mechanism by which his house may be passed to somebody else — a son can only be adopted to a man who is known to have died sonless and although the Crown Rent payments may be continued for many years by people uncertain of the precise meaning of the numbers on their papers, there is no way of preventing the eventual lapsing of the payments, and a re-entry by the Crown of the migrant's long-ruined home,\n\n21\n\nConclusion\n\nBy way of conclusion, I have taken the figures given by Aijmer, divided the total population of each of his two villages in 1911 by 5, his own reasonable estimate of household size for that time – and divided the number of registered houses (in 1905) by the result. This gives us the more useful information that at that time, there were about 35 households in Big Stream Village, owning on average 2.2 houses each; and that Plum Grove contained 12 households, with 3 houses each. It is a little curious that a community which by all other measures appeared the better off", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205823, "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-1969", "page_number": 129, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "CHINESE DESCENT SYSTEM\n\n123\n\n15 Unless exceptional circumstances make him de facto a property-holder; when, for example, a man's parents die before his marriage.\n\n16 This is an extreme over-simplification of the very complex pattern of property rights between father and son, and between brothers: I hope to use material from Sheung Tsuen in a fuller discussion of this topic elsewhere.\n\n17 The eldest brother, usually, who will have assumed responsibility for the family's ancestral tablet when he took over his father's house on his marriage.\n\n18 The result of this being merely to delay the division of the family property by one generation.\n\n19 Traditionally, in default of a close kinsman, any boy of the same surname might be adopted, though I have heard of very few cases of this. As far as the distribution of property is concerned, however, an adoption from outside the localised lineage is no different from a different surname adoption.\n\n20 J. Goody, “Adoption in Cross-Cultural Perspective\", Comparative Studies in Society and History, Vol. 11, No. 1, 1969, pps. 55-78, has an illuminating comparative survey of adoption in Roman, Greek, Hindu-Indian, Chinese, and West African society; but he is concerned to point out the differences between Eurasian and African practices, and therefore does not discuss the significance of differences within the Eurasian group itself. However, his demonstration of the general primacy in these societies of the inheritance of property over succession to an ancestral cult is most strongly supported by material from Sheung Tsuen. Studies of inheritance and succession in traditional Chinese society which rely exclusively on legal and literary sources (e.g. Klaus Mäding, Chinesisches traditionelles Erbrecht, Berlin, 1966) tend to overlook this vital point.\n\n21 And his abandoned land. There is similarly no mechanism in Chinese customary law by which a non-returning migrant's land can be transferred to his kinsmen or fellow-villagers.\n\n22 And although Plum Grove had practically no migrants; if one adds the migrants from Big Stream Village to the population figure for that village, the average number of houses per family is still further reduced,", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 205860, "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-1969", "page_number": 166, "title": "RAS-1969", "content_text": "160\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nAt the two villages of Old and New Heung Kong Wai near Aberdeen a group of villagers had to come before a Squatter Board in 1893 to help determine and register legitimate holdings. From the information then recorded, and happily preserved, the following facts emerge:\n\n(a) the New Village was built entirely by inhabitants of the Old Village;\n\n(b) two of the houses in the New Village were built 1860-70 and some earlier, some later;\n\n(c) many families owned houses in each village;\n\n(d) many families owned 2 or 3 houses;\n\n(e) none of the cultivated land in the valley was (1893) owned by outsiders.\n\nElsewhere on the island I obtained and wrote down the following account of house occupation in the small Hakka village of Tai Tam Tuk for the period before this village was removed to make way for a reservoir in 1914:\n\nSome of the houses were in a ruinous condition in 1914, which is usually the case in the smaller and poorer villages in South China where frequent typhoons and heavy rains combine to shorten the life of these simply-constructed dwellings. Perhaps in consequence, most families in the village had several houses. For instance, one of my informants, her husband, his parents and his younger unmarried brother shared three houses and one shed, but ate together as one household.