[
    {
        "id": 207872,
        "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-1976",
        "page_number": 260,
        "title": "RAS-1976",
        "content_text": "SOCIAL RESEARCH IN THE N.T. OF HONG KONG, 1963 245\n\npopulation in the figures often makes detection difficult). Large numbers of able-bodied men being away, the women must assume new or at least increased responsibilities. Now it would seem that New Territories women, both Punti and Hakka, play a very active role in agricultural life. (It was not so everywhere in China, nor even throughout the south-east). And it may be that their agricultural skill is not only a consequence but a cause of the absence of the men. (I also raise the question whether in the past the agricultural roles of women were more noticeable among the Hakka than the Punti, and whether, in turn, male emigration was in earlier times promoted more strongly among the Hakka by such a difference). But however competent the women, a heavy draining away of male labour, when it cannot be replaced with hired hands, must impose a considerable strain on the women who stay at home. To see a woman ploughing the fields with a baby at her back suggests many questions about the conduct of her domestic affairs. But it is not simply a matter of her economic duties being increased; if men are away some reallocation must take place in the social roles of the household; family life is affected; even the control of community affairs may pass partly to women. One study in the New Territories (see Miss Jean Pratt's paper in The Eastern Anthropologist, vol. XIII No. 4, 1960) has already approached this subject, but it is a fit topic for several detailed enquiries, for, apart from the theoretical problems it raises in sociology and demography, it has many welfare aspects in the field of marriage, the care of children, and social control.\n\n83. It seems to me to be important to study both ends of the movement to the United Kingdom. The migrants there are very far from being cut off from people at home, and their problems have a direct bearing on New Territories life. Stories of gambling losses and debt circulate widely. Talk of unemployment and the abuse of labour by restaurant owners upsets families with young men away. How the Chinese in Britain organise themselves, adjust themselves to their strange surroundings, and make use of the opportunities open to them are questions which deserve careful study. I have a Chinese graduate student under training in London who is interested in the problem, and if all goes well he should be able to produce a valuable study of it. As for the New Territories themselves, I think that the best material will come from community studies, because the effects of migration need to be studied in the",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1976.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/hq382988q",
        "rank": 0
    },
    {
        "id": 209727,
        "series_id": 26,
        "series_slug": "histsyn-rashkb-journal-engine",
        "series_title": "RASHKB Journal 皇家亞洲學會香港分會學刊",
        "series_use_hku_proxy": false,
        "document_key": "RAS-1982",
        "page_number": 384,
        "title": "RAS-1982",
        "content_text": "Page 362\n\nBOOK REVIEWS\n\n+ +\n\n+\n\nto provide a succinct general survey of British policy in the Far East with the emphasis placed primarily towards China and Japan; South East Asia is discussed, particularly in the nineteenth century and the period after 1941, when it is more important to assess developments within the pattern of British advance and retreat in the Far East. Within that framework Peter Lowe has succeeded admirably in laying bare the flesh and bones of the subject. And, indeed, so far as the body of the book has been anatomised as a living tissue of encounters, resulting from the impact of one Western civilization upon several Asian societies, the only possible criticism might be that the need to be succinct has forced the author to cut through the nervous system of cultural and diplomatic relations rather too drastically.\n\nHowever, it must be recognized that there is an awful lot of relevant data — economic as well as political — to be included in this survey. I admire Peter Lowe's skill in compressing these not insignificant details into the narrative. (I suspect that he relieved the pressure of his expositions when the text, presumably, was given as lectures by anecdotal asides to generate a feeling of the period and the place.)\n\nTherefore it would not be appropriate in a short review such as this to raise any particular issues for discussion or criticism. The text, in fact, is supplemented by well-informed references to recent book and periodical literature where the serious university student would follow up the cryptic clues to the problems of interpretation so precisely indicated in the author's presentation. Britain in the Far East, in fact, represents that happy example of a text book which so clearly reflects a mastery of the subject obtained by meticulous research and command over sources in Western languages. The authority so evident will therefore also commend the book to the general readers of Far Eastern History whether they are located in the British metropolis or in the surviving periphery of the British formal and informal empires laid down in the nineteenth century. Again, Peter Lowe puts this perspective into a lapidary concluding remark “In essence, Britain's role in the Far East belonged to history.” All we can add in Hong Kong is the rider that here a certain instalment of that history has yet to be played out.\n\nALAN BIRCH\n\nPage 362",
        "txt_file_path": "txt/dfo323lmgvd/RAS-1982.txt",
        "external_url": "https://digitalrepository.lib.hku.hk/catalog/mk61z420p",
        "rank": 0
    }
]