\n\nThese examples seem to bear out Mr. Nelson's reinterpretation of Dr. Aijmer's figures i.e. that at that time (1911) there were about 35 households in Big Stream Village, owning on average 2.2 houses each; and that Plum Grove contained 12 households with 3 houses each.*\n\nHong Kong 1969,\n\nJAMES HAYES\n\n* Since writing the above I also recall a case at Law Uk, Pui O where, speaking of her early married life there well before 1900, a very old village woman said theirs was \"a three table household\" with something over 20 persons eating together. It was also a multi-house one.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1969.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/9g553n20d", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 206849, "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-1973", "page_number": 126, "title": "RAS-1973", "content_text": "120 \n\nSUNG HOK-P’ANG \n\nthe name of the hill \"Ngo T'aam Shaan\" is almost unknown by most of the New Territory people now, a village near, formed recently by people returned from California and elsewhere, still follows the name of the hill \"Ngo Taam\", but the villagers in the New Territory dialect mispronounce the character #ngo-turtle to + ngau bovine animals and give the name of the village 4 (Ngau T'aam Mei), the end of the bovine animals pool, instead of *(Ngo T'aam Mei), the end of the turtle pool. \n\n= \n\nThis pool is also called Lit Nui T'aam (♬★i§) meaning virtuous girl pool. About the time of the Sung dynasty there was a village girl called Man Kam So (X), who was about eighteen years old and very beautiful. One day she was out grass-cutting with several older women when she happened to stray away from them, and found herself near the pool. Suddenly she was accosted by a youth, she shouted to her companions for help, but in her terror she did not hear their answering shouts, and to save her virtue she sprang into the pool and was drowned. It is said that the name actually was given by the scholars themselves in her honour, and the pool was also called Yat Waan T'aam (~**), one coil pool. In those days married women had their hair done up in a series of coils, while the unmarried girls put it up in one coil only. \n\nThe word Kok means horn. Thus according to the \"To Shue Chaap Shing\" the Kok in Kwai Kok Shaan referred to the two peaks of the hill that look like a pair of horns. The book also mentions that if the hill was clouded rain would certainly come. On the hill is a stone called the fairy hair-dressing stone, Sin Nui Soh Chong Shek (446), and at the bottom of the hill a stream called Kwai Kok Ts'uen (††), which is a famous place of scenery. It is recorded in \"T'o Shue Chaap Shing\" and other books, where it is said that the fountain is sweet and smooth for the tongue. Even now when the scholars of Kam T'in happen to call there, they draw some water from the stream and drink it, saying Yam shui sz yuen, \"in drinking the water think of its source,\" which is a Chinese maxim, or adage for descendants in remembering the virtue and the good work done by their ancestors. Almost at the top of the hill are two big rocks one on top of the other looking like huge grinding stones about 50 Chinese feet tall, with a passage through. A family of tigers are said to have lived there once, so it \n\n#", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1973.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/8910rj06r", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208132, "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-1977", "page_number": 171, "title": "RAS-1977", "content_text": "MEMORIES OF THE DISTRICT OFFICE SOUTH \n\n155 \n\ncrews, who had no permit for that beach, were driven off without their sand. One of my duties was to discover and report beaches that could be dug without injury to cultivated land. Some of these have since then been completely worked out, notably on Sha Chau, as I found in 1938 during archaeological researches. Eventually the P.W.D.* started a scheme for dredging and working sand from the sea bottom off Tai Lam Chung about 1929, which enabled the builders to get what they wanted. The beaches at Tai Long in Lantau and Tai Wan in Lamma were specially reserved for the waterworks filter beds because of the cleanness and high quality of the sand there. \n\nOne of the interesting communities on Lantau was the group of Buddhist temples and chai tong or fasting halls on the well-known high plateau between Tung Chung and Tai O figuring as 'Ngong Ping' on the maps. It lay at about 800 ft. above sea level and its members maintained a good pathway from Tai O across a stream and up the hill to their settlement and ran their buildings, somewhat in the manner of vegetarian youth hostels. They occasionally harboured strange characters, as might be expected in unsettled and revolutionary times. One such, I believe, was a big-scale opium smuggler and den-keeper who had operated in London, and was nicknamed ‘Brilliant Cheung'; I think he got banished from the Colony. The track from Tai O to Tung Chung was a favourite walk for many people: I unfortunately never did it. \n\nAs I notice that Hong Kong seems to have become more and more a tourist attraction of late years, I may perhaps conclude these reminiscences with a few notes on the sites of historical or archaeological interest which can be found in the Southern District, and which may be thought worth preserving. Our chief site, Sung Wong Toi, was I know wrecked by the Japanese as an anti-Kuomintang measure, though the inscription has been preserved. Kowloon City was full of interesting things when I visited it, such as old yamens, drill grounds for Chinese troops, ancient cannon with inscriptions, and above all the old walls and gates; I once sat in the gate to conduct an enquiry, after the manner of King David, with the people assembled round. Close by was a walled and moated village, shown on maps but hard to find, named Nga Tsin Wai, which I hope will not be ‘improved' out of existence by planners! On the low hill west of Kowloon City a loopholed wall and gateway with a ruined guard-house barred the path crossing a gap \n\n* Public Works Department.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1977.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/np198x23n", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 208988, "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-1980", "page_number": 150, "title": "RAS-1980", "content_text": "118\n\nBARBARA E. WARD\n\nuniverse in general and their own place in it. (3) One is always looking for the underlying principles or structures beneath these various aspects of social life, and attempting to compare them systematically with the underlying principles and structures of other societies.\n\nThe enumeration of these three points will allow you to see at once that a good social anthropological study is likely to put on record a very great deal more than almost any other kind of study, and although, of course, no single ethnographer ever really succeeds in writing about everything, as ideally he should, nevertheless he often does try, and in so far as he limits himself to one aspect or another of a society (as he always must when dealing with a complex situation) he remains aware that the rest is there and that it is important.\n\nThe result is that good ethnographies contain an enormous amount of information recorded in a systematic way. One thinks of Francis Hsü's Under the Ancestors' Shadow, for example, or Fei's study of Kaishienkung, or C. K. Yang's Chinese Village in Communist Transition. In short, the second point I am trying to make clear to you is that it is extremely lucky that the New Territories have been studied by social anthropologists because good social anthropologists usually include a great many more kinds of information in their studies than most other social scientists do. Thus, because quite a large number of social anthropologists have in fact worked here since 1950 the result is that it is probably true to say that we already know a great deal more about the New Territories than we ourselves actually realise.\n\nFor example, (taking the published books alone) we have a detailed anthropological study of clan and village organisation in Sheung Shui; we have an even more detailed study of clan and economic structure in Ping Shan, and the effects upon it of the nearness to the big port cities of Kowloon and Hong Kong; we have an interesting account of one part of the great and constant stream of overseas emigration from and return to the New Territories; we have important descriptive studies of the fishing communities in Castle Peak; a book on Sai Kung is about to be published in Hawaii, and part of a long-term study pre-New Town Shatin has recently appeared in Sweden and so on. In addition a number of other books are in the press or soon will be: one on the Ch'iu-\n\n!\n\nPage 150\n\nPage 151", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1980.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/kh04md207", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209315, "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-1981", "page_number": 218, "title": "RAS-1981", "content_text": "204\n\nNOTES AND QUERIES\n\nKung Temple. The dyke at Tin Sam Valley was across half the river as the river bed here was high, but the others crossed the whole stream. When the railway and Tai Po Road were built these main canals were carried across in great culverts. Other villagers in Sha Tin used less sophisticated irrigation systems, merely taking a small mountain stream and distributing its waters over the fields.\n\nThe dykes across the Shing Mun or Tin Sam streams would be washed away in each storm; they required to be rebuilt about twice each year. Each family in turn was responsible and would announce the dyke building day in advance by beating a gong through the streets. Every family had to send at least one adult to carry stones, earth, and straw (women) or place them (men). Families without land in that area were excused. The dykes were just heaps of stones, packed with clay and straw without anchors (note - wooden beams for anchors were too precious, and even if anchored the dyke would still be swept away in typhoon storm).\n\nThe main dyke at Tai Wai required communal building (Tai Wai/Tung Lo Wan), and the Hin Tin dyke required communal building (Tin Sam/Keng Hau).\n\nA tau of land: some causes of misunderstanding\n\nMisunderstandings have arisen once or twice when seeking answers to the questions \"How many seeds were needed to plant 1 tau of land\" and \"How much land would 1 tau of seeds plant\". The questions were asked to try to clarify if 1 tau of land and 1 tau of seeds were complementary. On several occasions the answer was “2-4 shing” and “several tau” respectively. The misunderstanding seems to have arisen from the fact that seeds were planted in seed beds and fields were planted with sprouts, and the first question was answered by the respondent as if the question was, \"How big a seedbed was needed to plant seeds for 1 tau of land\", and \"How many fields would a seed bed 1 tau in size cope with\". In both cases the equation 1 tau of seeds (yat tau t'in →†¤斗田) was treated as being too obvious to conceivably be the point of the question. In both cases it seems to be assumed that the seedbed should be 1/5 - 1/4 the area of the later fields.\n\nAn example of village morality: the problem of cash incomes, the importance of seamen's money\n\nI discussed with Wai Hon-leung the problem of how subsistence", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1981.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ff36bt18m", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209865, "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-1983", "page_number": 124, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "102\n\nThe first valley is that of Shek Pik (\"Rock Wall\"). This lies right under the steep south-west face of Lantau Peak. The main village stands at some distance from a creek with a big sandbar which makes a good harbour for small boats. To the east is a little hamlet, Tung Wan (\"East Bay\"), where a sandbar has silted across the mouth of a stream, making a marsh. A bay a little west of the creek faces the surf, and so has no landing and is in consequence deserted except for cultivation and pasture1a.\n\nShui Hau and Tong Fuk (\"Creek Mouth\" and \"Banked Happiness\"), which form the second group of villages, have poor landing-places. They lie at one end of the long stretch of beach which extends to Pui O (“Cup Haven\")14 which is the name of the third group of villages.\n\nThe chief features of Pui O are its fine woods with their ancient trees: the very long sand-spit enclosing a lagoon where boats can lie: and the double storm beach, the second one to the rear being the older. There is an old brick or pottery kiln built on this beach. Passes go from Pui O to Mui Wo and Shap Long.\n\nBeyond Pui O to the southeast is a rugged granite peninsula; it only has one village of importance, Tai Long (\"Great Waves\"). This village has one very fine sand beach with another to the west, which, because it is much more exposed, has no village15. To the east of Tai Long are the wells from where the Cheung Chau waterboats get their water.\n\nOn the north coast of this granite peninsula are bays and hamlets where sand junks used to dig sand. At its innermost point is Shap Long (\"Ten Ridges\", but this translation is particularly doubtful), a plain with a sandbank in front; the sea is so shallow sand junks cannot approach. A few years ago an epidemic of smallpox made the villagers think something was wrong with their abode, so they left the houses all standing and moved into huts further down the valley, on its northern side.\n\nThe next point of interest on the Lantau coast is the Silver Mine Bay, a beautiful valley with a big sand beach in front, and with four villages, Mui Wo (\"Plum Nook\"), Tai Tei Tong (\"Big Land Pond\"), Luk Tei Tong (\"Deer Land Pond\"), and Pak Ngan", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 209872, "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-1983", "page_number": 131, "title": "RAS-1983", "content_text": "109\n\nNam Tong Island (“Southern Hall Island\"). This island is large and mountainous. Military defence work is currently going on there. It was formerly cultivated, but in 1929 the cultivated area was abandoned. There is an Aga light on the southern point. The channel to the north of this island is \"Buddha's Head Pass\". The harbour within this channel is well sheltered: there is a big temple on the mainland to the north of the channel. The chief place of interest on this island is the old fort near the north point, with a south wall thickened, apparently for mounting cannon. This fort is probably Chinese, perhaps built by pirates.\n\nHere we leave the islands of the South District, and enter the North District as we pass into Port Shelter. The interest of this place lies in its extraordinary geography and geology, and its wonderful beauty. The surf which beats on the high pillared cliffs of High Island, Bluff Island, and Basalt Island dies away as your launch passes into the long calm channels, and under the hills of the mainland there is perfect shelter, though I do not think the anchorages are good. Grassy hills come down to the waters' edge, and near Saikung the sea is studded with diminutive islets.\n\nThe soil of these islands appears extremely barren, as the population of the islands is very small. Fishing seems the chief occupation. Settlements are few. Yim Tin is named after some abandoned salt fields a little to the south of the (Roman Catholic) mission church: Kau Sai (\"West of the Channel\") explains itself. There is also a group of settlements in the southern part of High Island. These have the remarkable names of \"North Fork\", \"Tribute Rice Junks Bay\", and \"White Insect Wax\",32 This group and Yim Tin are the only places in these islands where cultivation is of any extent. \"North Fork\" is a most remarkable place. Someone has lavished money on it, the houses and the ancestral temple are well built, a high platform held up by a big masonry retaining wall stands in front of them, and a small stream by the village is crossed by a fine three-span bridge all of stone: it is the sort of stream for which the rest of the Territory think six stepping stones are ample. I have no idea how these names originated, except that the bay may have been an anchorage for junks carrying the tribute rice north from Canton to Peking.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1983.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/j9607p61v", "rank": 0 }, { "id": 211400, "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": 116, "title": "RAS-1988", "content_text": "44\n\n+\n\nheard it they shouted for joy, and started off to their homes at once, full of hope. But when they found their houses half fallen down, some villages entirely hidden by the long grasses, and the paddy fields covered with weeds, they were much dishearted, realizing that they were not any better off when they were inside the boundary. San On district had in the meanwhile been re-established and Lei Hoh Shing (5) the district magistrate gives a pitiful picture of the condition of the land and people. ... I arrived as district magistrate and found many old and young lying in ditches, having died from hunger. The strong young men are gone to other places to earn their livings. When I look down from a height all is dense undergrowth and fallen walls and I cannot hear the voice of a single wild goose in the distance . . . . so I get oxen trained to plough..... and every so often I collect one or two lucky-to-be-alive people and try to encourage them to develop the barren land. We stand about and talk, but when the talking is not half finished each of us cannot help sobbing with grief. . . .\n\n++\n\nThus gradually the land was worked back to its old state, and to perpetuate the memory of the two men who had done so much to help the people, a hall was built in Shek Woo Market (M) by the Sheung Shui (E) villagers and their neighbours. The name of the hall was **Tuk Foo I Kung Ts'z** (A) \"The Viceroy and the Governor, these two Sirs Hall\". Over the front door three characters were written Po Tak Ts'z \"Return thanks for the Bounty Hall\". The hall was used for the village council for many years and every year on the birthdays of Governor Wong and Viceroy Chau a feast is held in the hall by the village elders. Another such hall is in Kam Tin (see H.K.N. VIII, page 207 and plate 20(2))* and has been used as a school for many years. It is situated on Taai Sha Chau (7) amidst beautiful scenery and near it is the Kam Shui (*) “ornamental stream\", with a big lawn like a tennis court in front of it. A large lichee orchard is on the left-hand side of the hill.\n\nSince the 10th year of Kin Lung (#), 1745, each Yuet Chau (ZE) year, which occurs every ten years [sic], the Kam Tin people have a matshed erected for Kin Tsiu ( ), the festival of the Dead. Two water colour paintings of the Governor and Viceroy are displayed\n\n* Vol. 14, of the Journal, plate 41.", "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1988.txt", "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/ft84gb83q", "rank": 0 } ]